Posted by jehu on March 02, 1999 at 10:03:15:
In Reply to: Re: CPS=SUICIDE posted by jehu on March 02, 1999 at 09:11:38:
zella, I want you to know that I heard what you said about the horror of watching your little one die.
Such a hurtful thing no one should experience. It is indeed sad and tragic.
Also, similar things are becoming all to common in our world, with its drive-by shootings, disease,
poverty among plenty, violence, and delusional thinking. It is because I care, that I point to the family as
the place to solve some of these problems. The family is where most of the learning is to occur and instruction to take place so that
discipline and self-control can yield peaceable lives, at least so far as this is possible with individual choices and decisions.
Some seem to have accepted the lie that somehow God must have made a mistake to put children into families. That it is okay to break
up a family when it is found that these families or parents have made mistakes. I see no biblical
basis for the breaking up of families where incest has occured or where abuse has occured. Does that mean such activity is okay? No. The bible says
that incest is against the law of Moses. It doesn't seem to prescribe a specific penalty, at least I haven't found it yet, but it does make it clear that such is contrary to the holiness of God and must be considered sinful and evil.
Yet do two wrongs make a right? If Amnon raped his sister, Tamar, does Absolom murdering his brother Amnon solve anything?
Some have said Absolom shussed up his sister Tamar because he just didn't take it seriously enough. Was this really so? Isn't murdering his brother serious?
Didn't Absolom love his sister Tamar? He took her to live in his household. Later when he had a daughter, a beautiful daughter, he named her Tamar, after his sister, I am sure.
Then why did Absolom quiet his sister who had torn her virginal robes and put ashes on her head showing others she had just become a tainted woman?
Could it be that hushing up a shameful event was in Tamar's best interest? In that culture, virginity was prized more highly than it is today.
Without it a woman basically could not marry. Some say that for those who say they have recovered memories of being abused there is no shame. But is this true. Does it matter who instigated the act? Isn't rape always a shameful thing?
Tamar sure thought so. She asked, "How will I be rid of my disgrace?"
The law of Moses seems to prescribe that in the case of Amnon raping his sister, the solution should be that he marry her. Plus paying the bride price, whatever amount the father demanded, I suppose.
While that may seem insensitive to us in our present culture, this seems to be what should have been done in Tamar's case, and she in fact asked her brother
Amnon to marry her to keep her from being a disgraced woman. He of course refused, because he saw her as a sexual object, and he hated her after he had used her for his own indulgence.
It does appear that the father, David, who was furious, should have done something in the way of
a penalty for his son's behavior. A shotgun wedding perhaps? He may have done something, but the bible doesn't show us that he did.
Because the law was not followed, Absolom two years later took matters into his own hands and had his brother murdered in the way of vengeance over the rape of his sister. This in turn led to an eleven year period of exile and rebellion which ended in the child usurping the authority of his father David and ultimately to the death of that child.
I say this to provoke some thought as to the proper consequences for sexual abuse within families.
What is the proper punishment? Is it life in prison or something less? Is the family still worth saving?
We might not think so if we do not value family and our culture certainly does not. Yet what does God say about family?
One thing he says is "Do not put asunder what God has joined together." That seems to apply to family as well as to marriage.
Most pay no heed to what God says. Still consequences follow whether or not they think God unable to give such consequences to their actions.
Perhaps going into therapy groups and telling others about one's shame is not the way to be healed or the godly way to handle incest.
Perhaps one does better to keep such disgrace quiet. Absolom told his sister not to take her disgrace to heart. Since we know he was taking the rape seriously, could he have possibly meant she shouldn't take it into the center of her emotions, let it affect her identity, blowing it out of all proportions? In other words, was the rape who she was? Of course not. It was but a very serious wrong done to her by one who ignored the laws of God. She was not the evildoer. Amnon was. By not taking the incident to heart, she could hopefully, get beyond it to a place of healing, not by dwelling on vile thoughts about dark events but by thinking on admiral, praiseworth things of good report.
We live in a cruel fallen world. No parent should ever see his children die before her/him. Yet this does happen. God is in control. Why does he allow this to happen. I cannot answer that question. No one can.
Yet God is good. The bible says that he is. There are some things man is not given to know. This is one of them.
Why evil happens to the innocent.
As one who has seen the cruelty of loss, loss which is unbearable loss, I ask that God grant you the healing over the loss of your beloved son, the healing that is in his wings.
I don't ask that you forget your son, or his dying, but that you come to trust God that somehow, He knew best, even though to you and to me, we would never have allowed this to be.
God bless you zell.
As David said when he mourned over the loss of his son, my son can't come to me any longer, but I can go to him.{in heaven, when the time comes}