Rebekah Rankin writers about "Jesus: The provider of hope, safety, and compassion".
*Please be advised that this post deals with themes of violence and abuse against women.
Over one in three women globally will, at some point in their lives, experience gender-based violence. If that feels like an abstract number, think about it this way: how many women or girls are in your church, school, workplace, neighbourhood, among your family or friends? Now apply the one-in-three statistic.
Elaine Storkey, former LICC Executive Director, described it as a ‘global pandemic’. This is an unfortunate reality of our workplaces, neighbourhoods, regular haunts – even our churches.
This article is from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity section on Connecting with Culture, Understanding Culture.
It saddens me to write the last phrase because the church should be a place of safety and sanctuary. But, like other societal institutions, it has a poor track record of supporting survivors of gender-based violence. At times, it has been complicit in, and even the cause of, their suffering.
Yet, it isn’t the response that Jesus offers in John 4 to a woman who has suffered loss and abandonment, and who comes to the well in need of more than just physical refreshment. Jesus meets her where she’s at. He tells her about her past not to shame her (a common misconception) but rather to show her that he sees her. In doing so, Christ displays the response that we all should towards those who have suffered violence and abuse.
The question for us as Christians is how we might follow in Jesus’ footsteps in our everyday lives. We are to model God’s character and love, proving that we are safe people to be vulnerable with. We are to make good work in caring for, and comforting survivors. We are to minister to them, revealing the compassion and love of Christ when they feel overwhelmed by shame and fear. We are to mould the culture around us, calling out violence when we see it. We are to be mouthpieces of truth and justice, speaking up for those whose voices society wants to turn a deaf ear to. We are to be messengers of a gospel which, at its heart, is about God’s love for the broken, the oppressed, and the shamed.
God, who entered into our own suffering, understands what it feels like to be broken and battered by society’s sin. And he made a way for us to not only get through it but also overcome it.
If we were to respond a little more like Jesus, the deafening silence that surrounds violence against women may well lift, providing hope, safety, and compassion to all survivors of gender-based violence and abuse.
Rebekah is the Team Operations Coordinator at LICC.
This article is from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity section on Connecting with Culture, Understanding Culture.
Rebekah holds a degree in Biblical Studies and French. She has written further on this topic; read here for wisdom in redeeming a legacy of betrayal and silence in the church’s response to violence against women.
