The complicated terrain of suffering on Good Friday

CW: domestic violence

Over the past several months I’ve spent two days in domestic violence court, accompanying people from my church. DV court is a place of uncompromising suffering, and as this Holy Week slips from foot washing to crucifixion, I’m reminded of those hours.

Because of the structure of the court, I showed up at 8 am, when the judge sets the schedule for the day. Then I waited for my person’s trial to begin, or a plea to be established. It took hours, and as a result I listened in on two dozen DV cases.

I noticed that one of the tactics for the lawyers of the defendants (both days 95% of the cases were men accused of violence towards intimate women partners) was to call into question the plaintiff’s suffering. Hadn’t she reached out to the man who beat her? Hadn’t she gone back to the house to watch a movie with him? Didn’t she tell him she loved him on the phone? In each case, the motive was to undermine the harm enacted. The woman, the lawyer claimed through inference, was exaggerating her pain and suffering.

I realized how easy it is to reduce the complexity of suffering in this kind of equation. In this framework there was suffering or not suffering. By contrast, the suffering of these woman was a kind of prism, and for a few hours I stood in the middle of it. The choice was not, as I sometimes imagined, the clarity of leaving the relationship and ending the suffering of violence. It was a choice between a variety of sufferings, a calculation about which suffering. These women calculated financial suffering if the partner left, the loss of connection and intimacy, the loss for the children involved, the suffering that comes when a dream dies, when the door slams on hope for the future.

I do not want women to be consoled that there is a meaningful redemption from a blow to the face. And I know that the rejection of redemptive suffering comes from this deep well of compassion. I know the church has often made the suffering inflicted by the powerful palpable – to women, workers, the enslaved, the poor – by making a virtue of suffering. We run headlong into suffering and redemption on the cross. I know that I wanted to pull aside every woman in the courtrooms those days and say to her, “I want you to be relieved of your suffering by leaving this relationship.”

But I also know these words would deny the calculus on display, that I needed to take seriously the reason women stay in abusive relationship. Even the women who made it this far, who filed the paperwork, set a court date, met with the person who harmed them face to face before a judge – even here the complexity of their suffering cut to the bone.

I had another experience with suffering a few years ago. I was at a meeting to address gun violence in our community. The speaker at this month’s gathering was from a group of parents whose children were murdered. They wanted the state of North Carolina to end the punishment of the death penalty. At the end of her talk the speaker asked if those from the organization would raise their hand. And I realized I was in a room with at least ten people whose children were murdered. It was an unfathomable suffering, a suffering multiplied by ten across the intimacy of parent and child.

I realized later that the heaviness I felt came from another place of suffering – the suffering of demanding the dignity and life of people who had taken that very thing from you. I think there is a profound sense of satisfaction that comes from evening the score (I don’t want to speak for everyone so I’ll just say I experience tremendous satisfaction when someone who does wrong suffers as a result) . “An eye for eye” is a measured response to violence, one that evens the scales of injustice. I bomb your country and I bomb yours. We have restored the balance. And there is suffering in withholding this balance.

There are all sorts of things I could say here about “the greater good” and the long-range possibilities of human communities that no longer depend upon surveillance and punishment to deal with their problems (dare I say the possibility of redemption?). I am an abolitionist, so all of this exists within me. But it does not cancel out or deny the intensity of the suffering and hardship that is inherent in letting go the tried-and-true apparatuses of punishment.

There are other stories I hold this week. At this moment forest defenders are sitting in an Atlanta jail because they hoped to stop the Weelaunee Forest from being bulldozed to create a gigantic militarized police training center. At this moment people with chronic illnesses live in and as bodies that are constantly suffering. When James Cone sees a lynching tree, he also sees the cross upon which Jesus Christ was crucified. Suffering happens because we are human beings with flesh bodies who live in a broken world.

This week, I turned about to the reflections of Shawn Copeland who interprets the spirituals through the tradition of womanist theology, taking seriously the horror of Black women’s suffering during chattel slavery. Copeland writes that, for Black women, a theology of suffering “evokes growth and change, proper outrage and dissatisfaction, and enlarge Black women’s moral horizon and choices.” A theology of suffering within womanism is also redemptive. By this Copeland means “Black women invite God to partner them in the redemption of Black people” – the cross of Christ provided the strength and courage to make sense of their sacrifices for their children and their futures. Finally, the womanist perspective is resistance – “With sass, Black women survived, even triumphed over emotional and physic assaults.”

I cling to these words because often I feel lost in the vast sea of suffering that the powers and principalities inflict on this world. If there is redemption here, I feel for its shape in the darkness – only in part and with little expectation that I can make sense of it. On Sunday, when Mary Magdalene arrives in darkness – even here before the empty tomb — I will make space for her suffering. I know we cannot witness the resurrection unless we are ready to sit in the dark of many, many graveyards.

But I also hold on to this: shivering in the blasting air conditioning of a county courtroom, I watched women tell the truth about their lives. I watched them speak out loud how they suffered. And each time one of those women sat down someone beside them would look over and nod, place a hand on their shoulder, or offer a hug to a fellow sufferer. I watched women hand out tissues and shake their heads in knowing regard as men who had harmed asked for forgiveness or downplayed their violence. I watched what happens when we know that we do not suffer alone, and the power of speaking our paid aloud. And I sensed it clearly, that the crucified and risen Jesus was also there.