So often these articles are about controversial topics. But far more common in my counseling are the sessions of helping the abused. And on this most holy of weeks, it is appropriate to focus on those who carry such sorrows in their hearts.
A key principle from my book Into the Light: Healing Sexuality in Today’s Church is this: “Our genitals are the closest outward connection to the deepest part of our being.” By God’s design, that’s how we are wired. To be touched on our genitals is so very different than being touched anywhere else. It’s like being touched on our very hearts.
This principle has so many applications, but when you think of the violation of abuse, it drives home the significance of just how very violating unwanted touch is. No one should be touching our genitals except someone who is in covenant with us.
Good Friday
While we usually think of the atonement of Jesus as paying for our sinful rebellion, there was so much more going on as he carried his cross to Calvary. Note what Isaiah foretold:
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted. Isaiah 53:4 ESV
On the Via Dolorosa, as he stumbled under the weight of the cross, he was also carrying our sorrows. Is there any evidence of this? I believe Luke 23 provides a glimpse:
27 And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. 28 But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Luke 23:27-31 ESV
Astounding! He’d been beaten to a bloody pulp, thoroughly humiliated, and was now trekking toward an excruciatingly slow and painful death. Yet he urges these weeping women to mourn for themselves. Why? Because 30 years later the Romans would lay siege to their city, starve its citizens, conquer it, and commit horrifying atrocities.
He carried our sorrows as he carried his cross, including the pain of these women who would suffer atrocities at the hands of soldiers.
Psalm 34:18 is a go-to verse when counseling the abused: “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.”
Has your heart been broken? Do you bear a burden of shame and pain? Or perhaps your ministry puts you face to face with the trampled and trounced. God draws near to you, even as you were so very near to his heart on the road to Calvary.
Mark - I truly loved this perspective, that Jesus died not only for our sins, but bore our grief and sorrow. This will be so meaningful to many.
The suffering of Christ has brought me great comfort. I know He GETS it. We don't talk enough about suffering in church. It's so important not to skip Holy Week. Many of us feel like we are stuck in that space, but we can take heart in the knowledge that it will end well eventually, just as it did for Christ.