You just need to love God better
by Jennifer Kesler
Purtek’s recent post at Feminism @ The Hathor Legacy got me thinking about something I’ve wanted to say for a while, but wasn’t sure how.
I’m about to talk about a particularly hurtful privilege many Christians in my culture choose to engage in. Let me be clear: many Christians do not engage in this privilege (and instead do a very nice job following the example of a man who tried to think past privilege). And I’m sure many people other than Christians engage in something like this. I’m just sticking to what I know.
The privilege of which I’m speaking is telling others that if something bad happens to them, it’s because their faith is inadequate (or non-existent, as the case may be). This rationale gets applied to fellow Christians as well as people outside that religion. It is nothing short of victim-blaming. Got hit by a lunatic driver? You must’ve forgotten to pray. Tornado ripped your house’s roof off? God’s trying to tell you something about your wicked ways.
And then it gets extended to: is someone cheating you, abusing you, abusing your loved ones? Clearly, you need to pray much, much harder.
Like all victim blaming, it’s denial. It can’t be the system of privilege (which benefits me) that’s hurting you; it must be something you’re doing wrong.
But when you put this common privilege argument into a religious context, something especially ugly happens: it no longer needs to make sense, because it’s about faith. It’s the ultimate excuse for privileged people to rationalize away anything. And I do mean anything: wives have been advised to “pray harder” when domestic abuse lands them in the hospital, for one example. Because if the church acknowledges how often men abuse the power it gives them over their wives, it has to admit it’s time to go back to the Bible and see if we misinterpreted something, ’cause that dog don’t hunt.
There’s another added wrinkle religion brings to this privilege: when the religious people are the privileged abusers, it’s insane what they get away with. Ministers tearfully admit on TV, that yes, they had affairs/embezzled all the funds/etc., but Jesus has forgiven them, and so should you. And collectively, my society does forgive them because they’re a member of the right club. Meanwhile, the rest of us are responsible not only for our own actions, but for those committed against us.
Anytime I hear someone saying that some event or disaster is God’s way of punishing folks, I like to agree with them and add that yes, God really must share bin Laden’s disgust with the US because the way they hit the twin towers just right with nothing but a well-researched theory – that’s got miracle written all over it. (Yes, I’m being facetious to make a point.) 
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Posted in Religion on November 5, 2007
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So true. Being also Christian, I get some of this as well. I’ve been reading a good book that takes this attitude apart as exceptionally non-Christian (as you do, but with further emphasis on the question of what the purpose of suffering is if there is a benevolent God).
It’s so apparent that it’s not really about the victim(s) in any of these thing, but about some psychological element for the people saying it, and yet that doesn’t stop it from being exceptionally hurtful.
I couldn’t help thinking about the book of Job while reading this. Job has a bunch of terrible things happen to him – as we, the readers, know, because god and the devil got together and decided to see if Job loved god for reals or because of all the Nice Stuff he had – and his “friends” come along and tell him if he would just confess whatever the hell he did to cause his miseries, god could stop punishing him and bless him again.
Job sticks to his guns and insists that god is in the wrong and should explain himself to Job, and although god never does explain himself, and just asserts his power as justification for anything he chooses to do, god does decide to castigate Job’s friends for the fools they are.
Of all possible lessons the book of Job could be said to be teaching, the idea that suffering cannot be explained by fault of the sufferer is central and unavoidable. And yet, although Christians invariably point to Job when they must discuss suffering (the problem of pain, as C.S. Lewis alliterates it), the all too common attitude you describe is never called to account, never realized for the gross torture it is.
Purtek, I have a feeling the need to blame victims is more basic to human psychology than religion. Meaning, people already have it in their minds that bad stuff must only happen to people who did something wrong; as they learn about or embrace a faith, they just incorporate that assumption.
Firebird, that’s a great point. I think Job is a really complicated story that gets taught in so many ways, they can’t all be right. As you point out, Job is as innocent in God’s eyes as a newborn baby. But I have a feeling people take the Job story as an exception to the rule, not as a parable about the suffering of innocents and why a benevolent God would allow the devil to hurt good people. Which I *think* is the real purpose of the story.
To both of you, I’ve thought about this topic since I wrote this post and concluded that it’s not a particularly Christian problem. There are a lot of people who claim no religion or spirituality at all who need to believe bad things only happen to people who did something wrong. I think in fact that this idea is why people seek religion: they desperately need to believe there’s a purpose to all this suckage, so much so that it’s preferable to think they brought it on themselves to thinking horrible things happen indiscriminately to anybody at anytime. The fact that the religion contradicts them is something they would tend to filter out, as it doesn’t suit their purpose.