Our Own House
Ministerial Meandering
Our own house
Sadly, I have been unable to find the photograph I took many years ago whilst I was working a Birmingham Children’s Hospital. It is at once one of the most beautiful pictures that I have of a child (who isn’t my own), and at the same time one of the most brutal and ugly.
The photograph is of a young girl around the age of nine or ten. It is only a head shot, but it shows on her face several scars. The first are round and blistered - from cigarettes being stubbed out on her face; the second is a linear abrasion from the angles of her mouth, tracking up to her ears; this is from the gag that was placed to reduce her screams; the next was an obvious black eye, and the final ones were bilateral sub-conjunctival haemorrhages, from being forcibly shaken or hit around the head. That is bleeding into the whites of the eyes- in case you weren’t sure.
I say that was the ‘final’ sign, but that’s not quite true - because her open mouth revealed broken front teeth - her new incisors - again from forcible trauma.
What on earth - you must be asking - can possibly have made this battered child look in any way beautiful? I’ll tell you; she had the most gorgeous smile I had ever seen. Your next question might reasonably be, “Why on earth would she be smiling, having been so abused?” And the answer to that is because for the first time in many years she felt safe.
When I told her parents that I was unhappy about the nature of some of her injuries - they came in with the usual lies about her falling or getting scratched, or some such utter rubbish - and I told them I wanted to keep her in to do one or two more tests, so they had no need to stay.
Her skeletal survey showed evidence of multiple old and recent fractures of her little, poorly-nourished body, and closer inspection of her wrists and ankles suggested that she had been tied up.
She was, of course, taken into care as soon as we could safely discharge her. What happened to her parents, I don’t know - but they were arrested and charged with child abuse. I didn’t have to go to court as a witness - I just sent the photograph I took, and that - plus the evidence of the skeletal x-rays - was enough to have them convicted.
I wish I could say that this was an isolated case. It isn’t - by a long way. I have many, many more from Africa and other places - but this one girl stands out in my memory because of her smile.
So, when I hear the likes of Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens going on about a ‘cruel, sadistic, and spiteful God,’ I stop before I answer them in my mind, and think about whether we have actually got our own house in order - before we start blaming God for all the faults we’d like to lay at his door. I think we have a long way to go before we have any right to throw manure at God’s creation - unless it is at the shitty individuals who perpetrate this kind of gratuitous violence on the helpless.
Philip+