Keeping Faith
I just finished reading Jodi Picoult's book, The Storyteller. As usual, Picoult has thoroughly researched her topic--in this case, the holocaust.
Toward the end of the story, the main character, who is the granddaughter of a holocaust survivor, poses an important question to the federal investigator she's been working with for the express purpose of serving justice on a guilt-ridden old man who was responsible for atrocities committed toward hundreds. The worst of the atrocities wasn't necessarily the killings, as Picoult shows, but what survivors were forced to witness happening to those they loved. Extreme violence and death, that is.
So the main character asks the investigator this question in the course of them going to worship at a Jewish temple, where the non-Jew sometimes finds solace, though this secondary survivor can hardly stand to enter.....She asks how he could keep his faith while hearing of the evil he had to hear about, year after year, for decades.
His answer rang in my ears as the closest to my own experience of this last twenty-five years that I've yet found. While his theological understandings had changed dramatically over the years, his faith had been strengthened by the remarkable survivors who had somehow been incredibly resilient, considering all the suffering they'd been forced to endure.
Very few people understand on a gut level what so many survivors of long-term abuse by clergy demonstrate in their willingness to continue going on, each in her/his own way confronting what so many others who have not endured abuse, refuse to do. For, ironically, the denial (or DIM thinking, as I've long referred to the Denial, Ignorance, and Minimization) that initially takes over the life of 98% of survivors of clergy sexual abuse is EXACTLY what long ago took over the entire community of faith!
Make no mistake about it.
For much more on this and many other sub-topics related to this, please check out Enlarging Boston's Spotlight: A Call for Courage, Integrity, and Institutional Transformation
Toward the end of the story, the main character, who is the granddaughter of a holocaust survivor, poses an important question to the federal investigator she's been working with for the express purpose of serving justice on a guilt-ridden old man who was responsible for atrocities committed toward hundreds. The worst of the atrocities wasn't necessarily the killings, as Picoult shows, but what survivors were forced to witness happening to those they loved. Extreme violence and death, that is.
So the main character asks the investigator this question in the course of them going to worship at a Jewish temple, where the non-Jew sometimes finds solace, though this secondary survivor can hardly stand to enter.....She asks how he could keep his faith while hearing of the evil he had to hear about, year after year, for decades.
His answer rang in my ears as the closest to my own experience of this last twenty-five years that I've yet found. While his theological understandings had changed dramatically over the years, his faith had been strengthened by the remarkable survivors who had somehow been incredibly resilient, considering all the suffering they'd been forced to endure.
Very few people understand on a gut level what so many survivors of long-term abuse by clergy demonstrate in their willingness to continue going on, each in her/his own way confronting what so many others who have not endured abuse, refuse to do. For, ironically, the denial (or DIM thinking, as I've long referred to the Denial, Ignorance, and Minimization) that initially takes over the life of 98% of survivors of clergy sexual abuse is EXACTLY what long ago took over the entire community of faith!
Make no mistake about it.
For much more on this and many other sub-topics related to this, please check out Enlarging Boston's Spotlight: A Call for Courage, Integrity, and Institutional Transformation
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