Written/Presented in Light University- Trauma Informed Coaching by Diane Langberg, Ph.D.

Diane Langberg- you will never know the powerfull redemptive words you have poured over my wounded soul. You get it and you understand trauma and gave me language that I was desperatley needing. Thank you for your life heart's work of uncovering the enemy and allowing God's people the dignity and space to heal wholly and HOLY! You walk on holy ground and your reverance and awe of God's love is evident in your being. Thank you my sister in Christ.

I truly say thank you for your ability to see deeply into the heart of others.

The Reality of Working with Trauma by Diane Langberg

Working with trauma is a grievous work, any many you sit with may have been oppressed, raped, trampled, abused, and battered. Sadly, it has often been by others who call themselves Christians, followed also by those who purposefully cover it up or are quietly complicit.

Story of Cape Coast Castle

In Ghana at Cape Coast Castle where hundreds of thousands of Africans were forced through its dungeons, and its door of no return onto slave ships. The fort had five dungeons for males and descending down into the darkness into one of those felt claustrophobic.

Two hundred men shackled and chained together sat in that dungeon for three months before being shipped across the Atlantic. We stood in one of the male dungeons listening in the darkness to the whole horrific story when our guide said this “do you know what's above the dungeon?” We shook our heads. “A chapel,” he said. Directly above 200 shackled men, some of them dead others screaming, all of them sitting in filth, sat God worshippers. They sang they read the scriptures they prayed and I suppose they took up an offering for the less fortunate. The slaves could hear the service. The worshipers could sometimes hear the slaves but not usually because they had someone down there making them behave, so it was not to disturb worship. It took my breath away. The evil, the suffering, the humiliations, and the injustice were overwhelming, and the visual parable was stunning. The people in the chapel were numb to the horrific trauma and suffering beneath them, in fact, they were actively complicit.

Under the form of worship in that Chapel in Ghana lay the darkness of slavery oppression and tyranny all things that blight and destroy human beings created in the image of our God, but I think you know that Christianity does not look like being folded up with evil and worshipping on top of dungeons. Following Christ does not mean complicity with a system that butters our bread and fills our coffees built on the backs of those created in the image of God. It does not look like praying and singing and giving money on top of screams and unspeakable suffering and filth and death.

Our guide pointed to the Chapel above and he said this “Heaven above Hell below.” But I would argue that Heaven was not above. That is not what Heaven does, and it is what Heaven really does that is the reason we are here today. Heaven leaves the chapel; Heaven goes down into the dungeon in order to bring out those who are enslaved into light in freedom so that they might in turn go back and bring out more.

The Dungeon of Abuse

We don't really have to go very far to go into the dungeon. Because you see it's in our homes and our schools and our military and our neighborhoods and our Churches. Historically, the Church largely ignored or often actively denied the dungeon of abuse; we did not believe it really existed and we were certain it never occurred in the homes that were represented in our pews or the lives of our parishioners and never within the Church itself. Sadly, it has taken the media and the courts to make it abundantly clear that sexual abuse is in all such places and has even been perpetrated or covered up by those we have held in high esteem. I am grieved that it has been the media and not the voice of God's people who have dragged this to the light. But I believe with all my heart that like our Lord who was anointed to bring good news to the afflicted, to bind up the brokenhearted and set the captives free that you and I are called to leave the comfort of our Chapels and enter into the devastating suffering of those who have been shattered by the evil of abuse.

Jesus demonstrated in the flesh the character of God. His Church is to do the same. When God's people worship over and separate untouched by dungeons, they are not worshipping the God of the Scriptures. There is nothing in the Scriptures to suggest that being complicit neutral or uncaring and deaf to the cries of suffering humans is godly. God has sown His life in you and me in the midst of this dark and fallen world filled with blasted and ruined humanity, He has sown his life in us and he has flung us out. He has also made it clear that the enemy has sown seed as well and it is growing and maturing right next to the wheat. It is with us not just out there. God has said so and He has said it will be so until he returns.

The Cape Coast dungeons were under the chapel. They were not a separate building they were not outside the walls of the fort. Our God has called us not to ignore the dungeons in or under or outside our sanctuaries.

Where Are We Today?

And so, as we consider the topic of abuse we must remember that it is not a problem out there it is among the people of our God. We fail to understand and believe our Lord's teaching if we think otherwise. Let’s look into this dungeon of abuse. Sexual assault is said to be our nation's most rapidly growing crime, however, of course most of the information that we have about abuse and rape depends on information volunteered by the victims themselves and as we know all too well from recent reports, the true extent of abuse is unknown because many compelling forces even in the Church favorite non-disclosure. Someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes in the United States. Child sexual abuse occurs in the lives of one in four women in one in six men before they turn 18. Sexual abuse against boys has been called America's hidden epidemic. Boys who are sexually abused are far more likely to become drug addicts, suffer from mental illness, attempt suicide or become sexual predators in turn. The majority of abusers are male. 3 to 7% are female. Please note that means there are female abusers. Most abusers are considerably older than their victims, although there has recently been a troubling increase in younger perpetrators which obviously has significance when we think about Church policies. One in five women have been raped. 44% percent of the victims are under the age of 18 and 93% know their attacker. You stop and think about these numbers in the context of the people in your Church or your youth group and you begin to grasp something of the frequency of these crimes. Victims of rape are 3x more likely to be depressed, 6x more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder. 13x more likely to abuse alcohol. 26x more likely to abuse drugs and four times more likely to commit suicide.

One in four marriages experience at least one episode of domestic violence. the effects on victims and on the next generation are staggering and sadly often the Church has blamed the victim or protected the form of a marriage when the substance is rotten and full of evil.

Statistics tell us that in this country, it is safer for a woman to walk down a city street than to go home. We have men and women in our Churches who have suffered and continue to suffer abuse. Most of them never tell some of them tried to tell and were not believed. Most of them have never heard the word from a pulpit they've never heard what God has to say about such life shaping evil and how it breaks his heart. Some of them have experienced that abuse within the confines of the Church and their presence in our pews is a measure of both their desperation and their great courage. Others have been abused in this place we call God's sanctuary and we have covered it up in the name

of that same God who himself tells us that He is light and truth.

The Role of the Church

What does it look like for church for pastors for teachers to enter into this dungeon? I want to give you some governing principles this evening about how pastors and churches should think about the life crippling problem of abuse of any kind. Given the stories that sit in our pews many still unknown to us, what does it mean for the body of Christ to actually be a healing community?

1. We actually need to acknowledge the problem of abuse whether it's child sexual abuse, rape, verbal or physical abuse. A part of that it is not just out there but it is in here it needs to be acknowledged out loud, it needs to be acknowledged by leadership.

2. We need to approach this topic with great humility. We often really have no education about these matters. We need to be honest about that. We have not invited victims to tell their stories and learn from them. We have not been taught about offenders and how they work. We have not developed policies and safeguards for those under our care. We teach about God in marriage and sex and parenting but it does not usually include the topics of sexual abuse, rape

or domestic violence.

3. Any kind of abuse is an abuse of the vulnerable by the powerful. It could be power of position, of size, of age, of verbal capacity or of knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is often used to have great power over others. The use of power to feed the self rather than to bless the sheep is a vile thing. Scripture is very clear that we are defiled by what comes out of us. Abuse of power is fruit borne by the abuser, it is never caused by the victim. A child is never responsible

for abuse. A grown woman or a man can be abused by someone with power. There are countless ways other than physical force to coerce another human being into something they do not want.

4. Anyone who does abuse another human being, whether it's sexual abuse of a minor or the physical, sexual, verbal assault, or harassment of an adult is exposing the contents of his own heart and mind. It is not a 50/50 proposition. Again, what comes out of the heart of the person, exposes the heart of the person.

It is not due to the victim's behavior clothing, wrongdoing, or anything else. The victim's behavior tells us about the victim it does not tell us about the perpetrator. The perpetrator's actions speak about him and him alone. Think about this. How many of us in Churches have been around troubled, confused, or even seductive adolescents and we've never molested them. Why? Because it is not in our hearts to do so. Such an adolescent actually needs more protection, not less. And that is also true about seductive, annoying, needy, or weak adults as well. To prey on vulnerable people is wolf-like.

Seeking out or using one's power to seek out the weaker for food is what a predator does.

5. Research has demonstrated time and again that you and I cannot tell who's lying. We don't like that. So, someone comes to us and tells us someone has been sexually abused or they have been abused by someone and we think it can't be true. I know that person. It’s absolutely not true. We think, you know they're so gifted and they're brilliant and look at the ministry that they've developed and all of those things, which have nothing to do with character. Scripture says that our hearts are so deceitful that you and I can't even figure our own out, let alone someone else's. And the Scriptures tell us that Jesus trusted no man why because he knew what was in men. So, we hear an accusation about abuse and we say I know that person I trust him. Jesus says I know that person, I don't trust Him.

Scripture tells us that God does not judge by what his eyes see and his ears hear but according to righteousness, which is likeness to Him in the character. We judge by what we see in here and we assume we know the heart. Scripture says that anything is that it's not like God is off plumb, sin. Scripture says the tares grow right next to the wheat and they look exactly alike until the fruit is born. We tend to trust the likeness and say that the bad fruit can't be possible. Research consistently shows that it is rare for an alleged victim child or adult to lie about abuse and when they do, it is most often to protect the perpetrator.

6. One of the things both research and experience make very clear is that those who offend deceive themselves about the nature of what they're doing, about the victim, about the impact of their behavior and about why they did what they did they have habituated deceit. That means that the words and tears of the offender are never sufficient indicators of the reality of what is going on inside his mind and heart. Such deception is very entrenched and slow to change. A sex offender has lost his capacity to discern truth from lies. Because of that, we must not just be concerned about protecting the vulnerable from the offender, but also about protecting the offender from himself.

Proverbs 1:18 says this “they ambush their own lives”. Violence takes away the life of the possessor. When we do not understand the level of deceit we make it easy for the offender to continue in sin and deception. If we love the abuser, we will know that true repentance is slow and hard and that their words cannot be trusted by us or by themselves. Keep in mind that one of the most powerful uses or weapons of deception is the use of spiritual language.

7. Church leaders are not trained to investigate sexual abuse or do child's forensic interviews. Sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence are all crimes. They are not mistakes. They are not an incident. They are not an oops and they are not a bad day. They are crimes. Church leaders are not trained to investigate crimes of any kind. I don't know of a seminary that offers such course. That means when someone alleges abuse we need to bring in others to help us with that. Obviously, law enforcement is part of that. To fail to do so is arrogant and inevitably will damage the victim and endanger others. Reporting crimes of any kind does not prevent us from being the Church. Hiding a crime is against the law. It is wise to get assistance from an outside organization who has experience and knowledge in this area. You know people often will say to me well the insurance company requires us to do something. Yes it requires you to do background checks. Background checks only reveal those who have been caught. Which is a very small minority. Many other things are needed so that the sheep are folded and fed well.

8. We need to develop carefully research procedures and policies for protecting all of the above vulnerable in our midst and again, it's wise to get assistance from other organizations that have knowledge and experience in this area. We need policies for victims. We need policies for the congregation. We need policies for offenders. We do that to protect the lambs.

9. Any abuse of any kind in a Christian organization ought to be the king of oxymorons. When a shepherd feeds off one of the sheep, God is honored when the unfit Shepherd is removed. Vulnerable, sick, or broken sheep should always find safety in the house of our God. As Christians, we often fail to report the crime of abuse because we think somehow we are protecting the family or the Church. Now the family and the Church are both God ordained

institutions. He made them up. He designed them and they are worthy of our protection. However, there is nothing sacred or protective about a family or a Church full of sin. When the people of Israel were going into the temple in Jeremiah's time, following the rituals that God had given them and calling out saying this is the temple of the Lord they were also full of sin. They were sacrificing their little ones and God responded by bringing in their enemies to

destroy that God-ordained holy place and scatter the people to Babylon. Our God does not protect institutions that He has created and designed when they are enterprises full of hidden evil. God thinks sin is the worst thing in the world. Not the loss of reputation, not the loss of an institution. An old Scottish theologian whom I like very much named G Campbell Morgan said this sanctuary is a place having no complicity with the evil that makes sanctuary a necessity.

10.Your church has gifted lay care givers in it. Many churches I know are beginning to develop like a corps of godly men in women who study issues of sexual abuse and rape and domestic violence, who are then able to come alongside those who are suffering with abuse in their lives. It can be a wonderful ministry in the dungeon of abuse.

11. Many victims turn to alcohol, drugs, get depressed suffer from PTSD. Anybody in church who meets with a troubled Church member, one of the questions ought to be about abuse. It should also be a question during every premarital counseling session. Teaching about relationships should include an understanding of abuse, verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual. Our teens need to hear these things. It will help them sometimes name what is happening to them. We need to teach our Churches that such things are never acceptable to God, no matter who does them, no matter how gifted or brilliant they are, and no matter how important they seem to be.

The Church as a Healing Community

Cape Coast Castle in Ghana is a powerful parable of the people of God worshiping sitting on top of dungeons filled with suffering and tormented humanity living their lives in a way that was diametrically opposed to the God they claimed to Worship. He who left glory and beauty and safety and love so that He might enter the dungeon of this world and the dungeons of our hearts and bring that glory and beauty and love to us making us, a then like Himself.

Those chapel goers missed him, didn't they? They didn't really know him at all. They stayed clean and separate they made a lot of money. They gave some of it to God I suppose. It is my prayer that the Church in the 21st century will not be like those chapel goers. I pray she will gladly follow her Lord and go into the dungeons, where she will find sexual abuse and rape and domestic violence and manipulation and lies, and deception and abuse of power shattering

precious lives made in the image of God and intended for glory.

She does not go, then she is not like her Lord. And in fact, her own heart is then a dungeon. One filled with distance, separateness, selfishness, and complicity with evil. When our God interfaces with this world He leaves the higher and descends. He leaves beauty and enters chaos. He leaves pure and He goes into filthy. He demonstrates that. God does not just speak words, but He also acts. First in the heart dungeons of human beings and then through the lives

of those same people in the dungeons of this world.

Jesus demonstrated in the flesh the character of God. His church is to do the same for the world. That is when his Church becomes a healing community. When God's people worship over and separate untouched by dungeons, they are not worshipping the God of the Scriptures. There is nothing in the scriptures to suggest that being complicit, neutral, or uncaring and deaf to the cries of humans is godly. Those scriptures do say that the dungeons of Cape Coast were below because they were first present in the hearts of the chapel goers.

In Matthew 21, we have Jesus' triumphal entry which culminated in his entrance into the temple where he found men trafficking in things other than righteousness and truth. Jesus drove them out. He called them robbers. Those who take what is not theirs. They profaned God's temple. But it's interesting in the story because you see when the traffickers in

unrighteousness were driven out by Jesus we're told in the scriptures that the blind and the lame came in, and He healed them. God's temple became a healing community. It also says that the little ones the children came in and sang.

God's temple became a hospital and a nursery when the traffickers were driven out by our God. Jesus says the praise of the vulnerable and the little ones in God's house silences God's foe. Now you think of the power of the enemy of God. The praise of the little ones who are safe in the sanctuary of God silences the enemy of God. When we silence the cries of the vulnerable child or adult, we are not protecting God's house we are actually profaning it. I pray that our Churches will be bold in driving out those who traffic in unrighteousness and welcoming the lame and the blind and the little and the weak, establishing strength against God's enemies and silencing his foes. May we the body of our Lord Jesus Christ go with love and truth to the dungeons that are in our pews and our communities. Transforming them into places filled with the glory of our God, who descended into dungeons for us.