In the Eyes of the Wounded Child
Best Things Dwell Out of Sight
“It's all so confusing, this brutal abusing
They blacken your eyes, and then 'pologize
Be daddy's good girl, and don't tell mommy a thing
Be a good little boy, and you'll get a new toy
Tell grandma you fell off the swing”
--Pat Benatar: Hell is for Children
“While brutality to children may not be the sole root of the cruelty of the Christian Right’s policies, it would be a mistake to ignore it—as most mainstream commentators do.” –Talia Lavin: Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America
One of the things that stands out amongst the Christian Fundamentalists and Christian Nationalists is the history abuse. Abuse meted out by “Christian” (Godly) parents (men) who would never “spare the rod,” and the pastors themselves who came from the abusive homes that grew up to spread that abuse around in measurable quantities.
Throughout the 20th century and into this, the “Evangelical” community has shared this thinking that children are basically ‘wild animals’ that need to be brought to heel through violence and abuse. The “Cycle of abuse” is passed on from generation to generation and has left the community with massive trauma that they refuse to acknowledge.
“The amount of violence in Christian homes is perhaps most directly reflected in the violence of the American Christian Right—and a contributing factor to just how violent a place the United States is in general.” –Talia Lavin
Many/most of the Evangelical pastors grew up with abusive fathers who beat them as a pattern of authoritarianism. These men then took on the false bravado of the Militant Patriarchal Christian male and vomited their woundedness onto their “flocks.” They grew up with tyranny and they perpetuate tyranny on those around them…the “Biblical” way.
“Once a violent childhood ends, what happens to the child who was and the adult he or she now must be? The trauma that thrums through body and mind remains; for those who stay in the evangelical community, it is passed on to their children. For others, those who leave the faith or adopt a new attitude toward their upbringing, it is the work of a lifetime to excavate the pain inflicted in their earliest years.” –Talia Lavin: Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America
Children who grow up in abusive homes are gifted with a lifetime of PTSD, are often prone to addiction or violence themselves…or seek out relationships that perpetuate the cycle of abuse.
“Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.” -- Bessel van der Kolk: The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
“Why were we taught to fear the witches instead of the men who burned them?” And who were witches, anyway, but women with knowledge, skills, and names?” ― Tia Levings, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
In Talia Lavin’s book, she outlines story after story of women who were made to strip naked in front of their “Godly” fathers, sometimes in their pre-teen or early teen years, and then suffer the blows of their fathers. This is done because the female is the ‘subordinate,’ and she must ‘submit’ to the will of the patriarch. These women grew up and found themselves in abusive relationships with other “Godly” men who were just ‘correcting’ their behavior through abuse.
“For many years, opposition to women’s rights and no-fault divorce has been central to the way fundamentalist sects have influenced broader evangelical culture.” –Talia Lavin
This disease permeates the Evangelical culture in America and has produced a closed civilization of women afraid of their own shadows and having no voice. It is not “the woman’s place” to speak up or have opinions. The man is the head of the household. Evangelical men have spent decades fighting ‘no fault’ divorce to protect their right to abuse women. In a previous post, I pointed out how James Dobson claimed the women “actively sought ‘the prize’ of being beaten” so they could gain “an otherwise unbiblical escape from marriage through divorce.”
Evangelical households are mini authoritarian regimes, where nothing is ever questioned, and the abuse is never discussed. Just “tell grandma you fell off the swing.” Read: Fleeing Christian patriarchy: "They raise women who don't even know the sound of their voices"
Reality is this is a culture of broken people, never healing their wounds and passing their brokenness on to the next generation. The walking wounded.
Accepting Cruelty
“Tomczak in God, the Rod, and Your Child’s Bod. “God, in his wisdom, prepared a strategic place on our children’s anatomy which has enough cushiony, fatty tissue and sensitive nerve endings to respond to Spirit-led stimulation. The area is the base of the back, above the thighs, located directly on the backside of every child. All children come equipped with one!”--Lavin
In a previous post, I discussed The Atlantic article by Adam Serwer entitled: The Cruelty Is the Point. It is not enough to be MAGA today, you need to be Extreme MAGA or Ultra Extreme MAGA!
These are the reverberations of a century of people raised in violent and abusive Evangelical homes. They just keep perpetuating the violence and dish it out to their own families and now, to the country itself.
The crux of the MAGA movement is to inflict pain on others, the “immigrants,” the “Jews,” the “gays,” the “trans,” the “libs.” It is cruelty for the sake of cruelty, and it comes from a culture that promotes corporal punishment as a means of “control.” Because the “Bible” tells us to.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, interestingly enough, does not include physical beatings to cause someone else to “submit” to you. The “Ego” portion, one could argue, is about power and control. But in Maslow, this is power and control over our own desires, our “own ego”…a necessary step to one reaching “Self-Actualization.”
A grown man beating a small child or a woman is not on the path to Self-Actualization. That man is a dictator, a tyrant. He is what the author Robert Bly would call the “Shadow King.”
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover
“Generations of men and boys have been nursed to resent and seek to overturn a “feminized” society, not just in courtrooms but in church groups and militia units. Their goal is to create a kind of parallel society composed exclusively of ideal Christians in ideal marriages, in which women are subject to the will of men and men are subject only to the laws of God.” --Lavin
Bly is considered a pariah in Evangelical thinking. He is part of the problem with men today in society. Men have become ‘weak,’ according to the Militant Christian Male model.
Bly defined the Jungian archetypes of the male psyche. The King, the Warrior, the Magician and the Lover. He defined this as mature masculine versus immature masculine. Evangelical men, raised in violence, continue a cycle of immature masculine energy. The immature King is the “Highchair Tyrant,” or the “Weakling Prince.” The toddlers throw their peas on the floor or the bully in the schoolyard tries to portray dominance.
Bly points out the American fascination with image of the “Cowboy” as a motif for masculinity. A word made up of 1) A female of a species, and 2) an undeveloped male. A “Cow-boy.”
In Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book; Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation she points out how the Evangelical community is wedded to the image of the Strongman…the “Cowboy.” “For many evangelicals, the masculine values men like John Wayne, William Wallace, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, Jordan Peterson, and Donald Trump embody have come to define evangelicalism itself.”
Again, this goes against the Jungian archetype of the mature masculine, where the King is one who blesses his people, he provides for them and ensures their safety and well-being. In America, we call these leaders “Statesmen.”
“A man fully engaged with positive King energy is completely present as a man. Because of his position at the center of things, he can survey everything that is going on, soak it all in, and then take a broad view of things. This overarching perspective allows him to remain immovable in the face of the passing and superficial.” –Brett: The Art of Manliness
Becoming Chiron
“In Greek myth, Chiron symbolizes the wounded healer, a term Jung originated. A wise and noble centaur, Chiron suffered a painful, incurable wound—and inspired many a Greek hero to reach full potential.” –This Jungian Life
For these modern-day men to truly use masculine power to create a better world, they will need to “do their work,” e.g., grow the fuck up. They will need to assess the trauma inflicted on them as children and treat those deep psychological wounds.
Sadly, the women who are now ex-Evangelicals cannot help. They are shunned now as being un-Godly women. They were not content ‘making the sandwiches.’
“I tucked away some of my bold ideas of what freedom looked like and rested in the illusion of safety that came from this is how it’s done. Insecure, I taught my kids to go along with what he wanted, a fawning people-pleaser yet uncured.” ― Tia Levings, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
The reason so many of the militant Evangelical men are shunned by women today is that women know these are “Cow-boys.” Women don’t want boys, they want men. Men that know their hearts, men who know how to navigate emotions rather than suppress them and then turn their emotional illiteracy loose on others. Chiron represents the mature masculine King energy.
“Whereas the centaurs were notorious for their unbridled lust and violence, Chiron, the foster child of Apollo, was all culture and restraint. Unlike the other centaurs, he was often depicted clothed rather than naked, and with human rather than equine legs.” –Neel Burton: Psychology Today
The rest of us are going to have to deal with a host of immature masculine men taking over the country, from Opus Dei, to the Council for National Policy, the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 and the hundreds of other far-right Talibangelical organizations that now own the U.S. government from top to bottom. On January 20, 2025, the infantile tyrants are taking over.
“From the readers of this book I ask two things: The first is to really and truly acknowledge that the people who say they believe in things—that, for example, the fate of the United States rests on a spiritual war between Jesus and the forces of Hell, which are everywhere manifest, that God is watching and listening and rooting for their side—really and truly believe them. That they really and truly want the United States to become Christ’s kingdom and will do everything in their power to make that vision a reality. And your actions in response should be informed by that truth.” –Talia Lavin: Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America