_{http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-God-Vision-through-Survivors}

Below is an excerpt from today’s Suffering and Survival meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation.

For a world without misogyny, racism, sexual abuse or violence, the transformation process is a process with ups and downs. flashbacks, and panic attacks.”

Two professors, Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M. Shaw, speak out about surviving sexual abuse.

Theologians Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan Shaw show how Jesus is a survivor of violent abuse who leads the way for other survivors to find transformation:  

“For Jesus, the way of God is the way of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, helping the stranger in a ditch, and demanding equity and justice, whether from judges, religious leaders, or politicians. Surviving with Jesus can redirect our anger, our han, our despair. [3] We can learn to accept ourselves, and we can work to create a better world. Things won’t just be hunky-dory. Transformation is a process. The accurate language for faith is not that “we are saved” but that we are “being saved.”

Susan once heard poet Maya Angelou tell the story of a young man who asked her if she were “saved.” “Are you?” Angelou responded. “Yes,” he replied. “Really?” she countered, “Already?”

Transformation is a process—and for survivors, it’s a process with its ups and downs, flashbacks, and panic attacks. But, as the resurrection confirms, it is the better way; it is God’s way.  

Surviving with Jesus gives us hope that a different kind of world is possible—a world without sexual abuse, without misogyny and racism, and without violence. That’s a world worth surviving for and working toward with faith that in each of us God truly is making all things new.” [4] 

References:   
[1] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 13. 

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2011, 2021), 113–115.  

[3] Han is a concept in Minjung theology, which originated in South Korea; it refers to “an accumulation of the suppressed and condensed experience of oppression.” See Jae Hoon Lee, The Exploration of the Inner Wounds—Han (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1994), 139.  

[4] Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M. Shaw, Surviving God: A New Vision of God through the Eyes of Sexual Abuse Survivors (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2024), 195. 

For the complete post see: cac.org/daily-meditations/surviving-with-jesus/