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Does God Love Rapists?

Posted on by Elissa Anne

It is silly when we think things like:
God doesn’t love the rapist during the act of rape, as though God’s anger and justice and judgement could ever outweigh his love.
God identifies with the rapist as surely as he identifies with the rape-victim.
He understands the thoughts and feelings of the rapist, the circumstances and rational that lead the rapist to committing the act.
And God justifies him!
Just as surely as he justifies you or me.
God justifies sinners in the midst of sin.

He identifies with every lie we tell ourselves.
He understands the hurt that causes us to respond the way we respond.
He knows the reasons as though they were his own reasons –
And he forgives the reasons.
He allows them.
He loves the rapist during the act of rape.

This is not to say he doesn’t love the victim.
He feels every ounce of the victim’s pain and suffering.
He experiences his/her anger and trauma to the nth degree – perhaps even more than the victim him/herself does!
He intimately knows exactly what we go through whenever we are abused.
And he justifies every response, every feeling, every thought:
Completely accepted.

God is within them both: the rapist and the victim.
He loves them to their core and his core entirely.

Does this mean there won’t be a reckoning?
There is always a reckoning – whether in this life or the next.
But the reckoning is not between humanity and God.
God is at peace with the perpetrator and the victim.
There is no separation.
The reckoning is between the offender and the offended.
Both must fully identify with each other, just as God has fully identified with them as individuals.
The victim must enter the mind, will and emotion of the abuser.
The perpetrator must enter the mind, will and emotion of the victim.
They must so entirely understand each other, that no forgiveness can be left unsaid or undone.

Just as surely as Hitler will experience the pain of each and every Jew who suffered in his war, the Jews will also experience the pain that motivated Hitler.
As surely as Ted Bundy will identify with the terror of his rape and murder victims, they will identify with the feelings that drove him to act as he did.
If we think that God doesn’t love Hitler and Bundy, and that he cannot forgive their mistakes, then God can not love you or me or forgive our mistakes.
Because if I lived Hitler’s life, if I were in his mind and reasoned the way he reasoned and experienced all he experienced, I would have done exactly what he did, simply because he did it.
What Bundy was capable of; I am capable of.
Because we are all human.
We all have the same capacity for darkness and light;
Love and hate.

For God to forgive even one offence means he must by nature forgive all offences.
For God to justify one sinner, means he has justified all sinners.
There is no special treatment because one person is more penitent than another, or one resisted the urge to become Hitler while another did not.
We all fail to be sorry and resist evil at some time or another.
This is what makes us equal.

If God truly is love, then everyone is equally loved by God in the midst of any and all evil.
This is the offence of the gospel!
This is the severity of God’s love!
This is hell and heaven and everything in between.
That we would all be as completely unified with one another,
As he is with us!

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Why Write a Book About Sex

Posted on by Elissa Anne

I have wanted to write a book about sex for years but it has taken me quite a while to muster the courage–and equally as long to actually engage in sexual practises. I have never considered myself to be sexually normal. Not that there is a normal, but TheObsessed-Webexperiencing sexual abuse definitely has unique effects on a person’s sexual development.

I grew up avoiding all things sexual, while simultaneously craving the thing I lacked. In fact, I spent a considerable amount of time and energy crying–grieving–about my sexuality. Whether I was crying about my singleness, or crying because I felt guilty for masturbating, or crying because I was pushing my own sexual boundaries, or crying because I wanted to have sex but wasn’t married and couldn’t decide whether or not to simply throw caution to the wind, or crying over past sexual trauma; my sexuality, without a doubt, has been and may still be one of the most difficult and painful areas of my personhood.

Part of my inclination to write about sex comes from my desire to heal the wounds of my own past and equally passionate is my desire to influence others who may suffer with similar wounds, difficulties, fears, traumas, sexual secrets and potentially harmful restrictions. I struggled with extreme guilt over masturbation in my twenties and I want to help other people to at least ponder the idea that self-masturbation is a healthy expression of ones sexuality. I’ve experienced disappointments in my married sex-life and want to encourage people to talk about sexual issues honestly and openly. My hope is that through honest conversation, we may begin to heal our collective sexuality sooner rather than later.

I feel strongly that it is time for the church to start preaching grace above abstinence. When statistics tell us that more than 90% of people, Christian and non-Christian alike, have sex before marriage in countries like America and Australia, we are kidding ourselves if we think that vamping up the abstinence message is going to stop people from having premarital sex. We need better sex education about contraception and even about abortion. Also, the church desperately needs to re-think its hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner approach to LGBTIQ people. The church is not capable of loving sinners if it simultaneously shames, judges, criticises, condemns, avoids and slanders their sin. An article of mine was published in the news about this recently.

If I may be so bold: I believe that the Spirit of Love has anointed me to proclaim freedom from condemnation, guilt and shame, to heal broken-hearts, to free people from oppressive social norms, to bestow the halo of God’s grace and cast out the spirit of heaviness, that we may all rejoice in the glorious love of our saviour Jesus Christ. In a nutshell, I feel compelled to preach grace for sexual shame.

This book equates to about 110 A4 pages (58,000 words) exploring and challenging current Christian and religious norms around various sexual topics. It was written over the period of approximately 18 months mostly in 2015-2016. When I began writing it, I was an intercourse-virgin. When I finished writing it, I’d been married more than a year. You will note this progression within the book and I have included some dates or references to when certain sections were written, to try and give the reader a clearer picture of where I was at in this progression. Also, I am Australian and my husband, JD, is American.

It is an explicit book and should only be read by those under age 18 if they have parental permission and guidance. I know that some people will take offence to the explicit nature of the book, and for that I can only say that I had to follow my heart and write the words I have longed to hear but never read from other sources.

I pray that this book particularly transforms and reforms the body of Christ’s approach to sex and that it challenges every reader in healthy ways. It is available here.

I invite your feedback, discussion and confession (if you so desire) at mailto:elissaanne.author@gmail.com and I ask that if you quote me on Facebook, you reference my website. Blogs that have been included in this book can be found and re-shared from here.

Permission to be Happy

Posted on by Elissa Anne

I’m taking a subject at Bible College called “Theological Reflection,” which involves pondering where I am at in my life theologically, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically.

Partly because of this subject, I’ve actually had to think a lot about how happy I am in my life right now … and how scary that is.

I was a pessimist growing up, with a deeply serious, melancholy personality. I often felt that my friendships were shallow and that most people didn’t know the real me. In fact, I didn’t know the real me. I was constantly trying to run away from the guilt and shame of my past imperfections. I even picked up and moved interstate as a young adult, in an attempt to make myself feel better, only to learn that all my problems came with me.

I suffered from depression for the first 4 years of adulthood. I didn’t think that my dreams would ever come true, that I would ever get married, that I would have the deep relationships I craved, or that I could actually be my true self. I was torn between wearing a façade of being a near-perfect, Christian woman, trapped in guilt and legalism; and the inherent belief that God’s love and grace has to be bigger than my failure, and for that matter, everyone else’s failures.

Then my mum got sick when I was 24, and I was still trying to find my feet as an adult in this world. No longer depressed per se, but still struggling with my dreams and my identity, with being single, and with trying to be a good Christian. Mum was sick for 4 years before she passed away and I spent those years caring for her, meanwhile working as hard as I could toward my dreams, writing books, trying to find the perfect guy to marry, building a piano teaching business, leading worship at church and pulling up the ranks of the worship team. Mum and I rubbed up against each other (as iron sharpens iron), and both started to deal with unresolved childhood issues. This in turn challenged what we believed about God and we both started to accept deep down that God is all-loving and all-forgiving.

Mum passed away when I was 28 and things in my life changed monumentally again. I not only lost my mum, but my entire theological foundation shifted as I became a Universalist-Christian. I changed churches and lost too many friends to count, including some that I never thought I would ever lose and still grieve over today. I failed a piano exam, and decided to prioritise my writing dreams over my musical aspirations. And I challenged myself to start writing publically about what I believe. Needless to say, my twenties were filled with struggle, grief, singleness and loneliness.

But then I hit thirty and I started to feel very secure in myself. I was no longer fighting who I really was, I was breaking down the facades. I met a man and started building a healthy relationship with him. I got married. My friends expanded to include my family-in-law and so many new relationships.

So here I am: content. And it scares me. I know what it’s like to be depressed and anxious. I know what it’s like to feel lonely and endlessly single. I know what it is like to grieve death. I know that things can change very suddenly for better or worse. Being happy, healthy, hopeful and content are fairly new to me and I’m somewhat afraid of losing these feelings. But I don’t want to live in fear, because it taints the blessings I have right now.

I also struggle with guilt. I feel guilty that not everyone is going through a season of happiness and contentment right now. I feel guilty for flaunting it, but I also feel as though I might burst if I don’t share it. Sometimes I feel guilty that I couldn’t make my mum’s life happier. As her oldest child I felt responsible for her happiness and often blamed myself if she was unhappy. So it is difficult to feel happy in light of the suffering that I saw in my Mum’s life at different stages – this I struggle with the most.

That’s why I need to give myself permission to be happy. Permission to bask in this season of contentment. Permission to pause and say thank you. Thank you to God for bringing me here. Thank you to my husband for loving me. Thank you to my family for accepting me. Thank you to the friends who have been around through so much of this, and to the newer ones who enrich my life.

And thank you to myself. For not dying. For not giving up. For pushing against the chains that bound me so that I could break free and become more truly myself. But even as I thank myself, I know I am really thanking God–the universal love–who lives in me.

Grateful For My Marriage

Posted on by Elissa Anne

I just came home from the cinema where I saw, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.” There was a scene in the movie where three generations of couples were kissing: the grandparents, the parents, and the daughter with her prom date.

I found myself crying because I felt so grateful to be married to a man that I love, who loves me. 5-10 years ago, the exact same scene would have had me in tears for the completely opposite reason. I would have felt a lonely longing for a spouse.

I was single for 30 years before I met JD. I went on my fair share of dates, but no one stuck. I wondered if there was something wrong with me. I was warned about my desire for marriage being the sin of idolatry, told that I wanted it too much and should be content in my singleness. I was also told, “If you can’t be happy without it, you’ll never be happy with it,” and that marriage wouldn’t make me happier.

Well, the (mostly married) people who told me these things were, in my opinion, wrong. I am the happiest and healthiest I have ever been in 33 years of life. Marriage has greatly added to my sense of contentment, and admittedly, to my sanity. I’m not obsessed with figuring out what is wrong with me. I’m not constantly looking around at all the single males and wondering, “Could this be the one?” I no longer feel the same level of loneliness and as though I am missing out. And I finally have a sex life!

I felt so overwhelmed with gratitude walking to my car tonight, that I thought to myself:
“If I cried a river of tears
My heart would still hurt
With the immense gratitude I feel
Being married to you, Joseph Daniel.”

To all my single friends out there, I know what it is like to feel lonely. I know what it’s like to want and wait for a spouse. There is nothing wrong with your desire or your emotions. They are totally valid. Be honest about where you are at and I pray that God will give you the desires of your hearts.