Jamin Bradley

When I lead people through inner healing, I work with the Holy Spirit through the visions he brings to their minds. But this method stops working sometimes when the Holy Spirit needs to address deep, deep trauma. The first time this happened, the Holy Spirit was unmistakably clear with me about why: “I don’t want them to confuse my goodness.”

Despite the clear statement, I invited the person I was working with to close their eyes and imagine Jesus again. They almost threw up instantly. They would not be able to use this visionary technique again until we were done working through the trauma and extracted the demon behind it—at which point the visions turned right back on.

God was never gone during that silence, but there were many times when it felt like it. I continued to reflect on his unmistakable comment during those months and remembered that the reason he felt absent was because he didn’t belong with the incredible darkness of the trauma. He was good, not evil. He was light, not darkness. He knew better than I did that envisioning him in that trauma could actually make the trauma more traumatic. This isn’t always the case, but I’ve seen a few times where it has been.

The Bible reinforces this truth to some extent. In Leah Rediger Schulte’s book, The Absence of God in Biblical Rape Narratives, she shows how the name Yahweh is “absent in divine name, speech, or deed.” These stories are something so far from God that he can’t even be mentioned there. It’s not that he wasn’t there or that he didn’t care—quite the opposite! But such stories are something so far from his character that we have to recognize his name belongs nowhere near such stories. He doesn’t want us to create a theology that says, “God let this happen to me…” or worse yet, “God made this happen to me so I could…”

No. He grieves with us and wants to help us out of our trauma. He is not distant whatsoever—but if it feels like it, it may be to protect our minds from doubting his character. We must turn to the Holy Spirit for counsel so we heal from such trauma, lest we end up like Jacob’s family who committed a vengeful atrocity in an attempt to fix the pain.