that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). The difficulty for most people is acknowledging that the purpose of the tragedy is to bring one closer to God.
The purpose of trauma in a Christian's life is to weaken oneself to show Jesus strong in oneself through the Holy Spirit. To hold on to traumatic events and insist on their resolution, one must hold on to the traumatic feelings that also resulted from experiencing those events. If a person is doing this, she is not acting from faith. Therefore, these feelings will often cause a person to harbor ill-will towards the people perceived to be responsible. However, those grudges also affect her who carries them because they push aside the love, peace, and joy the Holy Spirit has given the believer to enjoy. Thus, forgiveness, both of self and others, is crucial to maintain one's sanity. Isaiah 59:10 speaks of the unrepentant and unforgiven person: "We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon day as in the night." But accomplishing this forgiveness is possible only for the one who has the Holy Spirit.
Robert W. Harvey and David G. Benner note the intriguing connection between shame (self) and contempt (others), quoting Dan Allender: "The condemnation can be against the person whose eyes are penetrating our facade or against the element of our being that is the cause of the shameful revelation" (27). In other words, no person likes shame because it offends both ego and pride, characteristics common to all people. Shame tells a person that she did something wrong, much as does the red oil light on the dashboard of the car. However, a person proud of her driving ability might ignore the oil light, maybe even break the light to make it stop reminding her of the mistake committed. Nevertheless, the problem does not go away with the reminder; in fact, it worsens. Likewise, shame ignored is like pain or any ...