The therapeutic worldview which prevails in our society views trauma as the operating system. Your every action is caused by underlying trauma. But the demand for trauma outstrips the supply. So, the priests of this new religion contrive new sorts of trauma. Everything becomes a tangled web of traumas inflicted upon you, and trauma for trauma you’ve inflicted on others due to your privileges.
It’s hard to keep up with such a system, because, at its core, it’s an incoherent system. It’s a system which wants any evil in you to be pinned on someone else.
But evil doesn’t come from outside you. Each of us are quite capable of innovating some of the worst scum known to mankind. Have others wronged you? Most certainly. But in your response to that wrong have you always and in every way responded with innocent motives. Have you never harbored bitterness, wishing for evil to befall those who wronged you, lusting for revenge?
God’s Word gives us an entirely different route for dealing with evil. Ironically, God calls you to pin all your evil on Someone Else. You must put all your sin on the only One who never sinned, but first you must also confess that all your sin is, in fact, yours. You can’t blame shift. You can’t pin it on your parents, your culture, your skin color, your socio-economic class, or anything other than you. Your sins, every last one, is yours, and God welcomes you to put it all on Jesus. He who knew no sin became sin, that we might be made righteous. Confession of sin, then, is taking responsibility for all the vile things you’ve done as well as all the vile things you’ve desired to do. And then Christ gladly takes it upon Himself, and pins it to His cross, that it all might die there.
Ben Zornes – July 14, 2024
