Good news
Saturday
I was sitting at an interfaith gathering this week and during the course of a conversation, a woman in her 50s asked me, “why don’t churches talk about sexual assault?”
Most statistics show that around 1/4th of all women and 1/10th of all men are victims of sexual violence . Whether or not we are aware of it, we all know a victim of sexual assault. It’s uncomfortable, it’s personal, and it’s incredibly discouraging – and we don’t spend much time talking about it. The same goes for alcoholism and drug use (about 1/3 of Americans have abused alcohol, 41% have tried marijuana) – we just don’t talk about it much outside of a passing comment about the brokenness of our world.
The above wordle (collection of words where the more common the word is, the bigger it is) is a representation of the impacts of and responses to sexual assault – do you see faith, religion, spirituality, or church mentioned anywhere? Yet, shouldn’t communities of faith be the safest and most healing places for people?
The irony is that this deep hurt, addiction, and shame is exactly what the good news of a healing, freeing, and forgiving relationship with a living God can respond to. Shallow ‘real faith will make your pain go away’ responses aren’t the answer. We should learn how to communicate grace, love, and hope with people’s real pain in mind.
I’m not sure a sermon series on the topic is the answer, but as people who follow Jesus, we should be equipped to talk about and respond to real pain. Our churches, communities, and individual relationships should be the type where people find hope, even when their pain doesn’t go away.
Monday at 00:30
I suspect many churches, well maybe some churches do offer classes to help those who have suffered sexual abuse. There are also churches who have free counseling by professionally trained personnel but, obviously small churches don’t have that privilege. I know of one specific class in a church we visited that was well attended and had been in place a long time. It reminds me that more of our churches need to offer help and perhaps your reminding us of the problem is just what we needed to be spurred to action.