IIC 43: Rape, Incest, Shame, and Silence: A True Story Reexamined, Part 2

Dr. Peter guides a listening exercise deeper into the story of Princess Tamar and Crown Prince Amnon, looking at the incestuous rape and entering into the internal worlds, the inner experience of each of the characters, inviting you to not only listen to the story, but to listen to yourself as you listen to the story.  What are you noticing happening inside?  What can those emotions, impulses, desires, attitudes, beliefs, memories and images that come up in you tell you about your history and your experiences?

[00:00:12] Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski, and I am here with you to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundations for the Catholic spiritual life. It’s all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving. This is episode 43. It’s released on November 23rd, 2020. Thank you for being here with me. This is our seventh episode in our series on shame, and it is titled Rape, Incest, Shame, and Silence: A True Story Re-examined, Part 2. We are going back to dealing with very heavy, very difficult material. We are going back to the story of Crown Prince Amnon and his rape of his half-sister, the Princess Tamar. That was recounted in 2 Samuel chapter 13. Remember that both Prince Amnon and Princess Tamar were King David’s children. We opened that whole topic up in episode 40 with Part 1, and now we’ve taken two episodes to look deeply at King David’s upbringing, especially all those factors around shame and his relational wounds. And that’s so that we can better understand his role in the present situation.

[00:02:07] And now we’re ready to return to the story of the rape and so much of what went into it and what came out of it. We’re going to continue to apply what we learned about shame and the conceptual information that we gathered in episodes 37, 38, and 39. Those were the first three episodes in this series on shame, and they contain so much of the conceptual information. We’re going to also continue to focus on deep listening, as we learned about in episode 41 and especially in episode 42, our last episode. Okay, so there are some cautions here again, right? Because this is the story of an incestuous rape of a teenager. Now I’m going to reassure you, I’m not going into unnecessary graphic aspects about the rape itself. There isn’t a need to get into all the specific details of that, but I am bringing out the emotional, relational, and psychological impact of the traumas here. It’s not just the rape, it’s the betrayals. It’s the failures to protect. It’s the injustice of it all. All of those things are coming out in this episode and in the episode that comes out next week. So those aspects, the betrayal, the abandonment, the meaning of those contextual factors, that can often be worse than the actual physical violations.

[00:03:35] And that’s what Tamar tells us in the Scripture. Those realities can be very difficult to take. It’s understandable why people want to avoid discussing things like betrayal, abandonment, all of the things that go in to the intensity of the emotion, to the intensity of the experience around trauma. But we need to be real about these things. People who are traumatized, people who are burdened with shame, people who are confused, people who are lost, they need resources. These kinds of awful violations happen, and they happen more frequently than many of us think. We need to talk about them. And in this podcast, in this Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem podcast, I go into that difficult material. Now, there’s no neat and tidy way to talk about incest and sexual violence and all the things that go with that, especially the experience of shame. We don’t use any whitewash here. We’re not going to use cliches. There’s no pious nonsense about this, no spiritual bypassing. We’re going to put these things into a real Catholic context, and we’re going to see them from a Catholic viewpoint. Now, with all that said, and acknowledging the necessity of getting into these kinds of things, I’m going to ask you to be prudent in the way that you listen to the story and the way that you listen to these podcast episodes. This is not an episode, for example, for little kids to necessarily be listening to.

[00:05:11] And as important as it is to deal with these topics, I want you to be thinking about where you are in your life journey, in a broad sense, but also in where you are right now, where you are in this moment. It may be fine for you to listen to this podcast episode in most moments of your life, but maybe not this one. Maybe not right now. Right. So pay attention to where you are in your broad journey, and pay attention to where you are in your steps today. This story may strike close to home for many of you. You don’t have to listen to it. I’m going to invite you to listen to it only if it is good for you, when it is good for you. Even for people who are well-integrated psychologically, this can be really painful and difficult stuff. So unresolved sexual trauma, unresolved incest, unresolved betrayal, unresolved abandonment, especially by parents or church leaders or civic leaders, if you’ve got sibling issues, a lot of sibling rivalry issues, any of those kinds of issues could be really activated by the content that’s going to be in this podcast today. I want you to really pay attention to where you are in your window of tolerance. That’s the zone of nervous system arousal in which you’re able to function well. And when you’re within this zone, when you’re within this window of tolerance, you can take this in.

[00:06:34] You can process the information, you can integrate that information readily. If you find that you’re slipping out of that, slow it down. This isn’t some kind of marathon. This isn’t some kind of achievement that you have to do in listening to this. We want to be respectful of where our systems are. We want to be respectful of what we need. People in the window of tolerance are feeling their emotions at moderate levels. They’re not being overwhelmed with emotions as in hyper-arousal, but they’re also not numbing their feelings out and shutting down, which would be hypo-arousal. All right. So I want you to really just stay in touch with yourself. The most important listening that you can be doing as you’re working with this podcast episode is to be listening to where you are. It’s great that we can do this kind of exercise in a podcast, because we’re not dealing with the immediacy of what happens in the story. The immediacy of what happened in the story, that all happened about 3000 years ago. Right? So we have an opportunity here to begin to work with these topics in a way that has a certain distance. It has a certain distance in time, it has a certain distance in that we don’t know the people personally. We it has a certain distance and that we’re not engaged in an immediate conversation with them. And it gives us an opportunity to work with this material, to listen to ourselves so that we can be better understanding of ourselves, that we can love ourselves in a better, more ordered way.

[00:08:11] And that opens the door to us being able to listen to others, to enter into their phenomenological worlds. You know, if our own castle is on fire, if our own internal house is burning up, it makes it very difficult to go on diplomatic missions to anybody else’s castle. It makes it very difficult to go in a comfortable way and visit anybody else’s house. So we’re going to review these levels of listening. We’re going to review these briefly. We went over these in a lot more detail in episode 42, in the last episode. But three levels of listening: listening to, listening for, and listening with. Listening to, this is listening with your mind, taking in information, listening carefully to what’s happening in the story. It requires attention and concentration to grasp the contents, to get the facts. And it requires the capacity to focus externally on the characters and not be overwhelmed with what’s going on internally. So if you notice, and many, many people are going to have difficulties with this level one listening, this listening to, because it’s going to stir up stuff, stuff that’s unresolved within you. That is a great clue that something important is unresolved in your life.

[00:09:33] Something important is unresolved in your history if hearing the story stirs up that much intense emotion. Second level, listening for, this is level two listening. And this is speculative. We’re holding it lightly. The constructs that we’re making to understand the characters in the story, but we’re listening to fill in the gaps in each character’s big picture. We’re trying to get beyond just the words, beyond just the facts, beyond just what is said. We’re listening for what is not said. We’re listening for what is meant, not just what is said. We’re listening for the person’s experience. We’re trying to grasp that, really get into it, really understand that other person’s inner stuff, the emotions, the intentions, the thoughts, the desires, the attitudes, the impulses, the way they see the world, what they hold to be important. We’re looking at issues around their meaning and purpose and especially who they see themselves to be. We’re also listening for their parts, right? Because we’re not monolithic uniform beings. We’re not just homogenous beings. We have parts, right? We’re listening to those parts. And finally, and very importantly in this level two listening, listening for shame, right? Remember, this whole series is on shame. Shame is fundamentally important. It’s important that when we want to try to understand somebody else, that we listen for the issues around shame. We’re going to engage the faculty of imagination to help us fill in those gaps. We’re working on taking in what the person means instead of just what they say.

[00:11:21] And what we’re not doing is evaluating the merits of their perspectives. We’re not getting caught up in judging their perspective, seeing how accurate they are, seeing how tethered to what we think reality is, or any of that. We’re setting that aside. We’re wanting to be with these characters. We’re wanting to see things as they see them. We want to understand them. We want to see the world through their eyes, no matter how inaccurate or crazy that perspective may seem to be, because that perspective is grounded in some kind of experience. Some kind of experience informed those perspectives. And we’re not going to get very far with loving them or understanding them if we just reject their perspectives out of hand, because really what we’re doing is reacting to something inside of us. That’s really what it boils down to when we take that kind of position towards other people. And now on to level three listening. This is listening with. This is much more rare. It’s characteristic of great therapists. It means that you’re listening with your whole self, and you’re not just listening to the other person, and you’re not just filling in the gaps, and you’re not just using your intuition, but you’re listening to your own parts. You’re listening to your own experience. You’re listening in such a way that you can hold all this incoming information at once in a way that’s peaceful, that’s recollected, that’s calm, that’s non-reactive.

[00:12:54] You’re listening to your own emotions, impulses, and intentions, the thoughts that spontaneously arise. You’re understanding the images that come up, or maybe not understanding the images that come up, but can be with them in a way that allows you to be open to what the meaning might be. So all your inner experiences, recognizing what’s your inner experience and what is the inner experience of the other person that you’re listening to. This is listening in the interpersonal field. Which parts of me are resonating with the parts of the person that I’m listening to? How are they interacting? The self is an instrument, then, an instrument that’s tuning into the frequency of another person in their entirety, not just the parts that the other person deems appropriate and proper to present to the public. No, we’re going beyond that to all the messy stuff, all the untidy stuff, in that compassionate connection. Again, I’m just going to invite you to stay engaged with understanding where you’re at. If you need to take a break, you need to hit the pause button, by all means, do it. We want to be humble in the way that we approach this kind of material. We want to be really respectful of what we can tolerate and what we can’t. We want to recognize our limitations. Okay, great.

[00:14:20] So now we’re going to do another read through of this passage from 2 Samuel chapter 13. And I’m going to read it this time with more inflection, with more interpretation of the words. I’m going to create more of a word picture out of this than a dry recitation. So it’s going to have more inflection. It’s going to have more intonation. You’re going to see that come out. Okay. So here we go. Here is the story. “Now Absalom, David’s son, had a beautiful sister whose name was Tamar. And after a time, Amnon, David’s son, loved her. And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar. For she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. But Amnon had a friend whose name was Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David’s brother. And Jonadab was a very crafty man. And he said to him, ‘O, son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me?’ Amnon said to him, ‘I love Tamar, my brother Absalom’s sister.’ Jonadab said to him, ‘Lie down on your bed and pretend to be ill. When your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister come and give me bread to eat, and prepare the food in my sight, that I may see it, and eat from her hand.” So Amnon laid down and pretended to be ill.

[00:16:08] And when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, ‘Pray let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat from her hand.’ Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, ‘Go to your brother Amnon’s house and prepare food for him.’ So Tamar went to her brother Amnon’s house, where he was lying down, and she took dough and kneaded it, and made cakes in his sight, and baked the cakes. And she took the pan and emptied it out before him. But he refused to eat. And Amnon said, ‘Send out everyone from me.’ So everyone went out from him. Then Amnon said to Tamar, ‘Bring the food into the chamber, that I may eat from your hand.’ And Tamar took the cake she had made and brought them into the chamber to Amnon, her brother. But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, ‘Come, lie with me, my sister.’ She answered him, ‘No, my brother, do not force me, for such a thing is not done in Israel. Do not do this wanton folly. As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the wanton fools of Israel. Now, therefore, I pray to you, speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.’ But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he forced her and lay with her.

[00:17:47] Then Amnon hated her with a very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, ‘Arise, be gone.’ But she said to him, ‘No, my brother, for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other, which you did to me.’ But he would not listen to her. He called the young man who served him and said, ‘Put this woman out of my presence and bolt the door after her.’ Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves, for thus were the virgin daughters of the king clad of old. So his servant put her out and bolted the door after her and Tamar put ashes on her head and rent the long robe which she wore, and she laid her hand on her head and went away crying aloud as she went. And her brother Absalom said to her, ‘Has Amnon, your brother, been with you? Now hold your peace, my sister. He is your brother. Do not take this to heart.’ So Tamar dwelt a desolate woman in her brother Absalom’s house. And when King David heard of all these things, he was very angry. But Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad. For Absalom hated Amnon because he had forced his sister Tamar.”

[00:19:34] All right, let’s sit with this for a minute. Let’s notice, maybe jot down a few things. Connect with what’s going on inside. See where you are with your window of tolerance. Right? We’re going to dial it back a little bit now, and we’re going to talk about the background of the story a little more. Just get this into context so we understand more about what was going on in terms of situational factors. And remember crown prince Amnon, 20 years old, Tamar, 19 years old, Absalom, 18 years old. Physical locations. Let’s talk a little bit about how the physical locations laid out in something like this. The way that I understand this from the research I did was that the palace grounds were like a compound with multiple buildings on them. And the princesses, the virgin princesses were kept in a convent-like separated area. Remember, Tamar is a royal princess. She’s a virgin. And the harem eunuchs are tasked with watching all the virgin princesses very closely. So Tamar lived in the women’s quarters, always accompanied by guards, always accompanied by other women, separated from men, so that nothing untoward would ever happen. Right, especially nothing that would compromise her virginity. And the virgin daughters of the king. They were protected from all unsolicited advances from men. All men. You know, they wore this special long-sleeved robe, which was a very beautiful and very modest public testament of that protected virgin status.

[00:21:25] The Hebrew name for the robe, for the long-sleeved robe, is kethoneth, and the only other place that word is used in all of Scripture is for the robe, the multicolored coat of Joseph, the son of Jacob. Remember, Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery. His brother spilled the blood of a goat on the robe to convince their father, Jacob, of Joseph’s death. That’s the only other place that that kind of robe is specifically called out by name. A little more background. A little background on David. Now, remember, he’s in a morally compromised position because of his sins of adultery and murder with Bathsheba, right. The whole story is well known in the family. It’s very clear that David violated sexual boundaries, and this unleashes a predatory precedent in his family. Right? He modeled some of this sexual boundary violations, with violence. Because there’s no question there’s violence in him getting rid of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband. And now all kinds of unintended consequences are coming home to roost. Remember Nathan the prophet? Just in the chapter before this, 2 Samuel 12, called out the curse on David’s house because of his actions with Bathsheba. Remember also, David had many wives and many concubines. We know that seven wives are named in the Scriptures. There were more than that, and at least ten concubines, and probably a lot more than that.

[00:23:00] We’re probably talking dozens and dozens, scores of women with whom he either had a relationship as a husband or as the master of the concubine. Right. So many, many wives. And they have children, right. And sons grew up without strict paternal discipline, different mothers, jealous of each other, all kinds of rivalries happen in these polygamous types of situations. David’s also distracted. He’s got wars going on. He’s got the demands of duties of state, right? He’s the head of state. So as king, he’s got all kinds of responsibilities. He’s also idealizing Amnon. He totally misses what’s going on with his son. Who knows how many hopes and dreams were layered on this crown prince, how many expectations David had for him, how many ideas for his carrying on the family dynasty, leading God’s chosen people? All right, so we’ve got that. Now let’s start going through the story again. We’re going to go through it again, piece by piece. “Now Absalom, David’s son, had a beautiful sister whose name was Tamar, and Amnon loved her.” All right. So we’re going to start with this whole idea of Tamar being a virgin, right? That means more than never having had sex in Hebrew culture at the time. It also means that she was young. There are no references to older women being virgins in this era. It also means that she’s still living with her father. Virgins always lived with their father under their care and protection and under their authority.

[00:24:54] All right, so we’re dealing with this language of Amnon “loving” Tamar. What does that mean? Well, “Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister, for she was a virgin. And it seemed impossible for Amnon to do anything to her.” I just have such a hard time with this. And so I really like Confucius saying that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names, getting the vocabulary down. It’s hard to have a reasonable discussion. It’s hard to even think clearly unless you define things by their proper terms. So I really got into this language and I am not an expert on the Hebrew. Right. Some day, some listener who actually knows Hebrew is going to call me out on the terrible pronunciations and so forth, but we’re going to give it our best shot here. Right. So the Hebrew for 2 Samuel 13:1 is, the Hebrew is, “way-ye-’ĕ-hā-ḇe-hā.” Something like that. And there’s only one other place in Scripture where that exact expression was being used. And that was in Genesis 24:47 when Isaac first met Rebecca, right. His servant had set up for him to be able to have a wife. His servant brought Rebecca to Isaac. It was love at first sight.

[00:26:33] The verse in Genesis 24:47 reads in the RSVCE, “Then Isaac brought her into the tent and took Rebekah, and she became his wife. And he loved her.” All right. So it was love at first sight. There was this element, though, of intensity. You know, one can imagine Isaac wanting a wife, right? That’s why he went through all this trouble. And he fell in love at first sight. So there’s probably some idealization, probably some infatuation there. And that makes it a little easier for me to take that, that same language might be used between Amnon and Tamar, that Amnon felt towards Tamar. It doesn’t mean, you know, some sort of charity-based love. Obviously, the context indicates something different, something really infused with lust. Remember, they grew up together and these sibling relationships are complex. So there may actually have been some more positive feelings, non-lustful feelings. The desire may have increased over time. This intensity may have built up over years unchecked, to the point where Amnon was, in his bodyset, actually becoming physically sick. Scripture says he made himself ill. Tamar, remember, was a virgin, protected by their father, protected by their king, and it seemed impossible for Amnon to do anything to her. That language is significant. To do anything to her. Not with her, not for her, but to her. You know, at this point, Amnon may still have had some moral constraints.

[00:28:10] He knows that such a thing is not done, but he also has this example, remember, of his father, King David, who used his power and influence to pursue his sexual fantasies in an unbridled way with Bathsheba right up to the point of murder. Amnon saw this at age 18, just two years earlier, and it has to have made an impression. David got what he wanted. He got Bathsheba as his wife. And while the first son of David and Bathsheba, the baby that was conceived as a result of the adulterous union, well, that baby died as a consequence. Baby Solomon was born not too much later, right? Baby Solomon is now toddler Solomon, toddling around, right, in the palace grounds. So it may have seemed to Amnon that David’s consequences weren’t all that bad, really. David seemed to have gotten away with it. Let’s talk a little bit about what can fuel the kind of obsessions that we’re seeing here with Amnon and Tamar, like how he obsessed about her. There’s an EMDR therapist by the name of Jim Knipe, and he has a book called EMDR Toolbox. It’s an excellent book, and he discusses how intense experiences can be distorted in positive, idealized directions, including sexual arousal. Knipe writes about how a chronic distortion of perception can occur when an intense, positive experience remains unprocessed and is somehow perceived as a solution to an unresolved trauma. Right. So you have this pairing of an experience that’s intense and positive, which also has the additional positive effect of enabling the person to contain or avoid significant negative emotions, significant emotional disturbance.

[00:30:05] So you have something that’s pleasurable in itself, but also has this effect of keeping something really unpleasant, something really threatening at bay. The positive experience allows the person to shift awareness away from something that is upsetting and refocusing on something that’s pleasant. And when this happens, you get what Knipe calls an idealization defense, a positive experience that is not only positive in itself, but it’s a means of avoiding a problem in the person’s emotions, in their conscious awareness. All right. That can be really hard conceptually to understand. So let’s get an example here. I want to talk about Gus, right. Gus. And I’m making Gus up. Gus is very down on himself. He’s feeling a lot of shame. He’s feeling like he’s a loser. He’s having trouble with his employer. He’s having conflict with his wife. It’s this deep sense of shame, a deep sense of feeling unlovable. And he doesn’t usually do this. But, you know, on the way home from work, Gus stops over at the casino, right? Gets himself a pack of tokens. He’s playing the dollar slots. Like I said, real low point in his life. But you know what happens to Gus? I bet you can predict it happening, right? Gus wins the jackpot.

[00:31:23] And not just any jackpot, but a huge jackpot. Like one of these jackpots only comes around once or twice a year for the casino, right. And he has this ideal experience. He gets so much attention. He’s a winner now. Gus is a winner. People are admiring him, congratulating. He’s on top of the world. The news cameras are there. It’s amazing. He’s on this high. Totally changed his whole perspective of the world, right. But that winning, that experience of winning, it’s not integrated into the narrative of his life. It’s not integrated into his life story. And you know what? On the other side, feeling so much shame isn’t integrated into his life story either. They’re both not integrated. They’re both disconnected. But when he won that jackpot, I mean, it just seemed like everything changed for him. So, Gus, what happens? He idealizes the experience of playing the slots. He begins to gamble. He remembers in highly idealized ways how great it was to win the jackpot. And being back on that slot machine brings something back of that jackpot for him. It keeps his sense of being a loser, it keeps his shame outside of conscious awareness. It distracts him. And if this is going on for Amnon, he may be idealizing some pleasant early relational experiences with Tamar, something that was helpful for him in some way to deal with the trauma. And then he ran with it. He may be fantasizing about some kind of relationship that helped him to avoid something painful within him. And it need not have been sexual initially.

[00:33:12] In fact, it may not have been at all. This may have happened long before he ever hit puberty. Right, there was something about Tamar, though, that was idealizable. Right, her gentleness or kindness, something. Right. And then with the onset of puberty, he may have worked in some sexual fantasies into that idealization of Tamar. You know, at the same time, Amnon may have been acting out sexual fantasies in other ways. He may have been masturbating, he may have been taking sexual liberties with other women, abusing his power, the servants, the maids. He may have been imagining that he was doing that with Tamar. See how this gets on a really slippery slope. This didn’t develop in a day, this intensity. It may have felt that way, but this kind of things brew for months, years. Another psychological perspective. This one from psychologist Joseph Nicolosi, who came up with reintegrative therapy. And Joseph Nicolosi talks about how intense disordered idealizations can drive intense sexual attractions. But that sexual attraction, it reflects an attempt to find in another person something that is missing in oneself, some void within, some deep sense of inadequacy. So the disordered idealization and its manifestation in an intense sexual preoccupation is driven by a negative self-appraisal, something missing in the person.

[00:34:49] Negative self-appraisal, what does that sound like? Sounds like shame to me, the deep wound of inadequacy. Amnon knew. This is what I believe. Amnon knew, for all his charisma, for all his power as crown prince, for all his gifts, for all his talents, for all his status, he knew that he was deeply flawed. He knew that he was sinful. He had a deep sense of being bad, ridden with vices. We don’t know how he all got there. But I think that was what was going on for him. And he may have seen virtue in Tamar. He may have seen what was missing in himself, her goodness. Right. But especially her innocence. He knew he didn’t have that virtue. He knew he didn’t have that goodness. He also knew that he didn’t have that innocence. But maybe they could share her virtue together. I’m speculating here, but maybe she could complete him in some way. You know, these romantic relationships, ordered or disordered, are often about completing something that’s missing in me. Right, they’re all about me. Right? So it’s not a stretch for me to think that he was looking at Tamar as a way to complete himself. This kind of process is unconscious, and it certainly doesn’t justify boundary violations. It certainly doesn’t justify exploitation. It certainly doesn’t justify rape. We know that Amnon was not thinking of a marriage. He was not thinking of building a family together with her.

[00:36:41] There’s debate about whether marriage was even possible between the half siblings. It may have been possible with a dispensation from David, even with the prohibitions about it in Leviticus. Even if it weren’t legal, David’s got a lot of power, though. You know, it’s possible that he could have made it happen anyway. But David, to be honest with you, probably had other plans for Tamar, right? At 19, she probably already had a marriage arranged. It may have been imminent, right. It may have been pressing, you know, that Tamar was going to be married. She was old enough to marry at age 19. And there is no political advantage, to David, to marrying Amnon and Tamar. It’s bad optics. This isn’t the old time Egyptian royal family here. No, there are a lot of advantages to solidifying alliances. Two other people, important people within Israel, to solidify his base and so forth. No advantage to having two of his children marry each other. Well, let’s go back to Amnon here. Like so what do you do? What do you do when you really, really want something? When you really need something to complete yourself that it seems impossible to have, but you know you need it? Well, you bring in a crafty friend. Well, let’s just take a little break here. Let’s just take a little break here. Check in. We’re getting into a seedy part of this.

[00:38:06] Or a more seedy part of this. How are you doing? How are you doing? I want you to check in. Maybe you can connect with some of your own parts right now. How’s the listening going? What level are you at? You can pause it here if it’s helpful and just kind of check in, maybe write a few things down. Take time with this. It’s not something that has to be rushed through. All right. So where are we? Amnon is bringing in his crafty friend Jonadab. Who we seek out for counsel in these situations really matters. And part of Amnon knows that Jonadab was great at conniving. Jonadab could make the impossible possible. All you’ve got to do is violate the norms, the standards, the laws, the religious commands. That’s it. That’s all you got to do. And Jonadab has the wily imagination to figure out how to short-circuit all the external protections. He’s got the nefarious vision to know how to dupe the king and how to neutralize the guards and servants. Jonadab. What’s going on inside of that guy’s system? What’s going on in that man’s heart? Well, again, we’re speculating. I don’t really, I don’t really know. But there’s just the sense I have, what resonates with my system as I listen to this, is this idea that, if you can will it, you can have it. One way or another. It’s sort of this Nietzschean will to power theme, that I seem to be picking up from this.

[00:39:58] You know, in a secondary way, what I’m picking up is that Jonadab may have gotten a vicarious, twisted pleasure in being able to set such things in motion. It’s like a form of acting out, right? This kind of adolescent acting out, kind of rebelliousness. Right? It’s also a way to curry favor with Amnon, remember? Everybody believes that crown prince Amnon is gonna be king. Might be some advantages for old Jonadab if he gets in good with him, you know, as crown prince, gives him what he wants, gratifies him, makes things possible. All right. But what a tragic, evil little figure. What a snake. What a small, stony heart. It’s really hard for me to connect empathetically with Jonadab. There doesn’t seem to be a redeeming quality about him listed in the Scripture, although we know also he was made in the image and likeness of God and he was playing out things where he was trying to protect himself. I can imagine a variety of different ways that Jonadab was dealing with his own shame. It’s tough. When you do shameful things, the shame just builds. That’s what Jonadab, that’s what happening to Jonadab, that’s what’s happening to Amnon. What does Jonadab say? “Lie down on your bed. Pretend to be ill. And when your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister Tamar come and give me bread to eat and prepare my food in my sight, that I may see it and eat from her hand.'”

[00:41:42] And immediately Amnon does it, carries out the plan just like that. Pretends to be ill. The king comes to see him, right on cue. Right. Amnon says to the king, “Let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight that I may eat from her hand.” He’s moaning in his bed. He looks deathly ill. David comes, so do the doctors. Their physical examinations can’t figure out what’s wrong. This is the crown prince, though. This is not just, you know, some ordinary, you know, Israelite. We’re talking about the crown prince. The patient, Amnon moans again. Right. And then comes up with an idea that may seem to help him. You know, “Let my sister Tamar.” He’s emphasizing the sibling relationship. Right. Let my sister Tamar, to put David at ease. Right. Let her come and give me bread to eat. Okay. He wants food. Well, that’s a good thing. You know, it’s better for him to be eating than not eating. At least he’s got an appetite. Maybe give him something to eat. We’ll get him feeling better. Let’s try that. Right. But I don’t know, as you listen to this, did anything strike your system as being weird? This request of watching Tamar make cakes and then eating them from her hand.

[00:43:06] This idea of her having to feed him in his bed. Hmm. Weird. Oh, I think it’s weird. I mean, it’s got my creepy detector going off really bad, right? I think it’s weird. David misses the cues, though, or he chooses not to investigate. He may have been agitated about the “severe illness” of his favorite son, Amnon. But he also may not want to know that something is very amiss here. Something’s very wrong. Something’s creepy. The implications of Amnon setting up a bedroom meeting with his half-sister, Tamar, are eluding David. All right, we’re getting into unfathomable territory here possibly for David, though. You know, my son couldn’t possibly be considering anything untoward with Tamar. That’s unthinkable. It’s inconceivable. Right? He’s so sick, you know. He’s just so sick. He needs to get better. Tamar, she’s good at taking care of the sick. Right? And there are so many safeguards in place. There’s social norms, there’s religious prohibitions or legal prohibitions. There’s all the servants. There’s all the witnesses. Their function is to protect. Parts of David may have suspected that there was danger, but other parts of David did not want to admit the possibility that his favored son had such a potential for evil. And those parts that did not want that possibility to be admitted silenced the alarms that may have been going off inside of him.

[00:44:42] Right. You know, you’ve done that right where you don’t listen to that little voice inside, right? That part that wants you to know something. You silence that. You say, nope, not listening. David does not know his sons, and he may not want to know them, given his idealization of them. Puts his head in the sand. He does not want to see the curse on his family play out, right. The curse prophesied by Nathan in the previous chapter. There’s this avoidance going on, and David is now undermining the boundaries. He’s removing the physical limits. David’s shame could be activated if he were to see the generational effects of his sins. Right. David’s got many wives and concubines. This whole adultery murder thing with Bathsheba, all this indulgence of his sons, not disciplining them, not loving them enough to challenge them towards virtue. He’s probably afraid of Amnon, right, afraid of Amnon making a scene like a spoiled adolescent. But that passivity is very, very costly. It leads not only to the rape of Tamar, but also to fratricidal murder and to an all-out civil war between the armies of David and Absalom. He sowed the wind with this Bathsheba affair, and he is now at the beginning of reaping the whirlwind. What happens next? Scripture reads thusly.

[00:46:14] “Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, ‘Go to your brother Amnon’s house and prepare food for him.’ So Tamar went to her brother Amnon’s house where he was laying down, and she took dough and she kneaded it and she made cakes in his sight and she baked the cakes. She took the pan and emptied it out before him, but he refused to eat.” It’s all happening the way Jonadab predicted. It’s all happening the way that that crafty man thought it through. Amnon filled in the details with his own imagination. Let’s take a look at these cakes. Right. The Hebrew word for cakes in this passage are levav or levivah. Right. And the root of these words in Hebrew is the Hebrew word lev, which translates to heart. Now, these dumpling-like cakes, you might think of them as like pancakes with a thicker batter, these cakes were easily and rapidly made, and they were thought to strengthen the heart. That’s why the root there is lev for the levav or levivah, right? You know, to give the heart a boost of energy. So you might think of them as like heart cakes or heartening dumplings or something like that. It doesn’t have to do with the shape of them. They’re not like Valentine’s shaped or something like that. They are a traditional food for the sick. So even the name of the bread has a kind of sensuality about it. And an informed Hebrew might perceive in the name of the food something strange about Amnon’s request, especially when you couple that with having to eat it out of her hand.

[00:47:40] So the hints were there, the signs were there. Parts of David were probably detecting that something was strange, but those parts were silent. Right? We talked about that. Doesn’t want to think nasty things about Amnon, doesn’t want to question him, doesn’t want to challenge him. We can choose to listen to the parts that pick up on the hints, or we can choose to ignore them. What does David hear? What does he choose to hear? Only that Amnon wants a kind of special treatment because he was sick, and he wants it from his sister, right? All right. Tamar, completely unprepared. Parts of her might have suspected that Amnon could be a predator, but that’s not a very nice thought. Who wants to think that? If you can’t think something nice, why think anything at all? Right. Other parts of her suppressed those concerned parts. These are good girl parts, trusting parts, parts that don’t want any ridiculous accusations to be made about anybody’s motives. Right? Parts that want to believe that everything’s okay. Let’s talk a little bit about sexual predators. Right. The victims of sexual predators are often family or friends. And why? Because the misplaced trust of the prey, the confidence of the prey is a great asset to the predator in carrying out wicked designs. There’s something really creepy, I said this before, about Amnon, a grown man, lying in bed watching his beautiful younger sister knead dough for him.

[00:49:10] He’s got to watch her make the dough, right? Now, originally this came from Jonadab. Who knows where his mind was, right? What kinds of fantasies he was having and vicariously participating in, and who knows what he was going to ask Amnon about this when it was all over. But it’s just, I don’t know, it makes my flesh crawl, right? I don’t know how it lands with each of you, but it feels really pornographic to me. I see Amnon savoring this visual, this image, this image of Tamar kneading dough with sexual pleasure, like his body quivering with anticipation. He’s been waiting for so long for what is about to happen. The noble parts of him are are suppressed. He’s now on a mission. There’s no going back. The wheels are in motion, and he’s about to get what he’s been longing for and scheming for. His sister, kneading dough, baking cakes, feeding him by hand. It just feels really predatory to me now. Karen Souza, one of our listeners and one of the RCCD community members from Santa Cruz, California, when the first one in this series aired, the episode number 40, where we got into the Part 1 of this whole story. She brought up the whole notion of overt incest, covert incest, and emotional incest. It’s a great idea to talk about those things now, right? So overt incest is sexual contact.

[00:50:46] Physical sexual contact between blood relatives. Right. Could be father-son, mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, could be siblings. Okay. But it’s physical contact. Sexual, physical contact, that’s overt incest. Unlike overt incest, covert incest does not involve physical touching, but instead it is a nonphysical, sexually laced emotional intimacy, usually between a parent and a child, but sometimes also between two blood relatives, like two siblings. Right? And in that, the child feels trapped and used, the same as with overt incest. Right? So he’s watching her, and this just feels very incestuous to me. He’s again violating boundaries now, sinning in his mind. Right. And anybody that says you can’t sin with your mind, right? Sometimes in good faith, sometimes therapists will say that to people that are scrupulous, for example. Scrupulous people don’t believe it, first of all. And second of all, it’s not true. You can sin with your mind. You can make internal acts that are sinful. And that is exactly what’s going on here, at least in the way that I read it with Amnon. Like the way he’s watching his sister and enjoying it, built into his fantasy. Okay, we are going to stop with the story right here, and we’re going to pick it up in the next episode. Okay. We’re actually going to finish the rest of the story.

[00:52:20] We got a lot more to go into, but I am just going to invite you again to take a moment, go inside, check and see how you’re doing. How is it going? Maybe stop the tape here. Stop the digital recording here. Make a few notes. Right. How did the listening go? What was surprising to you as you listened to this story? And then my interpretations of the story. How the story landed with me? I’m going to invite you to share what you can of your experience of listening to this episode with another person. Is there some way that you can connect with another person, maybe somebody else, ideally, who’s actually listened to the episode as well? Right. If that seems too much, okay, let’s respect that, right? See what you can do. See if you can read between the lines in some way. Where do you struggle with the listening? Those points of struggle can help you identify where you need to work in your life. Notice what got activated in you. The parts of the story that stirred you up can help you understand what you need to connect with within yourself. It can help you understand the burdens that parts of you are carrying. I’m going to ask you to help me. Share these podcasts. Get out there. Let people know. We’re on Spotify. We’re on Apple Podcasts. We’re on Google Play. We’re now on Amazon. Share it on social media.

[00:53:52] We got buttons at soulsandhearts.com/coronavirus-crisis. Get the word out. Let people hear what you think about it. Your personal recommendation, your personal testimonial. That’s what really helps us get committed listeners. Also get on the waiting list to join the community at soulsandhearts.com/rccd. If you’re not already in the community, get on the waitlist. We are doing so many great things in terms of planning, making great progress in terms of what we’re going to be offering in the community in 2021. It is amazing. We’re going to have so many wonderful aspects of this. I’m super excited about it. For those of you that are already in the community, remember Friday, November 28th, from 4:00 PM to 5:15 p.m. Eastern Time, we’re going to have office hours for RCCD members, right? All questions are up for consideration. Make sure you register. That’s up on our Mighty Network, on our app. You’ll be able to connect on that. And if you can’t make it in person, if you can’t make it live, make sure that you PM me your questions or you can email them to me as well. People, you can reach out to me, (317) 567-9594. You can email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com, if there’s something you really feel like I should know, something that’s on your heart to tell me. And now, with all of that said, let’s go to our patroness and our patron. Our Lady, our Mother, Undoer of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.