Growing up, my father taught me to ask questions about faith. I'd sit on the couch in his office reading C.S. Lewis and other books on theology while he read for his seminary classes. I'd ask him existential Christian theology questions on what happens to humans when they die and questions on if you could lose your salvation. As I look back, I think many of my childhood questions about the afterlife and faith were rooted in anxiety about not having all the right answers.
I am thankful for my father’s example, as it helped me lean into exploring all thoughts and emotions in my relationship with God from a young age. God welcomes questions and desires connection with Creation.
We see this throughout the Creation account. As early as Genesis 3:9, God sought out Adam and Eve, and asked, “Where are you?” after they ate the fruit. Adam and Eve immediately hid from God; they froze in their feelings of shame. God’s response, however, was to seek connection and provide garments of clothes.
I'm also reminded of Elijah in 1 Kings 19:11-13, when he encountered God in a gentle whisper. Elijah was deeply exhausted after running for his life. His depression led to difficulties eating and getting up. Yet even when Elijah was experiencing doubt, trauma, and mental health challenges, God sought to bring comfort and care.
Reading these two passages from a trauma-informed perspective reveals Adam, Eve, and Elijah’s immediate nervous system responses. They experienced a common emotional response when we experience trauma.The need for certainty within one’s faith and life can be an anxiety or trauma response.
Jo Luehmann, who writes on decolonizing theology, explains, “It has been my experience that certainty is often an illusion to attempt to regulate a neglected nervous system. . . . When the way you’ve been taught to deal with everything is by bypassing your emotions, ignoring your intuition, and demonizing your humanity; then you’ve been neglecting your own nervous system. . . . That’s why it is so hard for so many people to even consider challenging the beliefs they’ve held so tightly, because certainty in regards to those beliefs is what keeps them feeling somewhat regulated and somewhat safe.”
God created our brains and nervous systems as gifts to help us navigate stressors, uncertainties, and challenges. Our brain has more than 86 billion neurons to help us navigate connection and discernment in life. Information from our brain travels up to 268 miles per hour. Our brains are like roadways sending electric impulses from cell to cell, generating enough energy to power a lightbulb. This is why we need sleep at night, allowing our brain to integrate memories and information as we rest.
Our minds and bodies are interconnected, and our nervous systems desire to move in regulation. We feel most connected with ourselves, with others, and with our faith when we are within what psychologists call our window of tolerance. Each individual’s window of tolerance is unique to them. These systems support us in social connection. Our nervous systems also help us to access trust, safety, rest, danger, threat, and times of survival.
Trauma and stress can inhibit access to the window of tolerance and lead to overactivated or under-activated nervous systems. Being above our window is like hitting the gas pedal in a car. Anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress responses, and "fight" trauma responses are often expressed as racing thoughts, nightmares, nausea, tension, and panic. Below-the-window responses can lead to depression, disconnection from self and others, dissociation, freeze responses, and feelings of numbness.
We cannot control these responses; our minds do this automatically. Our nervous system responses are like a compass pointing to unresolved, unprocessed memories and stressful situations, particularly if we have experienced trauma. In my work as a trauma therapist, I often tell clients that our nervous system’s responses are a protective part of us trying to navigate trauma, grief, and pain. These protective responses, even when they seem like they are working against us, reveal that we have a functioning nervous system that is seeking to regulate.
Trauma is held within our bodies, as well as our memories and minds. In My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem shares, "Trauma is also a wordless story our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat." When our minds and bodies are struggling with unprocessed trauma and mental health concerns, connecting to God may come to a standstill. Physically and mentally, we cannot serve God and others in the ways we used to. Such challenges may lead to immense questions and doubts surrounding our faith.
God created our minds and breathed “the breath of life” into humanity (Gen. 2:7). Because we are made in the image of God, God cares deeply for our mind, body, and spirit. Our minds reflect the imago Dei, or image of God, and have the capacity to remember, contemplate, discern, process, question, analyze, and learn. Just as God is Creator, our minds are able to create narratives and bring visions and dreams into reality.
During times of mental health struggles and grief, however, our minds may have trouble remembering, thinking, or processing the way we would prefer. In such times, we honor our God-given minds and express love for God, neighbor, and ourselves by asking questions, wrestling with our faith, facing our emotions, and potentially seeking professional support. This can include therapy, support groups, medications, or other forms of professional mental health assistance.
Even when we don't have answers for doubts, faith deconstruction, complex trauma, chronic pain, illness, grief, or suffering, and even when we don’t understand or feel like God is near, we can still hold onto the evidence–intellectual, intuitive, and communal–that God is present. We can rely on wise words from Scripture or sermons, encouragement and affirmation from caring individuals, or reminders from therapists. We can tangibly see the goodness of God through other people who demonstrate care, hospitality, support, and a willingness to grieve with us. We may even experience intuitive felt sensations of God’s presence in our heart and bodies, perhaps through music, art, or nature. Even in seasons of struggle, our minds and bodies, with support, can continue to point us to God.
In A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans wrote, "Faith isn't about having everything figured out ahead of time; faith is about following the quiet voice of God without having everything figured out ahead of time."
It is in times of grief and mental health challenges that we may encounter God as Comforter, Provider, and Caregiver. We may not be able to serve God and others in what seem like productive ways. But simply showing up, taking the courageous steps to live another day, embracing the needs of our mind and body, and pressing on in treatment can be an expression of our love for God.
Our relationship with God is cultivated not only through service but through rest, play, self-care, and community care. When we experience mental health struggles, we can learn to connect with God, rely on God, and be interdependent on God and others in new, supportive ways. We can learn what it means to be alive–trauma responses, mental health concerns, and all–and to exist in our God-reflecting humanity.
To this day, I attribute those early years in my father's study as part of the reason I have been able to continue in the Christian faith. The gift of using my mind to love God from a young age through questions and doubts has helped me to find peace in not knowing all the right answers. As I’ve journeyed through my own seasons where faith and God seem far off, while anxiety, burnout, grief, and trauma responses remain close, I’ve been encouraged to let go of the need for certainty and hold onto faith and trust in God. When I’ve asked God, “Where are you?” in times of anxiety and doubt, I am reminded that God responds back in a gentle whisper, “Where are you?” God continues to draw each of us into closer connection–one full of questions, dialogue, and the shared search for understanding.
Growing up, my father taught me to ask questions about faith. I'd sit on the couch in his office reading C.S. Lewis and other books on theology while he read for his seminary classes. I'd ask him existential Christian theology questions on what happens to humans when they die and questions on if you could lose your salvation. As I look back, I think many of my childhood questions about the afterlife and faith were rooted in anxiety about not having all the right answers.
I am thankful for my father’s example, as it helped me lean into exploring all thoughts and emotions in my relationship with God from a young age. God welcomes questions and desires connection with Creation.
We see this throughout the Creation account. As early as Genesis 3:9, God sought out Adam and Eve, and asked, “Where are you?” after they ate the fruit. Adam and Eve immediately hid from God; they froze in their feelings of shame. God’s response, however, was to seek connection and provide garments of clothes.
I'm also reminded of Elijah in 1 Kings 19:11-13, when he encountered God in a gentle whisper. Elijah was deeply exhausted after running for his life. His depression led to difficulties eating and getting up. Yet even when Elijah was experiencing doubt, trauma, and mental health challenges, God sought to bring comfort and care.
Our nervous system’s responses are a protective part of us trying to navigate trauma, grief, and pain.
Reading these two passages from a trauma-informed perspective reveals Adam, Eve, and Elijah’s immediate nervous system responses. They experienced a common emotional response when we experience trauma.The need for certainty within one’s faith and life can be an anxiety or trauma response.
Jo Luehmann, who writes on decolonizing theology, explains, “It has been my experience that certainty is often an illusion to attempt to regulate a neglected nervous system. . . . When the way you’ve been taught to deal with everything is by bypassing your emotions, ignoring your intuition, and demonizing your humanity; then you’ve been neglecting your own nervous system. . . . That’s why it is so hard for so many people to even consider challenging the beliefs they’ve held so tightly, because certainty in regards to those beliefs is what keeps them feeling somewhat regulated and somewhat safe.”
God created our brains and nervous systems as gifts to help us navigate stressors, uncertainties, and challenges. Our brain has more than 86 billion neurons to help us navigate connection and discernment in life. Information from our brain travels up to 268 miles per hour. Our brains are like roadways sending electric impulses from cell to cell, generating enough energy to power a lightbulb. This is why we need sleep at night, allowing our brain to integrate memories and information as we rest.
Our minds and bodies are interconnected, and our nervous systems desire to move in regulation. We feel most connected with ourselves, with others, and with our faith when we are within what psychologists call our window of tolerance. Each individual’s window of tolerance is unique to them. These systems support us in social connection. Our nervous systems also help us to access trust, safety, rest, danger, threat, and times of survival.
Even in seasons of struggle, our minds and bodies, with support, can continue to point us to God.
Trauma and stress can inhibit access to the window of tolerance and lead to overactivated or under-activated nervous systems. Being above our window is like hitting the gas pedal in a car. Anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress responses, and "fight" trauma responses are often expressed as racing thoughts, nightmares, nausea, tension, and panic. Below-the-window responses can lead to depression, disconnection from self and others, dissociation, freeze responses, and feelings of numbness.
We cannot control these responses; our minds do this automatically. Our nervous system responses are like a compass pointing to unresolved, unprocessed memories and stressful situations, particularly if we have experienced trauma. In my work as a trauma therapist, I often tell clients that our nervous system’s responses are a protective part of us trying to navigate trauma, grief, and pain. These protective responses, even when they seem like they are working against us, reveal that we have a functioning nervous system that is seeking to regulate.
Trauma is held within our bodies, as well as our memories and minds. In My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem shares, "Trauma is also a wordless story our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat." When our minds and bodies are struggling with unprocessed trauma and mental health concerns, connecting to God may come to a standstill. Physically and mentally, we cannot serve God and others in the ways we used to. Such challenges may lead to immense questions and doubts surrounding our faith.
God created our minds and breathed “the breath of life” into humanity (Gen. 2:7). Because we are made in the image of God, God cares deeply for our mind, body, and spirit. Our minds reflect the imago Dei, or image of God, and have the capacity to remember, contemplate, discern, process, question, analyze, and learn. Just as God is Creator, our minds are able to create narratives and bring visions and dreams into reality.
During times of mental health struggles and grief, however, our minds may have trouble remembering, thinking, or processing the way we would prefer. In such times, we honor our God-given minds and express love for God, neighbor, and ourselves by asking questions, wrestling with our faith, facing our emotions, and potentially seeking professional support. This can include therapy, support groups, medications, or other forms of professional mental health assistance.
But simply showing up, taking the courageous steps to live another day, embracing the needs of our mind and body, and pressing on in treatment can be an expression of our love for God.
Even when we don't have answers for doubts, faith deconstruction, complex trauma, chronic pain, illness, grief, or suffering, and even when we don’t understand or feel like God is near, we can still hold onto the evidence–intellectual, intuitive, and communal–that God is present. We can rely on wise words from Scripture or sermons, encouragement and affirmation from caring individuals, or reminders from therapists. We can tangibly see the goodness of God through other people who demonstrate care, hospitality, support, and a willingness to grieve with us. We may even experience intuitive felt sensations of God’s presence in our heart and bodies, perhaps through music, art, or nature. Even in seasons of struggle, our minds and bodies, with support, can continue to point us to God.
In A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans wrote, "Faith isn't about having everything figured out ahead of time; faith is about following the quiet voice of God without having everything figured out ahead of time."
It is in times of grief and mental health challenges that we may encounter God as Comforter, Provider, and Caregiver. We may not be able to serve God and others in what seem like productive ways. But simply showing up, taking the courageous steps to live another day, embracing the needs of our mind and body, and pressing on in treatment can be an expression of our love for God.
Our relationship with God is cultivated not only through service but through rest, play, self-care, and community care. When we experience mental health struggles, we can learn to connect with God, rely on God, and be interdependent on God and others in new, supportive ways. We can learn what it means to be alive–trauma responses, mental health concerns, and all–and to exist in our God-reflecting humanity.
To this day, I attribute those early years in my father's study as part of the reason I have been able to continue in the Christian faith. The gift of using my mind to love God from a young age through questions and doubts has helped me to find peace in not knowing all the right answers. As I’ve journeyed through my own seasons where faith and God seem far off, while anxiety, burnout, grief, and trauma responses remain close, I’ve been encouraged to let go of the need for certainty and hold onto faith and trust in God. When I’ve asked God, “Where are you?” in times of anxiety and doubt, I am reminded that God responds back in a gentle whisper, “Where are you?” God continues to draw each of us into closer connection–one full of questions, dialogue, and the shared search for understanding.
1 Laila Lalami, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2020), 70.
2 See chapter two in Daniel Carrol’s The Bible and Borders: Hearing God's Word on Immigration (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2020).
3 Julio L. Martínez, Citizenship, Migrations and Religion: An Ethical Dialogue Based on the Christian Faith (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2007), 51.
4 Peter Phan, "The Experience of Migration in the United States as a Source of Intercultural Theology," in E. Padilla E. and P.C. Phan (eds.) Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 148.
Our nervous system’s responses are a protective part of us trying to navigate trauma, grief, and pain.
Even in seasons of struggle, our minds and bodies, with support, can continue to point us to God.
But simply showing up, taking the courageous steps to live another day, embracing the needs of our mind and body, and pressing on in treatment can be an expression of our love for God.
Jesus, when it says that you wept does it mean you cried politely -
like a man in the movies
two quiet tears gently streaking your temples
rubbed away at once by strong hands.
the appropriate display for the holy protagonist
just the right amount of masculinity
in a moment as short as it is written
the scene changed to make way for your divinity, for Lazarus unbound
like a gratuitous Good Friday service moved aside for Easter Sunday
Or when it says that you wept does it mean you wailed -
with all the vulnerability of a child
pride abandoned, crying ugly
your face disfigured by the crevices of agony
stained and swollen with
snot dripping into hives of despair
your voice splintering, broken open
exposing the same deep groan we all carry here
Are your tears written there as merely a mention of your humanity -
a biological function, the same as eating or drinking
a token of compassion in a simple social evolution
the brief flesh of you in cortisol and oxytocin
a small piece of physicality separate from your mysticism
Or are your tears written there to reveal that mine are living water -
that you in me means I cry your tears from my eyes
as if we all have a baptism as soon as we are born
our first breath, the screaming
the holy saline purifying, falling from new eyes
the earliest measure of our strength is in our howling
expressed as both a reflex and the incarnation
of you, Jesus, in each
Are my cries the conduit that joins you and I, Lord -
the tears the thread, the vine I’m hanging on by
the well the balm that nourishes
the parts of me I try to suppress and hide
the crying I apologize for
the trauma I thought I was over
as if the suffering is that which sanctifies
as if the medicine is built into the brine
sorrow isn't the malady but the through line
the language, the communion
the most honest expression of you, Jesus, in me
Emmanuel in its most potent form
is in the surrender of salt.
Imagine being an early follower of Jesus the Christ, socially located in the ancient Near East and surrounding provinces. There were no televisions, tablets, or photographs. Beyond the rare mystical encounter with the living Christ testified about in early church writings, Christian imagery and paintings–artwork–became a way through which ancient sisters and brothers experienced the Divine. These tactile objects became meaningful conduits of worship, generating deep emotional experiences to cope with the hardships of life: trauma, hardship, suffering, and yes, even, mental health struggles.
In these ancient icons, artists weren’t just painting “nice” pictures from the Bible. They were using all their divinely inspired gifts and sensibilities to create an experience for people to engage the Great Creator. This, of course, was secondary to the actual icon of God, who became flesh to dwell among us. In Colossians 1:15, Paul tells us that Jesus is the " image of the invisible God.” This literally means that Jesus is the icon of God. Jesus shows us what God is like–fully (John 1:14,18, Heb. 1:3, Col. 1:15).
For this piece, I wanted to remake and reinterpret one of the most known ancient Byzantine icons, Christ Pantocrator. The most common translation of Pantocrator is Almighty or All-powerful. A more literal translation is Ruler of All, or, less literally, Sustainer of the World. For this StoryArc on Mental Health, I wanted to create an icon that fuses the ancient with the current, exploring the reality of Jesus’ humanity and divinity. Too often, our understanding of Jesus' humanity is diminished at the expense of his divinity. Then, when we experience trauma and hardship, we have trouble imagining Jesus’ relating to us. But the truth is that God became human (Phil. 2) and Christ knows what it means to be human. As a Christian, I confess this to be true more than I can fully comprehend it. But this is the great mystery we are invited into. This is a revelation we grow in only through embodied participation. I pray that this visual meets you in profound ways as we look at the almighty, all-powerful Jesus Christ, who is not merely aware of our sufferings but with us in them.
Jesus of Nazareth was a human being. As a confessing Christian, I also believe that Jesus was the incarnation of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who delivered Israel from Egyptian slavery. But since ancient times, people have debated this about Jesus: Just how human was he? How far and deep into the human condition did he enter? And why does this matter for thinking about mental health?
Fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nazianzus, a major influence on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, argued it is crucial that Jesus was fully human. One of the heresies Gregory argued against was the notion that Jesus did not possess a human “spirit” (also sometimes called “mind”). Some believed Jesus’s mind was completely divine but encased in human flesh. Colloquially, this heresy is known as the “God in bod” teaching. In short, Jesus was mostly human, but he wasn’t fully human.
Against this idea of Jesus as a “Man without a human mind,” Gregory writes, “that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” He goes on to note that “Godhead [united] with only flesh, or even with only soul, or with both of them, is not [fully] man if lacking mind which is the even better part of [hu]man [nature].” [1]
Gregory’s point is that Jesus has to take up all of the human experience in the incarnation. Otherwise, the part of humanity that Jesus did not possess would not be “healed” in the union of the divine with the human. Whatever Jesus left out would be left without salvation.
Using Gregory’s line of reasoning, we can and ought to affirm that this includes our mental health and the inner workings of our mind. From Scripture, we see that Jesus is not only fully human, with a human body and spirit, but he has also experienced the fullness of the human condition in all its aspects—what we would call trauma, anxiety, and depression—save without sinning (Heb. 4:15; 2 Cor. 5:21).
Many scriptural demonstrations of Jesus’s humanity tend to focus on his thirst (John 19:28); hunger (Mark 2:16); exhaustion (Mark 4:35–38); grief at a close friend’s death (John 11:33–36); and—it almost goes without saying—actual death (Matt. 27:50; Mark 15:37). But there are other Scriptures that speak to the human experiences of Jesus that we might connect with trauma and mental health. [2]
Through his incarnation, Jesus is a co-sufferer with all of humanity. Jesus epitomizes the “suffering servant” in Isaiah 53, who is “a man of sufferings and acquainted with grief” (53:3; my translation). This solidarity in suffering provides us important insights on the character of God and the deliverance the Creator brings for all suffering creation (Col. 1:20; Rom. 8:19–22).
The author of Hebrews says that Jesus “had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God” (2:17). The text is explicit that this meant Jesus’s assuming the “weaknesses” of humanity (4:15). The author highlights Jesus’s “loud cries and tears” (5:7) and “what he suffered” (5:8). This is likely a reference to Jesus’s time of intense, agonizing prayer in Gethsemane, where he reveals that his “soul is very sorrowful” or “extremely agonized” (Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:34, my translation). [3]
Luke even says, “In anguish he prayed feverishly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood” (22:44, my translation). This is a rare but known medical condition called Hematidrosis, which occurs when someone is under such extreme stress, fear, or anxiety that capillaries burst and blood intermixes with sweat. To say that Jesus was merely feeling anxious is an understatement. He was experiencing painful bodily symptoms of trauma.
This was likely not the first time Jesus was anxious. It was just the first time others had witnessed it up close—and it happened to be the most physically intense. Jesus regularly escaped crowds and his closest disciples to pray alone (e.g., Luke 5:16). Gethsemane was the pinnacle of his trauma response.
Jesus began life as a refugee, his parents fleeing to Egypt to avoid Herod’s violence (Matt. 2:1–23). Given what we know about the trauma current-day refugees carry, how could the fully human Jesus not have been affected by his time as a refugee? Or by the fact that when returning to his homeland, he had to settle in the northern region of Galilee rather than southern Judea (where he was born) because of further fears of violence (Matt. 2:21–23)?
Also, Jesus was between age ten to twelve when Judas of Galilee led a failed revolt against Rome in 6 AD. (This is recorded by the historian Josephus and mentioned in Acts 5:37.) By the age of twelve, Jesus already had a profound sense of his messianic identity and vocation (Luke 2:41–52). This means his expectations for his adulthood were formed in the crucible of having his life threatened and seeing how Rome punished those who spoke of liberation from its empire.
Jesus also saw what happened to John the Baptist, his relative, for proclaiming the politically subversive message of the kingdom of God: imprisonment and beheading. Jesus knew a similarly tragic and violent fate awaited him because he preached the same politically disruptive message (e.g., Matt. 17:10–13; Luke 1:46–56).
Jesus was very aware that he was going to face a brutal end. This knowledge pressed on him all his life, but especially after John’s death. Jesus’s reading of the Scriptures only confirmed what awaited him (e.g., Luke 18:31–33; 24:26–27). Indeed, as one claiming to be the Messiah, the King of Israel, he knew his end would likely be crucifixion, the capital punishment reserved for slaves and non-Roman revolutionaries. The brutality of crucifixion also included what we would today call sexual abuse: Jesus was stripped naked, mocked, beaten, and publicly hung naked on a cross. [4]
It’s not surprising that Jesus would constantly be beset by anxiety and need to slip away to pray in private. This all comes to a head in Gethsemane, when the accumulated traumatic stress is so severe that he thinks he might die from the soul-crushing anxiety: “My soul is very sorrowful to the point of death” (Matt 26:38; Mark 14:34, my translation, italics added).
So, Jesus experienced sexual abuse, profound anxiety, and even a rare trauma response to his agony and anxiety. Why does that matter?
This is where we return to the reflections of Gregory of Nazianzus. Gregory helps us understand the importance of the Creator experiencing the depths of all human existence: “He was actually subject as a slave to flesh, to birth, and to our human experiences; for our liberation, held captive as we are by sin, he was subject to all that he saved” (Oration 30.3). [5] Jesus’s sharing in “our human experiences” is “for our liberation.”
According to Gregory, when Jesus became incarnate, he brought the divine nature into contact with each and every aspect of our fallen human condition. Gregory depicts the incarnation as Jesus “becoming a sort of yeast for the whole lump [of human nature]” (30.21). The divine nature heals our human nature when it comes into contact with each aspect, in the same way yeast spreads to every bit of a lump of flour. Gregory goes on: “He has united with himself all that lay under condemnation, in order to release it from condemnation. For all our sakes he became all that we are, sin apart—body, soul, mind, all that death pervades. The joint result is a man who is visibly, because he is spiritually discerned as, God” (30.21). [6]
In this way, Jesus’s co-suffering saves us (see also 30.5). In other words, it is precisely Jesus’s co-suffering with all humanity in our conditions of frailty, grief, abuse, anxiety, and trauma that allows our sufferings to be taken up into God to be healed and liberated. This is in line with Isaiah’s “suffering servant,” who not only was “a man of sufferings and acquainted with grief” (53:3) but who “bore our griefs himself, and carried our sufferings” (53:4). By his actions, “we are healed” (53:5) (my translations).
If Jesus did not experience human trauma, anxiety, abuse, sorrow, and grief, then those aspects would be left apart from God and unable to be healed, whether that healing happens now or only at the resurrection.
Grief, sorrow, and anxieties are the result of existing in this fallen world and being surrounded by tragedy, loss, sin, and abuses. Our trauma and suffering, including our mental health struggles, do not exist because they had some greater purposes and were “good” after all.
Suffering happens for all kinds of reasons to every creature, and Scripture names a few of these potential reasons. But Job, Ecclesiastes, Jesus’s healings, and Paul’s own accounts of his sufferings teach us it is deeply unwise to attempt to answer “why” for each instance of suffering happening at any given moment. For instance, God rebukes Job’s friends for trying to explain why Job was suffering (e.g., he must have sinned, God is trying to discipline him against future sin, God is teaching Job perseverance). But God praises Job for having the integrity to express how he really feels about his sufferings and his sense of divine abandonment (Job 42:7).
Staring into the abyss of suffering will conjure up many emotions, and God invites us to express them all. Despite the many questions we may have, the one thing we can be sure of is that God is present with us in our sufferings—even when, like Job, we might feel as if God has abandoned us. This is because, paradoxically, God was in Jesus experiencing the feeling of God-forsakenness as Jesus experienced it (Matt 24:46; Ps 22:1).
God takes all these death-dealing things into himself because nothing can separate the Creator from his creation—not even the pain and sorrows brought on by our own and others’ sin (Rom. 8:35–39). God takes these sorrows into himself and seeks to be with his beloved creations in all their woundedness. Jesus’s co-sufferings reveal that God is not absent in our sufferings. God is intimately present in and with our sufferings.
It can be difficult to name what it looks like for God to be present with us in our suffering—unless we look at the life of the human Jesus. The actions of Jesus reflect how God is present to all of our fallen humanity—even our mental health—because Jesus is Immanuel (“God with us”). When we do not feel God’s presence, we can fix our eyes upon Jesus and his own feeling of divine abandonment, and know we are not really forsaken. The Spirit of Jesus is actually groaning with and within us (Rom. 8:26–27) to such an extent that Jesus’s sufferings are our sufferings and vice versa (2 Cor. 1:5).
Scars from our wounds may still be there, like the wounds on Jesus’s resurrected body, and they may not be fully healed on this side of the resurrection. But those wounds cannot ultimately extinguish the blessed joy of being with the Creator in eternity. At the resurrection, God will refuse to let pain and death have the last word (Rev. 21:3–4). According to Isaiah and Gregory of Nazianzus, by sharing our suffering, God paves the way for each of us to be touched by the power of the resurrection.
In our own sufferings and experiences with mental health struggles—brought on from inhabiting weak and mortal bodies, or from trauma from external factors—we can find some measure of comfort in Jesus’s own co-sufferings with all humanity. God is not absent to our sufferings. Ultimately, either in this age or the age to come, God’s comfort will come to those who are “crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18; Matt 3:4–5; Mark 10:30). For now, God is intimately present in and with our sufferings through Jesus, and he offers unconditional love, acceptance, and belonging.
1. Epistle 101.5–6. Translation, slightly modified, from Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Lionel Wickham (Crestwood, NY: St. Valadimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 159. Here is an older but free English translation.
2. Here’s a great thread on Twitter that notably impacted how I thought about this article.
3. The adjective used here (περίλυπος, perilypos) conveys being “very sad, deeply grieved” and derives from the noun (περιλυπία, perilypia) meaning “extreme grief.”
4. New Testament scholar Erin Heim discusses this in a two-part podcast series on her essay, “Resurrection and the #MeToo Movement”: Part I, Part II.
5. Translation from On God and Christ, 94–95. Here is an older but free English translation of Oration 30 from Gregory.
6. Slightly modified translation from On God and Christ, 111.
Jesus of Nazareth was a human being. As a confessing Christian, I also believe that Jesus was the incarnation of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who delivered Israel from Egyptian slavery. But since ancient times, people have debated this about Jesus: Just how human was he? How far and deep into the human condition did he enter? And why does this matter for thinking about mental health?
Fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nazianzus, a major influence on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, argued it is crucial that Jesus was fully human. One of the heresies Gregory argued against was the notion that Jesus did not possess a human “spirit” (also sometimes called “mind”). Some believed Jesus’s mind was completely divine but encased in human flesh. Colloquially, this heresy is known as the “God in bod” teaching. In short, Jesus was mostly human, but he wasn’t fully human.
Against this idea of Jesus as a “Man without a human mind,” Gregory writes, “that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” He goes on to note that “Godhead [united] with only flesh, or even with only soul, or with both of them, is not [fully] man if lacking mind which is the even better part of [hu]man [nature].” [1]
From Scripture, we see that Jesus is not only fully human, with a human body and spirit, but he has also experienced the fullness of the human condition in all its aspects—what we would call trauma, anxiety, and depression
Gregory’s point is that Jesus has to take up all of the human experience in the incarnation. Otherwise, the part of humanity that Jesus did not possess would not be “healed” in the union of the divine with the human. Whatever Jesus left out would be left without salvation.
Using Gregory’s line of reasoning, we can and ought to affirm that this includes our mental health and the inner workings of our mind. From Scripture, we see that Jesus is not only fully human, with a human body and spirit, but he has also experienced the fullness of the human condition in all its aspects—what we would call trauma, anxiety, and depression—save without sinning (Heb. 4:15; 2 Cor. 5:21).
Many scriptural demonstrations of Jesus’s humanity tend to focus on his thirst (John 19:28); hunger (Mark 2:16); exhaustion (Mark 4:35–38); grief at a close friend’s death (John 11:33–36); and—it almost goes without saying—actual death (Matt. 27:50; Mark 15:37). But there are other Scriptures that speak to the human experiences of Jesus that we might connect with trauma and mental health. [2]
Through his incarnation, Jesus is a co-sufferer with all of humanity. Jesus epitomizes the “suffering servant” in Isaiah 53, who is “a man of sufferings and acquainted with grief” (53:3; my translation). This solidarity in suffering provides us important insights on the character of God and the deliverance the Creator brings for all suffering creation (Col. 1:20; Rom. 8:19–22).
The author of Hebrews says that Jesus “had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God” (2:17). The text is explicit that this meant Jesus’s assuming the “weaknesses” of humanity (4:15). The author highlights Jesus’s “loud cries and tears” (5:7) and “what he suffered” (5:8). This is likely a reference to Jesus’s time of intense, agonizing prayer in Gethsemane, where he reveals that his “soul is very sorrowful” or “extremely agonized” (Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:34, my translation). [3]
Luke even says, “In anguish he prayed feverishly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood” (22:44, my translation). This is a rare but known medical condition called Hematidrosis, which occurs when someone is under such extreme stress, fear, or anxiety that capillaries burst and blood intermixes with sweat. To say that Jesus was merely feeling anxious is an understatement. He was experiencing painful bodily symptoms of trauma.
This was likely not the first time Jesus was anxious. It was just the first time others had witnessed it up close—and it happened to be the most physically intense. Jesus regularly escaped crowds and his closest disciples to pray alone (e.g., Luke 5:16). Gethsemane was the pinnacle of his trauma response.
Jesus began life as a refugee, his parents fleeing to Egypt to avoid Herod’s violence (Matt. 2:1–23). Given what we know about the trauma current-day refugees carry, how could the fully human Jesus not have been affected by his time as a refugee? Or by the fact that when returning to his homeland, he had to settle in the northern region of Galilee rather than southern Judea (where he was born) because of further fears of violence (Matt. 2:21–23)?
Also, Jesus was between age ten to twelve when Judas of Galilee led a failed revolt against Rome in 6 AD. (This is recorded by the historian Josephus and mentioned in Acts 5:37.) By the age of twelve, Jesus already had a profound sense of his messianic identity and vocation (Luke 2:41–52). This means his expectations for his adulthood were formed in the crucible of having his life threatened and seeing how Rome punished those who spoke of liberation from its empire.
Jesus also saw what happened to John the Baptist, his relative, for proclaiming the politically subversive message of the kingdom of God: imprisonment and beheading. Jesus knew a similarly tragic and violent fate awaited him because he preached the same politically disruptive message (e.g., Matt. 17:10–13; Luke 1:46–56).
Jesus was very aware that he was going to face a brutal end. This knowledge pressed on him all his life, but especially after John’s death. Jesus’s reading of the Scriptures only confirmed what awaited him (e.g., Luke 18:31–33; 24:26–27). Indeed, as one claiming to be the Messiah, the King of Israel, he knew his end would likely be crucifixion, the capital punishment reserved for slaves and non-Roman revolutionaries. The brutality of crucifixion also included what we would today call sexual abuse: Jesus was stripped naked, mocked, beaten, and publicly hung naked on a cross. [4]
It’s not surprising that Jesus would constantly be beset by anxiety and need to slip away to pray in private. This all comes to a head in Gethsemane, when the accumulated traumatic stress is so severe that he thinks he might die from the soul-crushing anxiety: “My soul is very sorrowful to the point of death” (Matt 26:38; Mark 14:34, my translation, italics added).
So, Jesus experienced sexual abuse, profound anxiety, and even a rare trauma response to his agony and anxiety. Why does that matter?
This is where we return to the reflections of Gregory of Nazianzus. Gregory helps us understand the importance of the Creator experiencing the depths of all human existence: “He was actually subject as a slave to flesh, to birth, and to our human experiences; for our liberation, held captive as we are by sin, he was subject to all that he saved” (Oration 30.3). [5] Jesus’s sharing in “our human experiences” is “for our liberation.”
According to Gregory, when Jesus became incarnate, he brought the divine nature into contact with each and every aspect of our fallen human condition. Gregory depicts the incarnation as Jesus “becoming a sort of yeast for the whole lump [of human nature]” (30.21). The divine nature heals our human nature when it comes into contact with each aspect, in the same way yeast spreads to every bit of a lump of flour. Gregory goes on: “He has united with himself all that lay under condemnation, in order to release it from condemnation. For all our sakes he became all that we are, sin apart—body, soul, mind, all that death pervades. The joint result is a man who is visibly, because he is spiritually discerned as, God” (30.21). [6]
In this way, Jesus’s co-suffering saves us (see also 30.5). In other words, it is precisely Jesus’s co-suffering with all humanity in our conditions of frailty, grief, abuse, anxiety, and trauma that allows our sufferings to be taken up into God to be healed and liberated. This is in line with Isaiah’s “suffering servant,” who not only was “a man of sufferings and acquainted with grief” (53:3) but who “bore our griefs himself, and carried our sufferings” (53:4). By his actions, “we are healed” (53:5) (my translations).
If Jesus did not experience human trauma, anxiety, abuse, sorrow, and grief, then those aspects would be left apart from God and unable to be healed, whether that healing happens now or only at the resurrection.
Grief, sorrow, and anxieties are the result of existing in this fallen world and being surrounded by tragedy, loss, sin, and abuses. Our trauma and suffering, including our mental health struggles, do not exist because they had some greater purposes and were “good” after all.
Suffering happens for all kinds of reasons to every creature, and Scripture names a few of these potential reasons. But Job, Ecclesiastes, Jesus’s healings, and Paul’s own accounts of his sufferings teach us it is deeply unwise to attempt to answer “why” for each instance of suffering happening at any given moment. For instance, God rebukes Job’s friends for trying to explain why Job was suffering (e.g., he must have sinned, God is trying to discipline him against future sin, God is teaching Job perseverance). But God praises Job for having the integrity to express how he really feels about his sufferings and his sense of divine abandonment (Job 42:7).
Staring into the abyss of suffering will conjure up many emotions, and God invites us to express them all. Despite the many questions we may have, the one thing we can be sure of is that God is present with us in our sufferings—even when, like Job, we might feel as if God has abandoned us. This is because, paradoxically, God was in Jesus experiencing the feeling of God-forsakenness as Jesus experienced it (Matt 24:46; Ps 22:1).
God takes all these death-dealing things into himself because nothing can separate the Creator from his creation—not even the pain and sorrows brought on by our own and others’ sin (Rom. 8:35–39). God takes these sorrows into himself and seeks to be with his beloved creations in all their woundedness. Jesus’s co-sufferings reveal that God is not absent in our sufferings. God is intimately present in and with our sufferings.
It can be difficult to name what it looks like for God to be present with us in our suffering—unless we look at the life of the human Jesus. The actions of Jesus reflect how God is present to all of our fallen humanity—even our mental health—because Jesus is Immanuel (“God with us”). When we do not feel God’s presence, we can fix our eyes upon Jesus and his own feeling of divine abandonment, and know we are not really forsaken. The Spirit of Jesus is actually groaning with and within us (Rom. 8:26–27) to such an extent that Jesus’s sufferings are our sufferings and vice versa (2 Cor. 1:5).
Scars from our wounds may still be there, like the wounds on Jesus’s resurrected body, and they may not be fully healed on this side of the resurrection. But those wounds cannot ultimately extinguish the blessed joy of being with the Creator in eternity. At the resurrection, God will refuse to let pain and death have the last word (Rev. 21:3–4). According to Isaiah and Gregory of Nazianzus, by sharing our suffering, God paves the way for each of us to be touched by the power of the resurrection.
In our own sufferings and experiences with mental health struggles—brought on from inhabiting weak and mortal bodies, or from trauma from external factors—we can find some measure of comfort in Jesus’s own co-sufferings with all humanity. God is not absent to our sufferings. Ultimately, either in this age or the age to come, God’s comfort will come to those who are “crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18; Matt 3:4–5; Mark 10:30). For now, God is intimately present in and with our sufferings through Jesus, and he offers unconditional love, acceptance, and belonging.
1 Laila Lalami, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2020), 70.
2 See chapter two in Daniel Carrol’s The Bible and Borders: Hearing God's Word on Immigration (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2020).
3 Julio L. Martínez, Citizenship, Migrations and Religion: An Ethical Dialogue Based on the Christian Faith (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2007), 51.
4 Peter Phan, "The Experience of Migration in the United States as a Source of Intercultural Theology," in E. Padilla E. and P.C. Phan (eds.) Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 148.
From Scripture, we see that Jesus is not only fully human, with a human body and spirit, but he has also experienced the fullness of the human condition in all its aspects—what we would call trauma, anxiety, and depression
It’s not surprising that Jesus would constantly be beset by anxiety and need to slip away to pray in private.
It is precisely Jesus’s co-suffering with all humanity in our conditions of frailty, grief, abuse, anxiety, and trauma that allows our sufferings to be taken up into God to be healed and liberated.
Jesus’s co-sufferings reveal that God is not absent in our sufferings. God is intimately present in and with our sufferings.
At Pax, we believe that all people are deeply connected to one another as children of God, even if we come from very different backgrounds. After listening to one or more of these migration stories, take some time to connect with and reflect on the experiences you heard. You are welcome to do this on your own or with others.