We Too: We Must Bring Light to Survivors of Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse is evil. Survivors have had trust shattered at a fundamental level. Trauma is embedded in everything from their relationship with their bodies to their sexuality to their sense of self to even their relationship with God.

Many of my readers are sexual abuse survivors, and they have shared with me some of the ways their childhood trauma affects their marriages. Because my readers are women, I’ll be referring to survivors as women in this post–but I know that far too many men are survivors as well.

How we respond to sexual abuse matters.

That’s exactly what Mary DeMuth writes about in her new book, We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis.

Are Our Churches Safe for Survivors?

Over the past several years, we have seen many stories of sexual abuse—dark secrets that are coming into the light. We’ve seen #MeToo and #ChurchToo.

For every survivor who bravely shares her story, there are countless other women who just as bravely hold their experiences in their own hearts and bodies.

Every woman’s journey of healing is her own. We cannot tell her how to pursue healing.

What we can do, however, is ensure that the church is a safe place for those who have been broken by the evil that is sexual abuse. A survivor who wants to share her story should be able to do so safely. A survivor who wants someone to sit with her while she quietly struggles should be able to do just that.

As the Body of Christ, we MUST bring light to the broken and to the broken-hearted.

What Can We Do?

Mary DeMuth has written a beautiful and important book. In We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis (affiliate link), she guides us on a journey that both challenges and offers hope.

We begin the book’s journey with biblical narratives of sexual violence. It is a stark reminder that there is nothing new under the sun, that sexual violence has always been with us. Fortunately, we also see Jesus’s response to the broken and hurting—and we are reminded that Jesus shows us what DeMuth calls “a robust theology of grace and truth.”

The next part of the journey examines Satan’s efforts to separate sexual abuse survivors from Jesus. The enemy uses secrecy, bad theology, the persistent pandemic of pornography, the manipulative abilities of sexual predators, and the church’s passive responses to sexual abuse as his weapons.

The final part of the journey shows us how we can respond in ways that can help rather than hinder healing. This part of the journey begins by addressing many things we misunderstand about sexual abuse—and then it shows us how we can—and MUST—do better. This part of the book gives us many life-giving and light-giving ways to respond when we learn of sexual abuse.

Dealing with the Darkness

We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis is beautifully written, with imagery that I found stunning and profound. I’ve been particularly struck by what DeMuth describes as a “robust theology of light.”

It was not an easy book for me to read. I had to take many breaks. Some places hit me hard as a rape survivor, reminding me of healing I still have to do. At other places, I needed to pause to reflect on the profound observations I had just read. And there were times I simply needed to weep and pray in grief for sexual abuse.

A book about sexual abuse shouldn’t be easy to read. We must have a heart for the broken-hearted, for the wounded, for those who carry trauma.

Sexual abuse is evil. It thrives in the darkness.

We must shine the light of Jesus into that darkness.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5

Resources and Stories to Encourage You

• Buy the book (out on August 13) – If you preorder by August 12, you can get five healing books for free. Learn more here.
• We Too website – resources for survivors and churches
• Healing from Sexual Abuse, with Mary DeMuth, Sex Chat for Christian Wives podcast
• For Husbands of Sexual Abuse Survivors: Insights from Patrick DeMuth, Mary DeMuth’s husband shares his insights on how husbands can support their survivor wives
• Healing from Sexual Trauma, links to my posts about sexual trauma
• The Power of My Wound, Another Fearless Year blog
• Becoming Redeemed: My Story of Healing from Sexual Abuse, a guest post by Alynda Long at Lori Altebaumer blog

Disclosure: As a member of the launch team, I received an advance copy of the book at no charge. I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for the book.

Credit for image of girl on swing| Antranias at pixabay.com