Last week, I attended a presentation by a local nonprofit providing batterer intervention programs, anger management, and other classes to help domestic abusers recognize and repair the impacts of their unhealthy patterns. “Before they can even begin to seek compassion for and address their own past traumas that led them to cause harm,” began their Executive Director, “they need to be accountable for the harm they have done. They have to stop doing harm, stop making excuses.”
We have to look honestly at the harm our traditions have done, at those we have excluded, and at the ways in which we (collectively, as religious people) have deluded ourselves into false narratives that obscure the ways in which facets of our traditions may have emerged as dysfunctional responses and may no longer serve our highest good.
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