NONFICTION
Jesus Had a Penis
I don’t go to church anymore. It has nothing to do with the fact that my last three churches imploded in flurries of sexual scandal, financial mischief, and doctrinal disagreements. I could easily have moved on, as my friends did, to more stable congregations. It wasn’t a denominational issue either. I’ve been baptized into both fundamentalist Protestantism and the Roman Catholic church. I’d feel as comfortable in a West Virginia snake handling church as I did at the Vatican. So why, after forty years of faithful church attendance, would I rather poke myself with rusty scissors than walk into any church on the planet?
It’s complicated, but I’ll give it my best shot. You see, I had one of those childhoods. The kind of childhood that creates serial killers and sent Sybil off her rocker. When it came time for me to face the truth and heal, naturally I turned to my second family, the church. It took a few years of heart-breaking, wheel-spinning encounters to understand that, not only couldn’t they help me, but they had become an impediment, a seemingly insurmountable barrier, to getting well. One sad day I realized that I would have to choose between mental health and my spiritual family. I was tired of living in emotional misery, so I left my prayer team badge on a plastic chair and walked away.
What went wrong? First of all, to put it kindly, Christians can be the most emotionally constipated human beings you’ll ever meet. I credit some of that phenomenon to having a convenient storehouse of pat answers tucked under our armpits or resting on our bedside table. Why suffer pain when we can cut out a Scripture and paste it onto a wound? Of course, if the wound is gaping, there will be seepage. We call that rebellion and disobedience. If the wound is catastrophic, the Scripture bandage will hold for about a minute before the patient bleeds to death. We call that backsliding.
I spent the last seven years of my church life in a charismatic mega-church that focused on worship. I loved those people. I still love those people. We raised our hands, sang songs, and wept buckets of joyful tears. By then, however, I was beginning to comprehend my abuse history, and with comprehension came anger. When the anger gave way to rage, I could no longer raise my hands in true admiration of the living God. In fact, I was much more likely to give Him the finger. After all, Jesus not only let me suffer at the hands of numerous family members; Jesus had a penis.
Emotions like joy and sorrow are sanctioned in the church, but confront a Christian with rage, the white-hot rage of a sexual abuse survivor, and they can wilt like a dying carnation. Female rage is particularly troubling to those who have a conservative view of proper female behavior and attitude. They’ll do anything to make this rage go away, preferably before they have to witness something unsettling and unseemly. The truly emotionally stunted will drag “honor thy father and mother” out of the closet, but most will simply rely on the old platitudinous chestnuts about free will and forgiveness. Personally, I don’t care if my father, uncle, and grandfathers had free will or free cable. The need to forgive — often used as weapon-words of shame — can be used to rush survivors through the recovery process, short circuiting any hope of healing. To bury what our perpetrators did under a pile of religious detritus and verbiage is cruel and careless.
I would never characterize the treatment I received in a church setting as either careless or cruel. These were truly loving human beings. They just didn’t understand that healing from sexual abuse is a life-long process that happens in layers. I am sixty-two and still encountering new memories and feelings that need to be processed slowly and methodically. The complicated system of mental protection that kept me alive during the abuse isn’t going to let me drown in despair in the twilight of my life. Our minds naturally tend toward equilibrium; we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
I’m not advising sexual abuse victims to leave their churches. Stay in church and soak up all the love you need and can hold. That is a gift that many churches give gracefully. Explore the church’s resources for healing but insist that anyone putting themselves forward as an expert in trauma has sufficient training, skill, and experience. If that is not available in your religious organization, revel in the fellowship and love on offer, but get your healing somewhere else.
Ann Marie Potter has officially retired from academic life. She currently lives in the beautiful state of Wyoming where she watches the wind blow, the sky snow, and the deer play — and poop — in her front yard. Her work has appeared in The Muleskinner Journal, The Meadow, Peauxdunque Review, and Literally Stories.
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Image: Joseph’s Dream from the Byzantinesque frescos at Castelseprio. By Meister von Castelseprio – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain.
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