Recently in Spiritual Abuse Category

I'd like to draw my discussion of the book "Out of a Far Country" by drawing attention to a single statement that Christopher makes in the final (pre-epilogue) chapter.  I feel this statement deserves a great deal of attention, not only because it says something about the conservative evangelical/fundamentalist Christian approach to homosexuality, but their approach to life, the divine, and spirituality in general.  As Chistopher speaks of the overwhelming sense of welcome he felt as he returned home with his parents, he offers the following phrase:

I was unworthy of my parents love...

Christopher quickly slides past that statement and goes on about the great depths of love that his parents had for him despite his alleged unworthiness.  But I want to pause and really think about that statement.

Christopher felt he was unworthy of his parents love.

Because a child doesn't deserve the love of parents simply because zie exists.  It's something that either the child must earn -- presumably through proper behavior -- or through the magnanimous actions of parents who decides to love zem anyway.  But either way you slice it, a child is not simply worthy of a parent's love simply because, hey, children deserve to have parents who love them.

I don't buy that line of reasoning.  Quite frankly, if a parent ever told a child, "You know what, you don't really deserve my love because [the reason doesn't matter], but I'm going to love you anyway because that's just the way I am," I would not consider that parent loving.  I would consider that parent cruel.  I would suspect that such a parent was being manipulative or otherwise abusive.  If I were in a position to do so, I would watch that parent very closely and see how else zie treats zir child.  I might even have social services on speed dial.

Here's the thing, many Christians like Christopher don't just think that this unworthy child with a parent who deigns to love said child anyway as a dynamic between earthly children and their earthly parents.  They see this as the appropriate dynamic between themselves and their heavenly parent.  They see a God who loves not because people deserve love, but sees a bunch of unworthy people and decides to love them anyway because He feels like it.

My view of such a heavenly parent is no higher than my view of a similar earthly parent.  I believe that the Divine loves me because the Divine can do nothing else when the Divine looks upon me.  I believe that Divine love is based in my inherent worthiness to be loved.  I don't have to earn it.  I don't have to wait for the Divine to decide to love me anyway.  I deserve to be loved.

That doesn't mean that I'm perfect.  That doesn't mean that I don't need to improve.  The Divine calls on me to do these things because the Divine loves me, not in order to make me (more) lovable.

I feel a great deal of sadness for someone who considers themselves unworthy of love.  In my book, that suggests to me that zie is in a dark place.  And if zie is in that dark place because zir  religion tells zem that's the zie they should be in, well, I'll make no apologies for finding that monstrous.

Note about page numbers:  I'm using an iBook copy of this book.  With iBook (and I believe most electronic books work this way), the book repaginates based on your font settings.  As such, I'm not sure how useful it will be to give page numbers.  For anyone who wants to know, I'm reading my iPad in portrait mode using the smallest font size, with a font setting of Palatino.  That's how I come by the page numbers I list in the post titles.

Peretti starts "The Visitation" with a very short prologue.[1]  This prologue starts out describing what one might first think of as the crucifixion of Jesus himself.  Peretti describes the ringing of hammer against nail and the crunching of bone beneath said nail.  He then describes the young man as he hangs there beneath the scorching sun.

He cried out, but God did not listen.  It could have been God who drove the nails, then put his hammer down and turned away, smiling in victory.  It could have been God who left him to bake and bleed in the sun, unable to stand, unable to fall, as the sun marked the passing hours across the cloudless sky.

We can glean from this passage that the young man is likely from a religious background.  Contrary to what the "non-Christians hate Jesus crowd" might thing, the nonreligious - especially those who were nonreligious from the day they were born - do not face adversity and think that God has abandoned them, let alone that God is the likely cause of their adversity.

No, a young man has to believe in God - or at least be brought up to believe in God - to believe that it was God Himself who crucified him.

This is confirmed as the young man reflects on the accusations of his tormentors:

"You're a child of the devil," they said.  A child of the devil who needed to be contained.

So the people who crucified this young man are devoutly religious and believe they are authorized - presumably by God Himself - to determine who is God's own chosen and who is a child of the devil.  Not only that, they feel duly authorized to do what must be done to "contain" those who fall into the latter category, even if it means crucifying that person and leaving zir for dead in the scorching heat.

When I volunteered at a summer day camp for Child Evangelism Fellowship, the leaders always cautioned us to choose our words carefully when disciplining the children in our care.  They warned us that we should refrain from telling a child that zie is "bad."  The leaders explained that this often created a self-reinforcing message to the child, which would just as likely result in more bad behavior than encouraging good behavior.  We were encouraged to point out that the child was precious and valuable, and even good, but was engaging in bad behavior.  Bad behavior by good children was correctable after all.  What's more, it made it worth correcting the good behavior.

If I had ever told a child that they were the spawn of Satan himself, I suspect that the CEF leadership would have asked me to leave and never come back.  Had I ever told a child such a thing while driving nails into their wrist so they could hang their in agony while dying, I should hope they would have called the police on me.

What has happened to this young man is monstrous beyond measure.  Not only has he been involved in a religious group that feels justified in declaring him irredeemably evil, but they have placed final judgment on him on God's behalf, leaving him to die in misery.  This young man, whoever he is deserves our sympathy.  He deserves our compassion.  He deserves mercy and relief from his torment.

I find that interesting that as the prologue continues, the young man finds relief from his torment, but without any mention of mercy:

He cried out once again, and this time, a voice, a mind, answered and a power coursed through him.  Suddenly, he could bear the pain and make it fuel for his will.  With burning will, he determined he would live.

Power.  He does not find mercy, but power.  Power to survive according to his own will.  Power provided by some unknown source.

Of course, he has already had one brush with power.  Those who hung him by nails that tore through his flesh and bone and left him to die had power to.  They used their power to abuse and hurt him.  To them, power was something to torment and "contain" those they deemed unfit for life.

So one might wonder, how one who has been abused by the powerful might react when he finds not saving mercy from others, but power to save himself.  Power that he now can wield.  One might wonder what he might do with that power, power that still knows nothing of mercy.

Whether this young man becomes a just protagonist or a monster modeled after his own tormentors and the brutal lessons they taught him, this moment makes him a rather sympathetic character in my eyes.

Notes:
[1]  Actually, there is an introduction before the prologue.  However, given that the introduction is a brief discussion of his own thoughts, I chose to skip over them and move right into the fictional narrative.

Tracie sent me the link to a story that I can only describe as religiously aided extortion:

Madhya Pradesh urban administration and development minister Narottam Mishra has directed officials to probe the social boycott of 20 families in Betul district for allegedly practising witchcraft. Each family has been asked to pay a penalty of Rs.10,000 to 'get back to the society'.

Now, I susppose that being shunned until they pay the penalty is arguably better than being executed, as sometimes happens to "child witches" in Africa. However, one must wonder (and not being familiar with this part of the world, I have no point of reference to even offer a guess) how many of these families even have the Rs.10,000 being demanded of them, let alone the ability to part with the money and still feed and clothe themselves.

I think what particularly disturbs me about this story is that these families were "found out" through a baba performing a ritual designed to discover witches. So the baba fingers these families and now they're on the hook. I mean, what if the baba got it wrong -- or worse, is lying because of a personal vendetta? Do these families have any recourse? Or does being ritually "discovered" trump all forms of reason and/or evidence? If that's the case, then I see a potential racket!

I haven't been posting much lately due to being ill for the past week. However, to give all my readers something to check out, I decided to post another link. Besides, it's a good follow-up. Some of you may remember the link I posted to Matt Hill Comer's blog entry about returning to his childhood church. Well, recently, he received a comment from another member of that church. Matt made a public reply, and it's well worth reading. The strength of his response is astounding, not to mention well merited (in my opinion at least).

As I commented on Matt's entry, it amazes me how some evangelical and fundamentalist Christians have abstracted the concept of love to such a degree that they can justify just about any behavior or attitude they might have about people they see as "sinners." If that's love, I can't say as it's worth very much.

This afternoon, when I checked my email, I found a missive from the GAGV. It started out with the following words:

It has been brought to our attention that Fred Phelps, who is known for picketing funerals of victims of AIDS, is planning a “God Hates Fags” protest here in our community today at the memorial service for the five Cheerleaders from Fairport High School that were killed recently.

Of course, my perverse sense of humor immediately cackled with glee at the thought that my area (Fairport is just to the east of Rochester) has somehow earned the attention and protests of Fred Phelps and his merry band of hatemongers. Phelps and those like him amuse me to no end, and part of me would love to check out the protest tonight just for the sake of satisfying my morbid curiosity.

But on the other hand, I can't help but feel bad for the friends and families of these girls. I can only imagine what it must be like to have such hatemongers intrude upon what is already a sacred time of expressing the pains of grief and loss.

Of course, Phelps and his group really give no strong explanation of why they chose this funeral to picket. Indeed, their only comment (other than to rattle off a long and nasty sounding Bible passage) about this stop in their picket schedule is to decry the girls who died as "raised-for-the-Devil, American whores." Personally, I find these inflammatory and awful words, and words that I find hard to believe Phelps has any basis for using. After all, he doesn't know these girls personally.

Personally, I suspect that Phelps simply chose this funeral to picket on the grounds that it's the day before another scheduled protest that will take place approximately two hours from the Rochester area. As such, it strikes me as (1) a protest of convenience and (2) nothing more than another opportunity to toot his own self-righteous horn. (I cannot fathom a more despicable violation of a funeral than that.)

In the end, I think that the Fairport High School are right in their assessment that Phelps is simply looking for more intention and their subsequent request that those attending the memorial service ignore him to the best of their abilities. However, I hope that those in attendance at least shoot him a consterning look that communicates the shame he should feel.

John Hainsworth, owner of a witch shop in Lititz Pennsylvania, was arrested for aggravated and indecent assault earlier this month. Apparently, he performed a "spiritual healing" on three different women that turned into something far more personal and totally inappropriate.

Sadly, as much as many Pagans would like to believe we're above this sort of thing, such abuse is all too possible in our community. Truth be told, the lack of central authorities or systematic methods to identify less than honorable individuals who like to depict themselves as spiritual leaders and gurus makes Paganism a perfect outlet for this sort of thing. This is why it is so important that we as individuals need to be vigilant and careful in order to protect ourselves.

To that end, I would like to offer the following advice to people so that they might further protect themselves from incidents like the one that played out in Lancaster County on at least three separate occasions (and personally, I suspect there were more).

1. Be wary of anyone who's quick to offer their services.
In this story, two of the women got into this situation not because they went looking for a "healing session," but because Hainsworth suggested the idea to them. He saw that they had some deep needs and were vulnerable, so he presented himself as the solution to their problems. Unfortunately, this is all too common an approach for predators to take. Their "veil" of helpfulness is appealing and helps create the kind of confusion these women felt when things went wrong. Doubt created by thoughts like "he's just trying to help" are an excellent tool that a predator can use to keep a victim in his clutches. It's far safer to go to someone who waits for you to ask for help rather than someone who takes the initiative.

2. Check people out before you seek out or accept their services.
When seeking out spiritual help of any sort, take the time to make sure the person you're considering going to is on the up-and-up. Whenever possible, ask other trustworthy people about them. Find those who have had experiences with this person and ask them to tell you about those experiences.

3. Interview the individual you are going to about themselves and what they plan on doing.
Eight years ago, when I went to a Reiki practitioner for the first time, we spent half an hour talking before I even got on the table. She was quite open about how long she had been practicing, as well as when and where she received her attunements. She then went on to tell me about Reiki and exactly what would be involved in working on me. This kind of discussion is vital, as it sets expectations and makes boundaries clear. Had that particular practitioner done anything beyond what we had discussed before she started working on me, I would have been gone instantly.

4. Trust your instincts.
One of the things that saddens me about this story is that the third woman felt things had gone wrong, but didn't say anything because she was afraid she was "being stupid." I hope that someone who cares about her has reassured her that she wasn't being stupid. If something in a situation like that makes you feel uncomfortable, it's time to put an end to it. If you feel a boundary has been crossed, it probably has. And you have not only a right to stand up for yourself in such a situation, but an ethical mandate to do so.

5. Always be wary when disrobing (either partially or fully) is involved.
Some may disagree with me on this point, but I feel quite strongly about it. While I have nothing against nudity, I do not feel it is appropriate in a private situation between people who are practically strangers, especially when spiritual healing is involved. Most spiritual healing practices (in fact, I can't think of any where this doesn't apply) do not require it to be effective. And if a particular practice does require it, I think it is important that a stronger bond between healer and client be formed first, preferrably over an extended period of time in which the character of both individuals can be better gauged by the other party.

These are just a few points that I can think of. I would encourage everyone to think about them and the topic in general. Perhaps others around you -- or even you yourself -- might be able to offer more advice on the matter. I can't guarantee that this will keep you completely out of harm's way, but I dare say that it certainly help a great deal.