A response to a pastor who said: "He should have killed you. At least you’d have died a virgin."
A so called pastor told a young rape victim, "He should have killed you. At least you’d have died a virgin." Here was the response that John Shore gave to that;
Are you are a pastor, priest, or ministry leader who holds that women are intrinsically inferior to men—that women should submit to their husbands, that women are less intelligent than men, less emotionally sophisticated than men, not as ambitious, driven, or proud as men? Do you believe that a woman’s highest calling is to be a good mother, that a young woman’s moral status is tied to her virginity, that women’s sexuality causes men to sin?
If you do believe those things, then I’m begging you to right now resign all of your authority in the church. Get out—and don’t talk to anyone on your way to the door, either. You do not speak for God. You wouldn’t know good counsel from bad porridge. At best you are profound and grievous embarrassment to God; at worst the devil himself wonders at the fullness of the damage you do.
Please just step away from the pulpit. Because surely you realize what a short step it is from, “God designed women to love but be inferior to men,” to, “You should have made your rapist kill you so that at least you’d have died a virgin.” If you do not realize how smoothy the latter extends from the former, then … then gosh, what a surprise: logic isn’t your strong suit.
Well, friend, neither is compassion. It’s not now, anyway. But it can be! You can change! You can learn. You can do the psycho-emotional work you need to if you’re ever going to become a true friend rather than an enemy of God and humankind. You can reflect, think, consider, open your heart to the painful damage I guarantee you someone once did you. You can come to terms with your own powerful sexuality, and in so doing discover not the condemnation of God you expected, but the affirmation of life you wanted.
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