Abstract
This article sits at the intersection of pastoral care and biblical studies. It draws from exegesis from the field of biblical studies, as well as trauma theory and a brief case study from pastoral care. This article exegetes the Joseph story (Genesis 37–50) alongside Judith Herman’s stages of recovery from trauma: safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection with ordinary life. Pastoral care providers often work with people for whom the Bible is an authoritative text. Therefore, they must be able to interpret the Bible through careful exegesis that helps rather than hurts these people. This article offers one way in which pastoral care providers might read a biblical text through the lens of trauma theory in order to facilitate a discussion about healing from familial trauma. Through this type of exegesis, a pastoral care provider might help a person see themselves in a biblical text about healing from trauma or even construct a trauma narrative about their traumatic experience.
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Notes
Name has been changed in order to preserve anonymity of the person in question, who was a minor at the time of our interaction.
I am not the only scholar to utilize this approach. On the biblical studies side, there are several scholars who hope to reach those who have experienced trauma, namely, Kathleen O’Connor (2002, 2011) and L. Juliana Claassens (2016). Denise Dombkowski Hopkins and Michael S. Koppel’s (2013) work also sits at the intersection of pastoral care and biblical studies.
I have chosen to draw from Judith Herman’s classic approach not because it is the newest but because it still remains relevant in trauma-informed care approaches. For example, one of the four pillars of the sanctuary model of trauma informed care is language, and specifically, S.E.L.F (n.d.). This acronym stands for “safety, emotions, loss, and future,” an almost exact replica of Herman’s stages of recovery.
Judith Herman (2015) points to the fact that this fear causes constriction in a person’s life. Their life becomes about ensuring the traumatic event does not happen again; however, their entire life becomes limited by the traumatic event.
Self-harm most frequently refers to the practice of cutting, but it more generally means that a person attempts to cope with or numb their feelings by physically hurting themselves.
I in no way am advocating this decision to pastoral care providers who guide readers through the Joseph story. Some people might find their safety is more important and cut off all contact with their abusive families. Joseph chooses limited contact with his father and brothers. Ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide because every situation is different.
Herman states: “Although the survivor may come to understand that these violations of relationship were committed under extreme circumstances, this understanding by itself does not fully resolve the profound feelings of guilt and shame. The survivor needs to mourn for the loss of her moral integrity and to find her own way to atone for what cannot be undone” (Herman 2015, pp. 192–193). Joseph’s own way to atone for the pain he dealt his father is to seek reunification.
For example, Potiphar’s wife refers to Joseph as a Hebrew slave when she accuses him to her husband. Later, even when he is second-in-command over Egypt, Joseph still must eat apart from the Egyptians.
Certainly, I do not mean to imply that everyone who experiences a traumatic event will see the reason they survived was for some greater good. And yet, some do. Herman quotes a woman who said, “I feel very much like that’s part of my mission, part of why God didn’t allow me to die in that marriage, so that I could talk openly and publicly—and it’s taken me so many years to be able to do it—about having been battered” (2015, p. 209). So, while some people may in fact draw such conclusions and others may cringe at this interpretation, the fact remains that Joseph and the text reflect this mindset.
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Focht, C. “The Joseph Story: a Trauma-Informed Biblical Hermeneutic for Pastoral Care Providers”. Pastoral Psychol 69, 209–223 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-020-00901-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-020-00901-w