by Peter B
This uncomfortable reflection on the Passion and Easter stories (received on Good Friday) is not one designed to be a popular or reassuring piece of writing. But in the very honest way it is written, it gives us pause to think afresh about what we are doing and thinking at this very solemn time in the Christian year. Perhaps there are more of the sentiments in the piece that we can identify with than we dare admit. I am struck by my thought that the story of pain and brutalisation reminds us vividly of the ghastliness of the war in Ukraine and the individual stories of suffering that are etched into the lives of abuse survivors. The writer of this piece cannot be the only individual who struggles with the story of the Passion. I have yet to see any writing on the topic of the way that the Passion of Christ may trigger serious flashbacks for members of the survivor community. Perhaps our response to Peter’s personal piece is to be more aware of the ‘destruction’ that exists in people’s lives, and which is evoked by the story of the Passion. Those of us who preach need fresh sensitivity about the way that preaching about the pain and suffering of Christ needs to be done with extraordinary care. Editor
This Easter is the first I’ve made the choice not to do anything.
No walk of witness through the town, embarrassed as I thrust tracts at harried shoppers.
No 3 hour reflective service of self-examination.
No stations of the cross.
No services and vigils 3 nights in a row.
For I have a dirty secret. Holy Week destroys me.
This destruction has been growing since I entered my teens. As the son of a Church of England preacher-man, Holy Week was an important event.
As a teenager the hardest were churches that did the heavy Good Friday service and then everyone magically brightened up and we went for a picnic. Did people not read the mood? Did they not care as tomato pips ran down their fingers that thirty minutes prior they were bowed at the suffering of Christ and now were tucking into their pork pie as if nothing had happened?
Later there were churches where Good Friday is about looking at Jesus’ agony on cross and being told over and over again that you put him there. It’s YOUR SIN that is keeping him there. I mean what am I meant to do with that except feel more awful about myself than before? I am the one who is torturing him. I deserve to die, not him.
Even worse is when the preacher is telling you to picture yourself as Jesus. You’re being beaten. They’re nailing your hands. You’re being hoisted up. You can’t breathe.
Ever wanted to scream and scream in church and run out? Felt like you’re suffocating in the service? It’s not a good feeling.
Do people not have imaginations?
In one city the churches put on an outdoor passion play. It was laid on thick – think Les Misérables for Christ – and watching it I was overwhelmed and in tears by the end. Others from my church were not understanding at all – why emotional? He had to do this, and he comes back on the Sunday so okay.
Ever been so emotionally drained after Maundy Thursday and Good Friday that on Saturday all you want to do is stay in bed and hide under the covers?
Or wandered aimlessly on Holy Saturday not knowing what to do, after the sadness of Good Friday and Easter Sunday has not come yet. What to do in that space, suspended between despair and hope?
And on Easter Sunday you have flip to the opposite because this is the MOST AMAZING day!! And I do – only to find out most have moved on because apparently in (conservative) evangelical circles Good Friday is the important one because SOMEONE DIED FOR US, while someone breaking the chains of death and coming back to life is a footnote. Nothing important to see here, move along.
I’d started thinking about pulling back in 2019, and then the last 2 enforced Easter absences were enforced by Covid. Only then, despite the strains of the pandemic, did I realise what a release it was not to go through the Passiontide again.
I felt guilty at my relief. Horrifically guilty, as if by not putting myself through the wringer I was letting God down. Wasn’t this the payment I needed to do to say thank you for saving me?
And, said a little voice in my head, wasn’t this the culmination of my backsliding?
I’ve done the Easter story at least 39 times. I know it. The suffering is part of my DNA.
Maybe many people need to relive it each year. I don’t – I’ve lived it and it’s within me now. I don’t need to re-live Jesus’ suffering every year. It’s ingrained in me. I don’t have to retraumatise myself every single year.
Me and other people’s suffering, we don’t get on. I struggle to touch anything to do with the holocaust as the weight of that evil threatens to overwhelm yet feel I must know for their memory. The Easter story, the accounts of genocide at Auschwitz, Srebrenica, Rwanda, the recent torture and executions in Bucha, the brokenness of human life – they all sit together. All make me sad, and I am heartbroken for the people involved and their loved ones.
And yet. Easter is the only one where life comes back. Jesus rises from the dead and appears to his friends and others. He gives us hope that we can be saved, death is overcome, and we too can be united with the Father. It is different.
I can be without the self-flagellation this Easter.
I love my Father and my Father loves me.
Peter B, I am so with you there. That central plank of Christian doctrine: that Jesus died for our sins is so abhorrent to me that I am now on the margins of the Christian faith. We had a well meaning young woman, training to be a Methodist lay preacher, who came to the independent chapel in our village. She tried to get us to picture ourselves in prison for some unspecified crime. Then one day someone came and unlocked the door and took us to hillside to view a man who had died in agony. For us. To expiate our sins. And this experience was supposed to fill us with joy and liberation…. Err… No, it was the worst kind of emotional blackmail. It was like a dreadful parent saying look “Look what I have done for you. Look at how I have suffered for you. Look what I have given up for you.” All it achieves is massive life-crippling guilt.
I’ve always ‘lived’ Holy Week, since I attended a children’s club at our local church called A Week in Jerusalem. But I’ve had such an emotionally hard year this year – including depression, burnout and the death of one of my brothers – that I just couldn’t confront Jesus’ suffering head on.
It’s a powerful piece this and it feels authentic. Expressing what you really think is valuable for your sanity and for others. I spent many fruitless years engaged with responses that were more expected than experienced. It’s devastatingly unhealthy and I believe the Suffering Christ would get it too and be with you and me.
Thank you, Peter.
I’ve loved being able to live Holy Week, when I have. Good Friday is the day we have permission to grieve. We’re normally expected to live in the light of the resurrection. I found it very powerful and moving. But, I say cautiously, I think I understand. It really wouldn’t work if we were being forced, that isn’t the point. It’s being allowed to have these feelings, not being made to have them.
Thanks Peter. Kind of you to share as you have done.
I noticed some years ago that the crucifixion accounts in the gospels are very factual and don’t express shock or horror or highlight the pain at all. I decided therefore to let myself off from imagining the pain. I don’t think it helps. It is the fact that God did what he did for us in the person of Jesus that matters to me. My job is to be grateful, and try to live in a way that shows love and kindness to others.
Ouch Peter. My only surprise is that you persevered for so long. I do hope this will now be a more peaceful time for you. Personally I find Palm Sunday very hard knowing what is to follow, and cannot join in the Church ‘s celebratory spirit. I find the Bible reading of the passion quite enough and feel there is no need for any further dramatization. I would find it cruel and traumatic to be told to imagine myself being crucified and sorry that you and others endured this. It just seems a callous and spiritually abusive way to engender guilt and fill pews. Thank you for sharing. I hope you find healing.
Thank you for sharing this. It is powerful and moving. I will think a lot about this piece between now and next Holy Week, and think carefully about how I preach on the cross as a result.
I was reminded of a time some fifteen years ago when I led an Ignatian meditation on the death of Christ – something I had done often. One participant had a very strong reaction affecting her physically. At the time I could not understand why that had happened. This article has given me pointers as to possible raesons why.
I thinkI want to misquote Jesus and say “Holy Week was made for people, not people for Holy Week”. Like all forms of devotion, observing Holy Week works for some and not for others. One should not feel guilty at avoiding Holy Week.
Peter B state is too serious to consider advising on lightly but I’ll risk it.
I suggest that he considers becoming what Christ’s earliest adherents were, that is a “Follower of the Way” and imagine himself as one of the crowd that heard his parables and saw his miracles. I doubt if those people knew much about the Nativity and I suspect they wondered and had their doubts about the Resurrection but despite that they lived in hope and tried to enact his teachings and commands. And Christianity is very simple; “Love God with all your heart and mind” (for on this hangs all the Law and prophets) and “Love your enemies”. It’s all very simple but of course it’s very hard to do. And regarding most theology, long ago I decided to throw the tricky bits into my “too difficult to do box” items like the Trinity and Revelations, for I don’t have enough years to grapple with them. And I believe that much of 2000 years of developed Christian theology doesn’t much matter either. Theology’s main value it to keep many argumentative people out of pubs and off street corners but, alas, many just can’t keep it to themselves. My reference point for any question is to go back to the Gospels but even there I’d recommend the application of “Occam’s Razor” to see if any bits that don’t matter too much can be place aside, for instance the Nativity, which I enjoy as much as the next man but if it’s a pious forgery it won’t change my understanding of his teaching.
My whole idea in the foregoing is of a personal simplicity, but I also wonder if a piece “The Conversation” might help; it has a piece on Easter jokes which show a lost approach to what is now an over serious festival and for Peter a tortuous time. It’s rather irreverent but see here https://theconversation.com/easter-laughter-the-hilarious-and-controversial-medieval-history-of-religious-jokes-179401?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%202266622523&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%202266622523+CID_35e5f538944e0c9a8cd4f226823b392b&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=telling%20bawdy%20jokes%20and%20entertaining%20the%20congregation
In summary, Pete should avoid the occasions that hurt him for I’m sure that Christ never intended such things. We now know far better than when I was young that the spectrum of human personality is so broad that we must be careful on our assertions and judgements where they can impact on deeply held feelings and views. I’m sure that damage was not Christ’s intention.
I’ve never understood why the so-called christian year was ever invented, and why any follower of Jesus takes any notice of it, when it was clearly absent in the earliest years of the church. It clearly isn’t something that the first apostles taught or modelled, nor does the Holy Spirit have anything to say about it in the scriptures. If churches and individual christians were to revert to following the teaching and practice of the first apostles and of the church in its earliest years surely we would experience something much more akin to “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Wouldn’t we?
Hi Leigh. Probably not. We don’t live in Israel, 2,000 years ago. The church I was brought up in didn’t do the Christian year, many don’t. But it’s natural to remember anniversaries. And it means you can hear the whole story through, rather than dotting about randomly. Mike, I’m sure it’s a good suggestion. Happy Easter, all.
Except that the ‘Christian year’ is inconsistent. Such as when we go from thinking of Jesus as a baby to his baptism as a mature adult, and then back to baby Jesus again.
And we give very little weight to the bulk of his ministry, which is just used to fill in the gaps between Advent, Lent, and the major festivals.
Hi (not sure of your name – Athena, perhaps?)
You say “We don’t live in Israel, 2,000 years ago” (which is of course true) but you don’t give any indication of the relevance of your remark. Are you implying that the Bible is relevant and authoritative only to people who lived in Israel, 2,000 years ago? I assume that you can’t have intended to mean that. But what then did you mean? I assume that your remark did contain some meaning.
My understanding concerning the Bible (and perhaps your also?) is that it is relevant and authoritative to all of us in all places in all centuries; that it is God’s word to us. And since it says absolutely nothing about the so-called christian year, we can be confident that the Holy Spirit is not directing us to give any recognition to it nor incorporate it into our practice. And if the christian year does give problems to anyone (as indicated in earlier comments here, then he or she can safely ditch it and ignore it rather than try and accommodate himself or herself to it.
Or perhaps an alternative to following and obeying the scriptures would be that we ignore them and make up our own religion to suit ourselves and have no need or obligation to defer in any way to what the Holy Spirit says. Not what I would deem a christian approach but one followed in practice by many who would call themselves christians, and by many churches which would call themselves christian churches.
Athena is fine. I wouldn’t want anyone to feel they have to follow a code which makes them feel miserable. Or even if it’s not spiritually helpful. But not everyone will be troubled by it, and some of it, Easter, for example, is approximately when the crucifixion and resurrection occurred, so far as we can tell. So, why not remember these crucial events then?
I grew up in a church that didn’t follow the CofE year. I don’t feel strongly either way, but quite enjoy the discipline.
As for trying to live like the early church, it’s so different to 21st C life in Britain, it would really be difficult. I think we should serve and follow God where we are, where ever we are. On Easter Day, with all that is going on in Ukraine, that is a considerable challenge. I take the Bible very seriously, I assure you.
Hi Athena
I don’t want to get involved in a ping-pong backwards and forwards, and I dare say you wouldn’t want that either. So I’ll just answer the question you put and leave the remainder of your post uncommented.
Your question was: “So, why not remember these crucial events then?” My answer would be: “Certainly we clearly need to remember these events – they tell the story of Jesus’ victory and are the basis of our salvation. But that is no reason for inventing a church year in order to remember them. If the early church didn’t need to remember them in that way, neither do we. I believe that the practice of the early church, as recorded in the scriptures, is as a
authoritative for us as its teaching, also recorded in the scriptures.
I would add – not to you, as I know so little about your practice of your faith, but to many others out there – I see very few churches taking the Bible seriously enough to model their practice on it. Their teaching, yes, but their practice – far too difficult!
I now lay my bat down.
But how are we to decide which of the early Church’s practices – as described in Acts and the Epistles – to follow? Being baptised on behalf of the dead? Taking the sick to where the shadow of our leaders might fall on them and heal them? The archbishops could be pretty busy sending out handkerchiefs and aprons to everyone who’s ill, especially in a pandemic. Obviously all converts must be instructed to eat only meat with the blood drained out of it., but do we have to revert to parchments and scrolls instead of paper and books for our Bibles?
And what do we do when varying practices are described, as with church government? Do we appoint elders, deacons, and widows; or do we simply recognise those with charisms such as prophecy and healing?
Many a sect has tried to get back to the ‘authenticity’ and simplicity of early Church practice, and come a cropper. What we can do is to distil from New Testament accounts what were the principles behind the practices, and try to apply these to our own situations and culture. And that work has to be constantly renewed and refreshed.
Janet (April 18, 2022 at 7:17 am)
“But how are we to decide which of the early church’s practices – as described in Acts and the Epistles – to follow? Being baptised on behalf of the dead?”
I know of no-one who advocates being baptised on behalf of the dead nor anyone who believes that the New Testament teaches that we should do so. I don’t, I can make a pretty guess that you don’t, and I’ve never come across anyone who does. So that is a very obvious straw man that you have raised, and very obviously not a serious argument by you. You might perhaps wish to examine your motivation for posting such an obviously insincere suggestion.
“Taking the sick to where the shadow of our leaders might fall on them and heal them?”
If your leaders – or mine, or anyone else’s – were so moving in the power of the Holy Spirit that their shadows or handkerchiefs or aprons healed the sick then I am pretty sure that such leaders would be glad and honoured to do it for the sake of those who were healed thereby. And if it worked every time, they would surely be overjoyed to spend however much time it took to get thousands healed. Wouldn’t you agree? Or is this another insincere suggestion of yours?
“. . . eat only meat with the blood drained out of it.”
If we were in a situation where there were other believers for whom eating meat with the blood not fully drained constituted a serious problem of conscience – as was the case with the 1st century Jews – then we too would hopefully do the same as the first christians did, which was to avoid giving that cause of offence. But I don’t believe that you are raising this as a genuine query or a genuine problem: again it seems clearly to be insincerity speaking.
“. . . do we have to revert to parchments and scrolls instead of paper and books for our Bibles?”
Do you have a scripture reference for this? I’m not aware of any scripture that suggests any such thing.
Your second paragraph: I would be happy to follow each of those. I see no problem with doing it. The scriptures model it for us all. Presumably the early church saw no problem with doing any of it. Why don’t churches today do it? (I dare say some do, but most don’t). Could it be that they don’t take seriously enough the idea of obeying the scriptures?
I consider it more honourable and more obedient to seek to follow the directions given in scripture than to argue why we don’t need to, and then ignore them. Are we wiser than the scriptures? Do we have a better understanding of how to do church than the Holy Spirit has? Did he make mistakes when he inspired the writing of the various scriptures? Or are they still today profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness? How will we each answer on the day of judgement for our obedience on this matter – as indeed on every other?
For being baptised on behalf of the dead, see 1 Cor 15:29.
For scrolls and parchments, see 2 Tim 4:13.
Re. forbidding the eating of meat with blood in it, Acts does not tell us this was to avoid offending people (as Paul argued in Corinthians re eating meat sacrificed to idols). Rather, it seems to have stemmed from the observance of the Jewish Law which was later dropped.
I’m making a perfectly sincere point, as I am sure you are. My point is that we can’t just go back to look at the practices of the early Church and copy those. They varied from place to place and time to time, and many of them were cultural or determined by circumstances. What we need to do is look at the principles behind the practices, and apply those to our own very different circumstances – as I said above.
I didn’t say, “Why not remember” . I did actually say, “Then”, ie at the right time. So, you have Easter and Pentecost straight away. But, as I also said, I don’t think it matters overmuch. Everyone tries to follow Jesus! Many of us fail, at least in patches.
Athena, I’m not clear to whom or which to post you are replying (April 18, 2022 at 9:09 am). If your post is meant for me, I can only say that I quoted your exact words. If your post was meant for someone else, then please ignore this post of mine.
You quoted it, but ignored the point. And you’re being unnecessarily rude, particularly to Janet. This is a site where survivors of abuse gather. It would be an act of Christian love to remember that.
Brilliant Leigh. I agree. Have you discovered my books on the is subject on Amazon? have a good week.
As an ancient Anglican parson (86) I appreciated this thought-provoking article and I hope others will think about its ideas. Christians do not need to observe Holy Week. They did not observe it in early days but they observed the one celebration of redemption. Even when I was young, there were, for example, no Good Friday services in our local Baptist and Presbyterian churches. And church-going Anglicans should feel they can observe it in whatever way they wish. The churches I attended this year had the largest numbers since covid came, but neither of their sermons were of the kind equivalent to that dreadful film about The Passion (that I did not watch) and neither had the all too common, all year long sermons in my Sydney Diocese with their narrow emphasis on a substitutionary atonement. (Unfortunately nowhere could I find anything like what we had in my last parish for 22 years – a shortened BCP Matins and Litany and then Ante Communion, and Evensong on Good Friday, BCP Matins and Ante Communion (and church cleaning), and said Evensong and Confirmation on Easter Eve, and BCP Communion, Matins and Communion, and Evensong on Easter Day. By contrast my local neo-puritan parish church did have an informal Good Friday morning service but in the afternoon a beach barbecue ! For our one (less than an hour)observance at the large hospital where I am chaplain, on the Wednesday, we had in the one service as usual Palm Sunday prayer, reading and distribution of palms, Good Friday prayer, reading, and Good Friday buns, Easter Day prayer, reading and distribution of eggs, and then a short rather liberal revision of BCP Communion. I was joined by my Uniting Church and Pentecostal colleagues for this ecumenical service, with Roman Catholic staff the largest number there, but we had no sermon at
all ! If possible, there should indeed be various ways in which church folk can observe Holy Week, if they wish to observe it – and I think most will, but not all – especially if there is no satisfactory choice.
That’s interesting. In the American Baptist and other denomination churches I grew up in, there was often a Communion service on Good Friday, but need on Easter Sunday. The reasoning, I think, was that the Communion service re-enacts or recalls Jesus death on the cross, so is appropriate on Good Friday. Easter Sunday is about Jesus’ resurrection so you don’t want to be re-enacting his death.
I was quite shocked when we came back to the UK and I found it’s done the other way round here! But now I see our US free church practice, in evangelical churches at least, was based entirely on the substitutionary theory of the atonement, so I can make more sense of English practice. Though sometimes it still feels a little wrong!
It’s always healthy to know that whatever we take for granted as ‘normal’ can be done very differently elsewhere.
John Keble’s “The Christian Year” can still be found, and might be something of a revelation: poems, prayers and meditations in Keble’s beautiful language for every day of the liturgical year including Holy Week and Easter. It will be old-fashioned to some but in this and all liturgy it’s the inner meaning which has to be sought out and which counts.
A happy and peaceful Easter to all who read and contribute to ‘Surviving Church’.
It’s not only “the christian year” that is not to be found in the scriptures. The idea of liturgy isn’t found there either.
It seems to me that if christians (and churches) were to follow what the scriptures teach and what the first apostles taught – and scrap everything else – we would have a much purer faith and a much purer practice. Much closer to what Jesus intended: one assumes that what the first apostles taught and modelled they derived from Jesus’ instructions.
I’m afraid that’s just not true. We know from the scriptures that after the resurrection and Pentecost the did piles were often in the Temple. The temple was a hive of ritual, ceremonial and liturgy. We know that when Christian’s began to worship together, very early after the Easter events, they had ritual and liturgy. They also had Jesus’ instructions ‘do this in remembrance of me’.
Ritual, liturgy and ceremonial are at the heart of every expression of religion. Even the Quakers, who deny all three, are actually doing exactly the same.
Good point about the institution of communion. Paul was pretty early!
Athena (April 17, 2022 at 9:32 pm)
Breaking of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance of Jesus as part of the common meal is first seen in the last supper, then with the two disciples at Emmaus, and then in Acts 2. You could call it ritual or ceremonial if you wish (though I don’t see what value that would add) but you couldn’t call it liturgy, in the usual sense of pre-written words to be spoken at the appropriate moment.
What about the Lord’s Prayer?
Richard Ashby, Acts chapter three is the one that tells us about the hour of prayer each afternoon. It is mentioned not as an example for us to follow but as the context for the healing at the Beautiful gate. Peter and John never made it to the meeting – Jesus never asked his followers to hold prayer meetings, but they did heal the sick, as he had asked. I’m with Leigh on this. Ritual, liturgy and ceremonial are a distraction for followers of Jesus in my opinion.
Note that what the early Christians did can be read both ways, either ‘what a good thing to do, we should copy them’ or ‘why did they introduce practices that Jesus never asked for?’
My aim is to live out what Jesus asked the twelve to do, which is what he requested (Matt 28:20)
Richard (April 17, 2022 at 9:28 pm)
“We know from the scriptures that after the resurrection and Pentecost the did piles were often in the Temple.”
I assume you mean “. . . the disciples . . .” You had me there for a moment.
“The temple was a hive of ritual, ceremonial and liturgy.”
But the temple was never a model for the gentile christians, and a generation later it wasn’t a model for the Jewish christians, either, as it was destroyed by the Romans.
“We know that when Christians began to worship together, very early after the Easter events, they had ritual and liturgy.”
We know no such thing. Unless you can provide chapter and verse that say different.
“Ritual, liturgy and ceremonial are at the heart of every expression of religion.”
Such as when the Holy Spirit fell in Acts 2 and Acts 11? And that is what 1 Corinthians 14:26 is talking about? And that is how speaking in tongues expresses itself?
You could become Archbishop of Canterbury and still not be able to change the Anglican calendar of rituals. That ain’t changing. Officially. Unofficially many people within the C of E do what they want anyway, with their own take on what is appropriate as liturgy, including not calling it liturgy. And that’s within the C of E. The 30,000 other Christian denominations each has their own version.
On this blog generally it’s safe to assume almost every person has read the bible a lot. Each of us has his or her own take.
Steve (April 18, 2022 at 8:11 am)
The more important question is not whether most people have read the Bible a lot, but whether they or their church are doing what it says. My observation of churches in England is that they generally do not attempt to do the church the way indicated and taught in the New Testament. It could be asked why? I suspect that the answers would range from “We haven’t thought about doing that” through “Nobody else does it that way” to “We don’t see the Bible as telling us how to do church.” As the Americans would say, Go figure.
They’re probably trying. Do you always succeed?
I’ve just finished reading Proverbs of Ashes by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker (Boston: Beacon press 2001) who as two theologians and survivors reflect on the implications of the crucifixion … it’s powerful and thought provoking like the post written here by Peter B – some of you may know it
Here’s a couple of extracts:
The first from Rebecca Ann Parker: ‘I recognised that Christianity had taught me that sacrifice is the way of life. I forgot the neighbour who raped me, but I could see that when theology presents Jesus’ death as God’s sacrifice of his beloved child for the sake of the world, it teaches that the highest love is sacrifice. To make sacrifice or to be sacrificed is virtuous and redemptive. But what if this is not true? What if nothing, or very little, is saved? What if the consequence of sacrifice is simply pain, the diminishment of life, fragmentation of the soul, abasement, shame? What if the severing of life is merely destructive of life and is not the path of love, courage, trust, and faith? What if the performance of sacrifice is a ritual in which some human beings bear loss and others are protected from accountability or moral expectations? My childhood experience had helped me construct an idealized self who lived for others and disregarded her own needs.’
The second from Rita Nakashima Brock:
‘I have concluded that the Christian theological tradition has interpreted Jesus’ life in ways that reinforced trauma. I was isolated by the traumatic events of my childhood. The tradition has isolated Jesus as a singular saviour, alone in his private relationship with God. Jesus is depicted as unique and separate, carrying salvation on his own solitary shoulders… To be saved, I was supposed to have an isolated relationship with him, to need him when he did not need me. I knew from my own experience, that there is no grace in such isolation. Isolating Jesus from mutual relationships carried forward the trauma of violence without healing it. My theological obsession became how to show that vulnerability, mutuality, and openness demonstrate love, that these bonds of love and care reveal the presence of God. If Jesus did not participate in such bonds, if he was isolated, he could not offer any grace.
When the Christian tradition represents Jesus’ death as foreordained by God, as necessary for the divine plan for salvation, and as obediently accepted by Jesus the Son out of love for God the Father, God is made into a child abuser or a bystander to violence against his own child. The seal of abuse is placed on their relationship when they are made into a unity of being. If the two are one, Jesus can be selfless, can give himself totally to God, a willing lamb to slaughter. I thought of this system as cosmic child abuse.’
Oh yes. Powerful stuff. I’ve never believed the model of atonement that says God sent someone else was helpful. And I’ve never understood how Adam and Eve’s wrongdoing meant I got punished! Or even how precisely it became my impurity and tendency to sin! Lamarckism, the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Which happens not to be true. So how did I inherit Adam’s imperfections?
Thanks for these Fiona. May I ask what your own views are on these matters?
Hello Steve
I found the book a challenging and disturbing read – but felt great sympathy with the general debunking of atonement theories and very much agreed with the thinking of Rebecca Ann Parker on sacrifice. As someone brought up on guilt by a ‘martyred’ and ‘sacrificial’ mother who had regular bouts of ill health (all my fault), I can do without the heavy guilt making emphasis, and indeed on the obliteration of the self (child) for the other (more powerful parent) message.
I do not like interpretations of the crucifixion as placating the wrath of God, but rather see the death of Jesus Christ as resulting from our collective human propensity to violence and hatred – both state violence and individual violence that gets projected out. As someone who believes in the integration of the personal and collective shadow as one of the most important spiritual practices that we can undertake, I think this aspect has been underplayed in Christian tradition. There’s been too much out there stuff and not enough inner world acknowledgement…
For me there is rather too much ‘splitting’ into the ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ as different characters – rather than the appreciation that Divinity is a Presence that can have different manifestations.
Of course my thinking on this is a constant work in progress!!
Fiona, I agree with every word!
Thanks Fiona, I see where you’re coming from and thanks for this. I shared a similar home life.
Not wanting to get involved in the debate having benefited from both liturgical and non-liturgical settings I couldn’t help recalling with a smile one retired old Major in my Church who said ‘I’ve decided to give up “the traditions of men” for Lent’.
Leslie (April 18, 2022 at 9:45 am)
Did he go back to following the traditions of men after Lent?
A number of comments have been removed as being unnecessarily argumentative. Please observe common rules of respectful attention to the opinions of others. If people meet hostility on this blog, they will stop allowing their vulnerable ideas to be shared. I don’t want to go down the road of moderating all contributions but may have to.
Thank you Peter for sharing this, and I am glad you are avoiding re-traumatisation. No-one should be made to experience suffering, or feel guilty for not wanting to be emotionally dragged through the wringer in the way you describe. The opposite of trauma-informed practice.
I wrote about the horrors of atonement theory in my book. Presenting God as an abusive father who demands the slaughter of his own child is traumatising to a survivor.
For me, I relate to the Easter story from my experience as a survivor. I take comfort from the fact that Jesus understands my suffering – a fellow survivor. I lament in the bleak grief and hopeless of Easter Saturday. Sometimes I manage to find the hope & transformation & even joy of Easter day. Sometimes not.
I think God comes to us in different ways at different times, through scripture, through liturgy, through community. Revelation is personal as well as collective. So we all have a little part of the truth.
Belated happy Easter, everyone
And you, Jane!
If substitutionary atonement is dealt with in the horrible twisted way of the ‘Divine child abuse’ picture no wonder it makes us turn away where memories of cruel parenting come to mind. Perhaps another frequent Church celebration – “Mother’s Day” – should be given careful thought. Please think of those who would love to be mothers but aren’t able and give thought to words that are used. Also, though separately, remember that not all have gentle words of appreciation for the ‘mothering’ they experienced.
Of course I do realise that “Mother’s Day” was originally the day when one returned to one’s “Mother Church” and was not to do with human motherhood.