Ministering to Trauma Survivors: 3 Lessons from the Book of Job

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The book of Job asks many questions and gives very few answers. It is a passionately and beautifully written testament to suffering, confusion, and pain. In the end, Job does not get the answers he has been seeking, but he receives something else, something that brings him to a place of healing and restoration.

Trying to define that “something else” has baffled scholars for centuries. The book of Job continues to be a challenging and difficult text. It is not one we often turn to for sermon material. However, I would suggest that the book of Job is incredibly relevant today for pastors and churches seeking to minister to trauma survivors.

This article outlines three practical gifts we can offer to better minister to trauma survivors in our churches.

1. A place of safety

The book of Job opens with an idyllic picture of a wealthy man who is respected by his community and devoted to God. Yet we soon encounter some behind-the-heavenly-scenes machinations that result in a life-altering question:

Then the accuser answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job 1:9–11)¹

The stage is set. Within the next few verses, Job loses his wealth, his children, and eventually his health. Job is exiled to the town ash heap where he becomes so disfigured by disease and despair that when his friends come from afar to comfort him, they do not recognize him.

When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. (Job 2:12–13)

These friends sit with Job on the ash heap in silence for seven days. They simply sit with him, so that he is not alone.

Once Job begins speaking, fireworks and vitriolic debates between he and his friends ensue, but in those first seven days, these soon-to-be faulty theologians simply sit with Job in his pain. It is, perhaps, their quiet presence and faithful companionship that allows Job to begin speaking from the anguish of his heart and the depth of his pain and confusion.

It is easy to criticize the friends for their later actions and their harsh words to Job, but before we highlight their failures, it is worth noting their faithfulness. It is these three friends who come to comfort Job. They heard of his suffering and his losses, and they traveled to see him. They did not wait for the prayer chain to call. They did not wait to be invited to join the meal train. They heard about their friend’s pain, and they went to be with him. Without being asked, they offered him the ministry of presence.

What we see in this ministry of presence is one of the first things a pastor and a church community can offer a trauma survivor: a place of safety.

Trauma is disorienting and upending. Trauma shatters our sense of safety and order in the world. When Job begins speaking in chapter 3, he is confronting a world that no longer makes sense to him. His understanding of God, creation, and justice have been rocked by the trauma he is enduring. The world no longer seems safe.

Our church community can become a place of safety for those walking through trauma. We can offer physical safety by helping trauma survivors meet their basic needs. We can offer emotional safety by creating a space that welcomes survivors without judgement and without pressure. We can offer spiritual safety by embracing both healing and pain, anger and forgiveness, praise as well as lament. Most importantly, we must create a community that is free from exploitation, manipulation, and abuse of any kind.

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2. A place to tell their story

One thing we notice straight away is the importance of dialogue in the book of Job. Job talks, his friends talk, another friend shows up and starts talking, and, at the end, even God talks. The book is driven by dialogue. Scholars analyze, and do not always agree upon, the structure and purpose of the dialogue cycles in the text. But they agree dialogue is at the heart of the book of Job. The big question is, Why?

If we look at the book of Job from a trauma studies perspective, the heavy reliance on dialogue and the cyclic nature of the dialogue make sense. Trauma is an extraordinary event that overwhelms our nervous system and exceeds our usual coping capacities. Because of its overwhelming nature, we do not process the trauma-inducing event as it occurs. It becomes something we have to look back on and try to understand after it has already passed.

This backward-looking nature of experiencing trauma is complicated, and it may require us to revisit the memory of the event over and over again to try to make sense of it. This may happen in nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, and fragmented memories. The dialogue cycles in the book of Job illustrate the repetitious nature of trauma healing. Job has to return to his experience over and over, trying each time to understand it.

So a second thing a pastor and a church community can offer a trauma survivor is a place to tell their story.

The important role that sharing our story can play in healing from trauma goes all the way back to Freud. Even today, most of us can anecdotally share a time when just being able to talk to someone about a problem we were facing helped lighten the burden we were carrying. There is something healing in the process of sharing our story with a trusted listener.

The problem we see in the book of Job, and in some of our churches as well, is that the listener is not always trustworthy. Job’s friends, who gave us such a beautiful example of the ministry of presence, fail at being trusted listeners for their friend. Job’s words are so shocking to them, so threatening to their own theology and their view of the world, that they begin to attack Job.

To be fair, Job’s words are indeed shocking: “For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me” (Job 6:4). So the dialogue devolves into insults and condemnation as the friends accuse Job of ever-worsening sins:

Is not your wickedness great? There is no end to your iniquities. For you have exacted pledges from your family for no reason and stripped the naked of their clothing. You have given no water to the weary to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry. (Job 22:5–7)

Yet Job refuses to follow their guidance to repent, and, because he does not do what they want him to do, the dialogue breaks down. “I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all” (Job 16:2).

Just as Job’s words shocked his friends, so a survivor in our community may rage at God, be filled with doubt, challenge all of the standard Christian answers and Bible verses they have been given. To create a place where a survivor can tell their story requires the humility to accept that we do not have all the answers. We must admit that we do not understand everything this survivor is walking through. We must be courageous enough to embrace the mystery of suffering, and we must be compassionate enough to sit in the ashes with our suffering brothers and sisters and allow the pain to exist.

Creating a place to tell their story not only involves safety, but it also involves a willingness to set our own agenda aside. As pastors and church leaders, we may try to rush survivors to forgiveness as if it is a finish line to be reached and a sign that the healing work is done. But healing from trauma cannot be rushed. As we see in Job, it takes time and repetition to put all the shattered pieces together again. As trusted listeners in the church, we can help provide survivors with that time and space to heal as they share their stories with us.

3. A place to belong

One of the most powerful images in the book of Job is God showing up in the whirlwind to have a chat with Job. The language and imagery evidence that God has been listening to Job the whole time. It is a beautiful and poignant moment in the text. God meets Job in the ashes.

Certainly, God brings correction and guidance to Job, and gives Job a far wider perspective, as in the famous questions,

Have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this. (Job 38:16–18)

But God does not wait for Job to have his life all together before he shows up. He does not wait for Job to be “over it.” God meets Job where he is, in the midst of the confusion, pain, and anger. God comes to the ash heap.

As pastors and church communities, that is where we should go, too.

Trauma can be isolating and lonely. It is difficult to see the rest of the world carrying on as usual when one’s own world is falling apart. Job’s friends try to get him to come back to their way of viewing the world. They try to convince him to fit in with them, to give up his struggle and his doubt and just repent so he can get back to “normal.” But Job cannot go back. He has been through too much. His “normal” is gone. The question he faces throughout the book is how to reconcile what he believes about God with what he has experienced. Where does Job belong when he cannot go back, and yet cannot move forward?

What the book of Job shows us in the swirling power of the whirlwind is that Job belongs with God. It is the presence of God at the conclusion of the book that finally allows Job to leave the ash heap and resume his life in his community. Job is restored to his community, and they accept him as a trauma survivor with his story intact (Job 42:10–11).

The pressure churches may feel to present a good face to visitors and to be attractive to guests and unbelievers may inadvertently communicate to those who are suffering, especially those in positions of leadership, that they need to pretend like everything is fine and put on a brave face to make the church look good, even if their heart is breaking.

We are relational creatures created by a relational God. Belonging is a fundamental need for human beings.

Thus, the third thing a pastor and a church community can provide for trauma survivors is a place to belong.

As pastors and church leaders, we can be intentional about opening our community to trauma survivors and meeting them where they are. When we only share stories of victory and happy endings, we risk isolating those who are still suffering and those whose stories may not have ended the way we hoped. Our communities can be places where lament is allowed, where struggle is welcome, and where those who are suffering are embraced with as much fervor and joy as those who are celebrating.

A church of dust & ashes

Job’s final words in the text are “therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). To say there is a great deal of debate over Job’s final words is an understatement. Does he repent? (I’d say no, and I have a whole chapter on it in my book.) Is he being sarcastic? (I would also say no.) And what exactly has he learned about God that allows him to leave the ash heap and rejoin his community? (I have a much too long answer for that one!)

One of the key phrases in Job’s final words is “dust and ashes.” Again, there is much debate about what this means, but perhaps it is a reference to “dust and ashes” in Genesis 18:27, where Abraham acknowledges his own humanity and frailty.

Perhaps these words in Job can remind us that the church is not a building, a business, or an institution. The church is people. The church is wounded, hurting, healing, and whole people who make up the family of God. In God’s family, the sick and healthy worship side by side, the newest believer and the oldest saint, the healing and the healed. We are a collection of dust and ashes created and called by God for such a time as this.

To be God’s family is to embrace every member with love, grace, compassion, and patience. As a family, we go to the ashes when necessary and sit with those who are suffering. And Job reminds us that God sees, God knows, and God never leaves us.

Michelle Keener’s recommended resources for further study

Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence-from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 2015.
Van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Penguin, 2014.