I had a strange experience recently. I was talking with an old friend and found myself struggling to explain my faith journey. To be honest, I looked at the situation and logically concluded that this person’s faith and I mine were polar opposites. Truthfully, the only thing we had in common was that I still use – occasionally – the word Christian to define my faith on those questionnaires. I mean, it’s easier than “Not really sure that Jesus is God in flesh, a little more of reform Judaism, or who knows… many agnostic at best.” ya know?

This friend comes from an old school faith. The kind of faith one gets from down south in the mountains with snakes, speaking tongues and demons being pulled from peoples throats in hot tents. Thus, you can only imagine the differences they’ll have with many people when it comes to talking about faith. One thing that is so on the top of her mind is who is going to hell and who isn’t. It’s on her heart a lot, especially when it comes to people we mutually know.

Mind you, my relationship with this person is “tight” simply because of shared lingo when it comes to Christian faith, but I digress. As I had this conversation to catch up with all things new in our lives she asked me about my church.

My church…. Let me tell you – despite my rough faith journey, constant questioning and uncertainly around the triad of God-Jesus-Holy Spirit, my church is amazing. My pastor is excellent at bringing home the meaning of passages, getting to the root of the word, the love of Jesus, and the grace of God. The community at this church can only be described as family.

When we first got to this church I was terrified. I hesitated getting out of the car – we were late and how embarrassing is that to walk into a small community, as a new face, late. I might as well blow a horn as I walk in and announce myself. My husband coaxed me out of the car finally and we walked to the door where I peaked into the window, saw how small the congregation was and backed away, shaking my head, saying I can’t go in. My husband, who loves going to church, grabbed my hand, opened the door with a giant smile on his face and led us in.

We were maybe just a few feet from the pastor, she looked up, clearly excited for new folks and nodded as she continued her sermon/announcements. ((we were that late folks)) Within another 30 seconds, someone came up and welcomed us, handing us a pen and notepad along with a name card to fill out and wear if we’d like.

After the service, the pastor and her wife came up to say hello and introduce themselves – as did everyone else at the church. It felt…. incredible…. and scary. What if I can’t come back? I thought to myself. My husband and I had been looking for a new church for a while. One that was more inclusive of all genders, all humans, and had a focus on social justice issues that are personal to me. I have to admit, I didn’t know my heart needed a female pastor until I attended more of the services and felt a release – despite me still struggling to accept the word, or Jesus.

Grace came. It fell over us. It fell over me in this building.

Back to this conversation with my old friend – and in case you aren’t aware when I say “old” I don’t mean we’ve been friends for a long time. I mean she is much much older than I am. When she asked me about my church I paused because I knew there were pieces she wouldn’t understand, pieces she would grow deeply concerned about and the last thing I wanted was for her to suddenly worry that I was going to rot in hell because of my unacceptance of Christ.

I spoke of the amazing community, the brilliance of my pastor and the deep connection we were able to gain in this church community as opposed to some of the larger ones we’ve attended. Crisis adverted. But, if I’m being honest, I felt a lot of shame and guilt after the conversation. I felt like I was hiding something, something that I truly don’t think should be hid but in the moment it made the most sense to speak to the relationship and the way the church lives and breathes as opposed to more controversial things she would have issue with.

Throughout the conversation we both said same words but I realized quickly we had very different meanings behind the words we were saying. I knew what she meant when she talked about there being “bad churches” but she had no idea the churches I mean’t were the anti-LGBT, anti-women in leadership, covering up sexual abuse, churches that accept 4.4 million from the government but don’t open their doors for their community when they’re in need, type churches.

As I pondered this after the call, I felt God tug at me and say the words “grace…” and I realized in that moment the grace God gives us in our own conversations with God. How often in scripture we see people doing things in god’s name and how unlikely it actually is that God desired those behaviors, yet God still gives grace.

The conversations we have with God where God tells us to love people, and we fail – we think that loving people is correcting people. My old friend believes she is loving people by sending them bibles unasked for, and asking them to give their lives to Christ before they die and parish in hell. She believes this in her heart. I have friends who believe deeply that being gay is antithetical to being christian and they have to tell them or they’ll suffer, but God didn’t say this. However, somehow the word “love” has been taken and given a meaning by millions of people around the world. And yet, God still shows up for those conversations with those friends of mine. Giving grace.

I imagine some of those conversations where God sighs…. “It’s okay love… let’s try this again… and again… and again…”

The grace falls down from the heavens over us. The grace of understanding that we are missing the meaning of the words given to us. The grace of compassion to keep trying to help us understand the meaning of the words to turn into an action that looks like Jesus dying on the cross. Because after all, even if I am struggling with this meaning – there is grace on the cross for all.

So let it pour down.

I hate the language of my title. I have to correct it now. The actual title should be something more like, “When being an abuse victim is somehow worse than being someone who abuses” but that’s a long title for a blog post I think. Regardless, this title better reflects the deep-seated hatred for femininity in our society largely spurred on by half-read, misinterpreted scripture combined with a hunger for power.

In the Hebrew text, we see a lot of sexual assault. Though, of course, it isn’t read as sexual assault. Most often, it is just glared over. I’ve never heard a single pastor talk about the sexual assaults committed by saints, prophets and people in the Bible unless it was within an anti-gay message most often propagated in evangelical settings.

Oh, who am I kidding, most churches are more comfortable telling gay people to stop being gay than they are challenging the status quo and telling people who rape to not rape. I suppose this happens more due to the fact that the powerful rarely see their power through the lens of their victims. I mean, how do you commit rape when it’s your god given right to have an orgasm? amiright?

There are a lot of incidents of rape in the Bible that we rarely speak about. Of course there are all the rapes in Sodom and Gomorrah. There is the implied rape of Hager, who bore Abraham his son, Ishmael only to toss them to the wind when his wife bore him Issac. (Genesis 16:4). The rape of Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter, by Shecham (Genesis 34). There is Tamar, who is raped by her half brother, Ammon in 2nd Samuel. There are plenty more I am missing, but there is one we speak of often, yet rarely as an assault, one that epitomizes so much of the problems of today when it comes to seeing abusers as abusers and victims as victims.

The rape of Bathsheba, by the “holy of the holist” when it comes to evangelicals and their kings – David…. In 2nd Samuel 11, we learn that David sees Bathsheba proforming a ritual cleansing, he lusts after her, sends people to get her, “takes her” and then she conceives a child – which God appears to take away later in scripture. For me this brings up the question about how God handles the “sanctity of life” discussion we humans can’t seem to agree on. After all, this child was not at fault for the actions of their father, yet one could argue they paid a price for David’s abuse.

This isn’t an agreed upon subject of course. There are many who choose to see Bathsheba as a temptress – she was bathing on a roof in clear vision of the king mind you. Regardless, I think what’s most striking to me is how swiftly we see a man have “lust”, one of the greatest sins I’ve heard in the evangelical world, and act on that sin combined with the swiftness of evangelicals around me to brush it off, or worse, blame the female.

We tend to not see power structures as abusive in the faith world, I’ve discovered. In fact, in a recent article I read about why there are many victim/survivors of abuse supporting a candidate for president who has 30+ credible allegations of sexual assault among video/audio of him bragging about sexually assaulting women, walking in on minors naked and objectifying women, the most common answer is that he represents “protection”. He is the quintessential “man” the world tells us as women, we need.

Men who “take what they want”…. Men who “go for it” …. This is what we’re raised with. We ladies don’t call a guy first, and god forbid we kiss a guy first, or even worse don’t kiss a guy at all but kiss another… gasp… female? …. The problem with this, is that so often men of this style tend to be those most likely to commit some form of sexual violence. When I’ve asked youth, females in particular, why they want a guy to “just kiss them!” they say it’s because it makes them feel wanted, desired and that the guy is willing to risk rejection. When I follow that up with, “Why wouldn’t you feel the same way if the guy said, ‘I really want to kiss you, would you be okay with that?'” They don’t have an answer.

Our entire life, girls have been fed this story of our lives being saved from one. single. kiss. Yet in my life, and so many others, a single kiss is what broke us. Stole a part of us we weren’t ready to give. And what’s worse, is our perpetrators are hailed, while we’re condemned.

There’s often a saying I hear in the church… When they speak about sin up there on that alter. “Jesus can and will use anyone. Even a prostitute.” I don’t understand how this messaging aligns with the churches new found campaign to eradicate sex trafficking. How does one see through a clouded judgement? If we’re talking about innocents, how does one ignore the economic abuse throughout the Bible forcing women into sex slavery in order to eat? Why does David get to be remembered as a man after God’s heart, but Bathsheba is only remembered as the “temptress”?

Why is it sin when men commit rape, but identity when women experience it?

The women of the Bible leave a lot to tell because the men who wrote their stories deemed them unworthy and yet… Jesus…. Jesus chose women before he chose men. Jesus spoke to women in a way men never would. I don’t know if I believe Jesus was never intimate – I’m not so sure I believe it. But here is what I do think. The idea that Jesus loved these women, free of sexual impulse, is something I try to hold onto. Because what better way to show the world, ruled by men, how different he truly was from the men in the world.

The truth is… Until we can grapple with the abuse in the Bible, committed by the very people we look towards for inspiration, we will always miss the message God is trying to give us – the lesson on loving others. And we will continue to see victims today as “temptresses” and abusers as “sinners”.

The cycle of Sodom and Gomorrah will continue – a city consumed with selfishness, taking what they want without thought of another person.

“You’re a sinner” …. “You’re unworthy of god’s love” …. “You don’t deserve a single blessing you’ve been given” …. “drop to your knees, and be grateful for the pain Jesus took for you.” …

These words placed together sound eerily similar to the words my abusive partners said to me. I shake when I hear them. Though I’ve walked away from the teaching of sin long ago, I’d be lying if I didn’t still hold, deep within me this fear of being evil, corrupt, and worthless.

I sat in the back of the packed church, observing the small families, their hands raised in the foggy, lite up air in the large worship hall. Their mouths dropped, vocal chords expelling emotion. I imagine their silent pleas behind the words they sing. Both praising the almighty and begging for “redemption unearned”

The worship stopped and a video popped up on the large screens. Her voice swing around me, the pain in her tone crept through my pores and hit my gut. She was abused & tormented though her words never said those words, but abuse knows abuse. I can walk into a room and instantly feel my spirit latch onto a fellow victim/survivor.

I began to weep. Silently I sat, my lips quivering and my heart pounding. Suddenly, another voice took over, and then so did my rage.

It was Easter Sunday you see. The day Christians all around the world celebrate the rising of the Son of man. A day where the topic of sin seems to be the highlight of churches all over.

Back to my fellow warrior. Hundreds of us sat packed in this room, I’d prepped my heart to hear the way Jesus healed her, reminded her that the words spoken over her were lies, that what was done to her had no barring on her worth, her value and certainly she was pure and clean in God’s eyes.

I didn’t hear those words. We heard how sinful she was, how Jesus was her only savior to cleanse her flesh, and how unworthy she was of Jesus and God’s love. She spoke again with words that delivered a crushing blow to my gut, “I’m so grateful, my sin is in the open. Though I am unworthy, he has redeemed me.”

The pastor spoke of that woman moving fast towards hell until she accepted Jesus was the only way to cleanse her evil. Not a single word about the abuse she experienced. Not a single prayer for the healing of a broken spirit.

My husband listens to a song, almost on repeat, of a preacher speaking about how unworthy he knows he is of love from God. Of begging god for love and thanking god for grace not deserved.

I turn the song off now when I’m around. I’ve no intention of begging for forgiveness. I’ve no desire to see God, whose own first words when I was created was “it is good” as someone who demands me to see myself as worthless apart from themselves.

I am not innately evil, bad, or unworthy of love, grace and forgiveness. I don’t need a “savior”. God doesn’t wash me from sin, God washes me from the lies and filth of a corrupt world. A world dedicated to consuming power and building a caste where no one can reach God.

I am told in Genesis Adam and Eve walked with God. We are fed the lie in church buildings that God couldn’t look at us anymore. But the word tells us Adam and Eve couldn’t look at God anymore.

When my dog does something wrong he has a hard time looking at me.

Folks, you’ve been fed a lie. And that lie is what Jesus freed us from on that cross. We are not unworthy or undeserving of God’s love, but instead are flowing with God’s love. There is nothing that can keep us from God’s love. Nothing.

My little girl didn’t ask to be brought into this world, but in love and from love she was wonderfully created to simply, be…. loved.

When I was a little girl, I had a pink Holy Bible that my fraternal grandmother gifted me before she passed away. I don’t recall my parents ever reading me passages of this book. It seemed to just be on my shelves, mixed in with all the other books I collected.

I was an early reader and I can remember my small hands grabbing the smooth leather bound heavy book, the pages flopping downwards as I laid it on my lap and looked over the pages. I was intrigued by the thinness of the pages and felt I’d never finish a book this long!

As I began reading, I felt a lot of things. I wondered how true this world was in this book. Was this a fairytale like the other books my parents read to me? “In the beginning…” in the beginning of what? Was this just another “once upon a time” tale?

I wasn’t raised in a home where my gender restricted my dreams or goals in life – though I admittedly participated in stereotypical female gender roles throughout my childhood and early adolescence. I suppose if you asked my parents they’d say it was my choice. Regardless, my being a girl never occurred to me until I got 3 chapters into the Bible.

Genesis 3:16 tells the fallout of the “fall” and God tells Eve what her “punishment” is for falling into deception. “… Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you…” I scoffed, and slammed the book shut and hid it away in my bookshelf. A terrible fairytale I thought to myself.

Over the years, especially in my early teens as I began struggling with flashbacks of the child sexual abuse I endured, I found myself being pulled back to that book that brought me so much disgust. But ultimately, I found a relationship with God through writing out my pain, not by reading through scripture.

In my early 20’s I was gifted a bible and told to read the New Testament because the Hebrew text [read Old Testament….] shows a mean and angry god. Apparently in the minds of many, god is both the same and changing. This is a confusing message for a newbie evangelical.

Try as I might, the God I had spent years in the dark with, fighting flash backs, memories and the demons crawling over my skin, pulled me to the Hebrew text, and that my friends is where I struggled the most with the faith I had verses the faith people told me I needed.

The Genesis story has always caused a frustration in my bones, but what I was always so struck by was that many whom I knew in my evangelical world were so quick to accept the structure of life set up in that story.

Even if taken literally, which to be fully honest with you, I don’t, I asked the question – couldn’t you also read this as a revelation as opposed to a punishment? Isn’t it possible the words weren’t a directive, but were rather a statement of exasperation…

God, in all their wisdom, looking at the creation they made to reflect themselves after they’ve just been deceived saying, because of what you’ve done… you will struggle in ways never intended. You and Adam will no longer see each other as equals and instead will fight to be in charge, and sadly men will win out.

Yet, so many in our world struggle to see the compassionate god of the New Testament in the Hebrew text. I can’t seem to see God in any other light, unless I let the god of the evangelical belief system super impose himself over God. Thus the abusive nature we so often see in man suddenly becomes our image of god… But, my friends… we bare the image of God, not the other way around.

A friend and fellow survivor of sexual violence speaks to this issue brilliantly. In her talks with churches, she draws the parallel images between a trafficker/pimp and the god often found in churches today.

As a victim of trafficking herself, she found it impossible to heal in the evangelical world, though her faith tied her to it. Yet the more she focused on healing, the more she saw her evangelical community spouting off similar expectations that her trafficker had of her. Like pleasing a trafficker/pimp, at some point it becomes impossible.

Not only this, and I’ll get into specific verses in later blog posts, the god of the evangelic world became either an active agent in the abuse of the vulnerable, or at best an inactive bystander. I had to ask myself, “why would anyone bow down to a god so evil as to allow a 5 year old to be molested and raped?” …

Then I thought…. my… how many have I known just briefly in this evangelical world who have stood by and allowed a 5 year old to be molested and raped? How about a 16 year old? Or an 18 year old? Or 20 something old wife?

I made the decision to walk away from the god people propped up after recognizing that their god looked a whole lot like them and nothing like the Hebrew or New Testament God.

In looking through the Hebrew text, you can see a God so encapsulated with love for their creation. While looking at the god of the evangelical world, all I saw was a god hungry for power…. Sound familar?

Genesis 3:18 “…. he will rule over you….”

-Jess

More than a decade ago I walked straight into a mirage. A faith I found on my own suddenly became entangled in the faith of others and ever so slowly my own strands tying me to who I always knew, was so tethered that I found I had tied myself to man.

I’ve been promised the kingdom. Not in some far off future where my flesh lays six feet beneath the ground. But now. I had to ask myself why the kingdom felt so distant, unbearable and nothing like what was promised.

I walked away from everything I knew to find what I’ve always known. The following will be my own journey. A journey I hope you’ll feel inspired by. A journey, that perhaps you’ll decide you too need to be on.

I don’t proclaim to have the answers. In fact, I guarantee I will have more questions than answers. If I’m being honest, the questioning has always led me deeper into a spiritual journey than any man given answers.

I’m asked to dig deep into the spirit, not plant myself on earth. Digging myself up has been painful and isolating at times, but the kingdom is near.

-Jess