God Is Not the Parent Who Hurt You

Some Gospel passages are hard to hear if the people who should have been safe were not. Luke chapter 12, in the story of the servants and the master who returns, talks about beatings. A servant who knew the master’s will and did not do it is treated more harshly than a servant who did not know. If you grew up in a house where you never knew when it was going to be a bad day, that image does not sound like good news. It sounds like the old fear with a religious name on it.

Priests almost never talk like this, and I think I know why. In private conversations, people who struggle with God will tell you what that word “master” does in their body. Who is God? Can God be trusted to be just and fair? Life has already taught some people that the ones with power are not safe.

The problem is not that the Gospel is trying to recruit more fear. The problem is what happens when someone has already learned they cannot trust the people they should have been able to trust. Some children find out that Mom or Dad are not trustworthy, when they know instinctively those should have been the ones they could trust if anyone could be trusted.

You might be one of those people. If that is the case, my heart breaks for you. You listen to a reading like this and wonder if God is someone who is going to bring more pain into your life. That question is information. It is not unbelief. It is what a nervous system does when the old pattern puts on church clothes.

If this does not describe you, you still know people for whom it is the reality. They grew up not trusting. For some, the only way to prevent more pain is to keep people far away. They walk around with a kind of verbal barbed wire. You talk with them, you get poked. That poke is not always meanness. Sometimes it is the only fence they have.

How do you help someone like that? The same Gospel that can scare them also talks about the proper way to handle authority. Most of us have authority in small, ordinary places. You go to a store and ask someone for help. For that moment, they are there to serve you. Surprisingly, many people choose to use that little power to make cutting remarks. You have a chance, every time you interact with someone helping you, to show them kindness instead.

I know one woman who spent several weeks in the hospital before giving birth. It was a painful ordeal. She was devout, and she offered up the pain that came with the care. She heard the nurses arguing one day about whose turn it was to help her, because they all wanted her as their patient. She had made their job easier and more pleasant by not fussing at them for the pain their work inflicted. The nurses were, in that hour, her servants. She had authority. By showing them kindness, they experienced a kind of love she had been given the grace to share.

God has trusted you with a great deal, because you have authority in so many small situations. Each interaction today — even the person at a drive-through window — is a chance to demonstrate that some people can be trusted. Some people can be loving. For a person who learned the opposite at home, that might be an important piece of new data. It will not fix a childhood. It might slowly change what they think is possible, including what they think about God.

If you hear “master” and flinch, you do not have to force yourself to like this parable today. You also do not have to decide that God is the parent who hurt you. Those are two different sentences. The first is what your body remembers. The second is a conclusion that would lock the door. When the flinch comes, name it: This sounds like home. Then add the second sentence you may not feel yet: God is not that person. You can say it before you believe it all the way.

Do not use religious effort as a way to stay ahead of an unpredictable God. That is the old house again: if I am perfect, maybe today will not be a bad day. A safer first step is a small, kind human being with some power who does not use it to cut you. Notice the next time that happens — a doctor who explains, a clerk who is patient, a friend who does not punish you for a mistake. Let that be data. You are allowed to collect new evidence slowly.

If the old fear is still running the house, this article is not your treatment plan. Talk to someone trained to walk with abuse and trauma. If you are in danger now, get to safety and call 988 or local emergency services. God being trustworthy does not mean you owe unsafe people access.

If you are the person with the small authority — and most of us are, several times a day — do not waste the chance. Do not make the cutting remark. Do not take the tone you could take because you are the customer, the parent, the boss, the one they cannot leave yet. Kindness in a position of power is not decoration. For someone standing in front of you, it may be the first evidence that the world is not only what they learned at home.

God is not the parent who hurt you. Some people will need years and a lot of help before that sentence sits in the body. The work of the rest of us is to stop giving them fresh proof of the old one.

This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.

Drawn from a homily first preached in 2018.