I often wonder why 'broken' is such an in-vogue noun in the Evangelical Church. Apparently, we are broken and the logic in this thinking would suggest that we need mending to whatever state we were in before we were broken. The understanding to be inferred here is that we have made such a mess of our lives and that our thinking is so limited that we have ended up in a state that can only be described as broken. Indeed, we are taught that we can only make a success of our lives if we allow God to determine every single hour of how and what we do. It is thus a grave error to be independent and free thinking individuals lest we fall victim to our own sinful limitations.
However, this is not a phrase that I'm too enamoured with when used outside of context. Life for the majority of people is normal, ordinary and is not subject to a painful reality. Having a job, a mortgage, children, a marriage, a social life is part and parcel of an ordinary every day existence for most Christians. Yes, we have all had our emotional hurts and have been battered by the storms of this life. Yes, life can be painful but a great deal of people can sail through life without drowning from the varying severities of trauma that afflicts the more unfortunate.
As part of my day job, I deal with people who are unfortunate enough to suffer from alcohol or drug addiction and sometimes both. Such behaviour can be construed as a mechanism of coping with previous and current traumas or symptoms arising from a natural susceptibility to mental illness. The needle or the bottle represents a temporary numbing of toxic emotions that are awakened by pondering on a troublesome past and a very bleak future.
Quite often, the cause of a destructive addiction is a painful trauma during the childhood years which can result in depression, anxiety, personality disorders and delusional thinking in adolescence and adulthood. For the many people who suffer from or have second hand experience with mental or physical health problems, brokenness is a very real day to day reality and thoroughly inhibiting and isolating the sufferer from engaging in an ordinary existence. Walking through a ward in a mental health hospital or visiting a palliative care unit is an experience in what it truly means to be broken.
