The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (Doubleday Image Book. an Image Book)

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

For the minister is called to recognize the sufferings of his time in his own heart and make that recognition the starting point of his service. Whether he tries to enter into a dislocated world, relate to a convulsive generation, or speak to a dying man, his service will not be perceived as authentic unless it comes from a heart wounded by the suffering about which he speaks.

This experience of Peter’s we call “historical dislocation.” It is a “break in the sense of connection, which men have long felt with the vital and nourishing symbol of their cultural tradition; symbols revolving around family, idea-systems, religion, and the life-cycle in general”

When we wonder why the language of traditional Christianity has lost its liberating power for nuclear man, we have to realize that most Christian preaching is still based on the presupposition that man sees himself as meaningfully integrated with a history in which God came to us in the past, is living under us in the present, and will come to liberate us in the future. But when man’s historical consciousness is broken, the whole Christian message seems like a lecture about the great pioneers to a boy on an acid trip.

Both experiences are valuable and have their good and bad sides, but why should life be lived in just one perspective, under the guidance of just one idea, and within one unchangeable frame of reference?

I am increasingly convinced that conversion is the individual equivalent of revolution.

His appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross.

Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel. In this sense he also remains for nuclear man the way to liberation and freedom.

One day a young fugitive, trying to hide himself from the enemy, entered a small village. The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the soldiers who sought the fugitive asked where he was hiding, everyone became very fearful. The soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every man in it unless the young man were handed over to them before dawn. The people went to the minister and asked him what to do. The minister, torn between handing over the boy to the enemy or having his people killed, withdrew to his room and read his Bible, hoping to find an answer before dawn. After many hours, in the early morning his eyes fell on these words: “It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.” Then the minister closed the Bible, called the soldiers and told them where the boy was hidden. And after the soldiers led the fugitive away to be killed, there was a feast in the village because the minister had saved the lives of the people. But the minister did not celebrate. Overcome with a deep sadness, he remained in his room. That night an angel came to him, and asked, “What have you done?” He said: “I handed over the fugitive to the enemy.” Then the angel said: “But don’t you know that you have handed over the Messiah?” “How could I know?” the minister replied anxiously. Then the angel said: “If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.”

But the tyranny of fathers is not the same as the tyranny of one’s peers. Not following fathers is quite different from not living up to the expectations of one’s peers. The first means disobedience; the second, nonconformity. The first creates guilt feelings; the second, feelings of shame. In this respect there is an obvious shift from a guilt culture to a shame culture. This shift has very deep consequences, for if youth no longer aspires to become adult and take the place of the fathers, and if the main motivation is conformity to the peer group, we might witness the death of a future-oriented culture or—to use a theological term—the end of an eschatology. Then we no longer witness any desire to leave the safe place and to travel to the father’s house which has so many rooms, any hope to reach the promised land or to see Him who is waiting for his prodigal son, any ambition to sit at the right or the left side of the heavenly throne. Then staying home, keeping in line and being in with your little group—becomes important. But that also is an absolute vote for the status quo.

only he who is able to articulate his own experience can offer himself to others as a source of clarification. The Christian leader is, therefore, first of all, a man who is willing to put his own articulated faith at the disposal of those who ask his help. In this sense he is a servant of servants, because he is the first to enter the promised but dangerous land, the first to tell those who are afraid what he has seen, heard and touched.

The Christian leader, minister or priest, is not one who reveals God to his people—who gives something he has to those who have nothing—but one who helps those who are searching to discover reality as the source of their existence.

Teaching in this context does not mean telling the old story over and over again, but the offering of channels through which people can discover themselves, clarify their own experiences and find the niches in which the Word of God can take firm hold.

The compassionate man stands in the midst of his people but does not get caught in the conformist forces of the peer group, because through his compassion he is able to avoid the distance of pity as well as the exclusiveness of sympathy. Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.

Thus the authority of compassion is the possibility of man to forgive his brother, because forgiveness is only real for him who has discovered the weakness of his friends and the sins of his enemy in his own heart and is willing to call every human being his brother.

A fatherless generation looks for brothers who are able to take away their fear and anxiety, who can open the doors of their narrow-mindedness and show them that forgiveness is a possibility which dawns on the horizon of humanity.

articulate, compassionate and contemplative.

It is very difficult if not impossible for a healthy young man to realize what it means when nobody cares whether you live or die. Isolation is among the worst of human sufferings, and for a man like John the experience of isolation is endless miles away.

Nobody can offer leadership to anyone unless he makes his presence known—that is, unless he steps forward out of the anonymity and apathy of his milieu and makes the possibility of fellowship visible.