On Parting - Never to Meet Again - An Experience of Timelessness

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 12 August 2013 1 Comments
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Question

I need some help regarding the Bible, especially the injunction to “Honor thy Mother and Father." I have read almost every book that Alice Miller, a famed Swiss psychotherapist, has written. She died just last year, but she bravely went against the grain of our culture and her colleagues to expose the damage caused by child abuse. She uses a great variety of historical figures such as Hitler and other dictators, writers and artists in her books to demonstrate her theories of how the repressed child maltreatment manifested itself in their lives. She also does a great analysis of Mel Gibson's refusal to question his father (who did not believe the Holocaust occurred). She is one of many who found that most people repressed the feelings that accompanied abusive treatment at the most vulnerable times of their lives at the hands of their caretakers in the name of socially sanctioned “parenting” and “discipline.” She finds that this abuse leads to crime, violence, addiction, illness and the perpetuation of abuse onto one’s own children (or an entire nation if you are a dictator) if not therapeutically worked through. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta also found huge correlations to illness and addictions with child maltreatment in their “Adverse Childhood Experiences” studies. The new findings by Bruce Perry and Alan Schore (among others) in the neuroscience of trauma are in alignment with this theory also. To think this all starts in “the family!” Even as I write this, I can feel my own deeply-embedded resistance to acknowledging these truths and how honoring and not questioning certain systems is as ingrained in me as my next breath. Miller found the Bible’s “spare the rod, spoil the child,” the scripture story of Abraham’s blind obedience to God and the “honor thy parent” command to encourage the perpetuation of these abuses of children throughout the generations of our culture. The idea of forgiving impedes healing for many adults, damaged in their youth as once again, the injured party must care for the adult instead of self. Why not “Honor thy son and daughter,” Miller asks? I have seen lives hideously damaged and so can readily see this in extreme forms I daily witness. Yet most of us have degrees of damage, less extreme on a continuum-than that which makes it so visible-though it is repressed and we are not aware of it. I ask you to help educate where these biblical references come from as most people cling to them (literally) like barnacles to a sea worn ship. Can you do some scraping? This will help me to do the prevention and intervention work I must do as a school counselor in the “Bible Belt” where children are whipped with belts as a norm as if God desired it. Only decades later will the results become visible in more child abuse, depression, physical and mental illness and sometimes even suicide.

With great appreciation for your work and your God-given intelligence.

 

Answer

Dear Debbie,

Thank you for your long and informative letter. I have printed it in almost all its entirety because you describe the total scene so well. I thank you for bringing reality to our attention in such a provocative way.

I tried to address the themes you raise in a book entitled The Sins of the Scriptures and most specifically in the chapter on the relationship between the text “spare the rod” and child abuse. Even the Christian story is often portrayed in our hymns, liturgies and sermons as the Father God punishing the Son for the sins of the people. The abusive activities perpetrated by the church throughout history including the Flagellants, the Inquisition and the abuse scandal of recent history reveal that this kind of insensitivity and downright cruelty has been a constant in church history and points to a sickness in the soul of Christianity that must be brought to light, exposed and cured.

The only thing I would add to your letter as a cautionary note is that there are exceptions to the rule. People have been able to transform their abusive childhood situations and to channel their anger in creative not destructive ways. What usually makes the difference is the intervention into the abused child’s life of a healthy and mature counselor, teacher, godparent, friend or family member.

There is no one who cannot make a difference in the life of another. We only have to be open to the opportunity. Keep up your good work.

~John Shelby Spong

 

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