August 3, 2006

• I mention part of my testimony on this entry – if you want to read the entire testimony, it is long, here is the link

  
  

  I have to warn you that Genesis 34 contains material that is distressing.

  
  

  Remember that Jacob went into the promised land, but right on the border between Canaan and Shechem (which is too near the gentiles). When you live so close to idol worshippers and people of the World, you can often get pulled into their ways of thinking and acting. That was why God wanted people to be in the world, but not OF the World.

  
  

  Genesis 34:1 Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had born to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. (the other girls in Shechem). If you recall, when all the sons were born Leah and Rachel spoke a word over them. When Dinah was born nothing was said over her birth. Women were not considered as important as sons, and there was a standard that women had to meet that made them little more than possessions. I read the above mentioned book, and the lifestyle of women in Arab countries is so oppressed. I suspect that Dinah lived under many of the same limitations. One thing that distressed me in the above book was the fact that, if a woman was not virgin through no fault of her own (i.e. she was raped), she was killed so that the family name was not disgraced. Men were not bound to treat women well, and could order them around, beat them, or abuse them and nothing was said or done. The book is a real eye-opener. One thing about when Christianity comes into a country is that the status of women improves. Yet, people say that women are repressed in Christianity – not so, not true.

  
  

  There was a son of the king who carried the same name as the town, Shechem (which means back or shoulder), was the son of Hamor the Hivite and a prince of the country, sees Dinah, and takes her and lays with her (rapes her), violating her.

  
  

  Isaiah 34:3 His soul was strongly attracted to Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young woman and spoke kindly to the young woman. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this young woman as a wife.”

  
  

  I guess it is good that he wanted to marry Dinah, and loved her – but he did not love her enough to respect her and wait until after marriage. He was attracted in the flesh, but it would have been a fleshly union – an unequally yoked union. And I suspect Shechem was one who was moved by passion – who knows what he would have done once he tired of Dinah.

  
  

  There  is no mention in the entire chapter about Dinah’s response to the trauma she lived through.

  
  

  Jacob hears about her defilement and waits until his sons return from the field, where they were tending sheep. Hamor came to talk with Jacob about the possibility of marriage. We will later see that Jacob’s response has nothing to do with Dinah’s feelings or the situation, but the disruption of his area of comfort.

  
  

  Verse 7 And the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it; and the men were grieved and very angry, because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, a thing which ought not be done.

  
  

  Hamor again pleas for marriage, and suggests in verse 9 “And make marriage with us, give your daughters to us, and take our daughters to yourselves. So you shall dwell with us and the land shall be before you. Dwell and trade in it, and acquire possessions for yourselves in it.

  
  

  This makes marriage a business prospect. Remember Jacob was blessed by God and prospered, I suspect Hamor was hoping that intermarriage would spread some of that wealth to his country. It was not concern for Dinah, but a financial proposition that was mentioned. Shechem speaks to Dinah’s brothers and father, stating that he will give whatever dowry or gift that they want.

  
  

  Hamor will plead for a marriage between Shechem and Dinah. I will leave what the answer is to this marriage plea until tomorrow. Tonight I want to deal more personally with the above situation of the rape of Dinah.

  
  

  What is missing in the above picture? Dinah receives not one iota of comfort after the rape. The people are posturing about what they wish and the outrage of the situation. I can just imagine Dinah’s reaction.

  
  

  Most of you know my past. I remember being mortified by what was done to me by my father. The reactions I received from people only served to hurt even more. My mother took notes, and told me I should push his hand away. She never protected me and treated me more like a confidant for the horrid things my father did to her. Her friends, who were told in detail about what my father did, also advised me about how I should prevent him from touching me – the problem was, I knew that if I did anything I would be killed.

  
  

  When the courts sent me to live with my sister, she believed me about what he did (due to the notebooks), fought to get me away from them and into her house. Day one, she calls me into the bedroom and tells me that a lot of what happened was my fault. I suspect that she needed to put the blame on me so that her abuse at my father’s hands could be kept at bay. She also physically beat me and got angry because the hurt and pain of the past was so intense that I needed therapy.

  
  

  I had people tell me it is in the past, move on with your life and forget about the past. No one knows the kinds of feelings that occur, unless they have experienced them. The feelings do not just get pushed down and forgotten, they are there and must be dealt with. But they do not have to be painful forever, God can and will make beauty from ashes and turn what satan meant for harm to good.

  
  

  When I think of the first time my father came into my room, I remember having my hand covered with semen and lying awake for hours, fearful of getting up, and couldn’t wash myself until after he went to work. And fearful that my mom, an alcoholic who could not control her mouth, would find out. Only to discover that she knew he was in my room and wanted the gory details.

  
  

  Let me tell you that what you feel after violation is filthy, dirty, and that something inside is totally wrecked.You never feel “normal”. I used to look at the kids around me and assume that they had happy families (I now know that the stats indicate that 1 in 4 will be abused), and I felt like somehow I was different. I had to blend in, because I was ruined. And I did blame myself. I felt if I acted better, got better grades, said the right think, ignored the right thing, that maybe I would have not been violated. I tried to find something to pin on myself as the cause of the abuse because the alternative – that he didn’t love me or care was far too painful.

  
  

  When I got saved, the concept of Father God was like chalk squeaking on a blackboard. People used to pray “Father God” what seemed like five hundred times in a ten minute prayer and I would cringe. I did not want a father God. Some would suggest crawling into Jesus’ lap, sigh. Others would tell me to go forward, not look back.

  
  

  This is true advice, but not something that can be embraced all at once. God is a healer, and my relationship with Him as Father God has vastly improved.

  
  

  Please be careful what you say to someone who has been abused. While we who were abused do not need to be wallowing around in self-pity, we still have to deal with the emotions, the feelings, and have help rebuilding our lives from such wreckage. It is a process, and takes time. We sometimes need to come to a point where we can seek the healing, and go to God, who is our ultimate healer. All the years of therapy kept me alive and not killing myself, but it was God who started deep healing.

  
  

  Beth Moore has a few comments on this. If you do not know her history, just like Joyce Meyer, Beth has been sexually abused by people, and hers was abuse at the hands of an unnamed person in the church. She held onto her faith, but did as many of us did, turn to a life that was self-destructive. Yet God healed her, and she shared her healing in a study called “Breaking Free” which teaches people how to have liberty in Christ.

  
  

  Beth says on page 155 in her study the Patriarchs, “Can you imagine anyone saying “this person stole your car or broke into your house, so I think you should marry him?” Yet altogether too often people today, as in ancient times, minimize the crime of rape and even suggest Hamor’s solution. Treating rape lightly adds to the horrifying fact that many victims of rape never report the crime. Several factors add to the under reporting of rape, including embarrassment and fear of retaliation or further injury. Many victims fear the courts, police, and court procedures that too often scrutinize and judge the victim’s behavior, history, and credibility.

  
  

  Beth then says that she hopes that Dinah got some comfort from Leah, her Aunt Rachel, or the two maidservants. She also mentions that Dinah was a young teen and that in that day and age it was not wise to walk around without a guard, even though Dinah probably just thought that she would visit with the girls. And Beth says on page 156 ” ..to suggest that a victim asked to be raped by being in a certain place is not only devastatingly ignorant but also shifts the criminal’s blame to the victim.”

  
  

  Beth talks about 1 Cor. 6:17 which states that he who is joined to the LORD is one spirit with Him. and she says , on page 157 “My body may have been violated and my soul –the seat of emotions–may have been injured, but my spirit–the innermost part of my being, where the Spirit of Christ dwells cannot be violated. Therefore what defines me most has never been touched. In my own healing process, God taught me that the more I allowed the Spirit of truth dwelling in me to take authority over my body and soul, the more the wholeness of Christ would overtake every part of me. In other words, God taught me to live from the inside out.”

  
  

  She also reminds us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and broken temples can be rebuilt. God, dwelling within us has overtaken our whole being and our bodies no longer have to feel violated.

  
  

  I am walking this out slowly. I have better days and worse days, but God is healing the hurts, and I am learning more what it is like to live in Him. But there are still pockets of hurt and pain that need healing. A passage of the Bible like this is hard to deal with, but you know, it is God’s loving way of helping us to realize that there are still areas that need working on.

  
  

  Hoping you have a blessed day, I get to retrieve my daughter from field hockey camp. I am so excited, she has called a few times and has been so bubbly that I know she has had a blast.

  
  

  Heather.

  • 12:40 am
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