Religion and the Abused Child

This is a tough one for me. Long before I could start to hate my mother and realize that what she was doing to my brother and me were wrong, I had to realize God wasn’t who I was brought up believing he was. I had to realize religion was wrong first.

See, we always went to church. When it was the whole nuclear family of ‘mother, father, son, daughter’ we went to a Catholic Church. Sunday school, Christmas parties, the whole thing. We learned the “suffer the little children” line and John 3:16, “For God so loved his son that he gave his only begotten son so that whosoever beleiveth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life in heaven.”

When our family’s cracks began to deepen, and the unit became mother, son, daughter (notice, I still put myself last, I hate that but it’s there.) we went to the Salvation Army. I was a sunbeam, in the children’s band. Later I was in the choir and Girl Guards and going to nursing homes and was a junior soldier and promised to not harm animals or have strong drink and on and on.

My mother was a Sunday school teacher. She drove shut-ins to church. She was in the Home League and all the other stuff. And all that time she was erratic at home; she was throwing hammers at televisions, throwing plates against the walls, at us children. She was threatening to kill herself, to have me raped if I misbehaved (this was a favorite of hers, “you want me to send you to your father so he can rape you?” she’d yell.) I have scars, physical as well as emotional, from her. And I began to hate myself for not being able to see the good in her that God obviously did.

The Bible is a strong weapon, and my mother was smart. That’s the danger of people, intelligence and mental illness. It means doom for the world. She would throw the Ten Commandments at as, to “honor they father and mother, and make them holy.” And I disobeyed God in not wanting to do whatever inane wish she had in her mind. Then there was some line about returning things ten-fold. So that meant if I yelled at her, or disagreed, she or my brother (she seemed to enjoy watching him hit me) would hit me or spank me ten times.

So I was going through the Bible together and found her favorite quote:

Proverbs 13:24 – “Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them.”

I hate that so much, the power it had. There are others of course:

“Do not fear what you are about to suffer: - Revelations 2:9

“I will come like a thief and you will not know at what hour I will come to you” – Revelations 3:2 (This justified those times she’d drag my brother and/or I out of a sound sleep and bang our heads together, throw us under a cold shower, cut out chunks of our hair, spank us, whatever.)

“Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” Rev. 22:15 (This was why we couldn’t talk to anyone outside of the family about what was going on inside, because they were evil and just wanted to rape us and my mom was our savior.)

See, there was Jesus, the symbol, pure innocence. The picture of Jesus with the children surrounding him was somewhere in the house. He was the goal, you have to suffer to learn, and through that suffering comes redemption. God is good, and if you are in pain it’s because you deserve it, because you did something wrong.

That guilt complex was built into us from an early age. Everything was our fault. If mother was unhappy it was our fault. Did we not understand how much she gave up for her children? That she sacrificed her marriage, her last chance at happiness, to keep us safe? Did we not see that just as Jesus gave up his life on the cross she had given up her life of adulthood and sex to care for us?

Suffer the little children.

So as I aged and was able somehow to free myself from this brainwashing, how could I hate her without hating the God that created her? How could I not be mad at a God that let this happen? When she aligned herself with religion to such a degree that Mother and Jesus were synonymous, how is a child supposed to cope?

I tried, for many years after I left I tried to return to the church, and can’t. I went to a few Salvation Army’s but am still pissed that they couldn’t see her evil, didn’t question our bruises or tear-stained cheeks.

I tried other churches, but haven’t felt God.

However, I still feel him in my heart. I still talk to him, even if it’s arguments at this point. How can I be happy in a creator like that? How can I say that suffering is justified? That we need it to learn, to grow closer to God.

I feel like a failed Job experiment. He had no problems watching Job lose everything and still cry to him, my mother did the same. She admitted that she enjoyed watching us cry and then ask her to kiss the very ‘boo-boo’s she had created. “Dogs are smarter,” she’d say, “you guys keep coming back.”

It’s all so painful to try and figure out.