"For
the past two thousand years, we have inadequately treated the victims of sin by
neglecting to formulate doctrines for them while they walked through the valley
of the shadow of death" (Park, 2001, 2).
One would think that over the course of this much time an adjustment
might have been made, but this is not the case.
Instead, the church has become so firmly rooted in a doctrine of
soteriology that pardons sin without regard to the suffering of the sinned
against that their pain has nearly ceased to exist in the view of the
community. This essay will address the
concept of han: "the suffering of the innocent who are caught in the
wicked situation of helplessness" (Park, 2001, 47), the responsibility of
the church to come alongside victims, and the potential result of an evolving
soteriology that recognizes both sides of sin.
"Han is a physical, mental, and
spiritual repercussion to a terrible injustice done to a person, eliciting a
deep ache, a wrenching of all the organs, an intense internalized or externalized
rage, a vengeful obsession, and the sense of helplessness and
hopelessness" (Park, 2001, 48). No
one wants to experience han and yet the human life experience often comes
littered with moments of aching and wrenching that cannot be avoided because of
the sinful choices of others that, when thrust upon the innocent, change the
course of those lives without much, if any, input from the helpless. "In the life and faith of ancient Israel,
the wounded and weak did not characteristically submit in
silence to their suffering, as though their wound and weakness denied them voice. On the contrary,
such circumstance appears to have evoked a vigorous voice of protest which, in its utterance, is a voice
of hope that believes that the present circumstance
is not only untenable but can and must be changed" (Park, 2001, 34). "YHWH does not require
sacrifice, Sabbath, or fasting but justice for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant,
and all who are vulnerable to the rapacity of the powerful and prosperous.
On this view then sin consists in what is done to the neighbor; it refers to the affliction and humiliation of the most vulnerable in our
midst" (Park, 2001, 112). "Clearly,
in the Gospels - and indeed in the entire Bible - we are told that God stands
closer to the disenfranchised than to the powerful" (Park, 2001, 64). And yet, as the church today, we have instead
embraced a hierarchal model of power that often focuses narrowly on the
forgiveness of sins, as defined by the powerful, at the expense of the
marginalized. In the process, the church
has alienated the poor and powerless, heaping insult upon injury, han upon han,
essentially allowing perpetrators to go on sinning so that grace may increase
(see Romans 6:1), as if that is what grace is there for, all the while
insisting that victims humbly forgive or go to hell. "Demanding repentance
of sin from the abused, the hungry, and the humiliated is not good news, but
absurd news" (Park, 2001, 1).
There may be some confusion about the
responsibility of the church. It seems
that we have mistakenly accepted that idea that, "ignorance is a value to
be sought, for it also preserves innocence and avoids sin" (Park, 2001,
63). Instead of coming alongside the
suffering, the church has turned a blind eye, creating a form of cheap grace,
allowing, "the violation of the neighbor (to be) atoned for by virtue of
one's relation to the religious establishment that is quite willing to dispense
this forgiveness without requiring the inconvenience of dealing directly with
those one has wronged" (Park, 2001, 112).
This is a win-win situation for both the church and the
perpetrator. The church exercises power,
supplying the necessary forgiveness and grace that the sinner requires for
salvation, and the debt is often paid in financial resources, loyalty to the
church, and adherence to whatever social structure is deemed appropriate. "Sin comes to be highlighted as the
violation of the religious order, as a failure to comply with one's
responsibilities in the narrow religious sphere" (Park, 2001, 112). This is convenient for everyone involved,
except, of course, for the victim who continues to accumulate tally marks in
the loss column. There is much to be
said of the importance of forgiveness in regard to salvation, but "the
theological category of sin is not adequate to describe the full range of human
alienations" (Park, 2001, 73). This
leaves those who have suffered at the hands of others asking, "What is
salvation for me?" "If
confession is the cry of the sinner, then lament is the cry of the victim"
(Park, 2001, 168). Interestingly, all
alienation is remedied "by the restoration of communication and
relationship" (Park, 2001, 61). The
church has abdicated its responsibility to victims and thus restricted
salvation to only some, as opposed to all. "Salvation' or 'reconciliation'
entails not only repentance and the receiving of forgiveness (where appropriate) but more basically a
process of healing that includes remembering their
experience of being refused, grieving their loss, accepting their
vulnerability, forgiving themselves for
being so vulnerable, seeking restitution (where possible), and learning to reconnect and trust again"
(Park, 2001, 74-75). Redefining
salvation in such a way may be somewhat inconvenient to the church, but it
cannot be avoided if the church is to be responsible. "Much modern liturgy does not name but
avoids mention of victimizing life experiences" (Park, 2001, 169), but if
the church will not become the entity that brings healing, where is the
hope? The voices of the weak and wounded
must matter to us. Walking alongside
them is the way of Jesus.
Exploring an evolving soteriology
that recognizes both sides of sin is not an easy sell, but the right thing
usually isn't. It is, perhaps,
problematic that society as a whole, followed by the church specifically, has
fallen into a dysfunctional mode of addictional living that does not ordinarily
recognize the value of the sinned against.
People are viewed as commodities, and broken commodities are not
generally desirable. "To know shame
is to experience ourselves as deficient and ultimately rejectable" (Park,
2001, 77), and most people have known shame in some form or another. "The category of brokenness emerges from
the fact that human beings are by nature very vulnerable" (Park, 2001, 74). With this in mind, the church would do well
to remember that all people are
broken people with something valuable to offer the community. "The field of popular education has shown
that if people perceive themselves to be powerless, they must be engaged at the
level of their own experience if they are going to be animated toward
change" (Park, 2001, 97). The key
to this is that when the church engages people, wherever they are, change is
possible. A common observation is that
when we walk alongside the broken, becoming agents of healing and change; the
result is a community of people who love more deeply and aspire to then become
the healers that others need. "Human
persons need others. We need to be
wanted and loved, and we need to love and have our love accepted by
others" (Park, 2001, 78). For every
victim who becomes a perpetrator, we must ask ourselves, "What if someone
had walked alongside this person, in their pain, before this became a cyclical
situation?" "Vicious cycles are broken, because of daring human
intervention on the part of those who are perpetrators/victims of destructive
behavior" (Park, 2001, 40). What if
we broke these cycles and created new, positive ones, simply by reaching out in
love to bring value to the lives of both sinners and the sinned against?
"We
are looking for some meaning because we earnestly believe that the only thing
worse than suffering is meaningless suffering" (Park, 2001, 124). As people, all of us have experienced
pain. We are all broken. As the church, we have the responsibility to
come alongside victims, bringing the good news that salvation is for everyone
and that it breaks the bonds of alienation, regardless of fault. Loving like this opens the door to healing
and restoration that brings value to all lives, solidifying what it means to be
a part of one body, the body of Christ, the community of God's people, working
together to bring and recognize redemption even in the midst of pain and
suffering.
Work Cited
Park, Andrew Sung, ed. The Other Side of Sin: Woundedness
from the Perspective of the Sinned-Against. State University of New York Press, 2001.
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