Toxic Myths: Understanding Their Impact and How They Can Affect Recovery
11:03 06/03/2026
When trauma tears us apart, can the pieces ever truly come back together? Beth Keith offers a compassionate and courageous exploration of recovery for those wounded by abuse within the Church. But how can the Bible impact our perception of trauma and how can it guide us towards recovery?
Beth Keith discuss' this in Chapter Three: Toxic Myths of her new book The Pieces Join...
In John 8, we read the story of Jesus and a woman; we don’t know her name. The religious leaders allege she has been caught in adultery; they demand that Jesus complies with the law and joins the crowd intent on stoning her to death. It’s a story often referred to as ‘The Adulterous Woman’ or ‘The Woman Caught in Adultery’; either title seems odd to use as there is scant evidence for the crime and so much more is going on in the story that deserves to make the headline.
Even though the accusers are opposed by Jesus, and even though no credible evidence is given, 2,000 years later we are still buying into this perception of her: that she is guilty. How we label things deeply affects our ongoing perception of them. We’ve seen this in the way children caught up in grooming gangs have often been referred to as child prostitutes. We see it in the news stories which distort the facts by offering headlines that shift blame on to victims, with images or words that suggest they were complicit or asking for it. We read it in the headlines that minimize the harm caused, romanticize rape or project positive values on to perpetrators.
What if the story had been given the title, ‘The Wrongly Accused Woman’ or ‘The Woman Slut-Shamed’? What if we shifted the focus, as Jesus does in the story, and called it ‘Standing Up to Abusive Religious Leaders’ (O’Day, 2015, p. 535)? I wonder how that might change our perception. What if we read this narrative not through the misleading depiction of this woman, but by attending to the text and imagining what happened?
Revd Dr Beth Keith is a vicar in Sheffield. Her work and ministry have frequently involved supporting victims and survivors of sexual violence. She is a trained Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA) and working with the Church of England on developing its Redress Scheme.
Find out more about the Redress Scheme here.
The Pieces Join is out now and available here.
