Community: --not isolation.

The woman came to my office shortly after I arrived in the morning. There were fresh bruises on her face, and older, bluish, purplish, and yellowish bruises on her arms. Her eyes stared at me, dull and wounded. She moved almost defiantly to the chair and, without preamble, asked me bluntly, "Does God approve of violence? Does God demand that women must always be submissive to their husbands?" As she pointed to her fresh bruises and to other bruises and scars on her arms and face, she demanded, "Is this what your God is like?"

I drew in my breath. "Tell me your story," I said.

The story came pouring out of her cut and still bleeding lips. Her husband was abusive. They were members of another church in the city. He was a prominent member of the community and of his church. She knew he had a temper and she had tried for years to do everything to make things perfect for him so that he would not strike out at her. But whatever she did, it seemed not enough. Of course, she thought that the beatings were her fault, that she somehow deserved them for not doing things in exactly the right way. But last night was the final straw. He had come home late, without any explanation. He was upset that his dinner was not reheated and waiting for him. And he hit her, as he had before. He raped her, then rolled over on the bed and fell asleep as if nothing was wrong. But she could not tolerate it any more. She quietly put on some clean clothes, then phoned her pastor, telling him that she needed to talk to him right away. Half an hour later, they met in his office at the church. He listened quietly as she told him what had just happened, and how this had been going on for years. When she finished speaking, her pastor faced her and said, "I know this is hard for you to understand right now, but God has placed all of us in a chain of command, with God on top, then the pastor, then the husband, and then the wife. You are expected to obey whatever your husband says, and to do as he wishes. That is one of the ways you please God. You might have been disciplined (she noticed that he did not say, `beaten') for one of the two reasons. Either you were proud and disobedient to your husband, or else God was purifying your faith through suffering, as St. Paul says in Romans 5: "Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us ..."

"And now", continued the pastor, "You must return home to your husband and apologize to him right away. And if you are not back in your home before sunrise, and if you have not apologized to him before that time, you will be excommunicated from the church. You will not be welcomed back until you repent of your pride and submit once again, just as God wills it."

Shocked at what her pastor had said, she did not go home. She wandered the streets until the sun came up. She stopped at a coffee shop for a muffin and coffee, then decided search for another church to find out if what her pastor said was true. When she passed by the church in which I was serving, she walked in and demanded to know whether her pastor had been right, whether this was really what God wanted. If it was, she told me, then she wanted nothing to do with such a mean-spirited God or with a group which had such a warped sense of love. "If this is a God of love, then I will do without such love," she said, almost challenging me.

What could I do, what could I say, in such a situation? She had been abused, not just in physical, mental and sexual ways by her husband, but also in spiritual and psychological ways by her pastor. As a young pastor, I had never dealt with anything like this before. I was not sure where to start.

I began by telling her that our church does not teach that God has ordained a hierarchy; but instead, that all people are created equal, that all are created in God's image, as Genesis 1 describes. I told her I was quite sure that when Paul talked about suffering, he was not approving of the kind of abuse she had suffered. One of the images she found most helpful, when we were talking about suffering, was the Hebrew understanding of a curse. They felt that to be cursed was to be cut off from God and from community. To be blessed, on the other hand, was to be welcomed into community. I suggested that the abuse she faced was not an

Dr. Gordon Jensen Armena, Alberta, Canada acceptable suffering, because it Was isolating. Her husband had told her after each beating, that if she told anyone, he would make her pay for it. Part of her abuse was her husbands power to cut her off from friends and family He never wanted anyone to visit at their home. He did not want her to have friends, and would rant and rage and abuse her if she talked to anyone, or got too friendly with other women in her neighborhood. What he was doing was isolating her from her community. She was being cursed. Also, when her pastor threatened her with excommunication, he was threatening her with a curse; threatening to cut her off, to isolate her from her faith community.

We then talked about how different this kind of abusive, isolating type suffering was from the suffering the people of Israel faced in their forty years in the wilderness. The difference was that the suffering of the Israelites did not cut them off from others. Rather, their wilderness suffering was done together, as a community, in solidarity with one another. It was not so much a suffering, as it was a struggling together. It did not isolate but brought the community together. God is a God who blesses; a God who gathers people together in solidarity with one another. In this solidarity, community is created. It is a blessing, not a curse. Struggling together creates a community of equals where power is shared and used for the good of all. An evil suffering, on the other hand, is caused by a person or a people trying to gain power over others. They gain power over others by isolating and cutting people off from community In a very real sense they are cutting people off from life.

The church has an important ministry here: to proclaim good news to those who are abused; to welcome them into community rather than condone the actions which isolate them from community. I hope the church has the courage to uphold this ministry; to always be a community of blessing rather than an hierarchical institution that curses and marginalizes.

The solidarity women find with others is an important step in addressing the evils of abuse in both the church and society. The church is meant to be a place of community and when it is not, women and men are called to speak out and take action to form a community of blessing.

What about this particular woman who sought my advice?

She began to move, with the help of friends, from an isolation of cursedness to a community of blessedness. It was not an easy journey. It never is. Our congregation helped her by providing her with a place to stay and food and clothing until she was ready to move on. She tried another church of the same denomination as her former church, simply because she felt at home in the style of worship. I would like to say that she became involved, but because of the hierarchical system, she gave up on the institutional church.

She returned to her husband a couple of times. Once, she returned because she felt that she was now stronger in her convictions and could change him. She also felt strongly that divorce was wrong. Yet when the abuse continued and the isolating control of her husband began again, she left. The second time she returned, it was because her husband had been hospitalized and when he regained health, she felt that he had changed. Unfortunately, that was not the case. She left again. When I last saw her, before I moved away, she had a small, supportive community of women (and a few men), who were encouraging her and walking with her on her journey. It was this small group, rather than an institutional church, which became her blessing community. I was encouraged and hope that her journey within this community still continues.

This encounter with someone in an abusive situation challenged me. As a man, I asked, what should we be doing? I feel that we men need to be proactive, speaking out against abuse that isolates. I have become an advocate of the "White Ribbon Campaign." Men are choosing to wear small, white ribbons on their clothing to announce that they are in solidarity with those who are abused, rather than with the abusers. By doing so, they announce to all that they do not tolerate abuse of women. Such actions signify to abusive men that it is not just women who are against the abuse. These men are choosing to do something about the violence. They are challenging the silence and isolation of abuse. And that is a good sign. It announces that God's realm is a realm of blessing and of community. It is a start. It is just a shame that it is required at all.