Concluding ‘The curse
of choice’, the paper about recreating a
borderline/narcissistic mother in the Person of
Christ thus creating a fake Christ, I wrote:
“I do not know whether
the necessity of restoration of a normal, i.e.
as commanded by God, order of attachments
explains why a habitual act of sacrifice “all or
nothing” can suddenly work with Christ and open
up an opportunity for God to act. Is it because
the fake god is thrown from her pedestal and now
the real God can act? …Perhaps the wisest thing
that can be said here is that something
happens, and that is it.”
I think that
“something” is “trusting God”, nowadays a much
overused term which, by association, brings to
mind Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s term “cheap grace”.
Or perhaps it just looks overused, cheap or even
laughable to a person with c-PTSD. The reason
for that is simple: such a person has paid for
her trust with her ruined life. What the
good-willed advisors often fail to understand is
that a trauma, the product of childhood abuse
inflicted by a parent, is not something that
“happened once upon a time” and thus can be
“fixed” with the notion “your parent hurt you
but God will not, trust Him” although in itself
this statement is true. Yes, God will not hurt
her; it is her who will. And, paradoxically,
the more she applies herself to practice
trusting God the more pain she will feel.
I do not know whether
it is more or less difficult for an abused
person to acquire an initial faith in God. I
suspect it depends (as always) on an individual.
God also is capable of “breaking through” and
granting a person the initial spark of faith,
regardless of her condition (accept her will not
to have anything to do with God). My concern
here is with what happens next. Naturally, after
the initial excitement of finding God a person
begins developing an attachment to this new
figure in her life and here, in this area of
personal relationships the real problems begins,
of a conflict between intellectual knowledge and
the knowledge ingrained in her body.
A typical example of
the battle between the two: a soul is trying to
lift itself towards Christ, Who she has learnt
is Love, in prayer and then the tiny irrational
thought appears, oblique and murky, typically
along the lines “but what if…” (“…I made a
mistake”, “…did not understand” etc) – the body
tenses, starts sweating, breathing almost
ceases, then terrible fear comes – and all the
riches of theology can do nothing because the
body went into its familiar “in a premonition of
abuse” mode. Interestingly, the usual methods of
relaxations like deep slow breathing do not work
in this case or work poorly. Once triggered, the
oppressing mode of existence tends to restart
itself as soon as a person stops forcing herself
to “relax”.
The notion of “what
if…” is the key here I think. It is a typical
automatic thought and it is the antithesis of
trust. There is not “what if” for absolute
trust; if there is then it not trust but
semi-trust and this will not do, with the
Christian God. What is astonishing here and what
cannot be emphasized enough is that the fear =
the memory of abuse is triggered by the very
attempt to trust Someone who is absolutely good.
The fear of evil is triggered by good.
The mechanics are simple: a child trusts her
abusive mother; no matter how much she is hurt
by her she will continue trusting; trust and
pain are one for her; every time she reaches
for her mother she unconsciously expects to be
hurt. Exactly the same is true when later she
reaches for God. The childhood abuse served as
the tool for corrupting the absolute ideas and
even God’s attributes: Good, Love, Trust, Truth,
Life. Ultimately, God is experientially (in the
person’s mind) rendered a Manichean god,
incompatible with the Christian revelation.
This picture is
profoundly metaphysical. I think it is much more
helpful than the simplistic notion of “just
trust God and you will be fine” because it
acknowledges the reality, not just biological
but metaphysical as well. An abused person’s
brain = body in which her soul feels imprisoned
is a miniature model of creation, “groaning in
travail”. And there is no other way out than the
Son of God – just as the “just-trust-God” people
say. The question is not about trusting as such
but how to trust without being pulled down into
hell, by the past which keeps recreating itself
in the future thus making the present – the real
present in which the presence of the Son of God
can be experienced – virtually non-existent.
It looks to me that a
person with c-PTSD has two major choices. The
first is to be in a very superficial
relationship with God, when God or, better to
say, the notion of God serves as a guarantor of
carefully maintained security. This option
usually takes a rigid, ritualistic form; the
person “fulfils the obligations” while remaining
emotionally numb. I am not condemning this
choice by the way because it is certainly better
than nothing and, for some, is the only thing
they can endure, initially. The second choice is
as extreme as the abuse, literally throwing
oneself into God no matter what, giving all to
Him. This action is best described by St John of
the Cross, as “nothing – nothing – nothing” but
God only. In my opinion, such an action can be
accomplished out of desire for God or out of
extreme despair, when one sees herself as a
total wretch and has no other option but
collapsing into God in the hope that He would do
something.
Those two reasons for
this extreme action are not mutually exclusive
and both require some experience of God. This is
very murky territory because it is impossible to
write about such a unique and intimate thing,
for each individual, as experience of God
without falling into the simplicity of shameless
platitudes; it is also God Who grants such
experience. However, what is common for all of
them is the need of each individual for the
Person, Another One Whom she may desire or into
Whom she may collapse, the Son of God. And here
we are entering into the even more difficult
area, of God’s revelations about Himself and the
hidden desires of human hearts, something that
may be grasped only instinctively.
Jesus Christ is One in
Whom “all come together”, as His numerous names
indicate: Physician, High Priest, Brother, Son
of God, the Beloved, the Desire of all nations,
Love, Truth, living water, resurrection and
life, Bridegroom, everlasting Father, alpha and
omega, and so on. It means that a person can
relate to Him differently, in a way He grants
her and as she chooses or accepts. While I have
no intention of representing some ways of
relating as more “effective” I feel the need to
discuss a currently much neglected way of
relating to Jesus Christ, as the Bridegroom of
one’s soul.
But first it is
necessary to restate that this discourse has
nothing to do with treating the relationship
with Our Lord as a mere “therapeutic tool”. I
have to say it because too many sources do
precisely that, treating what must be treasured
for its own sake as a means of achieving
“well-being”. In the case of Christ it is not
only unacceptable but does not work unless a
person has at least some wish to know Him as the
Person, for His own sake. It is probably not a
mistake to assume then that the thirstier an
individual for the Person of Christ the more
personal ways of relating to Him are opening to
her.
It would be misleading
to say that I have thought about Jesus Christ
the Bridegroom of the soul in connection with
childhood abuse only. His manifestation as the
Bridegroom is entirely scriptural and well-known
to the tradition of the Church. Every Christian
is betrothed to Christ in baptism and is
supposed to anticipate the consummation of this
relationship, as a mystical marriage with Him,
in the end of times. It is the eschatological
teaching of the Church about the destiny of each
human soul and the Church. At some point though it occurred to me that relating to Jesus
Christ as the Bridegroom is in many respect very
distinctive and different from, let say,
relating to God as to a parent – distinctive,
stupidly it sounds, on the level of neural
pathways.
Both modes of
relating, as to a parent and as to a spouse,
involve the notion of trust. However, those
“trusts” are of different kinds. The Scriptures
define the relationship with a spouse as far
more close and intimate then with a parent, as
“one flesh”. Consequentially, the most radical
trust is demanded by the relationship with
Christ as the Bridegroom because it involves not
only the soul but the body as well. This may
sound shocking, especially now, when the
teaching of the Church regarding this issue is
somehow pushed aside as something
“old-fashioned”. I will attempt to explain.
When a believer refers
to Christ as her Divine Bridegroom it
essentially means the following: “I am totally
Yours” i.e. all me, my soul and my body, I trust
You absolutely and I love you absolutely and –
very distinctively – “I desire You”. A normal
individual could not say those words to one’s
parent; it is radically different statement, of
a desire to possess and be possessed. A believer
here is not just a helpless child, someone on
the receiving end but one who can give God
something that He wishes for, her love, and not
sterile disinterested love (the parallel with
the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet and whose
sins were forgiven because she loved much is
very apparent because the Lord there speaks to
His host about her actions along the lines “she
gave me what you did not and what I needed, her
love”). Whatever happens, it appears that the
psyche of an abused-by-a-parent person when
addressing the Son of God in this extremely
intimate way somehow begins escaping the
familiar “ruts” which the abuse burnt into her
brain. She begins feeling something else, a
different kind of trust and love, unpolluted by
the past. Such a radical trust opens the gate
for the inflow of God. Desiring God seems to
play the crucial role because it seems to
counteract that “Manichean” damage of the body;
the intense desire of the spirit is experienced
in the soul and body and thus sends a person
into a totally different mode of existence when
the spirit and soul and body are one and
experience Love untainted by the evil, Love in a
pure form. I would go so far and say that it
appears to me that for many abused individuals
the experience of the love of Christ as of their
Bridegroom is the only way to God, simply
because only in a state of a radical openness
can such people perceive the reality of God.
All the above does not
mean that I propose to those who suffered
sustained abuse to go for Christ the Bridegroom
so to speak. I find it worth of thinking though
that typical female figures in the Gospels are
usually severely damaged, possessed, outcast –
and their relationship with Our Lord, after He
healed them and they followed Him certainly had
the overtones of that very intimate kind of
relationship, with the Bridegroom of their
souls. Thus there is something there, and not
just for those who are damaged or only females.
Finally, I feel the
necessity to clarify something that may be
missed, that such radical trust and changes in
the soul and body of a believer could not be
possible if she did not experience the Son of
Man as the real Person – just like the women in
the Gospels. It takes a person to undo the
damage done by another, so no impersonal “God
inflow” or “trust in God in general” can do
much in this situation and this is why “general
trust in God”, God Unknown, cannot really work.
Hence true healing (and true spiritual life)
must start from beginning to know the Person of
God whom a person is supposed to trust. And,
completely contrary to human logic it may appear
that God demands the most radical trust from
those who are least capable of it. Or perhaps it
is not God but those damaged by the abuse can
see more need for God to crack in, and more need
for radical trust in Him – not light-weighted,
empty worded “trust” but the trust out of sweat
and blood.
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