Category Archives: Trauma and Recovery

After Charleston: Seek White Repentance, Not Black Forgiveness

Last Wednesday a young white supremacist man murdered nine African-Americans who were taking part in a Bible study group at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC. Emanuel AME is one of the oldest and largest historically black congregations in the South, and played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement. The Root has published profiles of the victims of this terrorist act, including three pastors of the church. Go read those and pray over them, then let’s talk about a certain kind of follow-on emotional violence that our media perpetrates–against some kinds of victims in particular.

Racism is abuse. Like domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse, racist attacks are perpetrated by individuals but supported by our shared culture. Sometimes we actively spread these beliefs, other times we simply fail to notice them and miss opportunities to challenge them. Dehumanizing beliefs about a less-powerful group seem so normal that we refuse to see their role in justifying violence. That would implicate too many of us in acts that our media depicts as extreme individual aberrations.

I’m not saying that most white people want to murder blacks. But do we unconsciously view black lives as less valuable? Do we interpret the same behavior as “menacing” or “troubled” depending on the subject’s race, a filter that makes black men the primary targets of police brutality and incarceration? Do we define “racism” so narrowly that it never applies to our thoughts and actions?

In the days following the Charleston massacre, my husband and I happened to be listening to the audio book of James W. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. We were on disks 5-6 of 12 (it’s heavy stuff!) learning about how the Confederacy’s myth of Black incompetence and corruption, popularized in Gone With the Wind, became the dominant cultural narrative about the post-Civil War period known as Reconstruction. Though we knew better than to take GWTW as unbiased history, my husband and I were still shocked by how much falsehood we’d casually absorbed from our textbooks and popular culture. That includes falsehood by omission: we didn’t learn about the immediate and brutally effective campaign of terror to suppress the black vote, stifle literacy, and force non-whites out of skilled professions. What else do we “know for sure that just ain’t so”?

The story we tell about a violent crime determines whether we collectively confront the sources of that violence, or look away. Whether we listen to members of the victimized group, or continue to silence and discredit them. Whether we dismiss Charleston shooter Dylann Roof’s racist jokes and apartheid flags as harmless delusions, until he fatally puts them into practice.

The “forgiveness” story, so beloved by our melodramatic and context-free media, is a silencing story.

It seems that every time there is a massacre of innocents, reporters are up in the faces of the mourners, asking “Do you forgive?” before the bodies are cold. Editorials repeat Sunday School platitudes and proclaim that only through forgiveness can the bereaved find healing. It happened during the Amish school shooting in 2006, the Newtown school shooting in 2012, and again this past weekend in Charleston. Earlier this summer, when it was revealed that Christian fundamentalist reality-TV star Josh Duggar had molested his sisters, his celebrity parents cited the girls’ alleged forgiveness of their elder brother as evidence that we should let bygones be bygones. The pressure to perform the role of the “good victim” bears down with extra weight upon members of less-powerful groups who reasonably fear they will not be valued or believed: e.g. sexual assault survivors, children, or African-Americans in a racist society.

Notably, it did not happen after 9/11, to the best of my recollection. The peace activists who sympathized with the desperation of the suicide bombers had their patriotism questioned, or at best seemed insensitive to bring this up while so many of us were still in shock and grieving. This was no time for sentimental empathy for the killers, this was an attack on America!

Was not the Charleston hate crime an attack on America? A strike against a historic landmark, targeting civilians, spiting the values we claim to hold most dear–freedom of worship, racial equality, life and liberty?

The forgiveness story centers the perpetrator. It makes the victim’s worth conditional on his or her response to the crime. It reduces these crimes to a private issue that can be settled between individuals, more like a civil tort than an offense against society. It gives the rest of us permission to minimize the damage, and to neglect our responsibility for the culture that incubated abusers and killers.

What if, instead, reporters in the days following Charleston had pulled over random white people on the street and asked, “Do you repent of white racism in America?”

Well, I do.

I can’t apologize on behalf of Dylann Roof. I didn’t pull that trigger, and I would never in my wildest dreams want to do such a thing. But I repent in the sense of “turn again”: I accept the responsibility to turn back and take a second look at the beliefs I’ve absorbed, turn away from racially biased stories, and turn toward learning from and signal-boosting black voices.

To that end, here are four excellent commentaries on the oppressive demand for black forgiveness in the context of racism.

Trudy, who writes the black womanist blog Gradient Lair, made this powerful Storify of her June 20 tweets on Black Forgiveness Without White Contrition. Follow her on Twitter @thetrudz, and if you love how she kicks your ass with the truth, please support her writing with a donation or subscription (see the right-hand sidebar of the blog for options). An excerpt:

Analyzing POWER here. Families of victims of State violence are indirectly demanded to apologize if Whites hate protestors’ actions.

Now those families might actually disagree with the protestors, right. But examine the DEMANDED performance of compliance with Whiteness.

In same way, *a few* fam members of *some* of 9’s families may forgive as their process, but examine indirect DEMAND for performance of it.

Hypervisibility on Blackness = consistent direct or indirect (again, structural power dynamics) demand for PERFORMANCE for White comfort.

Direct or indirect demand for performance of forgiveness to assuage guilt of ppl w/ more power is STANDARD abuse culture & American as hell.

& ppl with power have ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY to those harmed and their comfort centered above the harmed’s safety. Standard abuse culture.

Anger can be useful. Anger is a stage of grief. Well, for humans. Black ppl clearly excluded from human expression…

…Notice how media narrative shifts to “good Blacks forgive; bad Blacks don’t” versus WHY IS WHITE TERRORISM A FACTOR SINCE 1492?

Essayist and literature professor Kiese Laymon writes in the UK newspaper The Guardian:

…Grandma and her church taught me that loving white folks in spite of their investment in our terror was our only chance of not becoming them morally…

I told her that loving white supremacists in the face of white supremacy is a hallmark of American evil, and a really a fundamental part of the black American experience in this country.

It’s what we’re supposed to do, I said.

Many of us have made a life of hoping to get chosen for jobs, chosen for awards, chosen for acceptance from people, structures and corporations bred on white supremacy. We’re hoping to get chosen by people who can not see us. Knowing that they hate and terrorize us doesn’t stop us from wanting to get chosen. That’s the crazy thing. Everything about this country told Grandma, a black woman born in Central Mississippi in 1920s, to love, honor and forgive white folks. And this country still tells me, a black boy born in Mississippi in the 1970s, to titillate and tend to the emotional, psychological and spiritual needs of white people in my work.

I told my Grandma that we should have chosen ourselves. I tell her that we should have let us in. We should have held each other, and fallen in healthy love with each other, instead of watching shame make parts of us disappear.

What do we make of the shameful work of being chosen? Our family eats that shame, quite literally. Other families drink the shame. All the work that we put into forgiving white supremacy, white power and white people, and then hoping to be chosen by those people, should have gone into talking about – and collectively reckoning with – our familial experiences with sexual violence, food, and trauma.

Shame strangles, I told Grandma; truth sets free. But what does any truth set free look like? I know that I don’t know.

What I do know is that love reckons with the past and evil reminds us to look to the future. Evil loves tomorrow because peddling in possibility is what abusers do. At my worst, I know that I’ve wanted the people that I’ve hurt to look forward, imagining all that I can be and forgetting the contours of who I have been to them.

In Ebony, theologian Candace Benbow preaches a survivor-centric gospel in her article Christian Responses to Charleston are Killing Black Women:

Of the nine people killed at Mother Emanuel, six were women. We now know that the pastor’s wife and one of their daughters hid in his study as Roof went on his rampage. A mother played dead in her son’s blood, while another elderly woman’s life was spared. At least ten sisters were present in Mother Emanuel on that terrible night. Sisters have been turning to the church for centuries to cope with White supremacy and Black pain. It is no shock that so many Black women were there Wednesday because we are the church. Yet, despite comprising the bulk of Black church membership, the theology of our churches has yet to respond to our pain and address our needs. In just three days, we began to celebrate the forgiveness extended by the families. Pastors offered this as an example of authentic faith; this, according to them, is what Jesus would want from his disciples. But what does that mean for young women unable to forgive their rapists, molesters, abusers and attackers? What can we give them for healing instead of trite clichés and biblical interpretation that places responsibility on them? Whenever faced with difficulty, we are always reminded that we are strong Black women. Because sisters before us survived worse, we should be able to survive our current crisis. Survival is important but we glory too much in it.

How are Black women supposed to understand that violation is wrong when they hear pastors celebrate how God is able to use it for His glory and their development?

Weak theology seeks to protect a God who is not vulnerable. God can handle our questions, anger and disbelief. God is concerned about our emotional health and we do that concern a disservice when we preach otherwise. Jesus challenged the religious leaders of his time whenever the articulations of their faith further marginalized oppressed people. We must do the same and hold our leaders accountable for the ways they prevent Black women from healing, causing even greater despair. If Black women are strong, perhaps that strength is in acknowledging our weaknesses. It could be that we are strong because we recognize when we need help and accept it when others are trying to share our load.

I must admit that I am a long way from forgiveness. I’m not ready to forgive Roof and others who have hurt me. And I believe that’s okay. I believe God understands my unwillingness to forgive is tied to the unbearable pain I feel and would never hold that against me. I believe God journeys with me, even in seasons of unforgiveness, and understands that it’s hard sometimes. I believe God is acquainted with my grief and, above all things, wants me whole and well. We must cultivate a faith that allows Black women to be honest and vulnerable. We must give them the tools to understand that God never called them to be Jesus but to be faithful and human.

Mallory Ortberg is one of my favorite contemporary satirists. She is wrong that Avalon’s “Testify to Love” is not the best Contemporary Christian Music song of 1999, but other than that, I trust her to rightly divide the word of truth. In a more serious post for her website The Toast, she interviewed Carvell Wallace, founder of the urban youth initiative Vibosity, on The White Myth of Black Forgiveness. An excerpt:

Carvell: I think a lot of people forget that forgiveness of racists among black people is something that WE DO IN ORDER TO KEEP OUR SOULS INTACT.

Mallory: Oh man, let’s start with that. Break down a little, if you will, what you think forgiveness means in the context of Black American Christianity, with the usual caveat that you do not speak for all black Americans, but are familiar with the broad context?

Carvell: Yes. Thanks for that, and also why do we still have to explain that I don’t speak for 40 gajllion people. But. Anyway. There’s a difference between the private act of forgiveness and the public act of forgiveness.

Mallory: Which I think maybe a lot of white people do not understand! Again, there are many kinds of white people and white Christians, but in the broad Christian context I grew up in, saying “I forgive you” was generally understood to be a complete act. You forgave someone when you were DONE wrestling through what they had done to you. And it meant that you were, if not over it completely, at a certain amount of peace, and that things were, generally speaking, “okay.”

Carvell: Right. Well, when your entire history in this country has been about literally dying to be considered human, you have to develop a Christianity that enables you to fight while also “forgiving them” who hurt you. We have to forgive the sinner because the accumulated resentment could destroy us, but that will never mean that we don’t fight tooth and nail against the sin.

Mallory: So it has more to do with self-protection than it does with absolution, it sounds like.

Carvell: Absolutely. It’s nothing to do with the offender and it’s not about granting a pass to anyone.

Mallory: I think a lot of us miss that entirely.

Carvell: It’s more about clearing your heart of hate SPECIFICALLY SO YOU CAN CONTINUE TO FIGHT.

Keep fighting the good fight, readers.

Celebrating My Chosen Mother

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(Roberta’s birthday, December 2006.)

I blog often enough about how my childhood with my bio mom resembled Disney’s “Tangled”. Today I want to celebrate someone who makes Mother’s Day a joyful occasion for me, despite the painful memories we share (or perhaps because we can share them): my mom-of-choice, Roberta “Bib” Pato.

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(Roberta and I celebrate her freedom from 34 years with my bio mom, February 2011.)

Bib moved in with my bio mom and me when I was about 5. I wasn’t allowed to call her my other mother, though she certainly was. We were closeted, albeit not very convincingly, and my bio mom approached motherhood with a “no other gods before me” attitude. So she was my “babysitter” in public, and my “dad” when we affectionately joked around in private.

She taught me how to cook by having me chop vegetables and read aloud recipes from Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey’s 60-Minute Gourmet. Mmm, chicken with shallots and asparagus! She drove me to school in a succession of clunky American-made station wagons, and then in the little red Toyota that served us faithfully for 14 years till I totaled it as a student driver. She was a beloved teacher in the NYC public elementary schools for 30 years, from Lower East Side ghetto schools where the children came from homeless shelters, to the Upper West Side, where she faced down a system that assigned children of color to the classrooms that were perceived as less desirable.

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(Roberta’s wedding to her now ex-husband, 1968, with her mom Bea at right. She makes a cute femme, but it didn’t stick.)

Since starting her new life in 2011, she’s become the center of social life in her apartment building, co-founding a tenants’ association and making many friends who are film professors, religious scholars, writers, and more. They know they can knock on her door at any time of night for a slice of cake and a binge viewing of lesbian soap operas on YouTube. She’s amassed what is probably the largest collection of lesbian films in Northampton, which is really saying something.

(One of those “gay for you” romances that is so common in the movies, not enough in real life! But I might kiss Lena Headey if she asked me.)

As an active member of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC), Roberta has attended conferences in Oakland and St. Louis, and (though she is staunchly pro-transgender rights) plans to visit the last Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival this summer. Not bad for someone whose ex-partner wouldn’t let her leave the house! The “classy old dykes” whom I’ve met through Roberta have given me a new sense of solidarity with other women and a gratitude for feminist heritage. For Pride Weekend this month, Roberta and two of her OLOC friends produced playwright/actress Terry Baum’s “Hick: A Love Story”, a brilliant show about Eleanor Roosevelt’s closeted romance with journalist Lorena Hickok.

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(Northampton Pride 2014. She raised “L” this year too!)

Last but not least, she is the world’s most devoted grandmother to the Young Master:

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(Roberta holds Shane for the first time, April 2012. Look how tiny!)

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(Christmas/Roberta’s birthday, December 2014.)

Some grandmothers are always second-guessing the kid’s mom, but Roberta never criticizes. When I start to worry about the Young Master’s development or behavior, her unconditional love reminds me that Shane is perfect just as he is. Look at that face, right?

Thank you, Roberta, for showing me what a mom should be! We love you!

Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha’olam shecheyanu v’kiy’manu v’higyanu lazman hazeh.

April Is the Cruelest Month: Mommie Dearest Links Roundup

Is it just a coincidence that April is both National Child Abuse Prevention Month and National Poetry Month?

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(Hat tip to Love, Joy, Feminism.)

In that spirit, I’d like to share some excellent articles I’ve discovered this month about family trauma and recovery, and a poem from my new collection, My Miserable Life…oops, I meant Bullies in Love. Special #NaPoMo promo: Order your copy of Bullies, email me the receipt (je***@************rs.com), and I’ll mail you a free copy of my award-winning chapbook Swallow. Even if you live in Tasmania.

Swan and Cygnet

I’m a dry tit, a blackened heartsteak.
Since memory
began a pink baby tumor has been cradled
on my ribs, curtaining
my girlhood’s one-act ballet.
Where is it now, inseparable sucking warmth,
sleepless fury, what selfish operation
uprighted me? Pounds of wet fat gone,
the thin belle shivers
in the too-wide spotlight, the crowds of love
never enough to heat the distance.
Don’t blame her for dancing
with such momentum she topples off the stage
like a drill bit spun askew in a splintered board.
I’m that dragged ankle, that pin in the bone remaining
after the symphony has laid down its burden
and the cheap statues
trundled into the closet,
the Act One virgin with no hands to save money
because the plaster baby is supposed to fit there.
Like all frivolous things, it’s a cruel vocation
always to be missing you, mother-
less child, as the feet miss bleeding,
as the red shoes miss being danced to tatters
in the ruthless illusion of flight.

 

My mother was a charismatic, creative person who always acted like normal rules didn’t apply to our family. Including the rules of sanity, I eventually noticed. So it’s both validating and slightly deflating for me to go down the checklists in these articles about emotional abuse and mother-daughter role reversal: “Yeah, we had that… and that.. .and that too… wow, I didn’t know there was a name for that…” She wasn’t even original in her narcissism!

But this late revelation highlights a deficiency in our cultural picture of “abuse”. The movies-of-the-week and PSAs usually feature a man hitting a woman. We have trouble recognizing that women can be equally harmful perpetrators, and that their violations are often disguised as affection that’s hard to refuse. Look at the Internet reaction to Madonna’s forcing a kiss on young rapper Drake at the Coachella music festival last week. Because of the mockery surrounding the whole concept of female-on-male sexual assault (see also: Shia LaBeouf), he’s had to pretend that he didn’t mind it, when his body language tells the opposite story.

And now, the links:

*At the website Womb of Light: The Power of the Awakened Feminine, life coach Bethany Webster discusses the complex interplay of patriarchy and mother-daughter emotional incest in her 2014 essay, “When Shame Feels Mothering: The Tragedy of Parentified Daughters”. This piece was extraordinarily close to my own experience.

The road between a little girl and her mother is supposed to be a one-way street with support flowing consistently from the mother to the daughter. It goes without saying that little girls are totally dependent on their mothers for physical, mental and emotional support. However, one of the many faces of the mother wound is the common dynamic in which the mother inappropriately depends on the daughter to provide her with mental and emotional support. This role-reversal is incredibly damaging to the daughter, having long-range effects on the her self-esteem, confidence and sense of self-worth.

Alice Miller describes this dynamic in “The Drama of the Gifted Child.” The mother, upon having a child may unconsciously feel that finally she has someone to love her unconditionally and begins to use the child to fill her needs that were not met in her own childhood. In this way, the child begins to carry the projection of her mother’s mother.  This puts the daughter in an impossible situation to be responsible for her mother’s well-being and happiness…

…Patriarchy has deprived women to such a degree that when they become mothers, they often turn to the love of their young daughters starving and  ravenous for validation, approval and recognition. A hunger that a daughter could never possibly satisfy. Yet generation after generation of innocent daughters have been offering themselves up, willingly sacrificing themselves on the altar of their mother’s suffering and starvation, with the hope that one day they will finally “be good enough” for her. There is a childlike hope that by “feeding the mother,” the mother will eventually be able to feed the daughter. That meal never comes. You get the “meal” your soul has been longing for by engaging in the process of healing the mother wound and owning your life and your worth…

Why it’s hard to face how your mother was a perpetrator: 

  • As little girls we were culturally conditioned to be caretakers and to not advocate for our own needs
  • Children are hard-wired biologically for unwavering loyalty to mother no matter what she does. Mother love is critical for survival.
  • Having the same gender identification as your mother; the implication that she is on your team
  • Seeing your mother as a victim of her own unresolved trauma and a culture of patriarchy
  • The religious and cultural taboos of “Honor thy father and mother” and the “holy mother” that instill guilt and silence children about their feelings.

Why is self-sabotage a manifestation of the mother wound?

  • As a parentified daughter, the mother-bond (love, comfort and safety) was forged in an environment of self-suppression. (Being small = being loved)
  • Thus, there’s a subconscious link between mother-love and self-attenuation.
  • While your conscious mind may want success, happiness, love and confidence–the subconscious mind remembers the dangers of early childhood in which being big, spontaneous or authentic caused painful rejection from the mother.
  • To the sub-conscious mind: rejection by mother = death.
  • To the sub-conscious mind: self-sabotage (being small)  = safety (survival).

That’s why it can feel so hard to love ourselves, because letting go of shame, self-sabotage and guilt feels like letting go of mother. 

*The Invisible Scar is a website devoted to raising awareness about emotional abuse of children. This article, “Not Only Shouting: Different Types of Emotional Child Abuse”, explains why certain behaviors are so damaging, and why it’s hard for us to name them as such. Again, I am a texbook case. Silent treatment, triangulation, pathological lying, sabotaging… Look, I completed my Bingo card, what’s the prize? Recovery!

…The abusive parent will withhold attention and affection until the child caves in and apologizes for whatever the abuser perceived as a slight or insult. Through a series of silent treatments, the abused child will learn to be silent, to be docile, to never speak against the parent—because if the child does, he will not be loved or spoken to or even acknowledged as a human being…

…“Bunny Boiling is a reference to an iconic scene in the movie “Fatal Attraction” in which the main character Alex, who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, kills the family’s pet rabbit and boils it on the stove. Bunny Boiling has become a popular reference to how people sometimes exhibit their rage by behaving destructively towards symbolic, important or treasured possessions or representations of those whom they wish to hurt, control or intimidate.” (Out of the FOG website) Whatever the child treasures, an abusive parent will take away or destroy…

…An emotional child abuser will sabotage a child’s calm and peace. For example, if a child looks forward to a television program, at the last minute, the emotional child abuser may deliberately set forth a ridiculously long chore list to be done before the child can watch the show. (Think of the evil stepmother in “Cinderella,” who set up Cinderella to fail by giving her too long a list of items to do before the ball.) Or the father will deliberately schedule a family meeting at the same time that a child had planned ahead of time to attend a friend’s birthday party. Like all forms of emotional child abuse, sabotaging ruins a child’s sense of security…

That was a real downer, so here’s a picture of two cute bunnies, in what we hope is an emotionally healthy relationship. Thanks for reading this far, kids.

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(Photo credit: Twiniversity.)

Recovery, Not Return: A Conversation About Faith and Suffering

Ysabel de la Rosa edits the online journal Getting Along with Grief, a home for poetry, memoir, other prose, and artwork about life after loss. In an email conversation between us during Holy Week, we got onto the topic of Christian interpretations of suffering. We were both struggling with the ways that our spiritual traditions can sometimes reinforce abuse rather than challenging it.

Having followed my “Survivors in Church” series on this blog, Ysabel mentioned that she’d been part of a congregation where the lesbian pastor severely betrayed people’s trust. The surrounding community then exploited the scandal to argue against LGBT acceptance–shaming victims of spiritual abuse, in order to advance “Biblical truth”. Meanwhile, I felt my faith hanging by a thread after hearing a sermon to the effect that “Jesus ended the cycle of violence by absorbing violence”, a sentiment often repeated by progressive Christian writers during the Lenten season. Anyone with a basic education in domestic violence knows that absorbing abuse fuels the cycle of violence; believing otherwise (often with the church’s encouragement) keeps victims trapped in trying to be good enough and forgiving enough to magically change the perpetrator. And isn’t that one of the popular theories of Christ’s Atonement–that his perfect victimhood moves our hearts to repentance?

I’m through with taking victimhood as a role model. And I also refuse to identify with perpetrators who need someone else’s blood to make their own wounds visible. If that’s being a Christian… SmashMouth said it best: When you’re done…you’re really done.

I asked Ysabel: “A lot of traditional Christian doctrine seems to reinforce psychological distortions that prevent trauma healing–all that self-negation and glorification of suffering. I keep searching for more positive ways to understand Jesus. Do you have any favorite books or websites along these lines?”

She’s given me permission to quote an edited version of our conversation below.

Ysabel:

“These will not address childhood trauma directly, but Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity may be just right for you at this point. It was a turning point book for me for many reasons. I highly recommend John Dominic Crossan’s books that cover Roman and Christian history. He does an excellent job of putting Jesus’s life and message in context, and that context was one of occupation. If you are going to fight having your people occupied by another, that entails some necessary suffering…and there, to me, is a key. Some suffering is necessary, and one of the things I find comforting about Christianity is that it acknowledges that all suffer, but I believe the glorification of that suffering came about as a tool of a human and power-seeking institution, that was served well by making people feel sanctified about their suffering and encouraging them to stay in a suffering state or place. Other suffering is not necessary…and that’s one point where we tend to get hung up and start to look on our suffering as an accomplishment or as something that entitles us to privileges…

“I see the church as the tomb—and only the tomb–where the resurrection takes place. We have to have a tomb. 🙂 Don’t let the dark walls of the tomb (doctrine) rob you of the resurrection of the spirit.

“As for childhood trauma, I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. I was not abused, but my life has been deeply affected–and painfully so–by people who were.

“At some point, there needs to occur a deep letting go into the light. I don’t completely understand it, but I have seen that when adults cannot do that, they stay stuck, stuck, stuck in the trauma. And, whether conscious or not, they traumatize others. One thing I have thought about is Mary at the foot of the cross. Does her suffering not equal any other?

“Christianity does not promise me ease or lack of suffering. However, it clearly tells me that a life with suffering is NOT a sign of failure nor is an easy life a sign of success. I find acknowledgment of my suffering in the crucifixion and a strange kind of healing in the resurrection story. It does not matter to me one whit if Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead. My own father, a Methodist minister with a Ph.D. in theology, believed that the primary aim of the resurrection was to reveal eternal life to others, to make a statement that suffering is not the final answer. Did Jesus appear physically, spiritually? It doesn’t matter. That message about eternal life and suffering not being the final answer remains true.

The resurrection also tells me that to ‘recover’ is not to ‘return’. There is often some loss in healing. I had heart surgery in 2013. I have ‘recovered’, but I won’t ‘return’ to where I was several years ago. I said I did not suffer abuse in childhood, but I certainly have in my adulthood. I have recovered, largely, from that, but I will never return to the state of innocence or even joy that  I lived in before the abuse. So, that return/recover distinction has helped me see that healing does not mean erasing, it does not mean we get to recover something we never had, but we do get to recover what and who we are now, and that is no small thing. ‘Shake the dust off your sandals and move on.'”

I wrote back: About “recover versus return”, I like to meditate on the idea that the risen Christ still had wounds. (I always picture that Isenheim Altarpiece image where his body is glowing with light and the wounds look like rubies.) The Cross and Resurrection are such paradoxical symbols, because it is a fine line between de-stigmatizing inevitable suffering versus glorifying self-destruction. My heart continues to be drawn to the mystery despite the headaches it gives me. I remember a video of Crossan saying that Jesus didn’t die FOR our sins but BECAUSE of our sins. It’s not the suffering that’s redemptive, but the love, which only entails suffering as a by-product of his encounter with a flawed world.

Ysabel:

“You are right. SUFFERING IS NOT REDEMPTIVE!! It is necessary, though. It comes with the life package. What it can do is teach…but it is another power which is wholly redemptive. The good news is that suffering can lead us to that power. The whole business of Christ dying for our sins is a notion come quite late to Christianity.”

 

So I guess I’m not done with Jesus. I am, though, for the time being, exhausted with Christianity.

I believe I can connect with a Jesus who speaks truth and healing into my particular experience. But participating in this collective thing called Christianity, I’m struggling uphill against a headwind of codependent myths, triggering images, and the simple ignorance of good people who don’t prioritize abuse prevention or trauma recovery in their theology. On the flip side, I understand that congregations include people in all stages of psychological growth. I wouldn’t have wanted to hear about these issues 10 years ago! Should I graciously get off the bus instead of trying to turn it around?

The cold never bothered me anyway.

Stations of the Cross: Mental Illness

Christian artist Mary Button’s annual series of “Stations of the Cross” collage-paintings depict the torture and execution of Christ in the context of a social justice issue. For instance, last year’s Stations took on the injustice of mass incarceration in America. The 2015 series is devoted to mental illness. In the artist’s words, it “addresses the cross-cutting theological implications of the treatment of people with mental illness. Individual stations address both the special gifts and insight of people living with mental illness as well as social justice issues such as race, gender, homelessness, and stigma.” Read her interview about this year’s project in the Huffington Post.

Each image, with artist’s commentary, can be viewed on Flickr. I was struck by the fact that these pictures are gorgeous with color and creative energy, while also being chaotic and sometimes scary. Button portrays the creativity of mania, the allure of the special and mysterious chambers of the mind, as well as the cost of getting lost in that labyrinth. Surely many of Jesus’s contemporaries must have thought he was crazy! Those who explore the frontier of spiritual experience often seem so, especially when their confidence in their inner truth sets them at odds with their family and their society’s interpretive authorities.

Some of these pictures show Jesus sharing the suffering of depression and schizophrenia, while others, such as “Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus”, critique the mental health system’s complicity in sexism and other oppressions. Several deal with suicide as a political consequence of racism and veterans’ PTSD. I would have liked to see childhood trauma and its aftermath explicitly included, but even so, survivors can certainly find a lot to identify with in this series.

Survivor-Centric Liturgy: An Example from Inclusive Church (UK)

Inclusive Church is a UK-based resource for making the Church of England more welcoming and sensitive to diversity around sexuality, race, class, disability, and mental health. The latter topic caught my attention during my ongoing search for materials for a trauma survivors’ Christian study group. What’s great about Inclusive Church is that they see the disabled and mentally troubled not merely as categories of consumers to be reached with an existing product, nor as objects of Christian charity, but as co-creators of theology from the standpoint of their lived experience. That’s been the goal of my “Survivors in Church” series on this blog as well. It disappoints me that most Christian books recommend using faith to suppress the socially uncomfortable symptoms of trauma, such as anger and rumination on the past, rather than heeding their radical challenge to faith.

This article from the Inclusive Church’s mental health resources page, “The Secret Holders and Bearers”, is by two community mental health chaplains who are willing to take up that challenge. In the portions quoted below, they consider how some standard prayers in the Sunday Eucharist service may reinforce abuse survivors’ distorted sense of themselves as broken and powerless. We need much, much more work like this.

…Are we prepared to be changed, transformed, outraged, and can the secret-holders enable our secrets to be borne more gently, even if they need to remain hidden for a while? Can we bear to hear when the practices and the theologies heard in some churches have not contributed to the empowerment of lives and voices but to their continuing silence? Even where genuine expressions of compassion and pastoral care have embedded the idea of ‘victim’ rather than the radical Gospel idea of partner and co- theological agents?…

…Let’s hear their words and attend afresh to our own and let’s attend to our liturgical language, see again the symbolism and architecture of our services and hear the clamour and the whispers, the invitations and the barriers that inhabit the theology in our liturgy and hymns. I am not saying that the brief account of these liturgical examples are wholly problematic but they are an example of a presently largely cataphatic liturgy with very little liturgy of lamentation and an apophatic perspective that speaks so much of human experience and especially the lived reality of those with long term and abiding mental health issues:

Just some examples from the present Common Worship Order 1 Service for Holy Communion:

Confession Prayer: We have wounded your love and marred your image in us (so many secret holders bear the woundedness that is wholly the responsibility of others and blame themselves throughout their lives and have been forced to blame themselves, lives overwhelmed by guilt. We tentatively suggest that such a statement echoes the feelings they already have about themselves, ‘knowing’ they are wholly unworthy of any kind of love, let alone the love of God).

… Lead us out from darkness to walk as children of light (on the face of it, who could argue with such a sentiment? However it represents a larger problem with the ‘darkness’ imaginary that suffuses Christian liturgy and theology. So many of us, in so many different ways, have found the metaphor of darkness wholly positive and therapeutic and the prospect of light almost unbearable at times. We need to look again at these intimately related metaphors.)

Prayer before Distribution: We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs… (We know this is an optional prayer but nevertheless, and because it has been taken wholly out of context from a biblical story which effectively says the opposite, a sense of unworthiness just before we break bread together is, for all of us, and especially for those who live every day with an overwhelming and unbearable sense of unworthiness, wholly unfortunate directly before the gathering at the feast. We are worthy, all of us; we do not have sinful bodies but beautiful bodies and minds. Neither of us, personally, has been able to say these words for a long time because of our own inner battle with a sense of unworthiness imposed upon us by others).

The Spiritual Gift Shop; or, Living in Syncretism

jendi_ash_weds_2015

Ash Wednesday selfie with Buddha outside Namaste Bookshop, NYC.

I spent four days in New York City last week to take Internal Landscapes movement lessons with one of my artistic mentors, the choreographer John Ollom. John’s work invites one to occupy the “liminal space” where mental preconceptions are relinquished and new insights arise from listening to one’s body. He challenges the compartmentalization of sacred and profane, regarding Eros as the undivided source from which flows not only sex but spirituality, art, and interpersonal intimacy.

My visit coincided with Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent, when we are encouraged to re-evaluate our lives and renounce obstacles in our journey toward God. Lent can be a time when we shame ourselves and further split off the shadow side of our psyche. Or it can be a hopeful movement into the liminal space where we have to trust God more than our ideas about God.

This year, I’m giving up doubting my intuition for Lent.

How do I know when the cadence of a poetic line rings true? What’s that feeling when my novel characters are telling the truth and surprising me, and how’s it different from the gut-level suspicion that we’re bullshitting each other? How does my body, never trained in dance, free-associate from one gesture to the next during an Internal Landscapes lesson, suggesting new images rather than merely illustrating my pre-conceived storyline? How do I know what gender and sexual orientation I am?

I can’t dissect these intuitive processes the way I can pick apart a theological argument. But I can’t retrain my traumatized nervous system through political analysis alone. My head’s gone as far as it can go. Mistrust, fear, and alienation can only be overcome through openness to receiving the life force wherever it manifests.

My intuition knows that quickening feeling when a new line of inquiry makes me feel vital, curious, clear-headed, creative, and pleasurable. That’s the thread I follow through the labyrinth in my creative writing. Now I’m taking baby steps, with some guilt and anxiety, toward the same non-dogmatic attitude in my religious life.

Religion was where my inner child sought order, stability, clear moral boundaries, and the public accountability created by community norms and rationally defensible creeds. Traditional Christianity appealed to and reinforced my dualistic thinking: faith/superstition, good spirits/evil spirits, magical mystical sacraments/New Age hippie make-believe. At my most conservative, I was afraid to open a box of Women’s Bodies Women’s Wisdom Healing Cards that I received as a gift, because didn’t the Bible forbid divination?

One of the spiritual abuse survivor blogs I follow, Caleigh Royer’s Profligate Truth, this year has chronicled her journey away from Christianity and her process of healing from child abuse while raising her baby son. We have a lot in common. In her most recent post, she disclosed her current intuitive attraction to Tarot. I heard that little “ping” inside myself that tells me when I’m onto a good idea in my writing. I remembered my fascination with Tarot in college before I converted to Christianity. The mysterious symbols and fairy-tale archetypes on the cards had inspired me to write an epic poem based on random (?) cards I drew from my Aquarian deck. (One was Temperance, below.)

My mind instantly threw up a cloud of objections. “You have no reason to believe this is ‘true’. Aren’t you just looking desperately for patterns in random events? That’s not a grown-up thing to do! How can you take seriously a religion without a complex philosophical foundation? Or a coffee hour?”

Look, I don’t know any of that, either. I just feel drawn to Tarot right now as a source of resonant images to spark my creativity and know myself better. As this xoJane article, “Tarot Reading for Skeptics, Cynics, Nonbelievers and Side-eyers”, explains:

Why use tarot cards?

Personally, I use them for focus and meditation. I don’t tell the future, I don’t see other people’s secrets, and I don’t think I’m communicating with the divine. (It’s cool if you do, though — I ain’t judging.) I find the archetypes and stories in tarot symbolism to be resonant and meaningful for understanding myself and my life. I do self-directed readings to give myself points to think about, or to reframe my perspective. For me it’s really just a self-help practice with pretty props.

Do you “believe” in tarot as a supernatural/occult/magic thing?

Personally, no. And in general I believe any sort of faith associated with tarot use is fully optional. People will probably argue with me on this point — as I would have done when I considered tarot reading a spiritual activity — but no, you can be a flat-out atheist and still get use out of tarot cards, if you want.

Rational (if not fully scientific) efforts at explaining the efficacy of tarot for some folks often use what Carl Jung — founder of analytical psychology — termed the “collective unconscious.” Jung believed that this was a separate psychological aspect from our personal unconscious, and was not dictated by our individual experience but by the breadth of human existence, taking shape as our shared ability to recognize a series of basic universal forms that he called archetypes.

Examples of archetypes are pretty familiar to human storytelling, and include our ideas of the hero, the mother, the self, the wise old person, the trickster, and so on — most of these broad archetypes can be found in myths and folklore throughout time and across diverse cultures. Thus, Jung argued that this collective unconscious passes from one generation to the next as an inherited understanding shared by all humans.

Tarot cards — especially those who take their symbolism from the Rider-Waite standard — often employ these so-called universal archetypes. Even if you think Jung is full of shit, much of the symbolism used, especially in more modern decks, comes from human experiences many of us can relate to on some level — heartbreak, joy, falling in love, achieving a goal, a fleeting moment of feeling in tune with the world around us — and so with practice they will speak to you in their own ways.

On Ash Wednesday, on my way to my Internal Landscapes lesson, I passed the Church of the Holy Innocents to check on service times. I sometimes attended Mass there in 2000-02 when I worked in an office nearby and needed a mid-week spiritual recharge. It’s everything a small Catholic church in Manhattan should be: shadowy, smoky, crammed with aging plaster statues and paintings of beautiful agonized saints. In true on-the-go New York fashion, they were offering round-the-clock imposition of ashes from 7 AM-7 PM in the basement chapel. Next to the prayer station was a makeshift gift shop with elderly ladies selling saints’ cards, rosaries, beaded bracelets with saints’ pictures, and devotional booklets.

I used to have a childlike faith in such items. I attributed protection to the Jesus lucky charm, rather than the relationship with God that it represented. And by “used to” I mean until 2009 or thereabouts, when traumatic aspects of the adoption process made me realize I was a child abuse survivor. I became cynical and bitter about looking for rescuers outside myself. I wanted to stop clinging to the illusion of control over external circumstances, and instead grow stronger by loving myself and seeing my situation clearly. Rituals and saints seemed like painful reminders of a helpless child’s imaginary friends.

I’m just beginning a new stage of my healing journey, focusing on body-mind integration and openness to God’s presence. With that orientation, and with John Ollom’s insights about the undivided energy of Eros, my view of religious tchotchkes shifted once more.

After my movement lesson on Wednesday, I took the subway down to Namaste Bookshop to buy a Tarot deck as a souvenir of my New York spiritual pilgrimage. The colorful, welcoming store is packed with books and trinkets reflecting just about every New Age, Eastern, and indigenous tradition you can imagine: Goddess cards, angel cards, wolf spirit totems, Ganesh statues, charm bracelet Buddha heads… Since New Yorkers are never too spiritual to call a lawyer, the cash register also sports this lovely disclaimer about the store’s fortune-telling services:

Namaste disclaimer

The religious smorgasbord before me brought out my cynical side at first. When all traditions are presented as equally valid and on sale for $14.99, doesn’t that encourage shallowness, cultural appropriation, or a superstitious dependence on any barely-understood totem that gives you a good feeling that day?

But that objection fell away when I understood that the whole world is already sacred, already “charged with the grandeur of God” that shines out from every material object, waiting for us to notice it. The Spirit is not something separate from daily life, which we must bring in by choosing the right set of rosary beads or tarot cards. Any of these objects could work as a point of connection to the life force, just as any of them could become an idol if used in the wrong frame of mind.

I’m not saying “all religions are the same”. Beliefs have consequences: some are conducive to justice and love, others hurtful and misleading. Symbols, on the other hand, exceed the boundaries of any single interpretation. Jesus has been claimed for many contradictory agendas. Does the Cross represent God’s solidarity with abuse survivors, or does it reinforce abuse by romanticizing the suffering of innocents? Does the Incarnation represent the complete reconciliation of human and divine, or does it imply that human beings other than Jesus lack the divine spark? My heart’s attraction to the Cross transcends arguments.

Don’t ask me where I’m going, but I’m having a good time.

Christian Blog Roundup: Incarnational Boundaries, Rethinking Outreach, and More

I read Christian blogs and Twitter feeds nearly every day, and periodically email myself the standout articles that give me ideas to write about. Time pressures being what they are, a lot of these ideas hang about in my inbox for months, never quite finding the right occasion for a full post. So here is a links roundup, loosely connected around themes of Christian psychology and the balance between self-care and service.

“Maybe We Should Stop ‘Doing Outreach’“: The Rev. Cathie Camaino, an Episcopal priest who blogs as Father Cathie (read her wonderful explanation here), proposes that churches should stop thinking of “service” as organized programs for helping outsiders, and face our fears of sharing our own needs with our fellow members.

“Learning to be vulnerable enough to give and receive is ministry…Engaging with our faith such that it stirs up our compassion, generosity, and courage to be vulnerable is certainly the work of the church. How this happens may not be. It seems that in our congregational life, at least as much energy is put towards the organization and scheduling of ‘outreach’ programs, the recruitment of volunteers, and the promotion of service, than is actually spent doing the work to which we have been called. Maybe the church is not the place to create the programs (which are often duplicated, in much better ways, by other organizations) but the place to ground ourselves in our Christian faith such that we feel the call to serve.”

“Incarnational Boundaries“: Progressive evangelical writer Zach J. Hoag contends that our churches would be emotionally healthier if we took Christ’s embodiment more seriously. We become lost in theories and systems, and don’t pay attention to the ways that abusers exploit our simplistic moralism.

“I see Jesus affirming the embodied human experience of that which is emotionally healthy and unhealthy, safe and unsafe. In fact, I see Jesus practicing healthy boundaries in his work with people that reveals the often manipulative, abusive, and harmful ways that people treat each other (which often causes so much emotional and psychological pain and damage). And this Way of Jesus confronts our ideological, neo-gnostic ways as evangelicals.

See, we are very good at creating unsafe environments where harmful and abusive behaviors are explained away using flat theological categories like sin, pride, faith, prayer, love, reconciliation, forgiveness, leadership, headship, submission, etc. Thus,we don’t respond to these behaviors appropriately nor protect those victimized or potentially affected by them. And, these behaviors are often coming from leaders who are protected as those endorsed by God. Further, we often force the value of ‘community’ onto relationships in the church in such a way that puts people in unsafe or even violating situations.

When we interpret Jesus’s words through his Way, however, we see a different picture. Instead of mandated ‘reconciliation’, we see that there can be no grace, and thus no real reconciliation, without the truth. And, though we always pursue and remain passionate about reconciliation, the reality is that the truth just might bring division, not reconnection. (Forgiveness is another matter, as it requires only one party engaging in a process of releasing bitterness toward the offender.) Matthew 18:15-20 describes a process of truth-telling that may result in the offender not hearing – and thereby being deemed unsafe.

If we mandate things simply by looking at the words of Jesus or the Apostles and drawing out ideological categories, then we may very well continue to produce communities of obligation racked with unhealthy dynamics rather than safe, healthy churches. And if the gospel is bringing us to greater wholeness, showing us what it means to be truly human in the Messiah, then an incarnational church will preach and practice the healthy boundaries that Jesus himself embodied.“

“Kenosis as Pouring Out and Vomiting“: When psychology professor and theologian Richard Beck shared the stage with a trauma expert at a Fuller Theological Seminary lecture series, they explored how the Christian ideal of self-emptying (kenosis) must have a different interpretation for the abused and oppressed, i.e. people whose selves have already been crushed or never allowed to form. Beck proposes:

“…what is being emptied is the hero system–the ways we have internalized social and cultural standards of significance versus insignificance, success versus failure, worthiness versus unworthiness, light versus darkness, pure versus defiled, whole versus damaged. The ’emptying’ of kenosis is becoming indifferent to, dying to, this hero system…

The only difference is where we find ourselves within the hero system. For many the hero system places us on top. At the top, self-esteem and social respect are easy pickings. But the call of Jesus is to become indifferent to all this.  That is experienced as a ‘descent’ of sorts.

But for others, the hero system places them at the very bottom. And all too often, this is internalized. You feel that you ‘deserve’ to be at the bottom, deserve the abuse. Because you are insignificant, damaged, unworthy, and full of darkness and pollution.

It’s a toxic situation, this internalized self-loathing, but it’s still the hero system. It’s just the opposite pole, the shadow side. The hero system is still the way the self is being evaluated, even if it is full of self-loathing and self-destruction.

So an emptying has to occur. The hero system–that internalized filth and shit–has to be poured out. Vomited out.

Come to think about it now, this is an emptying that, psychologically speaking, looks very much like an exorcism. Demons–destructive psychological/spiritual darkness–are being cast out, emptied out.

“White Men, Submission, and the Kingdom of God“: And on a related note, Christian author and blogger Dan J. Brennan expands on a comment by Christian feminist writer Julie Clawson about how the language of “dying to self” can reinforce patriarchy:

“Which man or woman, dealing with self-contempt, dealing with chronic self-contempt, wants a steady diet within their church pulpit and church social media, ‘You must die to self, you must submit your voice to others because we’re all guilty of self-exaltation’?  I myself, deeply wrestled with chronic self-contempt for years and sermonic appeals to trust God, etc. did not help. For years I did not wrestle with Niebuhrian pride. I wrestled with self-contempt, wrestling with shame wondering how God could love me.

Because of my history, I cringe when I see white male leaders so tightly knit death to self with submission in their ecclesiology and spirituality without a healthy understanding that in the 21st century Niebuhrian pride is not all there is to self-understanding. Niebuhrian pride is not a universal experience for all people. It’s probably not even at the heart of most postmoderns. It’s certainly not at the heart of many women and minorities. White male leaders like this can keep good Christian (and nonChristian) therapists with an unending list of clients wrestling with self-contempt.

They can also promote systemic sin as Julie noted.

It’s challenging and heartbreaking when you see good white men with good hearts come to grips with their genuine Niebuhrian pride and then they want to universalize it for everyone else in their sermons, tweets, and social media.

Read Brennan’s follow-up post here.

The Priesthood of All Survivors

I’m having doubts about my place in the church.

As I overcome trauma-induced beliefs that made me fear direct communication with God, I have less need for a giant mediating structure to serve as a lightning rod. As I gain confidence in my own perceptions, and in the availability of forgiveness for my faults, I have less need for sermons saying how everyone “should” feel and act.

I still long for a community centered on Christ. I want to give and receive the support, spiritual insight, and deep friendship that a shared faith journey can offer.

However, as I work towards higher levels of psychological integration and adulthood, I have to be part of a community that’s consciously working the same program. As I choose to break familial patterns of nonconsensual intimacy, I have to be part of a community that’s organized by consent and choice, not guilt-tripping the unchurched.

Such a community doesn’t form spontaneously in every group of people that calls itself a parish. It either has to be steered in that direction by an insightful pastor who is willing to yield power to the laypeople, or assembled outside church walls by the individuals who need it.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that the local parish, precisely because of its randomness, teaches the spiritual discipline of learning to share fellowship with people for whom you feel no natural affinity. This is an important practice, but I think he was wrong that a person’s hand-picked circle of spiritual friends is more likely to be a group of yes-men than the traditional church. Intentional communities can be diverse if they make a commitment to be so. (See, for example, the Freedom Circles at the Becoming Church program that I visited this spring.) Plus, there is a difference between the fruitful discomfort of listening to people outside your own race, social class, etc., and the pain of being a survivor in a church that doesn’t prioritize relational safety.

What about the sacraments? My mystical, physical union with Jesus in the Eucharist is my strongest reason for choosing church attendance over quiet reflection with Morning Prayer on my iPhone. When I see my fellow parishioners approach the altar rail, our relationship becomes solemnized, revealing a dimension of interconnection beyond ordinary acquaintance. I sense the possibility of the Body of Christ. It isn’t something I can access in solitude.

Surely the official church still has a monopoly on this power…or does it?

Feminist Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether wrote the following in her book Sexism and God-Talk (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983).

The residue of clericalism gives even liberal Protestants the impression that the administration of the sacraments is a function that most especially must be exercised by persons set aside in specialized ministry. But, in fact, representation of the community in rites of baptism, forgiveness, or Eucharist depends very little on specialized skills of learning. It is significant that the New Testament contains many words for special charisms and skills, but that they are not identified with special offices responsible for the sacraments of baptism or Eucharist…

…[As] people become empowered to make their contribution to shaping the worship life of the community… leadership does not disappear but assumes its true functionality when it is liberated from clerical monopoly over ministry, word, and sacrament. Leadership is called forth from within the community rather than imposed on it in a way that deprives the community of its own self-articulation. (pgs. 209-10)

This radically Protestant idea had never occurred to me. I set it aside as a memorable curiosity for several years, until now, when I realize I need a healthier reason to stay than “Where else can I go?”

Codependence taints the American church’s strategies for retaining members. A quote popped up in my Twitter feed from a progressive evangelical blogger. On the Internet, I’ve seen it variously attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, Chuck Swindell, and Chuck Colson. “The church is a lot like Noah’s ark. If it weren’t for the storm outside, you couldn’t stand the stink inside.”

As a relationship move, this is like telling your wife, “Go ahead and try to leave. You couldn’t make it on your own.” It’s a counsel of despair, casting would-be reformers within the church as whiny children who won’t accept that life isn’t perfect. Actual children, to survive, have to convince themselves that the “stink” of their dysfunctional families is better on balance than the “storm” of an outside world where they’re not yet capable of living independently. But we’re adults now. “The world” is us. A church held together by fear and shame can never help its members recognize toxic interpersonal patterns in their own lives.

When I first became a Christian, I was a young woman fighting for the right to marry and leave my abusive home. I resonated with the church’s self-presentation as a tiny raft of stability adrift in an ocean of danger. When Christianity told me that human beings were helpless and sinful, I was relieved, because that was how I felt all the time. It was validating to be able to admit my imperfections to a supportive community, not like my home where any flaw would be pounced upon. Like my mother, the traditional church faced the fact that the world is full of bullies, sexual predators, and plagues of locusts–which is true, up to a point. The church promised safety without isolation, a huge step up from my life before.

So my disillusionment with church makes me feel very guilty and sad. I feel like I’m abandoning the institution that helped me reach escape velocity from my biological family. But this, too, is part of growing up. In Buddhist teacher Phillip Moffitt’s essay “Healing Your Mother (or Father) Wound“, he speaks of initiation as the fourth and final stage that good parent figures must complete, to release their protégés into adulthood with a blessing.

I’m reminded of Ray Bradbury’s short story “Jack-in-the-Box“, where a paranoid mother creates an elaborate ruse to convince her son that their house is, in fact, the entire world. When a crisis forces him to venture outside, he at first thinks that he must be dead:

Everything before him was new. Odors filled his nostrils, colors, odd shapes, incredible sizes filled his eyes.

If I run beyond the trees I’ll die, he thought, for that’s what Mother said. You’ll die, you’ll die.

But what’s dying? Another room? A blue room, a green room, far larger than all the rooms that ever were! But where’s the key? There, far ahead, a great half-open iron door, a wrought-iron gate. Beyond a room as large as the sky, all colored green with trees and grass! Oh, Mother, Teacher…

The story ends with a policeman bemusedly describing the strange kid who just ran past him.

“…He was laughing and crying, crying and laughing, both. He was jumping up and down and touching things. Things like lampposts, the telephone poles, fire hydrants, dogs, people. Things like sidewalks, fences, gates, cars, plateglass windows, barber poles. Hell, he even grabbed hold and looked at me, and looked at the sky, you should have seen the tears, and all the time he kept yelling and yelling something funny.”

“What did he yell?” asked the pedestrian.

“He kept yelling, ‘I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m glad I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m glad I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, it’s good to be dead!'” The policeman scratched his chin slowly. “One of them new kid games, I guess.”

He who loses his life will find it…

 

Why Believe in a Need-less God?

Televangelist Victoria Osteen took some flak in the Christian blogosphere last week for a video clip where she says that we should worship God and do good because it makes us happy, and God wants us to be happy. Osteen and her husband Joel are regular targets of critique from other evangelicals who say their message is too upbeat, sin-free, and self-serving. In response, Eric Reitan, a progressive Christian philosopher whose work I admire, wrote this post suggesting that Osteen (in her simplistic way) was putting forth a legitimate Aristotelian theory of true happiness as being in harmony with virtue, as compared to the Kantian view that we’re only virtuous when we act from pure obedience and ignore our own happiness.

I’m Team Aristotle all the way, but that’s another post. What struck me, this time, was that Reitan, Osteen, and probably most of her conservative critics share the common assumption that God does not need anything from humanity. I often hear it said that prayer is for our benefit, not God’s. On this point, evangelicals who emphasize God’s sovereign perfection find common ground with liberal Christians who have trouble believing that prayer could supernaturally alter the course of events. Here’s Reitan’s characteristically clear restatement of this widespread doctrine (boldface emphasis mine):

Here’s what I think Victoria Osteen gets right: When you worship and obey God, you aren’t doing it for God. Doing it for God’s sake makes no sense, because the infinite creator of the universe doesn’t need anything from us in order to be fulfilled. God doesn’t need to be glorified by us, as if God is somehow diminished by failing to be properly fawned over. If there is a need here, it’s our need. We can’t be fully actualized human beings if our priorities are wrong…

…On Christian metaphysics, Victoria Osteen is exactly right when she says we don’t worship and glorify God for God’s sake. We do it for our own. God needs nothing from us, least of all our worship. But if we think God is worthy of worship, then failing to worship God displays a disorder in our value system that will compromise our ability to love others and find joy in life. And if God is the infinite source of value, then connecting with God in worship becomes a way of communing with the good, of letting it enter into us, in a self-actualizing way.

I believe that the boldfaced statements above seriously overstate the case. It’s a leap from “God doesn’t need Hir ego stroked”* to “God doesn’t need anything from us.” This doctrine, which we take for granted as orthodoxy, has hidden negative political and pastoral consequences. Because of what I’ve learned from feminist and disability theology, I am compelled to question the equating of “need” with weakness, imperfection, or immature egotism.

*(I’m trying out the gender-neutral pronouns “zie” and “hir” to refer to God, rather than locutions like “Godself” which I find awkward. Respectful feedback welcomed.)

My analysis is indebted to the philosopher Sara N. Ahmed, who blogs at Feminist Killjoys. Ahmed’s posts often riff on a word that has been negatively applied to a marginalized group, teasing out its complexities with a poetic technique of free association, and turning it on its head to ask whether the shunned trait is properly attributed to the person who “fails” to fit, or the social environment that fails to be welcoming. See, for instance, her thoughts on fragility, imposition, and how a person becomes classified as a stranger.

Though human psychological categories only capture one aspect of the infinite God, we Christians have been invited to relate to God in human terms through the Incarnation. Any concept of a personal God contains value-judgments about the best kind of person to be. These judgments then affect how we treat people who seem different from that ideal. (For instance, the mainstream depiction of God as white and male reinforces some Christians’ sexism and imperialism.) That’s why I think it’s legitimate to ask whether a God without any needs would be a good Person to love, or be loved by.

Where does it come from, this idea of strength as not-needing? What kind of relationship can one have with a Being whose superiority is defined thus?

The need-less God doctrine is partly a product of classical Greek philosophy, in which an entity that is changeless is considered more perfect than one that changes, and an un-caused entity is more perfect than one that is contingent or dependent. However, the Christian’s “personal relationship with God” was not part of this philosophy. These ancient thinkers were looking for a nobler and more mature alternative to the anthropomorphized Greek gods, who were petty, ego-driven, and lustful.

Centuries later, Enlightenment philosophers levelled the same charge against the Old Testament God. To modern people in a pluralistic society, Yahweh’s smiting of Baal-worshippers doesn’t make sense. We are, or should be, burdened by the memory of genocides that claimed Biblical justification. So we read these stories and only see an insecure tyrant. This is the argument that Reitan references when he says God doesn’t need to be fawned over. Reitan wants to salvage the Biblical God by placing Hir above human foibles.

But narcissistic needs are not the only needs. Not-needing, in fact, can be just as egotistical. Imagine God as a parent–something the Bible encourages us to do. “Here, Daddy, I painted you a picture.” “Thanks, but I didn’t need that.” What a cold response to our heartfelt offerings. God is already perfectly fulfilled without any gift from us. Some of you may know what it’s like to have a parent like that. It doesn’t lead to a life of freedom and grace. It breeds perfectionism and self-doubt. Another variation is the caretaker personality who always has to be the giver, not the receiver, because pleasing others is a way to stay in control.

Equality is not necessary for a healthy relationship (e.g. parent-child, God-human), but mutuality is. If our acts of worship are not fulfilling to God as well as to us, the relational aspect fades and the very presence of God becomes needless, a mental placeholder, a merely theoretical component of our religious practices.

As an activist for trauma-informed care in the church environment, I come up against need-shaming all the time. Like any minority group seeking inclusion, our concerns get dismissed as “special needs”. This formulation assumes there is a normal way to navigate the world and I am demanding an exception. In fact, “the world” is just one possible arrangement that works acceptably for the current majority who have a voice in the system. To not have needs, or not be perceived as having needs, or not have to meet your needs in a way that involves other people–is this really a virtue of self-sufficiency or unselfishness, or is it mainly good luck that you have the kind of needs that are met by your environment?

The church will never truly resist domination by the “special needs” paradigm until we stop need-shaming God. We stigmatize each other’s dependence and vulnerability when we recoil in horror at the idea that God could ever experience these states with respect to us.

And yet, the crucified Christ hangs on our wall.

Jesus was needy and vulnerable from his birth as a human baby to his death on a cross. We often talk about this episode in the life of God as though it was temporary, like a journalist slumming among the homeless to show solidarity and gather information. The wounds of the risen Christ tell a different story. What if everything we fear about “neediness” was really an eternal part of God’s essence?

I think mainstream theology is wrong both about what God would need (if Zie needed anything), and what happens when God’s needs aren’t met.

As for the “what”, the prophet Micah said it succinctly: Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. We’re just not used to thinking of these as needs, as well as commands. But a loving God would feel pained, would be diminished, when we don’t act lovingly ourselves. In Matthew 25, Jesus puts himself in the position of the beggar: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” He has to spell it out for the disciples because they can’t imagine seeing the Messiah sick or hungry or in prison.

And what actually happens when God’s needs aren’t met? Does Zie have a narcissistic tantrum and kill lots of innocent bystanders? Well, the Book of Judges might give that impression, but there the real problem is the primitive feudal concept of what God needs, as well as the unskillful means. Or does Zie collapse into a big pile of weepy tissues, leaving no one in charge of the universe? (God is a girl, she’s only a girl…)

These are the two hurtful stereotypes that come up when survivors advocate for our own needs. We are made to appear simultaneously tyrannical and weak. In reality, people who face their own pain and take care of it are the most self-sufficient and safe people to have in your community.

Instead of need-shaming, let’s imagine that God feels pain and lack because of human sin, and still carries on with love, strength, equanimity, and nonviolence–just like a trauma survivor who’s doing her healing work.