Book Review: Surviving God

 

"Healing the soul-wounds of abuse requires new images of God that can comfort, nourish, sustain, and empower."--Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan Shaw in Surviving God.

    God heals the brokenhearted 

    and bandages their wounds. 

    God counts the stars by number, 

    giving each one a name. 

    Our Lord is great and so strong! 

    God’s knowledge can’t be grasped! 

    The LORD helps the poor, 

    but throws the wicked down on the dirt!

     Psalms 147:3–6 (CEB)

I typically read several books per month and do a quick review of most on various social media.  However, this month, I read Surviving God by Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M Shaw and cannot limit my comments to a paragraph.  Before I begin, I must share my bias.  I am a huge Grace Ji-Sun Kim fan and have read most of her writings.  I have read her book on intersectional theology, which was also co-authored by Susan Shaw and found it incredibly informative, and more importantly, spiritually formative.

Surviving God tackles the topic of sexual abuse and how the Church has often developed theological constructs that literally re-traumatizes survivors and pushes them away from an authentic experience of the God who loves and heals. Both authors, who are accomplished theologians, share their own experiences with sexual abuse and write with potent vulnerability.   They share their own theological formation as well, giving insight on how the trauma of sexual abuse influenced their spiritual formation, and specifically their understanding of the image of God.

Both authors were raised in largely evangelical churches and so part of their development included deconstructing some of the common, but harmful theological ideologies that exist in evangelical churches.  Often using intersectional analysis which takes into consideration the power dynamics of various intersections of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and even political affiliations.

"Intersectional analysis, then, functions with its bias toward justice to uncover and restructure power relations by dismantling oppressive ideologies, practices, and institutions."--Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan Shaw in Intersectional Theology

This deconstruction and dismantling, while necessary, may be deeply unsettling to many in the evangelical church who may have not experienced a crisis requiring a deep interrogation of their own beliefs.  But to those who have been traumatized and have felt alone or isolated in their journey toward healing, this book is tremendously affirming and provides guideposts on the road toward resilience.

Additionally, both authors are informed by wide theological streams.  While I find their insights to be incredibly informative, readers who are unfamiliar with feminist, womanist, process and queer theologies may wish to at least google/wiki these terms so that you are familiar with their perspectives.  These theological perspectives add tremendous insights into understanding Biblical texts that critique cultures which promote and accept sexual violence.  You do not have to agree with every single tenet of these theologies to gain quite a bit of insight.  For example, I love the insight that Process theology gives that God acts via persuasive love rather than domination, but I disagree with the Process theology insistence of some that God lacks "personhood" but is described as an impersonal force.  

The book's title "Surviving God" is explained at the beginning of the book.  Behind it is a deep distinction that our understanding of God is a reflection of an image that is constructed through particular temporal-socio-cultural locations.  

"What we relate to, then, is an image of God, not God.  When we accept these images as actual, concrete, or literal, we make them idolatrous.  These are the graven images that are warned against in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17).  To avoid substituting the image for the reality, we must constantly challenge harmful images of God.  We must evaluate our own images of God to see if they are just and liberative." (p.46)

"Surviving God" then is a statement of surviving harmful images of God and discovering the authentic God who does not approve of sexual violence but who is present among the victimized and survivors.  But the search for the loving and liberating God begins by interrogating harmful images.

"These images of God can easily become fixed over time, so that we assume they are eternal rather than reflections of a particular culture, time, or place.  We begin to think of them as actual portrayals of God, and we accept the associations that come with these images as God's will." (p.46)

To some pastors and Christian educators, this encouragement to reconsider the images of God may feel as if the authors are questioning the integrity and authority of Scripture, but they are actually reinforcing its authority and ultimately its inspiration in centering the incarnate Jesus as the most accurate reflection of the image of God.

At the foundation of formation of the image of God, is our understanding of models of atonement.  Atonement is a word that describes the work of Jesus that reconciled humanity with God.  Traditional models, such as penal substitution and satisfaction models imply that Jesus appeased the wrath of God through taking upon himself the wrath or punishment for our (all of humanity) sin.  These models as well as ransom and Christus Victor models which focus on Jesus being given over to the Devil or evil in exchange for humanity, suggest a violent and wrathful God whose primary orientation towards humanity is wrath and intolerance.  Scripture uses multiple metaphors to describe atonement.  

"A metaphor of atonement is a set of lenses through which we describe God's acts of resolving sin and of bringing humans back home in their relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the world." --Scot McKnight in A Community Called Atonement

So one's understanding of atonement informs their understanding of the character and attributes of God.  While Scripture uses a variety of descriptors for Jesus' reconciliatory work, we are reminded by the authors, that each has a specific contextual meaning that can be interpreted differently, depending on the experiences of each individual and their communities.  Experiential interpretations of metaphors can be vivid tools of re-traumatizing survivors of abuse.  For example, if one believes that the primary work of atonement is that Jesus paid for our sins by God, the father, unleashing wrath upon his son in the most brutal, inhuman, and violent means possible, then those who were abused by their Earthly fathers may feel like their own fathers were justified in their behavior, and furthermore, avoid the Church who, in their perception, promotes an image of God that is also abusive.

"New metaphors can expand and reimagine our traditional language, understanding, and imagination about God." (p.49)

This is one of the most powerful aspects of the book.   There are a myriad of Scripturally informed means by which to understand God's attributes and activities.  The authors spent an entire chapter (Chap 5) describing Jesus as survivor.  Jesus as one in solidarity with the suffering.  

"Instead of an all-powerful God who causes or allows suffering, survivors of sexual violence can recognize God as the One who suffers and survives sexual violence with them.  God is present in and experience their suffering; God is their co-sufferer and companion on the journey through violence and toward healing.  Rather than being power-over, God is power-with and power-to.  God is in relationship with survivors, affects and is affected by their suffering and their resilience." (p. 102)c

Scot McKnight speaks of our relationship with Jesus on the cross as being in Christ, with Christ, and Christ for us which speaks to how we can frame the Scriptural concept of Jesus as survivor (Mcknight goes further to suggest that this relationship with have with Jesus extends not only in his earthly life and crucifixion but also the resurrection and development of the communities of Jesus).  The difficulty is that most pastors do not describe Jesus that way.  

Surviving God does a great job of connecting poor images of God with perverting Biblical practices.  Multiple practices, based upon terrible Biblical interpretation literally prevents the justice and healing process.  One such example is that of misapplied forgiveness.   

"Christianity has been concerned for far too long about the vertical relationships between us and God. Christianity has focused on the sinner who has done something wrong against God rather than focusing on what we have done wrong against our neighbors." (pg. 55)

"When we think about this side of forgiveness, we must center the needs of the victim; the victim is the one who decides what restitution and making things as right as possible should look like because the point is to try to restore the victim's wholeness as much as can be done." (pg. 56) 

So, churches demanding victims to forgive their abusers without any accountability or reparations (when possible) simply allows the victim to go on without consequence. We saw what this did in the Southern Baptist scandals and the Catholic Church Priest scandals, but there are many more where the reputation and the effect on the abuser took precedence over the wellbeing of the victim. 

Chapters 6 through 8, highlights Biblical narratives that show survivors of sexual violence, including the story of Jesus of Nazareth.  Drawing from mostly womanist and feminist interpretations of scripture, story after story of survivors and victims demonstrated despite its commonality, that it's an evil that continues to grieve God. These are chapters that should be read slowly and reflectively.

The final chapter is a chapter on the role of joy in resilience.  Joy is described as "the experience of being fully present in each moment, mindful of all the wonder it holds, attentive to our senses and the people and world around us."  One of the many debilitating effects of abuse is a dissociation among the senses, so that things like human touch, sexual intimacy, tastes, smell, and visual associations of the trauma serve to trigger memories and embodied responses to previous trauma.  Joy, as described by the authors, is the ability to use your senses in a way that brings joy, not dread and anxiety. 

"Sexual abuse, as we've discussed, can make us feel that God has abandoned us or punished us, especially when our churches are telling us that God controls everything...Our abuse happens because someone with physical, emotional, psychological, institutional, or spiritual power over us makes a choice to do harm to us. God calls people to do what is good and just and loving, but people can choose to do what is evil and oppressive and hateful.  When they do, God suffers with us in our suffering. God with us cries out for justice.  God holds us in God's embrace, even when we may not feel it, and God comes to us in joy. (pg. 206)

This book is very rich. The only questions that I have for the authors of this vitally important topic are:

1. Is it possible for harmful images of God and their associated metaphors, particularly those used in Scripture, to be redeemed?  For example, God as caring father as a contrast to abusive fathers.

2. Many of the harmful images of God, particularly as omnipotent-controlling God, reflects a very reformed theological understanding of the providence and control of God.  That assumption is not predominant in Wesleyan-Arminian approaches where God has foreknowledge, but human will is free. While that is an oversimplification, I wonder if an alternative response to denying the omnipotence of God using Wesleyan-Arminian frameworks.

This is an incredible book that is a gift for sexual abuse survivors and Church leaders seeking to minister to and among survivors of abuse.  It challenges some of the common, but damaging theological constructs, particularly as experienced by survivors of abuse.  I strongly recommend it but if you are reading it as a survivor of abuse, perhaps processing it also with a therapist or a trusted pastoral counselor is advised as it may generate traumatic memories and their feelings.