The Bill Zeller’s Suicide Note posting on CRC-Voices predictably generated some good discussion. A lot of it centering around the questions “can you tell the truth in church.” This was one of my responses that I wanted to save.

There are lots of reasons people don’t tell the truth in church, some of them good. I think we imagine that telling the truth is just a matter of saying a few words. It is never that simple. In a real community (not to be confused with a healthy community) words count because the people are connected and there are reasons that “don’t ask, don’t tell” exists.

I agree with what you said about Bill’s need to tell the truth, and the community’s need to hear it. That would have brought therapy, but every abused person knows that the words they say will cost them dearly. Few of us have the capacity to accurately imagine what the cost/benefit analysis will be regarding that disclosure, often because the abuse happen when they were children victims are particularly incapable of really doing that kind of communal calculus. You’re exactly right David that telling the truth doesn’t happen if it means my family might break up and everyone will blame me for the rupture, whether or not Uncle Milty really did the dirty deed. Sin is a chain that ties us to each other and ties generations together. Uncle Milty’s story then comes into the mix and Grandma Fanny then gets implicated and no one dared cross Grandma Fanny, pillar of the church that everyone thought she was. It goes on and on.

The “truth” as told by any human being is also, never, an uncomplicated thing. Victim becomes perpetrator, perspective is enmeshed with distortion, and Susie who as a child suffered what no one ever should has grown up to be part of the system.

This enemy is beyond us and can be exorcised only through prayer for a whole lot of grace, wisdom, leadership in community for creating robust enough communities of grace strong enough to withstand strong enough truth told by the loose cannons that we all are. Those kinds of communities usually gain strength like bones gain strength, through trauma and healed fractures along the way. Cross and resurrection are always deeply entwined.