Hurting people tend to hurt others, whether consciously or unconsciously. This is because they are hurt and are in need of healing – the kind that only Christ can bring.

Sadly, many people who are carrying hurts are left to deal with their feelings of pain or loss by themselves. When left alone, the hurts that are not healed slowly become a poison that causes a person to become bitter and cynical. The good thing is that our hurts can be healed by Christ's love on the cross.

What causes hurts?

Hurts are caused by sin itself. We remember that during the time of creation, all that God had made was "good." Nothing was subject to corruption, to decay, and to pain. Think about it.

When God made all life, He meant that man and animals will eat from all vegetation. There was no struggle for what we call supremacy in the food chain. Lions eat with lambs. Adam probably had fun passing bananas to monkeys and apples to anteaters.

But after their fall, Adam and Eve felt the loss of all that bliss: shame and nakedness crept in and innocence was gone. The salads suddenly became unappetising to some animals who started to eat the smaller animals. Adam and Eve felt the need to hide from God because of their sin.

And God became separated from the man He created, all because of sin.

Sin caused all of the decay, destruction and loss that all mankind feels and sees today. Sin caused all the hurts that we have.

So why do hurting people hurt?

All of us are longing for that which only God can give. Read through the news and you see people fighting for peace. Others enslave themselves just to get some comfort and provision. Some spend a high price for enjoyment which is just passing, and then spend more when newer models come out.

We all strive to save ourselves from pain and hurts, enough that when we see others doing or having it better than we do, we try to inflict upon them the pain that we feel. Consider James 4:1-3, which says:

"What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can't get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure."

The solution

Friends, it is only when we find our healing, comfort and completeness in God that we stop riding this vicious cycle of hurting people hurting others. God has planted eternity in the heart of man (see Ecclesiastes 3:11), and that eternity can only be made joyful when we are in Christ, in the Lord our God. Remember, by Christ's stripes we are healed (see Isaiah 53:5).