Resurrection After Rape Community Group
Discussion, question-and-answer, general social support, and journal processing for progress-oriented rape survivors. No crisis, no damaging or triggering conflicts--this is for individuals who want to contribute to collective, cooperative action toward the goal of making actual PROGRESS through rape trauma. Much of this work is based on the book "Resurrection After...
I've been thinking about some of the spiritual questions that are often confronted during recovery from betrayal trauma (such as rape, abuse, domestic violence). One of the questions that a lot of survivors seem to have is how to manage their hatred toward their perpetrator, especially if they have been indoctrinated to believe that hate is sinful or wicked. How, they wonder, can I love God and hate my perpetrator? Will God condemn me for hating someone? How can I love a God who loves the person who violated me?
These are crucial questions, and something tells me that the streamlined "God loves everyone and you should too" answers aren't sufficient. I think we need to explore a more mature, more thoughtful, and more honest theology of God, justice, hate, and love. I am not calling for a new endorsement of "holy hate", but I do think survivors deserve much better answers to these questions.
I'd really appreciate input from diverse spiritual starting points, including multiple Christian perspectives (fundamentalist, liberal, Catholic, Protestant), Jewish, Muslim, Indigenous (tribal), and even "undefined" spiritual beliefs.
Here are my religious stuck points:
If God brings us into interconnection with all life ("Gakina Awiiya"), are we forced to acknowledge that this connection also includes our perpetrators?
I have heard that "God loves everyone." If that is so, it includes perpetrators of betrayal trauma. How can that be? Is there an answer more sophisticated than the old "love the sinner/hate the sin" slogan, which just seems insufficient to me?
Does the holiness of God somehow diminish if we perceived God as being capable of hating, say, a child abuser or incest perpetrator?
If God DOESN'T hate them, what positive message can God still offer the survivor? How can I truly see God on "my side" (if I am a victim), if God seems to have tolerance and grace for my perpetrator?
Is "hate" perhaps the wrong word? Has it become too poisoned by things like bigotry, cruelty, and misogyny to use here? If "hate" is not the right word, what word does describe God's feelings toward perpetrators and rapists?
I'm not asking people to answer all of these like an essay exam; these are just MY starting stuck points. I'd like to hear your beliefs, though. Respect for all who are willing to divulge their private spiritual discernment here!
These are crucial questions, and something tells me that the streamlined "God loves everyone and you should too" answers aren't sufficient. I think we need to explore a more mature, more thoughtful, and more honest theology of God, justice, hate, and love. I am not calling for a new endorsement of "holy hate", but I do think survivors deserve much better answers to these questions.
I'd really appreciate input from diverse spiritual starting points, including multiple Christian perspectives (fundamentalist, liberal, Catholic, Protestant), Jewish, Muslim, Indigenous (tribal), and even "undefined" spiritual beliefs.
Here are my religious stuck points:
If God brings us into interconnection with all life ("Gakina Awiiya"), are we forced to acknowledge that this connection also includes our perpetrators?
I have heard that "God loves everyone." If that is so, it includes perpetrators of betrayal trauma. How can that be? Is there an answer more sophisticated than the old "love the sinner/hate the sin" slogan, which just seems insufficient to me?
Does the holiness of God somehow diminish if we perceived God as being capable of hating, say, a child abuser or incest perpetrator?
If God DOESN'T hate them, what positive message can God still offer the survivor? How can I truly see God on "my side" (if I am a victim), if God seems to have tolerance and grace for my perpetrator?
Is "hate" perhaps the wrong word? Has it become too poisoned by things like bigotry, cruelty, and misogyny to use here? If "hate" is not the right word, what word does describe God's feelings toward perpetrators and rapists?
I'm not asking people to answer all of these like an essay exam; these are just MY starting stuck points. I'd like to hear your beliefs, though. Respect for all who are willing to divulge their private spiritual discernment here!
Maybe I better preface this by saying that I certainly don't believe in the "Clockmaker" model of God--that God made the Universe, wound it up, and just watches it run without further interference.
However, it is clear to me that the Universe runs on certain physical laws which are set, and which God chooses not to violate, or violates very seldom. A good man can be driving along, and by chance be in the path of a drunk driver's speeding car. Doesn't matter how good that man is or how much God loves him; God is simply not going to suspend the laws of physics to save that man's mortal life. It doesn't work that way.
Likewise, an evil gang of militants in the Congo take a little girl and rape her for months. Humans have free will and God can't really interfere in their decisions to torture the poor girl.
So where is God? What use is He?
God's realm is more spiritual, I think, than hanging out in our physical world. God won't stop the car crash but he will envelop the man's spirit, and later comfort the man's mourning family and friends.
God is offended and horrified at the kidnap and rapes of the Congo girl, and he weeps with her, and he holds her fragile spirit together. He moves a group of people to set up a special hospital for rape victims, and he moves some of us to write letters to these sisters half a world away.
The realm of the spirit is just so different. We are used to seeing the physical world with our eyes: if something breaks you take a tool and you fix it, or, call somebody who knows how. But the world of our spirits is more fluid, in flux, strange. One of the best parts of it, though, is this: We are not isolated spirits contained, trapped, in these physical bodies. We are connected to one another through God who made us all. When somebody pops into your head and you call them and sure enough they needed a friend to call, this is what I think that is! This very site, Daily Strength, people both reaching out for help and reaching out to help others, the people who come on here honestly to build relationships like that are responding to a prompting in their spirits. God "works" on us Himself, but he also works on us through others.
Maybe God made our rapists, too, but I like to think that He withdraws quite a bit from them. Maybe Matt can clarify for me, but I recall we read years ago that a "curse" is not a spell or a series of bad things happening to someone, but a curse is the absence of God. You get some bad people--let's use Bernie Madoff as an example--who misuse others for YEARS and it looks like they are actually prospering, not getting any punishment. Madoff got away with a lot for a long time, and was living the high life. Well, that's us looking only at their physical, outward lives. We don't know what is going on underneath, how black their souls must be, how no matter what they do in their twisted lives and how much fun they seem to be having, how empty and miserable they may be inside. And no God to turn to, because deep down they KNOW what they have done.
That's my 2 cents for today.
Which is also why I pity these people, and their stupidity and evil. They decided to cut themselves off from God, from His love...not God, not me, but THEM. I pity anyone who is dumb enough, wicked enough, evil enough, to make such a decision. And I pity God for having those people turn on Him and everything that He has given to them.
I wish no harm on my rapists, although I have at times, I've moved past that. And I don't believe that God wishes harm on them either...I don't believe He is capable of that sort of thing. But again, I do think that they have cut themselves off from a relationship with Him until they are able to right what they have done.
I guess...I don't see "hate" as a state of mind, or a wish upon others lives in any way, but I do see it as a decision to remove them from my being, to give them no further place with me, my life, or the people in it.
(p.s....I've looked at all of those bible passages, Matt, and inserted MY (not saying its everyone's) version of hate, and it fits juuuuust perfectly) :)
I can't say I have exactly "forgiven" them. I can say I have accepted what happened to me. I can say I see it more today for what it was than ever before. I can say I still hurt inside over what they did. I can say I still feel....used. It still hurts in that way. I don't mean..again, the physical used. I mean, I believed him...trusted him...hoped he was honest and allowed myself to believe that he was actually interested in ME, and I needed that. So, when I realized I had been duped..tricked...used - I was hurt, deeply, deeply hurt.
That may sound simplistic, or like I am choosing a kinder word for a feeling just as ugly, but I don't think so. I do not hate one human soul - not one. I do not hate the tall one...or the short one..or 'Nance'. I can understand you sense of feeling sorry for them, because, like you Laura, I believe they separated themselves from God by their actions toward me. I believe also in the idea that God doesn't change physical law..time doesn't stand still...no slow-motion interference...just, life as we all know it. So, that He didn't step in to swoop me up and remove me from that bed, I get that. I accept that. I wished, in my 12-year-old mind that it wasn't that way, but, I accept that it was.
I like the way this post has traveled...I like that we can say what we think, no arguments...no angry comments when we don't believe exactly the same. I like us....I like us more every day.
I wish I had a more coherent response.
I guess this is where a therapist would start asking the pointed questions to help me get at where that's coming from...
(sigh)
I truly don't know... But I'll think about it.
When I was younger, this topic angered me for the opposite reason: I judged this topic harshly, and was frustrated that people who'd been so hurt could still talk about God. I thought it was unfair to have so much proof of the world's cruelty, and yet stick to the script of religion in which God gets unfair credit. I saw it as a self-fooling charade!
I don't see it that way any more, of course.
How do you do it? 'Cause lord knows I can't....