Why the Church Needs to Understand Wounding

Too often in the Church we try to address the bad fruit in a person’s life without taking the time to understand the wounding that caused it. If we’re just dealing with the visible bad fruit in people’s lives, and not the bad roots in their hearts that cause it, then we’re just offering a sin management service. No, thank you. I want transformation.

Even if we successfully expunge bad fruit from our lives, if we don’t deal with the underlying roots, those roots will just cause bad fruit to spring up somewhere else. We need to address the motivation. We need to understand the wounding.

A Bank Robbers’ Parable

Two guys burst into a bank with guns. Both fired their weapons into the air and made everyone lay down. They robbed the bank and fled. Later, they were caught, tried, and convicted.

They each received the same lengthy sentence from the judge. After all, the facts of both cases were the same. They robbed a bank. They both used a gun (a worse legal offense). Although they didn’t physically hurt anyone, they both discharged their weapons (again, a worse legal offense). Justice was served like it should be, kudos to the legal system.

Their motivations, however, were completely different.

The first bank robber was motivated by straight greed. Pure, unadulterated greed. “They have something I don’t. I want it. I’m taking it.”

The second bank robber was motivated by fear for his 8-year daughter, dying from a rare and aggressive cancer. She needed an expensive treatment, and she needed it now. But he’d just lost his job, his health insurance was canceled, and the treatment facility required insurance before treatment.

Don’t get me wrong. His desperation does not justify the crime. The punishment was just.

The judge and jury didn’t need to understand the two men’s motivations to hand down judgment and punishment, just the facts of the case. But if the prison counselor wants to bring healing and reform to their lives, he must understand the differences between their motivations.

Which Do We Want to Be?

As the Church, Jesus’ body, the physical manifestation of his love here on the Earth, who do we want to be?

If we want to be judge and jury, bringing judgment, then, no, we don’t need to understand a person’s wounding. We can bring judgment with just the facts of the case.

But if we, as the Church, want to bring healing, then absolutely, we must understand the person’s wounding, and how that wounding has produced bad fruit in their lives.

The prison counselor isn’t going to justify either bank robber’s crime. But he is going to address the problems in each man’s life differently, because their heart conditions, their motivations, and their woundings are completely different.

Did You Cut Yourself?

If someone cuts themselves, too many conservative churches just yell at them, “Hey, stupid, don’t cut yourself! Stop getting blood everywhere, you idiot!” When we don’t lead with compassion, we’re too busy passing judgment to bring healing.

And too many liberal churches pretend they didn’t cut themselves at all. “Blood? We don’t see any blood? You’re fine, no problem here.” When we justify sin, like sex outside marriage, homosexuality, transgender, or abortion, we let people spiritually bleed-out by denying the wound.

But neither is bandaging the wound like Jesus would, which requires 2 things:

Acknowledging the wound.
Loving the person.

Visible bad fruit in a their life often requires immediate attention. But if we really want to help them, we need to address the bad root in their heart, a response to their wounding, that caused the bad fruit in their life.

Where there’s fruit, there’s a root.

What was the motivation for cutting themselves? Was it an accident and they were just being careless? Or was it intentional and they struggle with self-hatred?

Do you see that each motivation needs to be addressed differently? The former needs safety training, while the latter needs counseling and inner healing. Those follow-ups are very different, even though these individuals both received the same emergency medical care.

Start by Listening & Accepting Their Story

So how do we make a difference? How do we do this? Where do we start? How do we understand a person’s wounding?

Here are some helpful, practical guidelines to begin to understand.

Listen to their story. This is not the time to tell your similar story, which actually discounts their story. Shut up and listen.
Accept their story. Don’t judge it. Value their vulnerability. “Thank you for sharing that with me. That was really brave.”
Don’t generalize. Don’t assume you understand what they’re going through because you’ve heard (or lived) a similar story. You need to hear lots of different stories before you really understand an issue.
“Tell me more about that” is a great thing to say when you don’t know what to say.
Validate their pain. “That must really hurt. I’m sorry you’ve been through this.” (For more practical tips on how to validate someone’s pain, check out here and here.)

We can learn to understand wounding, to look beneath the surface, to validate people’s pain. We can learn to be Jesus’ heart, hands, feet, and mouth on the Earth like we’re called to be. Because if you can’t go to the people of God when you’re in crisis, where can you go?

Resources

In particular, I’ve got 2 short video series, each with videos only 5-8 minutes long, about understanding depression and post-abortive.

Your Turn

Have you ever had someone give you the right solution to the wrong problem because they didn’t take the time to understand? Have you ever done that and regretted it later? I know I’ve been on both ends of this. Tell us your story in the comments and please share this post on social media if it would bless others.