When the truth is untrue:--sexual abuse as context for communicating God.

INTRODUCTION

People who are exposed to sexual abuse are often seriously injured. Many of us regard these injuries as signs of a bad personality or "peculiarities" and label and stigmatize the abused people. People who have been sexually abused do not, however, belong to one particular personality type, and the abuse does not make them different from others. On the contrary, they are ordinary people with ordinary needs and completely normal reactions who carry with them a more painful experience and injuries to more fundamental areas of life than result from most other types of pain. This is why extensive personal resources must be reserved for dealing and living with this experience.

Abuse can be detrimental to basic characteristics and needs such as trust and security. The damage caused by abuse is physical and psychological. Personal relations and social structures are destroyed. Many victims discover that people do not believe them, or that they are blamed for what happened to them. Thus, they become victims of even more violations and breaches of trust.

In this article the focus is on women's experiences of abuse and women's experience of God. Women who have been quoted in the article have all been abused by a male abuser. Even if both boys and girls are sexually abused, and the abuser can be of either sex, there is little doubt that the majority of victims are female and a majority of abusers are male. This is due to the general inequality of power between the sexes in our culture.

The seriousness of the injuries caused by sexual abuse is proportional to the age of the victim (the younger, the more serious) and to the closeness of the relationship between the victim and the abuser (the closer, the more serious). This article is to a large extent built on my study, "Women's image of God in the light of abuse," and all quotations are taken from that source. The women in my study have been abused as children by a person close to them, a person they trusted completely. The results correlate to one of the few other studies on the same subject, the Dutch "Christianity and Incest" (1). Furthermore, the article is based on the three-year- long experiences of the Church of Norway's National Centre against Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse in their work with sexual abuse in a Christian context (2).

ABUSE AND RELATIONSHIPS

Sexual abuse is abuse of power. It can be physical power, but often it is just as much power exerted through the abused person's dependence on or trust in the abuser. When the abuser is trusted, secure and positive relations are destroyed. This is extremely serious. Sexual abuse always takes place in a relationship. For that reason, the ensuing injuries will to an even larger extent than other experiences of pain (illness, grief etc.), be detrimental to the victim's ability to establish secure and trusting relations in later life. The capacity to experience trust, security and closeness can be damaged.

One aspect of the abuse is the abuser's direct or indirect threat and demand for secrecy When a relationship of trust is violated, the experience is that the violation must also be kept hidden. Thus the abuse becomes a lonely experience, where the pain is made even worse by the fact that nobody must know. In addition, many victims have to establish a distance with their immediate environment or family, because these units, in different ways, lack the will to understand what has happened and fail to side with the victim. Some victims experience that the abuser is protected by his environment, and some others feel that what they have to tell is silenced by the listeners.

The consequence is that individuals exposed to abuse often have to struggle with their relationship with other people. They can experience isolation, loneliness, a lack of network and close friends. It can be very difficult to relate confidently and closely to family or friends, establish new personal bonds and belong to a community--it appears to be at least as difficult in a Christian context as elsewhere. This is extremely detrimental to the ability to live one's life to the full and enjoy a high quality of life.

Injured relationship with God

Christianity is all about people's relationship to God, to themselves and to each other. This is reflected in the religious language which, to a large extent, is focused on relations. Family concepts are used, as for instance "God as a father/mother", "children of God" and "brothers/sisters". Furthermore, there are other relational words. We talk about friendship, love and a personal God. Important Christian rituals like prayer and the Eucharist are based on the idea of relationships and community

To believers, God is someone they relate to in a personal way. The perception of God is closely connected to the individual's positive or negative experiences in personal relationships. The relationship with God is affected for those who have experienced abuse, ruined and broken relationships more than by other experiences of pain, because God is portrayed as omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent, and as such has been there all along.

It is a widespread attitude that belief in God helps people through difficulties. Even if some victims of abuse have that experience, it is at least as common an experience for victims to feel that God has failed them or has even sided with the abuser. In that case, God becomes a frightening person to relate to, and relations to God becomes insecure and damaged. Such an image of God is sharply contrasted to the Christian concept of a good and kind God, who "suffers when people are hurt", who "cannot stand injustice" and as one who "always sides with the weak", a God who is love and "who offers dignity and freedom to people" (3). Normally, there is a clear correlation between a person's problematic image of God and the abuse that person has been exposed to. Thus when we see these phenomena, we can call them religious injuries.

Many people with experiences of abuse find that these religious injuries are made invisible or are ignored. Some find that their spiritual adviser interprets their problematic image of God as a religious struggle instead of realising the link to experiences of abuse. One example is when a feeling of guilt is met by forgiveness. A person who has been abused often feels guilt, but is never guilty When told that God has forgiven her, her feeling of guilt is confirmed, thereby making the injuries even worse. Correspondingly, people working in the health services often ignore the connection between abuse and religion, and dismiss the traumas related to God and religious beliefs as irrelevant to their profession. Psychiatry in particular has traditionally regarded religiosity as something negative. Consequently, it has ignored injured religiosity. However, it is extremely important that an injured concept of God is recognized for what it is and treated correspondingly; as injuries caused by painful life experiences. The relationship with God is an essential dimension of life and must be understood and taken seriously, by the church as well as by the health services.

Ana-Maria Rizzuto claims that all people, at least in our culture, have an image of God that affects the treatment of traumas, whether the person involved believes in God or not (4). Therefore, it is important to everybody, those who believe in this God as well as those who have chosen not to, to focus on the concept of God. It might even be that non-believers have chosen not to believe because God is frightening and relating to God has become problematic.

Understanding of God and Relationship with God

An individual's understanding of and relationship to God includes much more than dogmatic truths like "God is kind, omnipotent, the God of judgement, omniscient" etc. Such dogmas are only theoretical descriptions of God. When a human being relates to God in reality, aspects of personal relationships become equally important. "What does God `think' about me, what does God do to me, how do I relate to God, how do I experience God's presence in my everyday life?" For example our concept of parents is not primarily formed by their status or education, but by what kind of personal relations we have enjoyed. Similarly, personal relationship with God is not related to the "degree or strength of belief", but is rather a description of the contents of the relationship with God. Even those who do not believe and do not wish to believe in God, have a concept of God's relationship to themselves. It could be that the need to distance God is due to the fear of a threatening God.

For people who have experienced deceit and abuse, the dogmas can be very different from their personal experience with God. In my study of sexually abused women's image of God, I found several examples of this. When asked to describe what they thought about God in the period of abuse, many women said things like "God was kind and looked after me." When asked about their personal relationship with God, for instance, what they believed that God thought of them, the same women gave completely different answers: "God wanted me to experience abuse" or "God did not like what I was doing" or "God thought that the feeling of physical pleasure/something about my body was dirty and sinful" or "If God related, to me, it was through commandments and demands--everything I had to do to avoid damnation?

The bottom line seems to be that the God who in theory is kind, is not kind "to me". The theoretical description of God probably expresses what these women have learnt about God. We have seen how this image of God is sharply contrasted to the experienced image. However, there is a clear connection between the experience of God as threatening and "with a negative attitude to me" and the experience of other close relations. When the relationship to people is injured, the relationship to God is injured too. The theoretical concept of God, on the other hand, does not seem to influence their relationship with God to any significant extent.

When "good" was "non-good"

When relation with God is injured by experiences of abuse, it shows us that something is wrong with the way we talk about God, with our theology. One explanation could be that what we communicate about God simply is not true. But often what is communicated seems to be good and true, but it is heard differently by the victim of abuse.

When this happens, it is due to the fact that the communication does not consider the child's painful experiences. The way we talk about God presupposes a different context than the innocent and invisible suffering of the child.

a. God's omniscience 

A good illustration is God's omniscience. When we say that God sees everything and knows everything, we consider them as expressions of care and security These qualities represent the God who is kind, who always "looks after me". To a lot of the women in my study, however, God's omniscience became a problem. It is a frightening aspect of God, a threat, something they must watch out for. For one thing, this is related to the situation of abuse, and the expressed or presupposed demand for secrecy When a person has a terrible, painful, dirty and shameful secret, the realization that God knows about it is a threat. One can hide it from parents and other people one trusts, but it is impossible to hide it from God. "What I liked least of all, was that God could see everything, therefore, I felt so terribly guilty," one woman explains.

Another woman says: "God did nothing in my life. God was just watching." The combination of the knowledge that God sees everything and the experience that God does nothing to help, leads to the feeling of being neglected. The parents of abused children will normally do everything in their power to prevent the abuse. The problem is rather that they do not know about it. God, on the other hand, knows, and does nothing, even when they pray for help. "Often I prayed that God would make somebody come and help me. But it never happened." This confirms and strengthens the feeling of guilt, shame and lack of value: "God ignored me. I thought it was because I was dirty."

b. Gods omnipotence 

God's omnipotence, interpreted as the ability to do everything, is most often regarded as something positive. It is all about having the strongest of all on your side, who gives you security and protection--in the same way small children feel safe knowing that their parents can deal with anything. When a person you trust completely--in this case God--shows to be of no help, it becomes difficult. This can be compared to a situation of abuse. Relations that were supposed to be safe have turned into abuse and violation. This is the way God is understood when God does not intervene to prevent evil.

When God is omniscient and omnipotent at the same time, and still does not prevent the abuse, God seems to accept and allow the act, or even use it as punishment or a way to teach a lesson. "God thought that the abuse was all my fault, God punished me for my sins through the abuser", "as a small child I believed that God wanted me to experience the abuse ... I was convinced that the Bible God ordained that this was something male adults were supposed to do to little girls." "If God accepts the evil I go through, he sides with the abuser and supports what he is doing."

Many people struggle with these thoughts and at the same time think that God wants what is best for them. Thus God becomes threatening, unstable and impossible to relate to in a trustful way. God gets the same qualities as a person who was trusted who commits sexual abuse: A person who "officially" is kind, but when it comes down to realities, commits or accepts the evil the child is exposed to. The threatening God, who in a way accepts abuse, is actually all the more difficult to relate to for a person who has put great emphasis on God's kindness and care. The stronger the position of God's kindness as an authoritative dogma, the sharper the conflict of finding that God is not kind and good.

When it comes to understanding the acts of an abuser and the acts of God--or rather the lack of acts--a child will often try to explain by taking the blame herself: "God is good and kind, there must be something wrong with me which devalues me in the eyes of God, and which makes me not deserve God's love." In this way the child is at least able to maintain a certain logic in her existence--things do not happen accidentally, everything can be explained by cause and effect.

Consequently, the concept of God's omnipotence can result in low self-esteem and to the realization that God sides with the abuser. God's omnipotence understood as something positive, only works as long as nothing bad happens. To communicate a feeling of safety through God's omnipotence presupposes that the receiver/child lives in a context without innocent suffering.

c. Abuse and sexual morality

Another example of communication that appears to be good, is the traditional sexual morality, the interpretation that sex is sinful outside of marriage. Even if the value and background of this morality are highly debatable, there is little or no doubt that its aim is positive; it intends to protect people and preserve what is good for them. No one would say that a person exposed to sexual abuse is sinful because of the abuse. Still, this is a problem to a lot of victims. "Mother told me that sex is a sin before marriage. I remember that I felt guilty ... I felt like a sinner who deserved punishment. I started to develop a fear of being seen by God/other people", one woman says.

"Sex is sinful" turns into "I am sinful because of the abuse". Children exposed to sexual abuse do not distinguish between forced sexuality, which is a criminal act and the total responsibility of the abuser, and voluntary sexuality, which is regulated by sexual morality. They label themselves as sinners because of something they do not have the power to change, something which is also the most painful experience of all, and therefore a burden more than heavy enough in itself. It becomes particularly difficult when they believe that they can do something about it: "I was never able to live the way God wanted me to. I did terrible things ... God was the only one who knew about my secret ... I wanted God to change the situation, but thought that the only thing to get from there was advise to stop seducing (the abuser)." Here we can see how God's impossible demands reinforce the problem of sinfulness.

People exposed to sexual abuse often feel guilty about what has happened. This mislocation of guilt is bad enough in itself. However, when the feeling of guilt is transferred to the relationship to God, among other things because of God's view of sex, it becomes even worse. Guilt towards God is existential guilt, and not just a locus of cause or an explanation. In my study, there are several women who believed that the sexual abuse would influence their chances of going to Heaven/alternatively Hell.

Image of God and self-image 

For people with strong experiences of pain, the theoretical image of God is hardly linked to the experience of the relationship with God. Even if the dogmas are good and positive, the relationship can be characterized by negative experiences. On the other hand, we have seen that experiences from close human relationships are strongly linked to the relationship to God. In the examples above, we also saw how a person's self-image and a negative relationship to God are related.

It is generally accepted that a person's self-image is influenced by the experiences of that person. It is only natural that early experiences--especially with close relations--strongly influence self-esteem. The experience of security gives the feeling of being valuable and vice versa. Thus the connection between one's self-image and the image of God is the same as the connection between experience and the image of God.

The correlation between the experience of relationships and the relationship to God is not, however, only valid when the relationship is negative. Gradually, when the experience of abuse is supplemented by good experiences with people in later life, these will give impulses to the relationship to God. Abuse therapy includes self-esteem work and work with the injured relations, so that they will no longer be allowed to work as a destructive force in a person's life. This can contribute to the creation of a new framework for the re-establishment of a good relationship to God.

To relate to God in spite of all

Even if many women with experiences of abuse struggle with the image of a God who does not seem to want what is good for them, many of them do long for a positive relationship with God, a kind God they can believe in. As adults, long after the actual abuse, many of them feel a certain ambivalence in their way of relating to God. On the one hand, they carry the image of and the wish for a kind and loving God. On the other hand, they have the image created by their experiences; God as a non-caring figure. "I believe that God loves me --and wants all that is good for me. In God's eyes I am valuable. But I have to struggle to believe it." The concept of God is formed by a double background of experience, one good and one non-good.

Lack of relationship

Several of the women in my study seem to relate to God more as a theoretical concept, a part of an overall structure of order, than in relationship. This is partly due to the lack of similarity between the experience of relations and the religious language. The talk of a safe, close and personal relationship to God has no basis and cannot be understood by a person who has not experienced positive personal relationships. In a "functional" relationship with God, where personal bonds are less prominent, the connection between the experience of abuse (or other injured relations) and God can become weaker. This is because the deceit in the close relationship is no longer a relevant experience in such a relationship to God. One woman describes her adult image of God in the following way: "I do not think God can be seen. He just is in everything ... I thought that God would save me. Later/today I understand that God is unable to intervene. Everything must go according to `the plan' even if it means that somebody is suppressed by others."

God is there, but not as a person with whom she has a relationship. Then it is easier to live with and understand the bad things she has experienced.

If God is kind, and you have negative experiences in relationships, it is hard to see God as someone you can relate to closely. In other words, if you do not have positive experiences of relationships and want to stick to the belief that God is good, it is difficult for you to exist in a relationship with God.

An example of the need for distance instead of closeness to God is of a woman who emphasizes the point that she wants no "personal" relationship with God, because "the talk about God's presence, about God as love, as a person who cares for me, gives me a nasty feeling of being invaded, surrounded, made demands on." A person who forces intimacy on you and makes the relationship closer than it should be represents the situation of abuse. When obtrusive closeness is clearly separated from God, it is possible that God is kind: "It has been important to me think that God wants the truth. That God cannot accept that a human being is violated, that God wants to expose evil ... that God sides with the weak, and knows what suffering is. That God reacts with justified anger. That God tolerates anger in me and supports those who want to rebel, but that at the same time God is open-minded enough to keep distance and not force [him/her]self on me ..." Such a distance to God is a sign of something healthy and good. It shows respect for one's personal experiences and one's self-esteem.

God is different

To several of the women, then, it is important to keep a distance from God. This distance gives some space for themselves, their thoughts and evaluations. To others, it is important to keep a distance from the church, the Christian community, the clergy and the dogmas. This distance functions in the same way as the distance from God does to others: It gives freedom and the chance to make independent choices and evaluations. As a result, God, too, can be different than the damaged concept produced by experience and dogmas.

Some of the women describe a relationship with God that belongs to an area we call `privatized religion'. The center is "me and God", and the sense of belonging to a community is not important: "Nature is my best chamber of prayer ... When other people pray, they often use words which I associate with things that make it difficult for me. It is impossible [for me] to use the term "father" about God, and it is hard when other people do so." Such reactions clearly describe an important reason for the distance to the Christian community: This community is characterized by a language and a way of thinking that is not good for the victim of abuse, and from which she has to protect herself.

A community of people and a common ground of belief are correlated. Consenting opinions often constitute a community. This also gives others the possibility and right to make definitions. To many people it is the definitions others have made of sex, God, sin and punishment that have complicated the image of and the belief in God. To be able to regard God as something good, one has to "watch out" for people who abuse God. This can be very difficult, though: "God is kind to me and other people today. The problem is to get to see God instead of those people and those concepts that give a false image," says someone whose relationship to God used to be characterized by fear and guilt, but who now enjoys good and positive relations.

It is of prime importance to keep the freedom to define God so that God can be seen as kind and caring, and several of the women emphasize that it is God who gives them this freedom. An important perspective on a kind God, in a context where the aspect of relationships is preserved, is that God is "different". This is connected to the experiences of relations. When experienced relations are not good, the most prominent description of God as kind is that God is different. God must be different from what is known, when what is known is not good. References to everyday experiences as descriptions of God as kind and caring can hardly work when these are destructive and negative. The unspecified, distant or mystical have better potentials to describe something good. j

As far as sex and body are concerned, the need for different-ness is quite explicit to some women: "God is difficult to describe, but just now it is important for me that God has no sex. God is neither male nor female." It is easy to understand the fact that the male body and male power/authority are associated with abuse and as such impossible images to use. However, a female concept of God does not seem to work any better. Sex, be it male or female, is related to physical-ness, sex and sexuality, which all embody negative things. The emphasis on different-ness and sexless-ness becomes important. God must be kept away from all that. As for Jesus, it is more complicated to avoid physical conceptions. "I do not think so much about Jesus. May be it is because he is so concrete? Man and body. And God? It sounds disgusting and frightening." Still, for some, it is possible to associate physical, concrete pictures with something good: "Jesus is like a good brother with eyes that tell me that I am valuable, that he loves me the way I am." Jesus is male, but associated with a male figure that may be undamaged: a kind and caring brother.

8. Untrue theology

When you tell your child that "God is kind and looks after you" you presuppose that the child has a good and secure existence. No one would say to a child that God allows the innocent to suffer. But that is exactly what some children experience. The bad thing that happens to them is the abuse. It is the abuser who has done something evil and criminal. Victims of abuse may experience that the theory/dogmas of God and their own experience of life do not correspond. As children, many victims trusted the abuser completely and believed in the God described by the abuser, and the result was a bad self-image. As adults, a lot of them dissociate themselves from the authority/institution of authority, but keep struggling with their image of God.

One thing is the fact that the context for the communication about God is different (abuse) from what the intermediary thought, which has the result that what was intended as a true description of God is understood in a different way by the receiver. However, this is much more serious: The language/theology that does not relate to the context of pain and suffering gives a fundamentally untrue description of reality. A reality where children do not suffer, is not the reality of our world. It may be the reality of the Kingdom of God, in other words, Heaven. It represents the dimension of hope, and should not be described as already present.

We have seen how generally accepted talk about God represents a reality and an understanding of reality which injure people when taken seriously. This talk about God minimizes suffering and makes it invisible, because it provides no framework for understanding the evil experiences. When people have to relate to their experienced reality, they lack the linguistic and intellctual tools they need in order to put evil in its right place. Instead, they have to use the framework available to them. Consequently, they cannot call evil by its right name, and have to interpret it as, for instance, the will of God, sin or guilt. This process of minimizing and making invisible is a parallell to the experience of abuse; it is something incomprehensible because it collides with the reality that "is supposed" to exist.

When many women choose to keep God or the church at a distance, even though they have worked with the abuse in therapy/counseling, it is, in many ways, due to the fact that they still do not have the tools that would enable them to understand, and that their image of God still has features that are difficult to relate to. They struggle to understand, and in order to protect themselves end up dissociating themselves. One of the challenges faced by theology today is to help people find the tools they need to be able to understand and interpret their experienced reality, and to give a true and meaningful image of God and man alike.

When communication about God, good and true as it may seem, injures people with extremely painful experiences, this communication does not represent true theology. True and Christian talk about God must tell the truth about reality and God at the same time. Reality can be evil and God can be good--at the same time. Therefore when theology meets experiences of violation and suffering, it is put to the test and proves itself as false or true.

(1) Imbens A and Jonker I, Christianity and Incest, Minneapolis, 1992. Translated by P. McVey from Dutch "Godsdienst and incest", Ammersfoort, 1985.

(2) Written in the Church of Norway's National Centre against Violence and Sexual Abuse's "Goals and Ideas", from September, 1998

(3) From the Church of Norway's National Centre against Violence and Sexual Abuse's liturgy, "A Creed".

(4) Rizzuto A-M, The birth of the living God, Chicago and London, 1979

Helene Horsfjord is theological adviser at the Church of Norway's National Centre against Violence and Sexual Abuse.