Blog Post
the Indignant Witness
God in solidarity
““God is not disclosed
in the crosses of our experiences, but rather beside our crosses as an indignant witness. God is neither behind abuse, animating it; nor above abuse, indifferent to it. Instead, God is closely present to the victim-survivor, making the absence of human goodness known to her.” Julia Feder in Incarnating Grace.
Perhaps one of the reasons why the psalms of the Hebrew Bible still appeal
thousands of years after they were written, is that those who penned them had an unerring belief that Yaweh was as present in the darkest of life’s moments as he was in it’s brightest. Perhaps it is this belief that frees the psalmists to feel their feelings fully and put them to song; from deepest anguish to highest joy the technicolour high definition of the human experience is given voice – their message is that we were never forsaken even if we thought we were.
The song ‘Its a beautiful day!’
sung here by its child author Jermain Edwards whose Caribbean accent drags the imagination away from the comfort and riches of white middle class suburbia, declares ‘Lord I thank you for sunshine, I thank you for rain, I thank you for joy, I thank you for pain!’. Can pain ever be good? I get it that rain can be good, we need rain to live, but what about pain? I am definitely in the camp of thanking God IN the pain but not FOR the pain! But could this child songwriter bring another life affirming perspective on pain? As a medical doctor, I know that pain is a good thing, the inability to register pain indicates that something is seriously wrong and needs attention. Pain is good information. We ignore pain to our detriment – be that physical pain, emotional, mental, spiritual or even social pain. So in that sense I can see why along with Jermain I might thank God FOR pain.
Photo by Reza Shayestehpour on unsplash
But what about the pain that we are left with from trauma and the senselessness of abuse? Well at one level I can see how it is a living siren telling us that things are not as they should be. It demands that we and those around us pay attention. It requires that action is taken to bring about healing.
Which brings me to my opening quote in which Julia Feder goes a step further, she helps us see God present to us in the midst of our pain, not simply as a healer or rescuer, but first as an indignant witness to our suffering. His presence and solidarity contrasting with and “making the absence of human goodness known to” us. His presence confirming that our experience is indeed the absence of human goodness… but not the absence of him. We are not forsaken. And so Jermain Edwards in his few years of life experience can sing a song declaring that the presence of pain in life does not indicate the absence of God, but rather he naturally responds with thankfulness to the God by whom he gets to live another day.
photo by Christina @ Wocintechchat on unsplash
In journeying with God through trauma and its healing I have found myself developing a personal theology in which the most startling realisation has been the solidarity of God in my forsakenness; that he would come not firstly as the healer and rescuer but rather in solidarity as an indignant witness.
Join me at a Beloved and Entrusted – Christian Training Day to explore this and other aspects of journeying with God through trauma in everyday life, or get in touch about hosting one of these days for your team or area.