It’s Trump again
In 2016, as results came in that indicated Hillary Clinton was in fact heading for defeat, there were a range of different reactions. I wonder what yours was. P...
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*Please be advised that this post deals with themes of violence and abuse against women.
Over one in three women globally will, at some point in their lives, experience gender-based violence. If that feels like an abstract number, think about it this way: how many women or girls are in your church, school, workplace, neighbourhood, among your family or friends? Now apply the one-in-three statistic.
Elaine Storkey, former LICC Executive Director, described it as a ‘global pandemic’. This is an unfortunate reality of our workplaces, neighbourhoods, regular haunts – even our churches.
It saddens me to write the last phrase because the church should be a place of safety and sanctuary. But, like other societal institutions, it has a poor track record of supporting survivors of gender-based violence. At times, it has been complicit in, and even the cause of, their suffering.
Yet, it isn’t the response that Jesus offers in John 4 to a woman who has suffered loss and abandonment, and who comes to the well in need of more than just physical refreshment. Jesus meets her where she’s at. He tells her about her past not to shame her (a common misconception) but rather to show her that he sees her. In doing so, Christ displays the response that we all should towards those who have suffered violence and abuse.
The question for us as Christians is how we might follow in Jesus’ footsteps in our everyday lives. We are to model God’s character and love, proving that we are safe people to be vulnerable with. We are to make good work in caring for, and comforting survivors. We are to minister to them, revealing the compassion and love of Christ when they feel overwhelmed by shame and fear. We are to mould the culture around us, calling out violence when we see it. We are to be mouthpieces of truth and justice, speaking up for those whose voices society wants to turn a deaf ear to. We are to be messengers of a gospel which, at its heart, is about God’s love for the broken, the oppressed, and the shamed.
God, who entered into our own suffering, understands what it feels like to be broken and battered by society’s sin. And he made a way for us to not only get through it but also overcome it.
If we were to respond a little more like Jesus, the deafening silence that surrounds violence against women may well lift, providing hope, safety, and compassion to all survivors of gender-based violence and abuse.
Rebekah Rankin
Rebekah is the Team Operations Coordinator, LICC
Rebekah holds a degree in Biblical Studies and French. She has written further on this topic; read here for wisdom in redeeming a legacy of betrayal and silence in the church’s response to violence against women.
Much needed . Thank you for the wisdom here.
I have no problem at all with the tone and intent of this article. I have, as someone who teaches the Bible on an irregular basis, a problem with the misuse of Scripture (making the Bible supposedly say something that isn’t in the text). So the woman at the well? Yes, someone with shame and apparently ostracised by her local community, and yes, someone married many times, and currently “living in sin” as the old saying went. But someone dealt with by Jesus as a victim of gender-based violence? Now that really is reading into the text something not there. And for the record, I believe Jesus told her he knew her history as a bridge across which he could walk as he was talking to someone of a different culture with hang-ups about His own nationality. It was to get Him a hearing – which it did – as well as it being of course a revelation to her of something of who He is – a step in her understanding. But I see nothing there to do with an assumption of gender violence in her background experience.