Excerpt from “Surviving God”

Tags

Brian Mclaren, grace ji-sun kim, Homebrewed Christianity, racism, substack, Surviving God, Susan Shaw, When God Became White

Surviving God co-written with Susan Shaw was released a few weeks ago. Below is a short excerpt from the Introduction of Surviving God. We hope you get a chance to read our new book and use it in churches, study groups, classrooms, and book clubs.

Surviving God Excerpt:

Surviving sexual violence has lasting negative impact and continues to send ripples across survivors’ lives long after the violent experience itself. By centering survivors in our thinking about God, we can begin to ask important questions about how we understand God in the midst of sexual violence, how sexual violence shapes how we think about human nature, how we must reimagine redemption, especially for the perpetrator, how we come to grips with the church as an institution that has facilitated harm and as a community that is called to love and heal survivors and perpetrators, and how we envision a future in the midst of harm and devastation.

Many perpetrators have distorted understandings of God which often provide internalized legitimacy of their horrid, violent acts. Survivors too carry these images that intensify their shame and guilt. Churches accept, reinforce, and promote beliefs and images that protect perpetrators and make survivors responsible for their own abuse. That is why this book is important. In these pages, we issue a direct challenge to Christian beliefs that position women as subordinate and submissive as a condition of God’s divine wisdom. We take issue with human and divine violence and churches and family structures that rely on and perpetuate gender-based violence. We contend that a God who causes or allows abuse and sexual violence is unacceptable and false, and we call on Christians to do better in confronting the pervasive problem of sexual violence. Such a task means getting rid of old and often dangerous metaphors like God as Father or King and creating new images helpful in processes of healing and dismantling sexual violence. We look to biblical survivors for wisdom, and we explore the usefulness of seeing Jesus himself as one who experienced sexual violence.

As outrageous as it sounds, the problem of sexual violence is pervasive in the Christian church. In fact, we’d go so far as to say the church enables a culture of sexual abuse through many of its beliefs and practices. The problem of sexual abuse is larger than the proverbial “few bad apples.” Instead, we think a big part of the problem has to do with what many Christians believe about God and how those beliefs have been created and shaped by men with power to keep men in power.

Often, we don’t even think of our images of God as images. We think of them as concrete realities. We turn them into idols. And, so, for example, when we think God is a master, we think God really is a white overlord who has the right to control and discipline and use violence. This image also reminds us of how important it is to keep intersectionality—the ways gender, race, and other kinds of difference shape each other—central in our thinking. In addition to traditional Christian thinking about God, other traditional Christian ideas can be especially problematic for survivors. Two “troubling” beliefs in particular create difficulties for many survivors within the context of Christian faith—forgiveness and submission. Traditional ideas about forgiveness say survivors should forgive their perpetrators and move on, and notions of submission make women vulnerable by telling them they should do what men in authority tell them to do.

Special Events:

1. Please join Brian McLaren and I in Pittsburgh for our book release/signing. It is free so please come join us.