What Is in a Name?
The Early Church created a new lexicon for the task of doing ministry. Terms were created to memorialize key events in the life of Jesus. For example, the Koinia Greek word βαπτίζω (baptizo) was adopted untranslated into many of the languages spoken by people converted to Christianity. It was the verb describing Jesus’ immersion in the Jordan river at the start of his ministry and this verb morphed into the noun ‘baptism” (in English) the name for the ritual of the new covenant. Similarly, Jesus’ role as the celebrant for the last Passover meal he shared with his disciples is memorialized in the expression “the Lord’s Table.” It has become the name of the ceremony that allows believers to connect with that ancient meal. Inexplicably, the disciples’ night of pathological self-preservation missed being christened. This event has been relegated to a paragraph heading in some, but not all, editions of the New Testament.
Despite the early Church’s failure to coin a commemorative term for the harm involved in the disciples’ betrayal, adopting the clinical label “moral injury” into the parlance of 21st century Christian ministry brings unintended consequences. The first of these consequences is the appearance of clinical authority over Biblical authority. It sends the unconscious message that God did not know this soul injury would happen. Thus, if the clinical world is providing revelation to the people of God, there will be a prejudice to continue ministry in clinical terms and expect clinical outcomes.
This leads to the dilemma of language. Even from a purely secular perspective, the term “moral injury” is not intuitive. A layperson using dictionary definitions of “moral” and “injury” would not arrive at the clinical understanding of this phenomenon. This conundrum is why almost all research on the subject offers Litz’s definition, or some other clinician’s assessment, very early in its content to inform readers what is included in this expression. Professor Tom Frame, Director of the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society at the University of New South Wales, Canberra described the nebulous nature of this label:
“In the extent literature, moral injury appears to be a phrase lacking precision, a concept looking for consensus and a notion seeking a parent discipline. At the moment, it appears to be a foster child still hoping someone will call it their own and to give it a name that fits its face. (Frame, 2015)
If Frame is correct, and “moral injury” needs foster parents to rename this inner dissonance, Christianity should have pride of place. In an earlier post, I asserted that the founding members of the Christian community each experienced “moral injury.” Their experience, recorded in the Gospels, is an opportunity for the Christian community to add to its lexicon and give moral injury “a name that fits its face,” as Frame suggests. I recommend a name drawn from a New Testament narrative containing elements of internal dissonance. The proposed narrative is Matthew 26:30–35 and verses 74–75. In these verses Jesus predicted the disciples’ inability to execute their individual promises and internal convictions. Jesus’ prophecy was rejected by the disciple Peter who believed himself capable of performing his own personal resolution (v.33). When the rooster crowed following Peter’s third denial, Peter experienced an emotional breakdown when his foibles were on display to himself (v.74–74).
The label I propose for the injury suffered by Peter and the other disciples is “rooster wound” since Jesus cited the actions of an adult male chicken as the harbinger of the disciples’ ethical dysfunction (Matthew 26:34, Mark 14:30–31, Luke 22:34, John 13:38). While this event displayed a specific type of dissonance between personal resolve and personal behavior, “rooster wound” is intended to be a label for any soul wound caused by a conflict between a person’s ideal comportment in a given situation or environment, and the actual outcome of a given event. Paralleling the observation in Litz et al where it is noted, “Moral injury requires an act of transgression that severely and abruptly contradicts an individual’s personal and shared expectation about rules or the code of conduct, either during the event or at some point afterwards” (Litz 2009), rooster wound would describe any soul trauma in an individual that had its genesis in one or more of the following criteria: 1) an action performed by the injured person; 2) passivity during the actions of others; 3) treachery by someone in authority over the injured person; 4) association or membership by the injured person in a discredited institution or cause (Acts 8:18–24; Gen 37:21–30; 2 Sam 19:1–6).
The individual may or may not experience trauma when the event or association actually occurs (Syracuse University, 2018). “Rooster wound” would include any pathology that occurs when a person decides their transmission of universal and/or personal standards during a given situation was flawed. There is no statute of limitations on how much time can elapse between an event and when the person decides their response was insufficient or inappropriate. All that is required for this wound is a sense that the “rooster” has crowed, and the person now lives in the shadow of their failure.
References
Frame, T. E. (2015). Moral Injury: Unseen Wounds in an Age of Barbarism. Sydney, Australia: NewSouth Publishing.
Litz, B. T. (2009). Moral Injury and Moral Repair: A Preliminary Model and Intervention Strategy. Clinical Psychology Review 29, 695–706.
Syracuse University. (2018, July 23). The Moral Injury Project. Retrieved from What is Moral Injury: http://moralinjuryproject.syr.edu/about-moral-injury/
Thayer, J. H. (1977). Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.
