The Rape of Tamar Pat Bergen, 1991 Hearing the Voice of Tamar in the Church Today
The Story of Tamar 2 Samuel 13: 1-21
Suffering may be seen as a multidimensional experience of brokenness, which includes physical pain, psychological anguish, social degradation, and spiritual desolation. While any one of these dimensions of suffering may be excruciating by itself, the composite picture of affliction describes suffering in all of its complexity. Phil Zylla, Suffering, in Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, 774.
For Simone Weil, affliction seizes and uproots a life, and attacks it directly or indirectly, in all its parts. It deprives victims of their personality and makes them into things [and] freezes all those it touches right to the depths of their souls. Weil, The Love of God and Affliction, in Waiting for God, 119.
Physical Emotional/psychological Social suffering within suffering or the wounds in wounds are the abandonment. Moltmann, Crucified God, 46.
Like Tamar, the victim is exiled and desolate... her life is shattered.
Edward Casey states that desolation signifies an intensified solitariness. To be desolate is not only to be without hope dis-consolate but to feel that one is entirely alone, without the resources normally offered by friends and family in a familiar dwelling place. (The Latin root, desolare, means to abandon.) Desolation is a special form of despair, but a form that has everything to do with displacement from one s usual habitat. Casey, Getting Back into Place, 192.
Spiritual If the perpetrator is the father or a father figure, the victim-survivor begins to question what her heavenly Father is like, especially, if after years of pleas for deliverance from the abuse, her prayers are unanswered. Family members or the church can inflict additional spiritual pain and abuse when they use Scripture verses as weapons of spiritual and/or emotional blackmail to intimidate or shame a victim into unbiblical submission, or to hasten forgiveness and reconciliation.
mutism - numb and cannot speak of the suffering, feels isolated, and powerless, unable to think autonomously: dominated by the situation lament - finds language to rationally express the pain, and to name the situation for what it is changing - suffering is examined and taken seriously Soelle argues that until a sufferer moves from mutism to lamenting, no change can take place. Soelle, Suffering, 70 74.
Possibly at this point a person moves from being solely a victim to being a victim-survivor. It is important to note that in the healing process, the dimensions and phases are not linear but more like a coil; the healing process is convoluted and difficult with many backward and forward steps.
How do people whose hearts and minds have been wounded by violence, come to feel and know the redeeming power of God s grace? Jones, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, viii.
At the heart of this question sits a vexing problem: When people are traumatized, a kind of cognitive/psychic overwhelming breakdown can occur which makes it difficult for victims to experience the healing power of God s grace because their internal capacities (where one knows and feels) have been broken. It is hard to know God and divine love when your knowing and feeling faculties have been disabled and shut down. Jones, Trauma and Grace, viii ix.
Cruciform: Phil 2:1-8 cruciformity is conformity to the crucified Christ, showing that this conformity is a dynamic correspondence in daily life to the strange story of Christ crucified as the primary way of experiencing the love and grace of God. Gorman, Cruciformity, Paul s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross, 5. It means that pastoral theologians and caregivers must approach the situation of sexual abuse with an attitude of costly humility.
The cross frames personal suffering and amplifies the cry for justice... As pastoral theology attends to radical forms of suffering and the complex interrelationship between personal experience and societal and historical circumstances, the cross speaks louder than ever and challenges the adequacy of the clinical assumptions of the past for addressing contemporary needs. Thornton, Broken Yet Beloved: A Pastoral Theology of the Cross, 14.
Biblically hospitable: 2 Cor 1:3-5 for most of the history of the church, hospitality was understood to encompass physical, social, and spiritual dimensions of human existence and relationships. It meant response to the physical needs of strangers for food, shelter, and protection, but also a recognition of their worth and common humanity. Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, 6. This requires moral vision that sees, acknowledges, and acts on behalf of others. Ford, Sins of Omission, 12.
Henri Nouwen conceives of hospitality as an empty friendly space where those who suffer can tell their story to someone who can listen with real attention. Nouwen, Reaching Out, 95. Attentive listening needs the full and real presence of people to each other. It is indeed one of the highest forms of hospitality. Nouwen, Reaching Out, 95. One critical issue for victim-survivors to begin healing is that they are heard and believed.
compassion from the Latin pati and cum = to suffer with and it is the center of the Christian life. Nouwen, McNeill and Morrison. Compassion: A Reflection of the Christian Life, 4 and 8. In spiritual and practical terms compassion means having the same cruciform attitude as that of Christ; following his pattern of downward mobility as portrayed in Phil 2:5 8; being voluntarily displaced and going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there. Nouwen, McNeill and Morrison. Compassion, 26.
Poling asks: Where is the community in which all persons can grow into their own integrity and be affirmed for the strength of the gifts they bring to the body, recognizing that all members of the community are both strong and weak? Poling, The Abuse of Power, 14.
Hope [a] community of faith formed by the Suffering Righteous One will guide by empowering people who suffer to express their pain, so that their sorrow will be led into protest. Their protest... offers genuine hope for liberation from current afflictions and serves to remind the whole worshiping community of the subversive power of doxology... Thornton, Broken, Yet Beloved, 174 75.
Three Kinds of Movement: From mutism to lament From indifference to compassion From loneliness to community Three Kinds of Hope: The hope that someone would listen. The hope that someone would care. The hope that someone would come. Zylla, Theology of Suffering Course, ACTS Seminary, February 2005.
Pastoral theology informs caregiving. Poling asserts that in order to make sense of sexual violence, the voices of victims and survivors must be given priority. It is they who endure abuse and violence while society (and the church) keeps silence. The truth can only be known when their voices are clearly heard. Their strength is needed for the whole community. Poling, The Abuse of Power, 48.
Who are the Tamars crying out for redemption in the Church today? The Rape of Tamar Pat Bergen, 1991 Let those who have eyes, see, acknowledge, and act. Let those who have ears, hear, listen and believe.