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“Life is difficult,” wrote M. Scott Peck a few years ago in his best selling book, The Road Less Traveled. But this is an understatement for many Christians around the world. “Life is traumatic,” hits closer to the mark.

“I was beaten to death,” said an African pastor describing how close to death he had been.

“My family and I were on our knees looking skyward, waiting for the shots that would end our lives,” another national pastor said. “At the last instant a higher ranking officer came and saved us.”

“Three men came across the border looking for my father,” a young pastor’s wife-to-be said. “They found him and killed him.”

An adolescent said: “We walked for eight months through the African forest, often sick, almost always hungry. At one point I got separated from my mother. I have never seen her or heard from her again.”

Believers from four different countries recently related these events to my wife and me. They are the survivors of severe trauma, violent life upheavals.

“How fortunate they are to be alive,” we might think at first. But look into their eyes and you may recoil in dismay. The shock of prolonged suffering, of near death experiences, of witnessing the brutal killing of a spouse, a parent or one’s own children, can leave a vacant stare that makes one shudder. Such a person has looked at more than a human being should ever have to see.

Whether the eyes reveal it or not, traumatic losses leave profound marks on the spirit. Medical researchers are probing deeper the initial evidence that trauma affects the brain. After the emotional numbness of a devastating experience wears off, anger, depression or guilt are highly predictable consequences. Sometimes the victims are aware of this. In other cases such emotions are denied, hidden or repressed, only to express themselves indirectly but in ways that hinder healing or cause additional suffering.

In the past two weeks I’ve watched a minister-to-the-spirit conduct trauma seminars for a hundred pastors and church leaders in two African countries. Dr. Fran White, a Christian clinical psychologist and former missionary to the Congo, heard the first seminar group say to her, “We are all sick in our spirits. Please help us.”

These men, women and their immediate families have survived three civil wars in the last nine years. At the seminar’s conclusion they said, “Our spirits have been consoled. And we see now how we can help others.”

Strangely, the most important thing one can do to help the traumatized is not what missionaries, pastors and teachers instinctively do most: teach, preach or offer counsel. Survivors need to actively communicate, not passively listen to our advice. The critical, initial step is to be lovingly present and listen, enabling people to speak about their experiences.

Talk is essential to reducing the impact of trauma. The process of talking helps a person begin to untangle thoughts and feelings about a personal violation or loss. If done immediately after the first 48 hours of shock, it even reduces the brain’s biochemical changes. Talking about pain and grief with trusted people also opens wounded hearts and minds to God’s healing grace.

The day after the trauma seminar ended a pastor returned to say, “Last night I had a visit from a Christian brother in severe shock. He was involved in an incident in which two of his friends were murdered. I encouraged him to tell his story as you taught us. I also showed him the list of physical and emotional effects of trauma that you gave us, and he recognized the elements of his suffering. We have arranged to begin meeting for one hour, three days a week, in order for him to find help and healing.”

With war, disease, poverty, AIDS and premature death so frequent in Africa, it is difficult to find anyone who has not already suffered multiple traumas. Many unrecognized and untreated effects continue to handicap people years later. The availability of people trained to offer appropriate help is tragically small in relation to the need.

Not long ago a Rwandan pastor and his wife came to see us. We asked the wife to describe living through the 1994 genocide. As she began to unburden her heart, her well-meaning husband stopped her. She should not be speaking of such things. She would be guilty of acting like Lot’s wife who looked back at burning Sodom and Gomorrah and was turned into a pillar of salt. He had no idea that talking about one’s pain could lead to healing.

We often forget that despite cross-cultural differences people everywhere share a common human nature and psychological structure. If this is true, it raises a question for our own ministries. Are we sensitive enough to the wounded spirits of the people with whom we work? Or are we only focusing on their economic or physical needs, or their relationship to God? Even if we recognize their grief, do we imagine that we have nothing to contribute? I feel personally convicted about my reluctance to listen attentively to people’s inner pain, to create a climate where they feel able to talk. I believe that the One who carried my grief wants me also to have a part in bearing the grief of others.

People of every culture can either face their thoughts and feelings honestly, or they hide or deny or repress them. To overcome the negative impact of hardships, we all need the help, encouragement and nonjudgmental listening ear and heart of another, regardless of our social or ethnic backgrounds.

My wife and I have been on the receiving end of such ministry in our own traumatic losses. We were in Africa three years ago when we received word of my mother’s unexpected death from a fall. African colleagues and students quickly gathered around us. After listening attentively, they responded with songs and prayers of comfort, with words from the Scriptures and a parting embrace. The healing of our hearts had begun.

The ministry of listening to trauma-produced grief is part of the comfort and healing help God wants us to offer and to enable others to provide. We don’t have to be professional psychologists to do this. The apostle Paul said it this way: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Cor. l: 3, 4).