It's Not Surrender

My abuser was an evangelical minister. God, prayer, heaven, and hell were all an integral part of the sexual exploitation perpetrated against me. That connection between abuse and God placed a very deep wedge between me and God for many years. In fact, I spent a substantial part of my youth wanting absolutely nothing to do with God, church, or Christianity. They were all one in the same - in my mind - with abuse and my abuser. As my mental, emotional, and spiritual state deteriorated, I soon recognized I needed something more - but to acknowledge that "something" was God was the equivalent to surrender in my mind. If I reached out to God, if I embraced Christianity - that meant my abuser and the system that my abuser belonged to . . . won! That's how it felt to me, at least.

Research done in 2006 revealed that those who had a strong history of religiosity (measured by consistent church attendance, involvement in church activities, and life-long affiliation with religious groups and practices) made up the highest percentage in a selected population of incarcerated sex offenders. In other words, strong religious ties often translate into a higher likelihood of sexual offenses and other forms of abuse against children. The other disturbing part of this study revealed that this same group also perpetrated against younger children than the other sex offenders who described themselves as atheists or recent converts.

What this means to many abuse survivors is that their abusers were also deeply involved in religious community and spiritual practices. This effectively obstructs your own spiritual pursuits and creates enormous barriers to finding peace through sacred practices - such as prayer, communion, church attendance, or Bible study. In fact, for many abuse survivors, these practices, icons, and symbols bring terror, anxiety, and repulsion because of their association with abuse.

Your spiritual journey beyond abuse must include growing beyond your abusers' defilement of faith, religious community and practices. Your resistance to God's gentle work in your life may have more to do with fear of alliance with your abuser than an actual struggle with faith. What you must understand is that even if you pray the same prayers, read the same Scriptures, attend the same church, believe the same doctrines as your abuser - that has nothing to do with your abuser.

Your faith is YOURS. No one who abused you is the "winner" if the faith you find hope, strength, and comfort in looks and sounds like theirs. The spiritual quest you are on belongs to you and you alone! Even if you abusers smugly take credit for your faith-walk and have the audacity to continue maligning it with their persistent insistence that you are "returning to their fold" - you are not!

To pursue God, to follow Christ, to pray, meditate, sing, fellowship, worship, study, or genuflect in the same ways your abusers did (or do) is NOT - I repeat, NOT - surrender to them in any way, shape, or form! This is YOURS. You must embrace that idea with total confidence. Your path to walk. Your faith to believe. Your rituals to find comfort in. Your prayers to pray. Your songs to sing. Your faith community to belong to. Not theirs - YOURS.

It is not surrender. It is a declarative alliance with the God of comfort, hope, grace, mercy, and love. It is to latch on to the "I am" from the Hebrew Bible and the "I am" from the teachings of Jesus (Exodus 3:14; John 8:58) and join your voice with that identity. To hear yourself say, "I am" and know that has NOTHING to do with your abusers' perversion and EVERYTHING to do with your pure heart that is on a spiritual quest.

It's not surrender. It's conquest – and you are the conqueror.