Healing the Invisible Wound
It is probably one of the more hidden injuries that results from sexual violence.
It thrives on being unseen, sliding stealthily against walls and crouching covertly in corners. Hovering silently in the shadows, darkness is its bosom friend. For Westerners, it is an undesirable guest. We refrain from speaking of it, choosing instead to refer to its cousin called guilt. Unfortunately, we fail to realize that our lack of acknowledgement permits it to maintain its grip on us.
What is it? I am referring to shame.
Counselors such as Megan are familiar with the hiddenness of shame among survivors of sexual violence. She told me how shame causes some survivors to be in counseling for a long time before they feel safe enough to talk about those areas where shame resides. Megan clarified, “Those are the hardest places to get to because they’re the ones we fiercely guard against because they’re the ones [where] we’re at war with ourselves.”
Survivor Elizabeth spoke of what it takes for shame to come out of hiding. Elizabeth explains, “Shame is buried, and it keeps us in the dark,” but it dies when light is shed on it. According to Elizabeth, if survivors relate only one thing from their story, they are shining light on their shame so that it can no longer live in that dark place.
But to understand shame’s desire for invisibility, it is important to clarify the differences between guilt and shame. Many times, Westerners tend to lump these two words together, overlooking their distinct traits. I begin with guilt, which results from an action. Guilt ensues after I commit an act that breaks a law of the social, spiritual norms. If I tell a lie, I feel guilt. If I confess my lie, ask for forgiveness, and stop lying, the guilt is removed. Notice that the action is not a part of who I am.
While guilt involves an action, shame involves our beliefs about ourselves. It is part of our identity. For counselor Joel, the act of sexual violence committed by the perpetrator becomes the identity of the victim of sexual violence. He believes that when a boundary is crossed via sexual violence, the event becomes internalized, making it a part of one’s identity. No longer is it an event that occurred on a timeline, separate from the self. Instead, it becomes a part of the self. For Joel, this is where toxic shame sets up house. Therein lies the difference: Shame becomes a part of who a person is while guilt is felt over an act that a person commits.
This aforementioned difference indicates distinct remedies for each. Guilt’s remedy is confession and forgiveness while shame’s remedy is empathy. Since shame is part of one’s identity, shame requires someone to come alongside and identify with the other in order for healing to be experienced. That is, the self needs empathic relationships to heal from shame.
This is where the story of Jesus Christ is helpful in healing survivors.
The story of the cross of Jesus Christ is a trauma story in which God is revealed as a minister. The church has been instructed to tell this story repeatedly through the partaking of the Lord’s Supper until Jesus Christ returns. As we chew the bread and we swallow the cup, we are re-telling the story of Christ’s trauma on the cross. Unfortunately, the word stories that normally accompany the Lord’s Supper among Western Christians center more on guilt and punishment rather than the shame of Jesus’s crucifixion. It is Christ’s shame with which survivors will identify. This is where they will experience God’s empathy and healing.
Dying by crucifixion is considered to be one of the most shameful deaths. While on the cross, Jesus was naked. He did not remove his clothes voluntarily, but he was stripped of his clothes, which humiliated and shamed him even more. He was unable to wipe away the mixture of blood and sweat from his body, swat away the flies that bothered him, or control his bodily functions. Jesus was not isolated, hanging on a cross where no could see. No, crowds watched, and this is where shame emerges: it occurs in association with others. The crowds jeered and mocked him. They ridiculed him by saying, “He saved others, but he cannot save himself.” Both the Romans and the Jews understood the shame of the cross. Roman citizens were not usually put to death in such a manner, and for a Jew, those crucified were under God’s curse—abandoned by God.
As seen above, through his crucifixion Jesus Christ fully identifies with those who have been shamefully abandoned. Shame fears abandonment and rejection, and it separates persons from the community. This is particularly evident when we remember that he was crucified outside the city walls. In short, Jesus took on our shame. He empathizes with us.
For survivors, partaking of the Lord’s Supper is an opportunity to experience God’s presence with them amidst their trauma and shame—their own sense of abandonment. Through their eating of the bread and drinking of the cup, they are re-telling the story of Christ’s trauma and shame on the cross. They are participating in God’s story of trauma and shame similar to how God has participated in theirs. They are entering into the death experience of Christ as he enters into the death experiences of others. As such, partaking of the Lord’s Supper re-tells a story of identification, a story that heals. It is a story of empathy. Although it tells of Jesus’s trauma, a believer’s participation in the re-telling is an expression of hope for complete healing for all when he returns.
Church communities now have an opportunity to participate in God’s ministry of healing to survivors. In the church’s partaking of the bread and the cup together, the church is sharing in Christ’s brokenness, joining in each other’s brokenness. As such, the community is embracing all stories, including those of survivors. The Lord’s Supper, then, becomes an invitation to live this out in our relationships with others. We are invited to become present to trauma stories through empathic relationships as Christ has become present to others. We are being invited to join the struggle of brokenness of survivors by journeying alongside them in life while yearning with them for complete healing. Christ is calling to us to participate in his healing ministry of empathy toward survivors, thereby healing the invisible wound of shame.
Pam is a practical theologian who is ordained with the Assemblies of God. Portions of this blog are from her qualitative study, See My Body, See Me: A Pentecostal Perspective on Healing from Sexual Violence (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2024). Pam interviewed eight survivors and five licensed counselors for this study. The names of the participants who are included in this blog have been changed to uphold confidentially.