[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]esterday, a friend drew my attention to a movie scene uploaded on Mount Zion’s Facebook page. After watching the 7-minute video, I was disappointed for two reasons. One, I love Mount Zion movies, especially with their recent technical developments. Two, when it comes to social vices, the church has a duty to speak against them and not enable them in any way.
In the scene, the pastor and his wife were scolding the choir director for raping a member. As expected the guy was crying, pleading for forgiveness, blaming the devil. Pastor’s wife consoled the girl and her mother, assured them that the guy will be arrested. The pastor later took the guy outside and asked him what happened. Brother choir director said the girl came to his house and what she wore possessed him with the spirit of lust. She asked to use his bathroom and when she came out, he took her to his bedroom and had his way with her.
I wasn’t triggered at this point. I was like, “Well, a culprit will always want to pass the blame to the victim.” But what happened after left me exhausted.
The pastor and the guy went back to the office, and the mother of the girl asked the choir director to excuse them. She turned to the pastor’s wife and scolded her, blamed her for what happened. Her reason? She said she had always cautioned her daughter about her dressing but the daughter always told her that she dresses the way their mother in Israel — the pastor’s wife — dresses. And what’s the indecent dressing? Earrings, makeup, trousers, and one-armed blouses. After scolding the pastor’s wife, the mother left with her girl. She didn’t demand any punishment. Nothing. She just beat her daughter as they left the office.
What made this video so hard to stomach is that Mount Zion uploaded it with the caption: “Don’t lead people astray with your ungodly dressing.” My friend who showed me the video said the comment section was a mess as people, Christians, supported the video.
As a believer, I tell people that everything we need for living is in the Word of God. So how was rape handled in the Bible?
When Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob, was raped by Shechem, her brothers didn’t ask her what she was wearing or why she was walking alone in a strange land. What’s more interesting is that when Shechem came to Jacob and his sons to demand Dinah’s hand in marriage as a way of “correcting” what he had done, her brothers didn’t accept that. They deceived Shechem and his family — asked them to circumcise themselves and when they were still in pain, killed all of them.
We see a similar story in David’s house. Tamar, David’s daughter, was raped by her stepbrother, Amnon. Her own brother, Absalom didn’t ask what she was doing alone in the room with him or what she wore. The Bible never recorded that Tamar was ever blamed. The blame was on Amnon, and Absalom never forgave him. He waited two years to kill him.
So why does the church rush to blame rape victims? What sort of message are we communicating to the world? The Bible says flee fornication. But when non-consensual sex happens, the church blames the person that was forced and exonerates the one that willingly fornicates. What sort of judgment is that?
The Bible first and foremost puts our faith and principles for living in our hands. Christ says if your eye causes you to sin, cut it off. He also says if you look at a woman lustfully, you have already committed sin with her in your heart. He didn’t tell you to excuse yourself with what the lady’s wearing. The responsibility to flee is totally on you. He tells us to remove the log in our eye before trying to remove the speck in another’s eye. You have an issue with lust, deal with it. The log is always bigger than the speck. You can’t leave your issue of lust and focus on trivialities like a lady’s dressing or where she was at a particular time.
Please, the church has to do better. We have the influence, the voice. We are light. We are meant to heal, to save. We shouldn’t throw people into the depths of depression, and subtly enable evil. Tomorrow, we will complain about persecution. But if we are persecuted, let’s be persecuted for righteousness and not for losing our humanity and rationality. People should be running to us for succor, not running away from us.
Do you think if Christ was on earth, he would ask a lady what she was wearing when she was raped? In a society that allowed an adulterer escape, didn’t he ask the woman brought before him, “Where are your accusers?”? Didn’t he give her justice?
Gideon Ogbonna is a Nigerian writer who alternates between counselling people on their health needs and writing stories. He often sees his life as a battlefield where his Pharmacist’s Oath and The Pen compete for his attention. Daily, he sees The Pen winning.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
