Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

A discussion with a family member brought me to musing on the “I am the good shepherd” analogy. And you can bet that, having grown up in a conservative evangelical church, I’ve heard it all before – what a shepherd did (and does) to protect the sheep and lead them in safety and good supply. But what I realised I’ve never heard is the other side of the analogy. If Jesus is the shepherd, then christians are the sheep, right? Now start thinking about the characteristics of sheep:
1) They do everything as a group
2) They’re pretty defenceless
3) They don’t think for themselves, they just do what the sheep in front does.

So the extension of a shepherd analogy is neither complimentary nor a portrayal of intelligence. Perhaps that’s why conservative christians hate people questioning their beliefs… because it’s a signal of a sheep who doesn’t obey the unspoken rules.

Of course, encouraging sheep-like behaviour suits the church down to the ground – and when I say the church, I mean the organisation. Obedient, unquestioning followers make for order and safety of those higher up the hierarchy. But – as with many of the church’s policies – it also makes for a member-mass that’s ripe for abuse.

I’ve been musing on PSTD and its symptoms, and this may turn out to be a multiple-entry thread, hence the no.1 in the title. But this first entry I want to explain a rather obscure symptom described in the DSM as “a sense of foreshortened future”. Now that doesn’t mean that I can’t visualise a tomorrow. But someone once put it this way: suppose you thought that your life would end tomorrow, or the next day, or even in a week’s time, what would you do differently? Ironically, that question is often used by christians to spur them to greater obedience and witnessing activity (though it’s not usually asked as one’s own life ending, but Jesus returning). And the point is not dissimilar. It is this – that your priorities would change. You would do things differently, and you would place emphasis on different things. And that is the reality that PTSD sufferers live with. One might almost say their priorities are skewed, and in a way they are. Some things seem pointless, while others take on a disproportionate urgency.

From this skewed perspective, and looking at one side of its coin – why push yourself to do the vacuuming if you’re not going to be here to enjoy the result (or suffer the consequences)? Why make an effort to keep yourself healthy, or looking good, if in a week’s time it isn’t going to matter? But the second side of the coin is an urgency to getting things done. When a PTSD sufferer thinks that something needs doing (in other words, something moves to the top of their priority list), that sense of foreshortened future compels them to do it NOW.

And that’s what a “sense of foreshortened future” means. On the one hand, it brings a lethargy, an apathy, over doing things that would otherwise be merely part of life’s routine, or part of self-care, because the ongoing sense of purpose in them that would see them done is simply not there. But on the other hand, it brings an urgency to dealing with things – often very small matters – that can push the imbalance even further off-centre, as normal priorities make way for a compulsion that often makes little sense, even to the sufferer themselves.

I don’t know how many times some well-meaning christian has said something to me along the lines of “but God has used your experience of abuse to bring good out of evil”.  And the “good” has usually been identified as one of the following: 1) it made you stronger, 2) your website is a great good, 3) your action has changed the way the church deals with abuse allegations… or something like that.

But what those things really mean, albeit often unconsciously for those who say them, is an attempt to make some kind of sense of what happened to me.  And many christians feel the need to make sense of abuse because there’s no other way of accounting for such evil being done while god is in control of the world.  But the cold harsh reality is that abuse doesn’t make sense.  And attempts to rationalise it as somehow part of god’s unfathomable plan simply don’t make sense either.  If god was really so great, and so much out for our good, then s/he could bring good without such evil being necessary first. Far better to see and acknowledge abuse as it is – an act of wanton aggression (once or many times) perpetrated on a defenceless victim.

In my opinion, seeking to make sense of it actually violates the enormity of the abomination it is.

Ooh, look! – Adelaide Catholic bishop Philip Wilson has apologised for the excommunication of Mary Mackillop. He even said that the excommunication was invalid. Of course, given that it happened nearly 140 years ago in 1871, I’m not sure that Mackillop herself cares much now… Though perhaps she should count herself lucky – Galileo didn’t get an apology till FOUR hundred years later!

But it seems to me that the significant issues here are that a) the church does occasionally admit to being wrong, even over such important matters as excommunication, but b) it takes an inordinately long time for them to do so. Ok, so the Sisters of St Joseph – the order Mackillop founded – are appreciative of the apology, but it really doesn’t matter a whole lot to most people now. The time when the apology should have been made was back in the 1870s, when everyone who had accepted the excommunication’s validity had the chance to revise their opinion of Mackillop, and Mackillop herself could feel the injustice restored (not to mention her faith in the church).

Of course, given that she was beatified 14 years ago, it’s clear that the church no longer sees her independent thinking as evil, but perhaps it’s time they acknowledged that faith in – and obedience to – the church is not the same thing as faith in – and obedience to – God, and stopped setting themselves up as such an immutable authority.

Given my previous blog entry on Fr Kennedy, one can’t help wondering if – in a hundred years time – they might actually have to admit they were wrong to sack him, too!