The Victim Beside the Road ... (page 2)

Catherine Clark Kroeger

Catherine Clark Kroeger

But to return to the victim in the story, some may ask “why didn’t he just call 911?” This, of course is ridiculous in the context of the story, but no more ridiculous than the questions that are often asked about modern day victims of abuse. “Why doesn’t she just leave, what is she doing to stop it, doesn’t she know that she’s just enabling him?” There may be remarks such as “I tried to help her once before, and she just went back to him” Alas, we are all too willing to place all the responsibility at the victim’s door. Recently an attorney for the Greater Boston Legal Services wrote a letter to the Boston Globe. In part she said:

Too often the victim is expected to leave the situation, so victims of domestic violence are essentially blamed for staying. We should never be asking why victims stay. The real question is why, as a society, do we continue to portray intimate victim violence as anything other than it is: a crime. If the parties to an assault were not in a relationship, no one would ever suggest that the victim was to blame for permitting the assault to occur.

My experience working with victims of domestic abuse has shown me that society treats these crimes differently. Why else would the media persistently refer to an assault on one’s partners as a “domestic dispute?” It’s a crime, and it needs to be treated as such. To do less is to perpetuate prejudice against victims, permit perpetrators to continue to deny responsibility, and allow the judiciary to impose sentences that send a message to perpetrators that it is not really a crime to beat up your spouse.

Of course nice Christian people think that the whole thing is horrid, and few are willing to address the issue – or to take on its systemic implications. The job is messy, complicated and inconvenient. It demands far too much of us personally and is likely to earn us the opprobrium of the respectable Christian community. However Jesus tells this story to place the responsibility on the people of God. It is they who must show love to their neighbor.

Help comes for the abandoned man from a most unlikely source. It is an individual outside of the victim’s own faith community, one who is able to buck the attitudes of the religious establishment. Although of a different race, the Good Samaritan has read the same five books of Moses. But he looked at the law of God with different eyes and was willing to step out of line, to respond to a different call and to invest himself in obedience to what he read. Some of us would consider other parts of his theology somewhat suspect.

Thus it is that modern day victims too sometimes finds that help comes from those who do not have the same religious point of view. Actually, secular feminists were in the shelter movement and performing all sorts of acts of mercy while we evangelicals didn’t even know there was a problem. It is still true today that most help for victims of domestic abuse comes from sources that do not identify themselves as Christian. One devoted church member exclaimed “It was such a shock to discover that I had to go the community sources for help to apply for food stamps and get a restraining order and emergency shelter and safety counseling.” The church that had a great reputation for caring really didn’t care to touch any part of the problem with a ten foot pole. Yes, we have been there with too little and too late.

The Samaritan, however, when he came to the place where the man lay, poured both oil and wine into his wounds, bound them up and placed him on his own means of transportation. Thereafter he brought him to a safe place where he would not be further abused. Beside the sacrifice of his own sleep and leisure in caring all night for the victim, the Samaritan parted with personal wealth in order to secure humane treatment for the survivor. It had cost time and trouble and treasure, but it earned him the commendation of Jesus.

The Samaritan had ministered not only to the body but also to the soul of a man whose desperate need had been ignored by his co-religionists. We read that the kindly stranger poured both oil and wine into his wounds. Wine, of course, can serve as a disinfectant, and oil promotes healing. In the Bible oil symbolizes the work of the Holy Spirit, grace, joy, and a demonstration of God’s favor and empowerment. It is particularly this demonstration of God’s grace that constitutes the gift that we who follow Jesus Christ can bring to abuse victims. Other agencies may be better suited to meet many of their other needs, but we are best suited to treat the soul wound. It is here that the injury is deepest and the need so often ignored. These victims have been betrayed and abused by someone they love, and often the emotional and psychological abuse is far worse that any physical injury they have sustained. They have been vilified, demeaned, humiliated, insulted and derided. Often their self -image is at ground zero.

Here is where the people of God can give women the healing balm of the scriptures, the hundred odd texts that condemn physical, verbal, sexual and emotional abuse. We can show them what the prophets say of God’s love for those who are oppressed, disenfranchised and afflicted. We can share with them God’s promise of healing and wholeness. Early one morning an abused woman read a collection of scriptures that I had e-mailed to her, and she said “As I drove to work, I just had shivers running up and down my spine.” She had been shunned by her church, but she found her affirmation in the Word of God, and she regained her personhood. Thereafter she started a support group so that she could share her good news with other Christian women in similar straits.

I recollect a woman who came to our local Cape Cod community shelter, and her first words were “More than anything else, I want someone to pray with me.” The wounded woman who has been covered with blows loves to be covered with prayer. They love to have you hold their hand as you pray. One day I stood with my arms around that woman as we prayed together in the restroom of the court house before she had to face her husband in a divorce hearing. Prayer can take on a whole new dimension for these people.

Abused women love little acts of caring, of being invited to your home, of being included in holidays that they might otherwise have to face in lonely bitterness. They are hungry for your words of affirmation and encouragement – and profoundly grateful for practical acts of assistance – watching the children, a basket of groceries, a safe place to store belongings. Toiletries, clothing and children’s toys for those who have had to flee in haste. A teddy bear. These say that somebody cares, that God is still there for those caught in the horrors of domestic abuse.

We can also help persons in unsafe situations to develop a safety plan. Some feel that to do so would be a lack of faith, but the wisdom writer said, “A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The foolish go blindly on and suffer the consequences” (Proverbs 22:3).

Yes there is the oil of healing, but the Samaritan also poured wine into the wounds as a disinfectant. There are many false ideas that bind the family and the church into patterns that exacerbate existing wounds and make further abuse more likely to occur. Alas, we have developed a predisposing ethos. If we are to be faithful to the scriptures, then we must disabuse God’s people of some dangerous concepts. Some of these will be addressed in a subsequent workshop.

We note that the Samaritan bound up the wounds, availed himself of a community resource and recruited the services of the inn keeper. We can also encourage women in consulting the services available in their community. “From the steeple to the shelter” is very good policy.

Here is an essential point: churches fear to send their congregants to the available community resources, and those connected with these community resources fear to have the victim contact her pastor. A woman who must seek protection in a shelter feels compelled to hide her spiritual needs and convictions. Shelter workers have repeatedly experienced the jeopardy in which their clients have been placed by pastors who insist that the victims return home. They are understandably reluctant for any contact with churches or church-related agencies.

Yet we can seek to bring evidence of our concern to shelters and agencies caring for abused women. The needs are so diverse that ordinarily no one agency or service can meet all of them.” Here is a wonderful place to serve as a volunteer; and in that capacity one doesn’t necessarily have to stand on a soap-box to make it apparent that one is a Christian who cares.

Increasingly there is a realization that a victim bears acute wounds in his or her soul and that spiritual needs must be recognized and addressed. The division of violence and Injury Prevention of the Department of Public Health in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts now employs a program coordinator to offer spiritual resources to secular community agencies that provide assistance to victims of domestic abuse. They’re starting to want what we have to say. Our literature, our labor and our love can make themselves felt in ways that are both large and small.

As the Samaritan turned his patient over to the innkeeper, he pulled money from his own purse to pay for accommodation and care during the convalescence. If the process were to take longer than might be anticipated, the Samaritan stood ready to underwrite a more protracted period of recovery. Healing cannot be programmed into a timetable. In particular, forgiveness does not happen on cue. It is the work of the Holy Spirit and cannot be rushed or supplied on demand. Much is written in the Bible about forgiveness, and often a pastor is very quick to demand that a wife forgive the husband who says that he is sorry. But neither God nor human beings can forgive in a vacuum. Forgiveness is based upon a changed pattern of behavior. Jesus said to forgive those who genuinely repented. This will take time to establish, and the wife has every right to continue to be concerned for her own safety as well as that of her children. To insist upon a precipitous reconciliation may be to send a woman and her family to their deaths. A victim may well need a protracted period of time before forgiveness is possible. This must not be forced or rushed. It may be a very long while before members of the family can feel safe around one who has betrayed their trust and endangered their lives. God can bring forgiveness at the right time and in an appropriate way.

We must remember that Jesus said that forgiveness should come as a result of genuine repentance and transformed conduct on the part of the offender. That takes a lot of time and work, no matter how extravagant the claims of immediate transformation. There are a few faith-based intervention programs that offer hope, but they do not offer instant cures.