by Dr. Johan Tredoux – Uncommon Community
In the foothills of beautiful mountains lies a sleepy town called Rustenburg, 60 miles from Johannesburg in the Rep. of South Africa. Literally, in Afrikaans, Rustenburg means “town of rest.” I have fond memories of my growing-up years in this town. This is where I learned to swim in the cold mountain streams called “the cliff.” I ran track, played rugby, and, wearing a school uniform, walked barefoot to school every day. My dad was the pastor of a small Nazarene church plant. We lived in the parsonage right next door to the church, and the street name of my home address was Church Street. A block away was a large Dutch Reformed church. Life in Rustenburg was lived outdoors with “Braai’s” (barbeques) and Rugby and Cricket competitions every weekend. Food from the Malayan, Indian, and British cultures blended with the Dutch cuisine to bring multiple flavors to the plate. I still remember the avocado, guava, orange, and lemon trees lining the back yard and passion fruit growing wild on the fence marking the parameters of our fenced-in property.
In the backyard, there was no grass, only sand. Amidst the fruit trees, as a centerpiece of our backyard, was a large Mulberry tree. The mulberries did their share of staining my teeth and hands, and the large leaves were used to feed the silkworms whom I enlisted to spin a special silk bookmark that I used in some of my favorite novels of life among the Cossacks in Russia. This was life before television with radio waves broadcasting provincial rugby games on weekends and soup stories every afternoon, capturing my imagination with vivid sound effects.
There were times when the camel-colored hot sand in our backyard lured me to come and sit or lie on my stomach with my chin on my hands interlocked in a giant fist. It was my time to ponder. The sand was like a clean slate with my right finger becoming chalk as it beckoned me to create and express what was going on in my 10-year-old mind. I vividly remember the sensation of the sand between my toes and maneuvering my body to experience the hot sand as I drew imaginary figures in the sand. If I didn’t like my drawing, I just wiped my hand over it and started all over again. It was the sand of second chances.
The warmth of the hot sand made me feel very grounded. My toes and fingers in the sand were primal to me. It was my body’s way to reset and stabilize my equilibrium when my anxiety got the best of me. This was before I knew that if I added three deep breaths to my grounded feet, I could experience my core emotions or calm my anxiety.
Now, upon reflection, this ritual in the sand is remembered because I experienced what I would call a moral injury. This injury came at this young age as I heard my mom cry the night before, early in the morning. I recall feeling unsafe and anxious. I later gathered it was over church conflict and my mom and dad having to leave after ten years of ministry at this local parish. To me, this meant the loss of friends at school and having to start all over in a different town.
The assumptions that I held about the world were broken. I assumed that I could trust people who said they loved me. My assumptions got a good reality check at the early moral developmental stage of a 10-year-old. My comforting old assumptive world was gone, and a new one had to be constructed. I recall a feeling of betrayal that stayed with me. It struck at my very sense of self and my sense of the world as a place capable of goodness. Shelly Rambo, in her article “Trauma and Moral Injury,” writes:
Too often we speak of morality, goodness, and matters of right and wrong in very intellectual ways. But moral injury is called an “injury” on purpose. We feel our moral lives deeply, including injustice and transgressions. Right and good, wrong and bad, we feel them in our chests, our guts, and what we call our hearts. (Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, 08/12/2020)
Scholars tell me that moral injury is something distinct from trauma, and both forms of suffering often go hand in hand. Peter Levine writes: “Trauma is about the loss of connection—to ourselves, to our bodies, to our families, to others, and the world around us.” (Healing Trauma, 9). And so it was for me…
The theological assumptions of my religious world at that time used simple phrases to explain away my very complex emotional and spiritual world. To wash their hands over the consequences the adults in our church used phrases like: “God is in control!” or “everything happens for a reason.” Somehow, they believed that God was at work in this forced separation and that God’s ways were mysterious. I was supposed to trust that God was present without full knowledge of why and how. This separation was but the first of many moral injuries and many more writings in the sand.
Unfortunately, my embedded childhood theology always included elements of fear and punishment. It formed the framework for this early moral injury. I was exhorted to examine every sin before I could take communion, otherwise, I would eat and drink damnation on myself. Often, I heard hellfire and brimstone preaching with a passionate call to repentance. There was always this sense of exclusion and embrace—us and them, insiders and outsiders. The urgency of “end times” judgment either in this world or the next was ever before me. I was afraid of being “left behind” or being on the very precipice of the lake of fire. The emotional and theological disconnect must have happened early for me because I can remember getting spanked for making canon bombs in the baptistry, but I can’t remember my baptism.
All this baggage has left me with some real soul searching… The stories I was told didn’t sound like the stories of Jesus. Along the way, my storytelling has shifted. I have come to realize that much of the meaning-making passed unto me was under the umbrella of the “God of will” not the “God of love.” Bradley Jersak has helped me to see that our highest moral values are ultimately an echo of the God we believe in. (A More Christlike God). According to Jersak, those who see God’s essence as his freedom or will say, “God is God, so he is free to do or say whatever he wills, and that makes it good.” This God determines, governs, and commands absolutely everything. Because he is omnipotent, nothing happens unless he ordains it. He is “in control.” He foresees everything and whatever he foresees, he also “foreordains.” He decreed everything, even the fall of humanity.
I am not convinced. Honestly, phrases like “God is in control,” “everything happens for a reason,” or “maybe God is teaching us a lesson” do not sit well with me. It has become trigger words for me, bringing old hurts to the surface. Maybe it is because of the trauma and moral injuries hardwired in my body over so many years of being a pastor. In my present calling as a clinical chaplain I’m constantly reminded that in dealing with patients these well-meaning phrases can trigger old hurts from an abusive past and become life limiting rather than life giving.
Thomas Oord reminds us that God is not into control, but rather approaches, awakens, or woos us through uncontrolling love. (The Uncontrolling Love of God). I now know that these simple, but harmful phrases, are all variations of the “God of will” mantra. What has helped me to heal is to anchor my values in the “God of love.” A God who doesn’t decree a fixed future already planned, but rather a God who takes me seriously in the present and relationally invites me to co-create my future with him, moment by moment with love and care.
Here in America, and most first-world countries, we are more shaped by a future orientation of time. Under the banner of progress, we put forth the idea that history moves in a ceaseless advance toward a better future. With this mindset, we believe that it is in the future that our present problems will be resolved. The future drives what is present. However, in present “toes in the sand”time, change is understood as possible because what might happen is already in the process of happening. The present drives what is forthcoming. This idea of the forthcoming as already present is also expressed in the Gospels. For example, in John, Jesus says: “The hour is coming, and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (4: 23; cf. 5: 25). The followers of Jesus can have victory because the Lamb has already conquered and is already on the throne (Rev. 5: 9-10). Here we see that “toes in the sand”time is not bound to hopes for a remote resolution of a current crisis. Healing begins in the present, not the future. In Christ, in “toes in the sand”time, the future is brought to the present as God is not outside of time, but in time walking with us. We are talking about the one who is, the one who was, and the one who is to come. First present tense, then past tense and out of the present, and the past the future.
The God of love is the sand giving way under the pressure of Jesus’ finger as a new story unfolds moment by moment…
Dr. Johan tredoux
The God of love is the sand giving way under the pressure of Jesus’ finger as a new story unfolds moment by moment preventing the stoning of a woman caught in adultery. Not death predestined, but love’s power drawing a new picture in the sand. It is the golden strand of the silk bookmark marking the story of Moses as he stood with his toes in the sand before a burning bush hearing God say “I am that I am.” It is the story of an 80-year-old Moses encountering the God of second chances when the anxiety of meaninglessness is replaced with new dreams and visions. It is this article emerging as a reflection of the author’s limbic system being reset and reconnected through self-compassion and mindfulness. It is Thomas Oord’s photography of the wild picturing his postulations of the uncontrolling love of God wooing fauna and flora to co-create in real-time. Toes and fingers in the sand… may the visual image of the uncontrolling love of God ground you as you take three deep breaths… hold it, and then write your own story in the sand.
Dr. Johan Tredoux
Photo by Clint McKoy on Unsplash