A little 8 year girl was raped. Her attackers were four boys aged 14, 13, 10 and 9. My mind cannot begin to get around the horror of this violence.
Perhaps as shocking for Westerners is that the family apparently didn’t see her primarily as a victim, but as one who marred the family honor. Yet, for many people in the world the family’s reaction was not shocking, but normal and expected. In some parts of the world the family would not only shun her; they would kill her. They would do it for the family’s honor, which is why we refer to such murders as honor killings.
I’ve been reading a helpful book called Honor: A History by James Bowman. Here is the way he puts this reaction:
In honor cultures, a woman’s honor normally belongs to her husband or father, and the dishonor of any sexual contact outside marriage, whether consensual or otherwise, falls upon him exactly alike, since it shows him up before the world as a man incapable of either controlling or protecting her. Dishonor is more like a fatal disease than a moral failing. It requires constant vigilance and even then can strike anyone at any time. And its only end can be death.
This is such a hopeless and tragic view of shame. Many in the West will emphasize to this little girl that she was not at fault for what happened. They will help her not feel guilty. This is true, important and crucial. But will they be able to help her not feel so dirty? Will they be able to deal with the shame?
This is one more reason I love the One who bears our shame and makes us clean. “For it stands in Scripture: ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame’” (1 Peter 2:6).
How do you begin to help someone not to feel that shame? …. even though God’s word says that those who believe in Him won’t be put to shame, if someone has gone through something like that and feels the literal pang of shame from it, how do you practically help lift that shame from them?
Thank you for your blog by the way. I discovered it recently and find it interesting.
What an important and difficult question! My answer will probably seem too simple to some, but it is the answer that I think God’s word gives. The gospel. You are right that the word of God says that those who believe will not be put to shame. The difficulty comes when we have been so defiled by another that it seems impossible to believe such promises. We must preach the comfort of the gospel – how God is for us and works all things for our good, how he cleanses us from within so that we are pure and holy, how he makes us his own children and promises to never leave us. Then we must cry out for faith to believe. We must trust that what God’s word says about us is true. By faith we are in Christ, justified, sanctified, holy, blameless, undefiled, children of God, forgiven, etc.
It certainly isn’t easy and will only happen as the power of God breaks in to not only cleanse, but help us see and know we are cleansed.
We certainly need to also let her express her shame and her anger and her doubts and her fears and everything else she is feeling. What she says may not coincide with the truth, but we ought to wait on correcting her. God is not any less our Father when we doubt we are his children. Nor is he any less good when we believe the lie that he isn’t.
Thank you for the reply. Although the practical outworking of things sometimes does seem complex, at the end of the day what you say is true… however simple it may seem….. i guess sometimes what we need is just faith to trust in the simplicity of the gospel.