© Hannah Wells
October 19, 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
SERMON
A few weeks ago, I heard a statistic on TV that just floored me. It shocked me so much I wrote it down. That is, four times a day in this country, a woman is killed by her boyfriend or husband.
Numbers and statistics don’t work well in sermons, so that’s the only stat you’re going to hear today. Four women a day are killed by their partners.
As hard as it may be, I want us to try to put our defenses down for this topic and begin from a place of total humility. As I was writing this sermon, I realized I kept trying to intellectualize it, and I had to say to myself, “who do you think you’re fooling?” That is, I had to admit that this is a really hard issue to get close to. Sometimes it’s easier to intellectualize an issue in order to keep it at a distance. The truth is I don’t really understand why people are hard-wired to be so violent towards each other, especially people who love each other.
Last week, a member of the church handed me an editorial from the Austin American-Statesman. The headline was ANOTHER REASON WHY DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS EVERYBODY’S PROBLEM. I’ve included this article in your order of service, and you’re invited to read it at your convenience. What I learned after reading it was something I wasn’t aware of: that apparently the experts have been saying for decades that domestic violence is everybody’s problem. I mean, I know it’s horrible, but what do I have to do with it? I live by myself, I don’t know of anyone who’s in an abusive relationship, and generally I feel powerless to change a statistic like the one I mentioned at the beginning: four women each day get killed by their sweetie. That’s awful, but how is it my problem?
I know this much: domestic violence, whether it’s in the form of physical or emotional abuse, is about power and control. It’s also very much about learned behaviors and the ways we learned to deal with anger growing up. We’ve all heard about cycles of abuse, and how history tends to repeat itself, as people grow up and become like their parents. What does it take to break the cycle of violence and abuse in a family?
I believe this is where religion can help. Because breaking the cycle – any cycle – takes a lot of work and courage. It involves saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know where this rage comes from. I don’t understand it. I need help.” It also involves letting go of trying to control people and giving up the illusion of power. One has to surrender the compulsion to control people. The need to control others comes out of a deep insecurity and fear. Fear that one’s weaknesses may be exposed, or fear that in order to not be hurt, one must hurt others first.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t people who are just plain brutal and cruel – there are, and they tend to have anti-social personality disorders. But I think it’s safe to say that all of us, to some extent, have developed defense mechanisms designed to protect the most vulnerable sides of ourselves. The question is, are these defenses healthy or volatile? Is the defense more like offense?
The reason religion has a role to play here is because our belief system can have a profound influence on our actions – our religious beliefs can help us to change. When we are most spiritually fit is when we are most likely to be honest with ourselves. What does being spiritually fit mean? I’m just talking about honesty here, plain and simple. The honest person is free of guilt, anxiety, and is especially free of fear. Sometimes that honesty is between you and your God, but in relationships, that honesty is how you stay morally accountable to your loved ones and to yourself.
I’m not sure, but I think at the heart of the issue of domestic violence is how to take responsibility. As religious people, we try to be morally responsible. Even though the Bible is full of violence and mayhem, I think its transcendent purpose is to try to teach people how to be morally responsible to one another. That’s what religion is for, whether or not we use a creed.
All we really have is each other and our relationships, the people we love the most. Life is about constantly working toward right relationship, and it sure isn’t easy sometimes. You are only yourself in relation to others and in relation to God. But the point I want to especially drive home is this: everyone, whether they are an abuser or a victim, is a child of God. In fact, it is specific to our tradition, Unitarian Universalism, that no one is damned. The Universalists refused to believe in a punishing God, and we still believe this is true. Everybody can find their way home and be forgiven.
Forgiveness and saying I’m sorry is a big part of all this. One reason why it’s so hard for abusers to change is because there’s such a social stigma around this. Ideally, religion can serve to help an abuser change by offering forgiveness, not punishment. If we are as non-judgmental as possible, a religious community can support an abuser on the road to recovery.
Because the truth is, throughout our lives, we are all likely to move across the boundaries of abuser and victim. That is, at times we fill the role of victim – especially as children, and other times the role of abuser. If you’re saying in your head, no, I don’t think I’ve ever been in either role, I would really question that. Abusing and being abused at some point in our lives is part of the human condition – and maybe that’s why domestic violence is “everybody’s problem.” Because so many of us know about these frightening power dynamics all too well.
I’d like to share a little bit of my own experience. I grew up with a parent who tended to – well, ‘explode.’ There was the occasional slap across the face or spanking, but it was really the screaming and yelling that characterized the scariest moments of my growing up. It was a kind of verbal intimidation. I noticed that in some of the first romantic relationships I had as an adult, I tended to do the same kind of thing. I’d let little things that bothered me add up until, boom, the anger could no longer be contained and I’d explode. After a while, I really disliked this about myself. It reminded me so much of the fear I felt sometimes growing up, and that feeling of being out of control scared me.
It was pretty easy to blame my upbringing for this at first. But part of growing up is realizing that ultimately you can’t blame anyone for anything. It was up to me if I wanted to change; I had to take responsibility for myself.
And what I’ve discovered is that, even though I believe I have learned some healthier tools to deal with anger, I’ll never really be “cured.” I’ve learned to be direct with people so anger doesn’t build up, I’ve learned to take time outs, to sleep on it, to meditate, to try to put myself in other people’s shoes. All this stuff helps a lot. But I don’t believe I’ll ever really be cured of the ‘explosion syndrome.’ I’m always going to have to work at the solution. Having learned that behavior from an early age, it’s potential to emerge is always going to be there. Which is to say, that, I’m always going to have to be vigilant when I’m dealing with conflict, which is hard work. I’m always going to have to be honest with myself, which is also hard at times.
For me, the only way I can stay honest is by being spiritually fit. Spiritual fitness is different for everyone. For some, it means building a vibrant relationship with God. For others, it means nurturing a spiritual practice, whether that’s journaling, meditation, taking walks, yoga, or whatever. The main thing is that you’re finding quiet time for yourself, quiet time that can reveal your growing edges – the areas of your life you need to attend to – such as your closest relationships.
Domestic violence is an issue that touches everybody’s lives because no sector of society is immune to it. People of the highest and lowest classes, of any race, of any education level qualify – the whole of humanity is susceptible to it. It’s like a disease, a behavioral disease. It’s a compulsion. And like alcoholism or addiction, it can only be self-diagnosed. No one can make another person change; one has to be willing to change.
I don’t want to downplay the horror of domestic violence. I’ve been talking about how we can empower ourselves to change. We can – but the children who have to witness it and live with it and be victims of it – they don’t have the luxury of choices. A lot of times women don’t have this luxury, either. It’s very complicated why women can’t get out of these relationships. I want us to think about how easy it can be to judge the victim. I know I tend to judge when I don’t understand something, and I admit I’ve wondered why women can’t leave an abuser of their own will.
But one thing I know I can’t judge or question is the total powerlessness of the children who are stuck in these abusive situations. And I think this is probably the number one reason why domestic violence is “everybody’s problem.” Because the society we can be proud of living in is the one that protects its children, whether or not they’re ours. It DOES take a village. Not only do the children suffer, they also learn to keep the cycle of abuse going. And, they learn not to trust.
Violence breaks relationships because it destroys trust. The reason why our society continues to become more distrustful is because there is violence all around us. It’s hard to escape – you hear about it on the news every night, it’s all over the movies and television. There must be, like, five crime shows on TV that focus exclusively on murder and rape.
It’s also very much a part of our foreign policy. I’ve decided the only way to make sure this sermon isn’t a total downer, is to try to make it a little politically feisty.
I’m not picking on George Bush, I’m picking on his administration and whatever menace is pulling his strings. Certainly our government has been teaching us lately that violence is their preferred method of “problem-solving.” Much of the national budget goes for “security,” which is a euphemism for troops and weapons to fight wars abroad and kill people.
What about the wars that go on in millions of households right here at home? If religion is the area where we examine the values we live by, and if politics is the area where our leaders’ values are given the power to control our society, then any religion that doesn’t address its country’s political situation is living in a separate reality.
As I perceive things, the Bush administration for the past three years can be summed up like this: spending billions of dollars on problems that never existed, while pretending the real problems don’t exist at all. The real problem of the economy has created more financial anxiety in the household, anxiety which worsens domestic violence.
I bring up politics and the Bush administration because there is an absolute connection between going to war internationally and loved ones hurting each other at home. I mean, talk about power and control issues! There are many instances in the Old Testament where the God behaves essentially like an angry, abusive pimp. It seems to me that our current foreign policy has been modeled after such a God. We seek to dominate and control what happens in the world, and use physical force to this end. I would not be surprised if people in other parts of the world think of the US as a bully on the playground, or as an abusive father. It is truly disheartening to think about what this loose canon kind of violence has done to the level of trust within the international community.
I have a friend who defines evil as “the breaking of relationship.” As hard to swallow as this may be, we model ourselves after our leaders. Violence is sanctioned from the top down in our society. And all I see right now in our national leadership is a lot of breaking of relationship, breaking of trust. I don’t think this is going to change until we get a new administration.
In the meantime, we can work on building and healing relationships in our homes, with each other. That’s how we can change things. It is scary what’s going on in the world. It’s scary how much of our tax dollars go to high-tech killing machines while women are being killed every day in our country because they have don’t have enough social services to turn to that can protect them.
Can I really blame domestic violence on our government? In terms of how money is spent, yes, I think I can. So many things in life come down to money, and domestic violence is no exception. Money does equal power and money can equal change when it’s well spent.
The Bush administration has put domestic violence at the very bottom of its list. When I Googled domestic violence on the web, I came across a Fox news article published on October 8th. George Bush talked about a 20 million dollar pilot program that will set up “family justice services” in 12 different communities. He had to throw a bone for domestic violence awareness month.
Now, first of all, these centers don’t even exist yet; the program is in the application stage. I wonder how long that will take. Second, 20 MILLION DOLLARS? That’s IT? Twenty million bucks doesn’t even cover a day in the life of the US war machine, maybe not even an hour. Third, at the end of this article, we find out that this piddely amount of money isn’t even coming out of the US treasury. It’s being raised through the sale of STAMPS by the U.S. Postal Service! So I guess if you want these services for battered women and children to happen sooner, stop emailing and start snail-mailing.
And that’s it – attention to this country’s REAL problems happens at a snail’s pace. So it’s like any other major social justice issue. We have to ask, is this the best we can do? We have to make some noise. The message needs to be sent to our nation’s leadership loud and clear that 20 million bucks from the post office just doesn’t cut it.
It’s time for this country to stop fighting wars abroad and start fighting the wars raging on American soil. We have millions of domestic refugees who need asylum.
On a world scale, I really do believe that the continued evolution of humanity is dependent on finding alternatives to violence. There is a better way – there is almost always a better way. But we can’t begin by looking for these alternative solutions on a world scale. We have to begin on the personal scale: with ourselves and with each other, here at home. The Buddhist prayer has it right: Let peace begin with me.
Let peace begin in this country, this amazing, beautiful, powerful country. Let peace begin in each American household, in each family. Let peace begin in each mother, father, and child. Let peace begin in each one of us.
Let it be so.
