Everything seems to be leaning toward being trauma informed in our culture. All you hear about is trauma. Childhood trauma, relational trauma, church trauma, family trauma, generational trauma, emotional trauma. Increasingly, trauma is not simply being used to describe something that has happened to a person. It is becoming the explanation for the person himself. We are encouraged to go backward, identify the wound, discover the beliefs created by it, and understand how those experiences have shaped our attitudes, relationships, appetites, emotions, and choices.

But what happens when that becomes our primary explanation for anger, gluttony, bitterness, marriage problems, selfishness, destructive choices, or sinful attitudes? What happens when the question “What happened to me?” begins to overshadow the question “What is wrong within me?”

At that point we are dealing with much more than a theory about trauma. We are dealing with a rival doctrine of man.

Every System Has a Doctrine of Man

The phrase “doctrine of man” may sound overly theological, but the idea is simple. Every system that attempts to explain human behavior has one. It must answer some basic questions:

– Who are we?
– What is fundamentally wrong with us?
– Why do we behave as we do?
– Who is responsible for that behavior?
– What must happen for us to change?

Christianity has already answered those questions.

Scripture teaches that man was created in the image of God, but that the fall has corrupted the whole person. R. C. Sproul called this “radical corruption.” He explained that the corruption of sin reaches “the root or core of our humanity” and affects every part of our being.[1] Our minds, desires, wills, affections, and choices are all touched by the fall.

That means the biblical explanation of our problems cannot stop with what has happened to us. It must eventually confront what is within us.

In Mark 7:21, Jesus says, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts.” In James 1:14, we are told that each person is tempted when he is “lured and enticed by his own desire.” Then in James 4:1, when James asks what causes quarrels and fights, he points to the passions that are at war within us.

That should make us stop and think. If my explanation for my anger continually takes me backward to someone who hurt me, while Jesus directs me toward my own heart, which explanation is governing me?

When Explanation Begins to Replace Repentance

Our experiences influence us, but influence is not innocence. There is a tremendous difference between understanding something and being absolved of responsibility for it. Yet therapeutic language can slowly blur that distinction. Anger becomes dysregulation. Gluttony becomes coping. Bitterness becomes unresolved pain. Selfishness becomes self-protection. Controlling behavior becomes a trauma response. Marriage problems become the product of family of origin.

Some of those descriptions may tell us something about a person’s experience, but they raise a much more important question: Have we explained the behavior, or have we quietly renamed it?

If I discover why I am angry, am I now less responsible to put away anger? If I understand why I overeat, has gluttony ceased to be a matter of self-control? If I can trace my bitterness to betrayal, am I less obligated to forgive? If my childhood helps explain the way I treat my spouse, does it lessen my responsibility to repent?

A person can become extraordinarily skilled at explaining himself while remaining remarkably unchanged. He can spend years discovering why he is the way he is and never become what God commands him to be.

Self-discovery is not sanctification.

There Is Also a Question of Sufficiency

This is where John MacArthur’s concern about biblical counseling becomes especially important. For decades he has warned about systems that enter the church and convince Christians that Scripture is somehow insufficient to deal with the deepest matters of the soul. Speaking from Psalm 19, MacArthur says that Scripture transforms, gives wisdom, brings joy, enlightens, purifies, and “provides full spiritual resources.”[2]

That forces us to ask a difficult question. When dealing with matters Scripture identifies as sin and sanctification, do we really believe the Word of God is sufficient?

If anger, bitterness, gluttony, selfishness, destructive behavior, and marital conflict cannot really be confronted until we first discover the trauma beneath them, what are we saying about Scripture? If another system must first reveal what is really happening within the soul before God’s Word can adequately address it, which system has become authoritative?

The New Testament does not send us on an endless search for the origin of our anger. In Ephesians 4:31, Paul tells us to put away “all bitterness and wrath and anger.” In Colossians 3:5, he tells us to “put to death therefore what is earthly in you.” Scripture calls us to confession, repentance, forgiveness, renewal of the mind, self-control, obedience, and sanctification through the power of the Holy Spirit.

That is a very different journey.

What Is Becoming Your Identity?

There may be an even greater danger in repeatedly interpreting ourselves through trauma. What begins as an attempt to understand something that happened to us can eventually become a way of understanding who we are. We begin identifying ourselves through our wounds, explaining ourselves through our wounds, and interpreting our relationships through our wounds. The past becomes increasingly powerful because it becomes increasingly central to our identity.

But in 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” Christianity does not offer us an increasingly sophisticated explanation of the old man. It gives us a new identity in Christ and calls us to walk in newness of life.

So perhaps these are the questions Christians should be asking:

– Is this way of thinking helping me see my sin more clearly, or merely helping me explain it?

– Is it increasing my responsibility before God, or continually locating the explanation for my behavior outside of myself?

– Am I learning to mortify sin, or primarily learning to understand why it is there?

– Is Scripture becoming more sufficient in my thinking, or am I becoming convinced that another framework must first explain me?

And perhaps the hardest question is this: When I think about who I am and why I am the way I am, is Christ becoming greater in that explanation, or is my trauma?

Every system has a doctrine of man. We should be very careful which one we allow to explain us.

FOOTNOTES

[1] R. C. Sproul, “Radical Corruption,” Ligonier Ministries, March 14, 2024, https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/radical-corruption.

[2] John MacArthur, “The Blessed Work of the Sufficient Word,” sermon on Psalm 19:7-14, Grace to You, October 17, 2019, https://www.gty.org/sermons/TM19-6/the-blessed-work-of-the-sufficient-word-john-macarthur.