Convergent Books is an amazing new Christian imprint from the Crown publishing group– unlike many (if not most) other Christian publishers and imprints, Convergent is focusing on books for the questions, the doubts, the struggles. They’re creating books for people like us– people who wrestle with God and Christianity. They’re also running a pretty incredible blog, and I was honored when an editor contacted me and asked if I’d be willing to write something for them.
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I stared at the clock, watching the minutes creep by. I wasn’t really paying attention to what time it was—all I had was a vague notion that it was an hour or two before dawn. The clock was something to look at as I desperately tried to numb the pain. I was too distracted to read, far too preoccupied to write. I wanted to quiet my mind, to force it to shut up, but so far my pursuit of boredom wasn’t working.
As the hours passed that night, I had alternated between weeping silently and holding myself and rocking. The back-and-forth motion soothed me for a while, but exhaustion caught up with me and I didn’t know what else to do.
If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city.
That verse, Deuteronomy 22:24, had been spinning inside my head like a merry-go-round, faster and faster and faster until I was sick and heartbroken.
I was in the city and I didn’t cry out.
Oh God, I was in the city. I could have told someone, ANYONE, what he was doing, and I didn’t. And, and… God says I should be stoned to death! This was done to me, but because I didn’t tell anyone God thinks I deserve to die?
There are so many women, so very many women, God, who have been raped—raped just like me. And they didn’t feel like they could tell anyone. Maybe they are like me and they didn’t fight back. Maybe they had no idea what was happening until it was all too late. And because of that we deserve to be stoned?
I can’t. I can’t. I won’t.
No, God. If that’s who you are, I want nothing to do with you.