Christianity & Forgiveness from my dissertation

One of the concerns of the daughter is often the question of forgiving the abuser, of making some form of peace with him. Part of the reason for this is the need to find some external validation that the victim was not responsible for the abuse that she/he suffered or validation that it really happened the way she remembers it. This is seldom forthcoming and puts the victims in the position of having to find within themselves that validation. However, forgiving the perpetrator is not a necessity for recovery from sexual assault or any other form of child abuse. These fathers did not do the best that they could. They are not entitled to forgiveness, it has to be earned. Even then, the daughter should not feel obliged to forgive what may be for her, unforgivable and unredeemable. If she wants to forgive, it must be for herself not for the father, the family or her therapist. The daughter has another option. She can simply let go, a feat that is difficult for the daughter. When all of her anger is vented, when she truly understands what happened to her, she can let go of the resentment, rather than let that resentment and anger control the rest of her life." She has then become a survivor.

Forgiveness of one's enemies, of anyone who has harmed you, is one of the 'prime directives' of Christianity. It is not just encouraged but regarded as necessary that a Christian adult survivor of incest should eventually, not just come to terms with her experience of sexual assault, but also forgive her abuser. It is argued that without forgiveness the survivor will always remain unhealed. Christianity with its emphasis on loving one's neighbour and turning the other cheek, forgiving seventy times seven or forever, gives divine sanction and authority to the repression of that anger. It is axiomatic for Christianity that one is always striving to be like Christ, the 'imago dei' is placed as the epitome for which Christians should strive. Christians must emulate Jesus, who forgave those who crucified him even while he was suffering on the cross. There is little material written on therapeutic spiritual intervention for the incest survivor in terms of Christianity. However, a fair amount of material for battered women in abusive domestic relationships is beginning to accumulate. With respect to battered wives, it is argued that forgiveness requires that the abusive husband undergo true metanoia or repentance. These men must turn their lives around and truly understand the evil which they have committed when they beat their wives. At the same time, however, women are told to look to their 'sin of silence' and pray for forgiveness from God. But if the daughter speaks up, she is often not believed. Chaos ensues, and often the family is broken apart. On the other hand, if she forgives her father, maybe everything will be all right.

Christianity, with its emphasis on forgiveness can give the daughter the idea that she must forgive her father even while he is abusing her. And even more distressing, she may feel that she must continue to let him keep abusing her. Letting go is a difficult option for the Christian daughter. Jesus forgave his murderers even while he was on the cross, Maria Goretti forgave Alessandro while she was dying. All the daughter's training propels her to forgiving her father - to the detriment of her recovery. For forgiveness can be premature and impede recovery. To force forgiveness means that the daughter will have to stifle her anger at her father and her anger at god. To make the process that much more difficult, how would she go about forgiving the father god for his failure to protect her after he had promised?

NOTE: I omitted the footnotes from this - people can click on the link to the dissertation if they want to see those.

Forgiveness: a few relevant verses

I just received a comment on one of my blogs on forgiveness.

It is a rather problematic issue but my basic position is that the Christian concept of forgiveness is unhealthy for healing and positive growth for survivors of abuse. I will post the section from my dissertation on the blog. I will expand on it in more depth in a few weeks. It will take more time than I can give it at present. In the meantime, here are some of the verses that underlie the Christian conception of forgiveness.

A few verses from the Christian testament:

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (Col. 3:13b)

But I say unto you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; (Matthew 5:39)

Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven." (Matthew 18:21-22)

Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven ... (Luke 6:37)

Then his lord summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. (Matthew 18:32-35)

Just another comment!

One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged. (Heinrich Heine 1797-1856)

Is forgiveness when you stop blaming someone for being who they were and are?

Forgiveness is one of those "trigger" words. This is particularly so for Christian "survivors". We are told that we will find peace, if we forgive our abuser. This is the way to healing - as we were forgiven, so we should forgive. But the word brings up all sorts of issues; among them are the following

How do you forgive, if you don't remember what was done to you?
How do you forgive when the past can't be undone?
Why do you need to forgive when you no longer believe?
Is the ability to forgive something that happens after enough grieving has been done?
How does one grieve when one cannot remember what was lost?

And then there is the problem of all of the people that we have hurt along the way, however unintentionally. Our own conundrums!
How can you say you're sorry, if you don't know what you did?
Saying you're sorry won't do a damn bit of good if the person isn't ready to forgive.
Saying you're sorry means nothing if the person that you have harmed doesn't remember what you did.
Saying you're sorry won't change the past; sometimes explaining why you did what you did helps.

But what do you do when there is no way to explain that when you are in the middle of a flashback crisis, there is really no way to control what you don't really understand. The world is truly incomprehensible and any attempts to control it are futile.

So you get lots of therapy and you finally understand almost all of what was driving you. Why you did, what you did - both good and bad. All the pieces of the puzzle are finally in place. Then what do you do? It can be overwhelming to feel so bad about some of the things that happened because you were driven to find answers. And you needed to find answers in order to survive.

You pray that somehow, the damage that you might have inflicted won't be fatal and won't last forever. And you need to learn to forgive yourself.

At one point over the years, I used to think that if I could just forgive God for abandoning me, then I could forgive my husbands, my parents. When I finally got around to grieving the death of my god, I found out that forgiveness wasn't a necessary component of anything. Understanding what I had lost was the key and I had to move on from there. It freed me up to understand that I had choices about establishing relationships and re-establishing relationships with whomever I wanted. The other side of the equation was that they didn't have to say that they were sorry. Sometimes they could, sometimes they couldn't. All human relationships are complex. They are made up of give and take. Maybe it is just a case of the good outweighing the bad and when the bad outweighs the good, the relationship is null and void.

(Strangely enough, I have never felt any need to forgive the priest - it was as if he was dead to me - what I would say today, is that there was no desire to continue any kind of relationship, so it wasn't an issue. Besides the long term impact of the evil that that man had perpetrated was unforgivable. He didn't just harm me, he harmed every relationship that I ever had.)

This brings me to the most complex of my relationships - the relationship with my mother. I have done a lot of thinking since writing my post on Sunday, September 7, 2008, How will we change the past, if we don't know what it is?

I have wondered just what is my relationship with her. Now that I have begun to put her life into some kind of perspective, how do I understand it. Maybe the word "forgive" is the only one that we have to explain what happens when you stop blaming someone for being who they were and are. My mother was and is as much a product of her past as I am. She did the best that she could have, given what I know. She was as driven by emotions that she didn't always understand as I was. We now have tools and understanding of how humans react to trauma that didn't exist even 30 years ago. Her inability to say "I'm sorry" had more to do with her avoidance of emotional pain as it did with anything that we did. She never spoke to her own mother after she was 27 and that after 12 years of not speaking to her. How could she have ever begun to deal with our emotional pain when she had never dealt with her own? There are many stories that could be written to explain that question. Those have to wait for a while yet. In all likelihood, she did better by us, than her parents did by her. We are all still here with her. She did love us as much as she could. There are many things that will always be sad and will hurt from the past. I am no longer angry about them.

I can only believe that I did better by my children. I know that there are many things that I would have done differently if I could have. I try to understand that I did the best that I could. At this point, the only thing that I can do when things come up is to be honest about my failings, say that I am sorry things weren't different, apologize for the pain that I caused and hope that they accept me as I am and know that I love them more than life itself.

A "Kazantzakis" (Spoiler Alert)

What is a "Kazantzakis"?

This is a term that I started using after reading Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ. This refers to authors, film directors, tv writers and others who "cop out" from pushing their stories where they should really go. In other words, they don't want to deal with the tough issues that their stories often entail.

In The Last Temptation of Christ, we start off with Jesus surviving the crucifixion, meeting with his disciples (including, if I remember correctly, Paul), getting married, being involved in the movement of his message into the larger Greco-Roman world. Kazantzakis is a strong writer and I enjoyed the whole novel until I got to the end & IT WAS ALL A DREAM (foreshadowing of Dallas??) - the Devil's last attempt to keep Jesus from dying "for the greater good". I felt cheated. It was such a bold envisioning of what might have happened if Jesus had actually survived the cross (& this was one of the issues right from the beginning). The discussions on whether or not Paul should be allowed to change the message to take it to the Gentiles were fascinating. The world that Kazantzakis builds on the limited outline in the Acts of the Apostles was brilliant. Then it ends with actual death. I have often suspected that this may not have been what he wanted to do, but it was his way of avoiding the problem of being accused of heresy.

One of the greatest recent example of a Kazantzakis is the introduction of a character in Star Trek Voyageur (played once more by Brad Dourif), who is a murderer because of uncontrollable anger and impulses. Rather than deal with the issues that this brings up in a society that has all but wiped out this type of behaviour, the writers decided to kill him off "heroically" by having him save the ship & its crew. However, the truly more interesting, logical but complex story would have been to kept him on the ship working with the Vulcan to control the murderous impulses. Another lost opportunity for Voyageur - my least favourite of the Star Trek franchise.

Two writers who haven't pulled the Kazantzakis are J. Michael Strazinski (in Bablylon 5 - the Forgiveness episode discussed in blog, May 8, 2009), Josh Whedon (so far in Dollhouse).

Why am I writing this? See the next blog, which is a review of Linden MacIntyre's The Bishop's Man.

I believe in me

I began this blog on the date posted. However, I really wrote it today - June 26, 2008.

Many times, my therapist has asked me what I do believe. The last time I finally had an answer that was simple - I believe in me!

It has taken me years to get here. As I mentioned earlier, we academics live in our heads. It was really easy to tell my therapist what I didn't believe in - to find an intellectual solution to an emotional problem. It was how I had to do things but there is always a price to pay.

The following is an example of how I dealt with (or more correctly, didn't deal with) one of my lingering issues.

In 1996, I published a paper called "God Died and Nobody Gave a Funeral" (it is available through most university electronic publication databases). It is rather good and still relevant - if I do say so myself! Its conclusion was that an effective therapeutic intervention for Christian survivors was to help them grieve the death of their childhood god.

Well guess who hadn't grieved the death of her childhood god? Yes, that's right little old me. By the time I wrote the article, I had finished my dissertation (The Father God and Traditional Christian Interpretations of Suffering, Anger, Guilt, and Forgiveness as Impediments to Recovery from Father-Daughter Incest), published "Christian "Virtues" and Recovery from Child Sexual Abuse", Psalm of Anger to a Patriarchal God (in English and French) and other stuff. By that point, I had had 10 years of very difficult therapy. My life was full of crises between 1992 and 1996 - I was working frontline with PWLAIDS and was also the primary caretaker of my father-in-law who had Alzheimer's, I defended my dissertation, my husband was diagnosed with MS a year after his father died, my marriage was failing, my youngest son was involved in a multi-million $ lawsuit (a fired teacher was suing him and 3 other students for libel and slander - read all about it on the front page of the Saturday Ottawa Citizen & they wanted to put it on W5, something our lawyers vetoed), we had to sell our house, I had to grovel to CMHC to manage to buy another smaller, cheaper one in a rotten real estate market, my husband eventually filed for bankruptcy. I could go on and on - these are only highlights. Through it all, I had my therapist (it wasn't like I was anywhere near resolving the issues of my childhood, although he spent a lot of his time just handling the day to day stuff) and I had my friends without whom I would have found it difficult to keep going on. However, ...

It all took its toll. I slowly sank into depression that was ever pervasive. Then in 2000, I received a call from the Alumni Association. Somebody was looking for me to get permission to reprint my "Psalm of Anger to a Patriarchal God" (its story sometime later) . This started a series of e-mails with Jean-Guy Nadeau at the Université de Montréal's Faculté de Théologie. I had to start thinking about the god stuff all over again (something I always tried to avoid, even though it consumed my life). It was then that the anger, the pain, the loss, overwhelmed me all over again. I went back and read "God Died and Nobody Gave a Funeral" and cried and cried because I really didn't know how to grieve the death of something that I no longer believed in - yet I had written what I needed to do. Have I mentioned that I have my therapist on speed dial (even today)? My therapist's office was the only safe space in my life and that is where I grieved and grieved and cried for everything that I had lost when I lost my god. I remembered all the good things about believing. The most important part was remembering that without that horrid, patriarchal, insufferable, rule making god I never would have survived the aftermath of being in a sexual relationship with a priest when I was 8 years old that ended with a violent sexual and physical assault. That god offered me an answer to why? As my dissertation points out, it wasn't a good answer - but it was an answer and it saved me at the time and nobody else had an answer (or would even talk about it - one of my lucky breaks was that I wasn't Roman Catholic; for that I will be eternally grateful). I believed with all my heart and soul in that god - I got saved, I had the answers, even though I had no memory of what I needed to be saved from. That god abruptly died when I was 12 although I didn't realize it at the time, but he had got me through the worst of that time (trust me, I'm crying as I write). I could now begin to draw on other resources.

As a result of grieving, I was able to write my "Eulogy to a Patriarchal god". That was the beginning of my release. Since that point, I have moved ever forward until finally the devastation that was caused by that priest's abuse is almost wholly integrated and is becoming just a part of my life story - it no more defines who I am than my genetics - it is part of my package - there is no other me. And I believe in me.

Note: The link for the Psalm of Anger and the text of the Eulogy to a Patriarchal god is at the bottom of the blog.