A Theology of Sexuality and its Abuse: Creation, Evil, and the Relational Ecosystem, Part 2, by Andrew J. Schmutzer

An excerpt from The Long Journey Home: Understanding and Ministering to the Sexually Abused, edited by Andrew J. Schmutzer. From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

The Long Journey Home

A Theology of Sexuality and its Abuse

Creation, Evil, and the Relational Ecosystem

Part 2

 by Andrew J. Schmutzer

The Relational Ecosystem: Sexuality Amid Consequences

Christian theology has historically separated culture from nature and nature from theology, which unfortunately has dichotomized the temporal from eternal, material from the spiritual, and so creation from redemption.¹¹⁷ “Science has now stepped in as lord of the domain which man used to refer to Creation.”¹¹⁸ All this has left a fragmented universe¹¹⁹ and a truncated salvation that lacks holism and restoration (cf. Rom 8:19–22).¹²⁰ This is disconcerting at several levels.

As God’s vice-regents, people live and interact within a *relational ecosystem of dynamic proportion.¹²¹ In the garden-sanctuary, foundational bonds are established between: the human and God, humankind and the ground, human and animal, and between humans. Though somewhat distasteful to contemporary readers, in the theology of Genesis, one’s place of origin and the nature of their birth determine the core characteristics and purpose in life.¹²² In addition to humankind made in the image of God (1:26, discussed above), other significant “bindings” include: the “human” (’ādām) extracted from the “humus” (’ădāmâ, 2:7) and the “woman” (’iššâ) extracted from the “man” (’iÅ¡, 2:22). So Adam is uniquely bound to the fertility of the soil as Eve is uniquely bound to the fertility of the body.¹²³ The animals are also “formed out of the ground” (2:19) as “creatures that move on the ground” (1:30). Thus, the biblical notion of self is a relationally “embedded” self, rooted in a web of extended relationships.¹²⁴ This contrasts with the Western value of the individual as an unembedded self. It’s important to observe then, how the relational ecosystem is shattered in Genesis 3. The mistrust of rebellion breaks this web of relationships (3:5).

The “Bindings” Break Apart

Both functional and relational,¹²⁵ the compensatory judgments of 3:14–19 follow the order of transgression (serpent → woman → man; cf. 3:1–7).¹²⁶ Naham M. Sarna helpfully observes that the judgment for each party not only: (1) affects what is of central concern in the life of that entity, (2) but also regulates an external relationship.¹²⁷ Thus, there is some measure of correspondence between the offense and the judgment, point of origin, and future orientation. Relational hostility will exist between humans and the serpent (3:15).¹²⁸ The woman will pursue fertility amid relational antagonism with the man (3:16b).¹²⁹ Similarly, the man pursues the soil’s fertility amid its antagonism (3:17–18). Their points of origin no longer offer security or fulfillment. While the Creation Mandate remains, it is pain and alienation that bind relationships now (Gen 5:29; Eccl 2:23). The man’s “painful toil” (῾ṣābôn, 3:17) working the ground repeats her “pains” (etseb) enduring childbirth (3:16).¹³⁰ A final bond is ruptured when the couple is “banished” from the presence of the Lord (3:23). Once Abel’s blood soaks into “the ground” (4:10), it “will no longer yield its crops” for Cain (4:12), and ultimately a pervasive “wickedness” reigns in “the human heart” (6:6), stunningly matched by the “pain” (atsab) of the Lord’s grieving “heart” (6:6).¹³¹ Sin has ecological and cosmic effects—from creature to Creator, the entire relational ecosystem now suffers (6:7; Deut 11:13–17; Rom 8:22).

When theology is severed from the foundational Creator-creature relationship, then a veneer of anthropology is all that remains. The practical outcome is both a shallow theology of sexuality and a minimizing of the holistic needs of victims who may simply be told that “all things God works for the good” (Rom 8:28a).¹³² So Claus Westermann prophetically warns:

When the theology and the preaching of the Church are concerned only with salvation, when God’s dealings with man is limited to the *forgiveness of sins or to justification, the necessary consequence is that it is only in this context that man has to deal with God and God with man … what sort of God is he who does everything for the salvation of man but clearly has nothing at all to do with man in his life situation?¹³³

The biblical creation account, however, does not distinguish between nature, culture, and community. “For,” as William P. Brown explains, “every text in which creation is its context, the moral life of the community is a significant subtext.”¹³⁴

Sin, Abuse and Its Environment: “It’s Worse Than We Thought”

In order to better address the brokenness to the relational ecosystem reflected in sexual abuse, we must move beyond such notions as an isolated “event,” the autonomous self, and the legal equation of “sin-as-crime.” “Sin is disruption of created harmony and then resistance to divine restoration of that harmony.”¹³⁵ The problem is that standard notions of “sin-justification,” “culpability-innocence,” and “offense-forgiveness” are synthetic and binary, and therefore an inadequate diagnostic framework to identify, protect, purge, and bring healing to the individual lodged within a particular socalized context. To understand and address sexual abuse, a fuller spectrum of sin’s afterlife must be dealt with that explains the social embeddedness, *intrafamilial customs, trans-generational patterns, and *internalized beliefs.

Evil and Pollution in the Sin-Portfolio

Sexual abuse has a complex sin-portfolio, which helps explain the phenomenon of trans-generational victimization (cf. Matt 23:36; Luke 11:51). Sexual abuse-type sin occurs in organic systems of families, societies, and traditions, often going back generations. Sin has its own life cycle, its own environmental logic that moves from: (1) the act, (2) through the resulting guilt, (3) to the perversion that is brought to others as consequence.¹³⁶ Not all sin is equally devastating.¹³⁷ But sexually violating a dependent child, for example, is a profound betrayal of trust, an affront to their Creator, a toxin to their psyche, and the vandalism of community *shalom. Understanding the sexually abused means recognizing that any “act” is embedded in the tissues of relationships.

Evil is the resulting corruption of that environment, the exploding and imploding of creation that follows a despoiling act.¹³⁸ Cornelius Plantinga states it well: “[M]oral evil is social and structural as well as personal: it comprises a vast historical and cultural matrix” of derived effects—“we both discover evil and invent it; we both ratify and extend it.”¹³⁹ Other chapters address the tenacity of such *family dysfunction. Sadly, the sin of sexual abuse illustrates how “evil often springs from the best of things rather than the worst.”¹⁴⁰ This only complicates matters. Especially in a child’s developmental years, such fine moral nuances are easily confused and perverted. Pollution follows from corruption. For example, a father’s incest not only damages his child, it also pollutes his marriage—perverting the gift of sex at several levels.¹⁴¹ Those ministering to the sexually abused must be cognizant of the larger field of pollution within the relational ecosystem.

The Distortion of Worship

Pollution corrupts by addition, combining what should be kept apart.¹⁴² This polluting effect of sin inhibits worship through idolatry. “In idolatry a third party gets in between God and the human persons, adulterating an exclusive loyalty.”¹⁴³ By God’s design, intact families require sexual fidelity, so an incested child naturally begins to wonder if their abusing mother or father is their guardian or lover. The new abusive dynamic compromises the intended relationships by contaminating individuals, severing communities, and so defiling the victim’s proper orientation to God.¹⁴⁴ Third parties are always wedge-shaped.¹⁴⁵ Throughout Scripture, idolatry and adultery are mirror images, theologically (Ezek 6:9; Mark 8:38). When personhood is misplaced, the symphony of doxology is muted. Exploring sexual abuse, Alistair McFadyen also notes this distorting effect on worship:

Sin is hence, not so much free choice, as spiritual disorientation of the whole person at the most fundamental level of life-intentionality and desire … In all our relations, we live out an active relation or misrelation to God, we enter the dynamic of worshipping God or other forces and realities. Sin is therefore living out an active misrelation to God … Genuine transcendence, and so the grounds for genuine joy, are blocked.¹⁴⁶

Understanding how worship can be disoriented for victims of abuse means helping them wade through the contaminating and dividing effects of sin—whether as self-idolatry or other-idolatry. Caring for the abused requires us to bring counter-dynamics into their relational ecosystem. Healing may take time, even a lifetime. But between the forgiveness of the good Pardoner and the healing of the Great Physician,¹⁴⁷ a survivor’s worship can be renewed and even strengthened. That said, healing from abuse cannot be scripted. Restoring worship, however, may be the most precarious stretch of the journey home. Many wounded leave the path right here, at the juncture of joy.

Facing Sin’s Organic Continuum

Long after the sin may have been forgiven, the consequences can live on as part of the organic continuum of sin. This points-up the shortsightedness of the “blame-justification” model to address the multidimensional nature of evil surrounding SA.¹⁴⁸ As Mark Biddle explains:

[T]he biblical notion of sin as a mishandling of the uniquely human calling to bear the image of God in creation implies responsibility not only to God—first and foremost, of course—but also, in fulfillment of the call, to other people and to the created order. Forgiveness must, therefore, include remedy and healing … [for] the real injury that outlives the act of wrongdoing.¹⁴⁹

Helping victims move toward remedy and healing brings real-time dignity to real injuries. These are the raw, if not fresh moments, for the scripted certainties of juridical claims tend to slip out the back when the ambiguities of sin show up. But the subtler and more pervasive danger of modernity’s “turn to the subject” (noted earlier) runs aground here as well. When the autonomous self remains unaccountable or some consequences of evil are minimized because the harm was “unintentional”—then that act is placed beyond the realm of redemption.¹⁵⁰ Increasingly, “[T]he nexus of sin and its consequences—its afterlife in the everyday world—has no place in the popular Christian mind.”¹⁵¹

The organic continuum of sin works with antecedent condition in its socio-religious environment as: cause → effect → further cause.¹⁵² Stories such as the rape of Tamar (2 Samuel 13) show that, unless sin is checked, the continuum naturally “matures” into further results (Gen 15:16; Rom 1:18–32).¹⁵³ Evil’s corrupting effects twist and pervert reality. Thus the dynamic of intergenerational transmission reflects: (1) children impacted by their parents’ sins, (2) creating conditions that negatively affect the options available to the children, (3) predispose the children toward certain choices, (4) that contribute destructively to their present identities.¹⁵⁴ Sin is inherited not as legal guilt, but as the tendency to perpetuate parental behavior.¹⁵⁵

In summary, while God is eager to forgive and heal, he does not alter the moral and physical principles that structure his creation. “Sin, as a continuum, twists reality and passes on this contorted system as an antecedent reality to those who come after, limiting their freedom to perceive reality properly and, thus, also their freedom to choose rightly.”¹⁵⁶ From these factors, sexual violence can live on in families and social structures of society. Environment is not destiny, but environment is a predisposing factor.¹⁵⁷ The complex actions of biblical characters validate precisely this. In several biblical stories one sees heinous sexual acts whose actions in turn reverberate far beyond their own lives to warp the realities in which others act. Again, “One sees sin lingering in the world, distorting perceptions, offering inauthentic possibilities, skewing the system, perpetuating itself … forgiveness granted the first sinner in the chain of causation is sometimes, sadly, unable to interrupt the sequence if the seeds sown in the environment have already taken root in the lives of others.”¹⁵⁸ We can demonstrate this continuum of sin by noting significant similarities in four Old Testament narratives.

Escalating Violence in Old Testament Stories of Rape

Some familiar biblical stories of sexual violence illustrate how evil progressively shapes reality, colonizing itself through destructive social interactions that increasingly tear apart the relational ecosystem. In a stimulating study of Old Testament rape narratives, Frank M. Yamada uses a literary and rhetorical method to analyze the narratives of Genesis 34, Judges 19, and 2 Samuel 13, stories that reveal “explicit thematic or functional connections between them” when read alongside each other.¹⁵⁹ He finds that these “stories betray similar elements, development, and outcome,” namely: (1) rape (2) that leads to excessive male violence (3) and culminates in social fragmentation (see table below).¹⁶⁰

Yamada’s findings supply further biblical demonstration for the organic spread of sin within the relational ecosystem. In fact, I would argue that eight to ten elements are so consistent in biblical stories of sexual violence that they form a *type-scene, a programmatic sequence of familiar motifs.¹⁶¹ This literary observation is achieved by reading these stories collectively, not just as individual accounts. In the following table, I place Yamada’s three thematic observations within nine additional themes I’ve collected.¹⁶² Adding Genesis 19 as a fourth text only confirms the profile and intensification of these themes.¹⁶³ Observe the table below [Editor’s note: please read the full digital edition of Pneuma Review Fall 2013 for the table, appearing on page 42].

Table: Sexual Violence and Thematic Connections within the Relational Ecosystem

Other chapters [of The Long Journey Home] explore these narratives; here, I merely collate the reoccurring themes and highlight their progressive profile that reverberates between these texts. It is not surprising that numbers 1–6 reveal some antecedent moral, domestic, and cultural patterns that lead up to the female rape, excessive male violence, and social fragmentation—Yamada’s core three (numbers 7, 8, 10). Collective shame and honor are very evident here. What begins with traveling strangers ends with people sexually violated, entire communities socially estranged or physically destroyed. I will comment briefly on themes 1, 6, 11, and 12, largely through the Lot narrative that Yamada does not address (Genesis 19).

The way travelers encounter the city “gate,” whether welcoming or ominous, sets a *judicial tone for the entire narrative; stories that use menacing meetings of various kinds (Gen 19:1–2; cf. Judg 19:15).¹⁶⁴ Further, the “door” signals a deeper threshold. In the case of Lot, he is a keeper of both boundaries (e.g., gate, door), vital protection for vulnerable strangers. The door functions as “personal space,” a gateway to a far more private world (cf. Song 7:13; 8:9). Thus in these stories, movement itself is thematized with a threefold analogy: (1) entering the city gate, (2) passing through the door of a house, (3) and the threat of sexually penetrating the male or female body.¹⁶⁵ Sexual violence threatens every group, from male bodies to Lot’s daughters, and finally Lot himself (19:5, 8, 9; cf. v. 36)! Breaching so many boundaries is not only hostility, but festers into greater violence, social disintegration, and vandalism of community shalom for all.

The attempted violation of the house by the men of Sodom is the very image of rape … In all narratives of sexual violence in the Bible, doors and entryways are central concepts in establishing narrative space—marking a clear boundary between inside and outside—and the site of violation is always on the rapist’s own territory.¹⁶⁶

In these stories, rape—an abhorrent misuse of power—is both crime and catalyst, enflaming further brutalities. What happens to aliens and strangers is the antithesis of the command to “love them as yourself” (Lev 19:34). Rape is the symmetrical opposite of hospitality.¹⁶⁷ Not surprisingly, hospitality is implicitly tied to sexual danger.¹⁶⁸ Like a grotesque meal, “the host in Judges 19 offers the Gibeahites the concubine and his daughter as alternatives” to his male guest.¹⁶⁹ The rape of the concubine (Judges 19) is literally situated in a context of “religious, social, and moral decline,”¹⁷⁰—“In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg 17:6 [chap. 19]; 21:25 RSV). How true: the concubine dies “with her hands on the threshold” of the door, what should have been a “safe zone” (19:26). The host shockingly spoke out of his moral conditioning, “do to them what is good in your own eyes!” (19:24 AT).

For Tamar, Amnon uses the door first to isolate a nurse, then exclude the shamed (2 Sam 13:17, 18). By contrast, the well-ordered Hebrew home was to be God-fearing, the very doors themselves testified of God’s law and family shalom (Deut 6:9; cf. Exod 13:9; Matt 23:5).

Such stories can bring a rare expression of what Robert Alter calls “narrated monologue,”¹⁷¹ the narrator’s moral assessment or judgment—“They were shocked and furious, because Shechem had done an outrageous thing against Israel by sleeping with Jacob’s daughter—a thing that should not be done” (Gen 34:7b; cf. Judg 19:23; 2 Sam 13:12). A thematic profile is also evident in God’s absence or silence. So it is significant, I believe, when God’s name is entirely withheld from a chapter of rape, deceit, and gruesome murder (Dinah, chap. 34), only to reappear in chapter 35 with “God” [10x], “El Bethel” [1x], “El-Shaddai” [1x], a divine audience (35:13) and eight occurrences of the names “Bethel” and “Israel.”

The New Order for the Redeemed

Moral order in sexuality has always been required of God’s people, in any age. So it is significant to see how tightly Paul connects the Thessalonians’ sexual ethics (1 Thess 4:3–8) with Christian love (4:9–12), and their future hope (4:13–5:11). The Dionysaic *fertility cult of their day was not their hope for a sure afterlife. Why should the Thessalonian Christians not participate in the sexual mores of their culture, because Paul claims that the Christians “are part of the eschatologically restored people of God,”¹⁷² the fulfillment of Jer 31:31–34, with God’s law now written on their hearts. Inscribed hearts is an upgrade from decorated doorways.

God’s law that set his people apart in Moses’ time still requires the Christians of Paul’s day to distinguish themselves in their sexual behavior. Drawing on established texts of sexual conduct (Lev 18:1–30; cf. Ezek 22:9b–11), Paul exhorts a largely Gentile audience to “a holy life” (1 Thess 4:7).¹⁷³ Holiness is more prominent in 1 Thessalonians than anywhere else in Paul and, empowered by the Holy Spirit (4:8), practically embraces all of one’s life (5:23).¹⁷⁴ They must stand apart from their society in their sexual activity, controlling their sexual urges.¹⁷⁵ Believers recognize that the body is “a gift from God through which we can manifest our Christian discipleship and obedience to the Lordship of Christ in the public, visible world. Thereby accepting Christ as Lord becomes communicable and credible, which it would not be if it were merely an ‘inner’ or ‘private’ matter.”¹⁷⁶ This critiques “my sex life” mentality. So Paul warns them that “no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister” (4:6a). Because sin still pollutes communities, holiness is still required and “evidenced in sexual purity.”¹⁷⁷

The foundation for sexual ethics is doing God’s will (Rom 12:1–2; 1 Cor 6:20; Eph 6:6). The ground for sexual conduct “is their status as part of the eschatologically restored people of God predicted by the prophets.”¹⁷⁸ The believer’s new identity stems from their “new humanity ‘in Christ’ [that] provides new creation and new corporate solidarity. Thus evil forces in the world are more powerful than isolated individuals.”¹⁷⁹ The Christian community is to be morally preserving. As Thielman states, “Their relationships should not be characterized by exploitative sex but by a quality of love that signifies the eschatological work of God in their hearts … God has chosen them to belong to his society.”¹⁸⁰ So for the believer, the body is to be used to communicate what Christian service and futurity means.¹⁸¹ Moral order is necessary for believers who are awaiting the full arrival of their new creation.

Conclusion

Among other things, understanding biblical sexuality means our expectations are not only rooted in the Creator’s designs but we are also deeply aware of the fractured portrait of sexuality. We must acknowledge that Scripture’s intention contrasts sharply with lived-experience, but biblical guidance is also given because of sexual corruption. To minister to the sexually abused, it is not enough to affirm “original sin” as some kind of theological escape clause. Instead, we must actively engage the “actual sin” of their violation. Solidarity with the abused requires a vulnerable empathy.

Speaking out is important, but so is writing down. Locally, we need leaders in the faith communities to draw up comprehensive policies against sexual abuse—for the healing of this generation and the protection of the next. It is hoped that our analysis fosters a redemptive grief for the abused who need the informed understanding of their Christian brothers and sisters in order to heal—their spiritual family. At one level, I look for a day when collective restitution, in a sacramental declaration, can be made on an inter-faith and international scale.

We also considered the profound “fall-out” of sexual abuse, largely by noting the dynamic nature of the relational ecosystem. Victims, infant and elderly; the sexually broken among the abused and abuser—all share the dignity of the image of God that connects us to all realms of God’s creation. This not only shapes the spectrum of relational trauma, it also highlights the relational contexts of healing. Creation theology shows us the male-female prerequisite for sexuality, affirmed throughout Scripture. Theologically, personhood is found in royal community for an ethical mission, making sexual abuse—the plundering of a fellow-image bearer—an inverted mission capable of intergenerational pollution. In the ministry of healing the sexually abused, it is vital to affirm the embodied realities of life, rather than isolating the nature of the image in the interiority of the person.

Those seeking to help the sexually violated must face the colonizing effects of sin that surround abusive relationships. “Sin-as-act” must also be viewed within the larger “neighborhood” of evil. This is the trans-generational nature of sexual abuse that must be addressed by pastor, counselor, and community alike. The vandalism of community shalom often results from the antecedent effects of sin. This needs more open and honest address in believing communities. Christian leaders must understand sin’s afterlife, the polluting effects of abuse to sexuality. The way abuse disorients the survivor’s relationship to God is devastating. This needs more holistic address from therapists and pastors. The community of the redeemed can truly be the healing family for the sexually broken. The moral order among God’s citizens is to be a foretaste of mystery restored.

PR

Coming up in the Winter 2014 issue:

A new chapter from Part Three: “Addressing Sexual Abuse through Pastoral Care” excerpted from the book, The Long Journey Home: Understanding and Ministering to the Sexually Abused, edited by Andrew J. Schmutzer. Nancy Nason-Clark and Stephen McMullin, “A Charge for Church Leadership: Speaking Out Against Sexual Abuse and Ministering to Survivors.”
 
A Charge for Church Leadership—Part 1 A Charge for Church Leadership—Part 2

Interviews with Andrew Schmutzer about The Long Journey Home: Understanding and Ministering to the Sexually Abused and his chapter, “A Theology of Sexuality and its Abuse: Creation, Evil, and the Relational Ecosystem” as appearing in Pneuma Review.

 
Interview 1 Interview 2 Interview 3

This chapter is from Andrew J. Schmutzer, ed., The Long Journey Home: Understanding and Ministering to the Sexually Abused (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2011). Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. www.wipfandstock.com

Footnotes and select glossary appear in the full digital issue of Pneuma Review Fall 2013 and in the book from which this excerpt is derived.