Right on with the catechism assessment,
freestuff . It's like all the curriculum authors interpreted some of these obscure stories to help set them up for shady abuse apologist uses like this.
Using the word "touchy feely" to minimize an adult's interaction with girls or women is the same thing as using "horseplay" to minimize abuse of boys. Jerry Sandusky used the remark "ahh it was just horseplay" all the time. Nope. It is battery, assault, rape.
When trusted adults or leaders habitually reach out and touch people whom they have roles of authority over (but aren't their actual household members) it is their early stages of power abuse. They are touching to test boundaries, to invade personal space, to gauge the resistance level, to see if there is a fight, freeze, or fawn response. They are sending a message of confidence, power, and trustworthiness to everyone else in the room, so that the target of their touch feels like their own sense of unease is imagined and unfounded.
They come up behind us when we are working at a desk, under their legitimate supervision, and they start massaging our shoulders. We freeze and assess the risks of protesting or saying "stop touching me." And the risks of acting like nothing is weird. What will they try next time?
They sit next to us while we are playing sound samples of potential choir music and start caressing our thigh. We freeze wondering why they would think this is remotely appropriate and wonder if it is worth announcing this problem to their wife who is in the next room.
They greet us as elders when we walk in church, patting our shoulder and letting their hand brush down our back to feel our ass for a quick second. We move on, wishing we had the self-confidence to loudly say "keep your hand away from my body and don't you dare do that again" in the narthex.
But we have been trained to believe a lie, that we are the ones who are starting a problem. We must've started the problem by being in the room, by having a body, right? We will worsen the problem when we assert a preference to have our own physical space respected. We are the troublemakers if we tell our bosses, our elders, our choir directors directly in the moment that they are out of line. Or if we tell their peers or fellow leaders what happened and warn them that this behavior is likely just the tip of the iceberg for a 50-70 year old man, that they've likely been crossing the line with dozens, hundreds of others over 30-40 years.
Nope. their entitlement to be touchy feely is equipped, urged on and blessed by age-old group dynamics that are very much meant to make all of this happen without consequences to leaders. The playbook is working when someone we tell, yet again, uses all the regular bull shit:
Nobody, no church is perfect. You are being too judgmental of someone you should appreciate, respect, and honor.
You are bitter, you don't know how to forgive.
Think of the poor man, he feels bad I'm sure, won't do it again, and you will hurt and ruin his wife, children, grandchildren if you speak up about such a minor incident.
Love covers a multitude of sins.
You should be flattered he finds you so personable and attractive.
Why are you telling me, you should just go to him directly and confront him.
It was probably you just reading too much into it, it is harmless.
Don't worry, that is just how he is, he probably does that to everyone, you shouldn't make such a big deal of it
There is a biblical way to handle this, and obviously how you are handling it ain't it.
Sounds like you are the more sinful one here. If you take sin seriously, you'd repent of your part in this and stop harping on what he did.
The private message at the beginning of this thread is very serious. That approach is hostile to survivors, supportive to perpetrators.
It is also super common. People who talk like this are doing just as much damage, if not more, than the original boundary violators. They are speaking against the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is equipping survivors and their advocates to speak out, to interrupt patterns of abuse, and to remove the cloak of invisibility from people who are routinely misusing their roles of leadership and trust.
Why do we even know about Ham to talk about him? We know about the story of Ham because Ham likely raped his father or his father's wife when Noah was in a vulnerable situation of intoxicated sleep. The other brothers properly assessed who was more vulnerable in that situation and took care of the harmed people. Noah's family, the scribes of Genesis, the generations of Jacob's descendants who passed on the oral tradition of their foreparents, and the Holy Spirit inspiring the Scriptural canon all made sure that we way over here in 2021 would know that Ham violated boundaries of his father. Also how David violated Uriah and Bathsheba's boundaries, how Judah and his sons violated Tamar's body, dignity, future, how Amnon violated a different Tamar, how David's family fell apart in fratricide and near patricide because David minimized the seriousness of his son's rape of a sister.
If anything, the Bible is full of TMI rather than examples or modeling of covering this shit up. I do not see a pattern of people in the bible stories who are going everywhere covering up sin with a blanket, I see a pattern of people doing what it takes to make sure that abusive people know they won't live with impunity, because there are advocates, empowered by The Advocate, who will take huge personal risks to do something to expose and interrupt the patterns of harm.
If you want to be like Haman, tremble, there is an Esther existing quietly near you who has more craft, wisdom, awareness of power dynamics, love for others, and long-game strategy than you. If you want to identify with Reuben or Judah, thinking you successfully covered up a Joseph in a pit or rid yourself of him in a shunning sale, keep your eyes out . . . Joseph will be back in your life, arisen from the Pit, and reveal to a whole empire what your role was on that long ago field day with your family members, when you thought you shut your brother down for good. If you want to squash a sister in Christ's access to her full life and agency as a member of your own beloved community, you may see her someday as the person who gets special access to tell a royal dignitary whether or not you are trustworthy to be among that dignitary's most Beloved people . . "the least of these."
Judah did some huge self-assessment work, thanks to Tamar having the unbelievable courage to be uncovering his awful character publicly in the town square. He changed his ways before being put to a character test in Joseph's throne room, so his story ended up to be one of restoration and blessing and a great legacy in spite of his first violations of family love. Reuben did not. Haman could have recognized and taken advantage of his own opportunity to turn himself around when Esther threw the first banquet. He didn't see until it was too late, til the traps he built for others were closing in around himself.
I'm glad that Esther's people didn't cover up his story, but celebrate Purim every year, dancing and partying about how Haman and his team was foiled. Telling the story in all of its details so that future generations can raise up Esthers and topple Hamans in their own communities. So that Mary could grow up to sing a pregnancy song of praise about how higher-ups bite the dust, and those pushed down by higher-ups to be the Cinder-eaters get recognized and valued by the Royal house.
