10 pointers toward a trustworthy relationship

I am very often asked what it is that you look for in the early going when dating and courting.  I’m also asked very often what the signs are to be particularly watchful of; you know, when charm is at full tilt and butter wouldn’t melt in a future partner’s mouth.

These are such important questions, because picking a dud early on is critically important before they begin ruining your life.  How often is it that the charmer, the one full of humour and pizzazz wins the heart, and it doesn’t matter the kind of relationship.  Working relationships are just as fraught as romances are.

We’re naturally drawn to those who often have the bent to turn nasty.

We never quite connect the dots that the charm it takes to sweep a person off their feet is often the influence, later on, that manipulates.

Here are ten things to watch for:

1.             Can you say no?  Extend that to how much are you allowed to have your own view?  Is your view cherished by the other?  These questions, like the following ones, are applicable to any relationship.

2.             How do they manage power?  Can they be trusted with it?  Who are they when no one’s looking?  If you discover they have integrity, keep watching, and be grateful, but also keep watchful because appearances can deceive, and perfection is in nobody.  These matters are universal in applicability.

3.             Are they functionally capable?  What’s the work ethic like?  Do they serve others willingly and enthusiastically or do they expect to be served?  Do they love and respect others or expect to be loved and respected?  In short, are they prepared to work hard for the relationship?  Is your diligence going to be returned to you?

4.             How safe do they make you feel?  In the gut I mean?  Chances are your gut knows instantly.  Don’t make excuses for poor behaviour if that ‘something’ they have is compellingly good.  Again, these things are relevant in any and every relationship.  A person who’s a saint 90 percent of the time undoes all that work if they’re violent one time in ten.

5.             What do others you know and love say about them?  What do they really say and feel?  Are those you know and love allowed to be truthful with you about this?  Or do you just agree to disagree and ‘don’t go there’?  Denials of these kinds usually end badly.

6.             Were you attracted to them romantically or to work with them because they ‘looked good’ or because it felt good?  It’s okay if that’s so.  Most of us make decisions based on face value, yet what we don’t see is the character beneath an ‘also ran’ who didn’t get a look in.  In the longer run, they may have had the character that would have made for a sustainable relationship.

7.             How much do they seek control or to control you or others?  Someone who needs to be in control is worthy of a red flag.  There will be no happiness in a relationship with such a person. Even when they’re in control, they’re a tyrant; just a happy one.

8.             Do they want the best for you?  Many of the ones who SAY they want the best for you actually want the exact opposite.  It’s those who act as if you’re important (and just as important as they are) who are keepers.  This, like all the above, goes for all relationships.

9.             Are your dependent others really safe?  Whether the people we relate with are directly in contact with our vulnerable dependents or not is immaterial in most cases.  A physical abuse is possible, but so is our neglect of those loved dependent ones because of how we’re treated.  How people treat us — and I’m talking abuse here — has an impact far further than we imagine.  Sometimes we can’t be in a relationship for the flow on impacts we cannot fully see.

10.          Is their heart capable of being open, safe, vulnerable, soft?  We are all a little hard-of-heart from time to time.  But some people’s hearts are calloused and defiant.  Others are legalistic and exact — no room for error.  Add to this the partiality of a heart full of unacknowledged bias.  The person we want a working relationship with is someone who sees their own heart — they SEE their own foibles.

Of course, we, ourselves also called to be faithful and trustworthy partners.  WE need to abide by these ten above.  Relationships only work when both parties to a relationship seek to outdo the other in loving action that seeks for the other what they’d settle for themselves.

Photo by Joseph Chan on Unsplash

You can’t demand a person forgive when their powerful abuser hasn’t repented

Jesus is always a breath of fresh air, even as by the Holy Spirit we’re convicted to do what repentance demands — to face the people and situations in our lives that deserved better so that all may walk free of whatever bondage impales us.[1]

Jesus never requires us to wed with bondage.  It’s always freedom to which we’re invited.

There is a bondage that Christians may become entrapped in and it surrounds the issue of forgiveness.  I want to suggest it isn’t what you may think it is.

A heinous and abusive theology has abounded

An abusive theology around forgiveness has made its rounds in the past five or so decades.

That sinful theology proceeds from the thought that whatever sin a person does to us, forgiveness is required of us; to let them off the hook, no matter what they’ve done, no matter whether the perpetrator of the sin owns it or not.

That’s right.  Forgiveness has been required of the survivor even if they’ve been abused (bearing zero percent weight of contribution) and the perpetrator of the abusive act refuses to acknowledge it and therefore does not repent of it.

Worse, many times the perpetrator prospers, and the survivor of the abuse has their life seriously curtailed; not truly because of ‘bitterness’ but more accurately, because their abuser’s wilful heart has poured contempt on the Holy Spirit in that abused person.  (How many have walked away from the faith because of unreconciled abuse?!)  It might be said that the ‘Christian perpetrator’ will not themselves be forgiven by God (Deuteronomy 29:17-19; Mark 3:28-29).

If there is anything that commands our attention as far as living right with our brothers and sisters, it’s what we stand to experience when we MEET our God and can no longer refuse to acknowledge the truth.

But the knowledge of this is spurned by the Christian perpetrator, and in that very act they deny their faith in God — they may as well be saying, “I don’t believe I’ll ever need to account for this!”  There could not be a more commanding example of folly.  All face God, eventually.

Now the blight that is on this church is this: the abusive theology has preferred to favour the wicked and it is abhorrent in God’s sight.

Let’s explore the biblical Joseph

God has directed my thinking of late to the story of Joseph in Genesis 45.  First of all, I was directed to that polarising text in Genesis 50:15-21.  Really these two passages couldn’t speak to one another more.

As Christians we hear people speak of the Joseph account of Genesis 37, 39-50 as kind of a prooftext that God can work in a heart (Joseph’s in this case) and can cause a person (anyone) to forgive a perpetrator.

But with Joseph’s narrative a case in point, I think we might find that forgiveness for Joseph — at least from an abuse survivor’s perspective — is a fait accompli.  For Joseph, a man abused by more than one group of people, we can see why forgiveness is possible.

Before I unpack why, I want to suggest that nobody understands how impossibly difficult forgiveness of an unrepentant perpetrator is for a survivor until they have been abused to such a degree that they asked for none of it and absolutely no justice has yet been (or may ever be) done.

I suggest it merely because those who haven’t had these experiences may struggle to comprehend it and may find it to be excuse-making.  The latter couldn’t be further from the truth!

The issues for Joseph were that he was the one who had come into great power — his abusive brothers who had been in the power role had since been rendered powerless.  That doesn’t always occur in life, and I would suggest that RARELY does it happen that the tables are turned; the powerless becoming powerful and vice versa.  This is a nuance that must be taken into account, because it is comparatively easy to forgive someone who pleads for our mercy.  What about cases where there is no such pleading; where there is no repentance and no seeking of forgiveness?

Another important issue for Joseph is that he could see God’s purpose in his suffering, or at least he could by the time his brothers cowered before him.  And of the issue of Potiphar’s wife and that wicked imprisonment, there again is a purpose in that; the deciphering of Pharaoh’s dream.

Being able to see God’s purpose in our suffering will get us through anything.  But for many survivors of abuse there is no such purpose to be seen — it feels senseless.  This propounds the issues of an abuser’s contempt for their God, which is the sort of blasphemy that sets the perpetrator at odds with God’s forgiveness.

There is possibly more to see in this Joseph account that instructs us that this is not a fair biblical example to cast upon the situation of the survivor of unreconciled abuse.

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I just want to say this, having built the above context.  I don’t know any survivor of abuse, whether by face-to-face interaction or online (and I know scores in both camps), who has been able to come close to a sustained forgiveness-of-heart for a perpetrator who does not confess, acknowledge or repent, and who usually prospers despite their abuse.

Churches must understand that nobody can demand a person forgive their more powerful abuser who hasn’t repented.  Churches should also extend grace upon grace for those who, for no fault of their own, are cornered in a grief that may seem ‘bitter’ but really is not.  This ‘unforgiveness’ is not a sin; it’s not helpful, but it’s also not sinful.

The only thing that reconciles abuse situations for many people is justice.

Thank God that that justice inevitably is eternal.  Nobody escapes justice forever, and it is wisdom for all people to face it now, this side of death.

Who would risk the eternality of their relationship with God but the one who says they believe but, by their unreconciled abusive actions, really they don’t?

A pastoral response to a dilemma

I’m sure pastors and churches feel duty bound to fix problems and people.  That’s God’s job.  Many, many situations in life are unresolved.  There is a great deal of maturity in accepting this truth.  It can seem despairing at times.

The worst thing a church or a pastor could do is expect one party — the innocent party — to do the work of reconciling what is broken to make it whole again.  This is a burden churches and pastors are not asked to bear.

An effective pastoral response to a dilemma is lament — to properly mourn that which can only be grieved, and yet do so in the hope that comfort will come (Matthew 5:4).  Pastors and churches are called to be faithful sojourners with survivors.

Nothing in this article suggests a full forgiveness of a perpetrator by a survivor is impossible; indeed it is possible, just not common, and it requires a special grace of God that isn’t afforded to everyone.  We customarily take too much credit for this grace; it’s God’s work and not our own.

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[1] Both the perpetrator and the survivor are bonded by a sin — the perpetrator to the sin of denial, the survivor is hamstrung by that denial.  But, the repentant themselves walk free whether they’re forgiven or not, for they have honoured God’s truth.  And as the survivor hears an attempt at an amends made, they walk into at least the possibility of more freedom than they have previously experienced.  If the repentance is real, the survivor may indeed receive complete release from the bondage that held them.

Photo by Daniel J. Schwarz on Unsplash

 

Clarity within the confusion of an abusive relationship

Crazy making gets a new definition when a person enters a relationship with a person who diminishes just about every facet of their life.  Give it a year or three and you’ll see if the person you’re in a relationship with is abusive — it hardly ever occurs in the first winsome months.

But begin saying no or putting up sensible boundaries and you’ll attract their ire — it’s either visible rage or a seething withdrawal.  You’ll know it by your reluctance to say no, by your need to give them their own way.

Once the bear is poked it is incited and there is always payback.  As you look back their unreasonableness is clear like 20/20 hindsight.  It is so clear as you look back.

Then you have to be kind to yourself and forgive yourself for the fact that you wasted so much time — good months and years — with someone who never deserved your empathy, patience, kindness and grace.  It’s not deserved because it was never extended to you; these beautiful character traits were only ever required of you.  And that’s not love.

When you’re in a relationship that always feels like where there’s a problem it’s your fault, you’re constantly aware that while they look like an adult in physical stature, they’re actually more like a 5-8-year-old in character.  But being a ‘big person’ they will feel like they must master you to project the feeling for both them and you that they’re in control — over the relationship and over you.  You know this when they reward you for obeying their will and when they punish you for disobeying.

Their love is punctuated by control — which isn’t love.  It is highly conditional.  It is a ‘deserved’ love and that actually means it’s not love at all.

It can take a long while to overcome the thinking that says:

§     “It’s okay, they’ll change.”  They probably won’t.

§     “It’s probably in some way my fault.”  No, it isn’t your fault.  Their abuse is their choice.

§     “I really need to be certain before I choose to leave the relationship.”  Empathise with yourself.  You don’t need any more pressure on you as to when to make that choice.  But you also know it probably won’t change.

§     “I’m really not sure what to think.”  Remember that abusive relationships are all about crazy making.  Being constantly confused is a sign you’re in a toxic relationship.

Photo by Tiago Bandeira on Unsplash 

Twelve Steps; Step 5 – when an addict or an abuser repents

Rare is it that we see someone with serious pathological shortcomings (sin!) come before God and another human being to confess it all.  Much more is it the case that an addict or an abuser would continue their journey of denial and bargaining and inward anger to deny those they’d harmed their justice.

But not with those who have embarked on a Step 4 “fearless moral inventory”.

This is where the Twelve Steps come into their own; each and every step the power of God for purification and transformation in the life of the one in recovery as well as justice and vindication for the ones harmed.

Step 4, when done well — usually an exhaustive process of prayer, journalling and recording, and much pondering and curating, based on the seven deadly sins — a period of time conjoined by both peace and agony, where we stay with the log in our own eye — is the launching pad to probably the most courageous thing any of us mired in our sin can do.

That’s Step 5 — to sit and confess every shameful deed dredged up before God and another human being.

Every deed that has long been buried in denial, shame, guilt, self-hatred and anger turned in upon oneself, which always spills out through transference onto innocent others.

The process takes hours.  It took me five hours on December 14, 2003.  And today I had the privilege of supervising someone complete their Step 5 — a final and official three-hour block that built on several hours of previous deep Step 5 work over a few months.  The courage that has consistently been shown by this one in their recovery is nothing short of miraculous.  The hope they give to those they have transgressed is built upon the pillars of justice and peace.

There was such a sense of achievement as we travelled together for 180 minutes of deep confession, affirmation, clarification, challenge, courage and commissioning.

The full Step 5 experience is laden with weeks of intercessory prayer beforehand, it has the Holy Spirit’s presence and anointing, and it is the ripping open of a new heart, cleansed, refreshed and made anew, restored in the holiness of Jesus’ name.

In this one today was the pleasure of Almighty God, a Lord who cannot despise a broken and contrite heart facing the full measure of their once destructive truth.

Survivors of abuse live and breathe in the hope that their perpetrators would one day face the truth of the despicable things that they did to them.  If only they did, they would just about without exception be forgiven.  But regretfully so few do.

The is why the Twelve Step program is the power of God for change, restoration for the sinner, justice for the abused, glorifying for our Lord.

Lord Jesus,

In the powers of Your grace, and by faith that pleases You, we ask for the sake of the sinner who has impacted the lives of those You love, that You, by Your Spirit, would convict their heart to acknowledge, to admit, and to address their sin.  Cause these ones who are still prodigals to You to turn back to You for their own eternal sake.  Cause them to have courage that, through honesty and courage, they might execute justice and vindication for the ones they’ve harmed before they go to meet You. Help them to know the way to Your peace, which is to worship You in spirit and in truth, to know that You are a relational God who desires all sinful harm to be reconciled.

AMEN.

Turning Jonah’s 4 weaknesses into strengths

The biblical paradox unfolds in trial and pain: where we come before the living God in our weakness, we can redeem strength, enough for the moment.

Jonah, the Minor Prophet, had such a difficult time of it obeying God’s call to proclaim impending judgment to the Ninevites; he can be seen, through the text, battling four types of emotion.

These reveal four weaknesses that we, too, battle with. It depends on how we battle as to whether (or not) we draw on the Lord’s strength in getting through.

Jonah 1 – Fear

Chapter 1 of Jonah hits the ground running; the prophet runs from God in fear. Perhaps it was mortal fear for his life to preach before the heathen of Nineveh; or maybe it was religious indifference, or a lack of faith. Whatever it was, it was fear that drove him the other way.

The Lord’s calling of Jonah is plain enough; he must go immediately (verse 2). But just as immediately, Jonah sprints in the opposite direction boarding a ship from Joppa bound for Tarshish. His fearful, disobedient reaction is ‘rewarded’ by a peril worse than he can imagine—death lies there, imminent.

Jonah’s mistake was to run in fear. We make the same mistake; the instinct is to run when staying put and considering what is before us, and what God is saying, is usually the wiser choice. Obeying God is often about moving beyond the reptilian instinct, where that instinct is based in fear.

Jonah 2 – Failure

The sweetest Scripture of this short book is saved for a psalm of thanksgiving.

Within the thread of Jonah’s gratitude for the provision of a great fish, is the lament for his failure, realising how dire the circumstance was; that his disobedience almost led to his death. Whilst he is ashamed of his failure, he is thankful for the having been saved. It is impetus for obedience, leading into chapter 3.

Just as easily we, too, can reflect over our failures, utilising them as platforms for learning and future obedience.

Jonah 3 – Feelings

When the time comes to perform, we often go to water, experiencing fight or flight—the nuances of adrenaline pumping through our bodies, impacting us emotionally.

We could imagine going to a city, known for its revelry, like preaching before the mafia or the KKK; Jonah is faced with preaching an insultingly laughable message—how would they react?

Feelings-from-head-to-toe would be us if we were placed in such an intolerable situation. How do we communicate what God has laid tremulously on our hearts, but by faith?

Faith alone remits courage to do only what God can empower us to do.

Jonah 4 – Frustration

Notwithstanding the miracle of the Ninevites turning back to God in chapter 3, Jonah is found irreconcilable within a fit of anger. Preaching to the Ninevites has meant his own goals went unmet.

When we obey God, at times our needs and goals will go unmet, and we can expect feelings of frustration. Equally, though, we can expect God to reprove us, as he did Jonah, if our frustration is selfishly poised.

Jonah experienced the weaknesses of fear, failure, feelings, and frustration. We do too. We can learn a lot from, and be encouraged by, Jonah’s humanity. Be balanced in fear. Accept failure and move on. Perform despite feelings. Patiently endure frustrations.

Most people are silent on abuse until it has impacted them

The fact is, for most people, there is complicity for abuse, until it directly impacts their life or those they love.  Then they speak up.  It’s then that they develop a view.  It’s then that they suddenly ‘see’, having seen all along.

Many issues in life are like this.  Nobody has the empathy to care much for those who face loss until they, themselves, have had their own lives completely re-channelled through grief.  Special needs in children are hard to see until you’ve had a child with autism, diabetes, a disorder or another syndrome, and the parents’ horrendously challenging daily journey doesn’t rate a mention.  Few bother much for depression or suicide or anxiety until they are met by that ferocity of these situations.  Abuse of children doesn’t tend to bother us until we imagine being that child.  The throes of pain attain a reframing of care.

Pain wakes us up from our slumber.  When we’ve experienced abuse, we begin to see how many victims there are, how many people are met with silence, who are ignored and uncatered for, who have even been maligned very severely in some cases.  When we’ve seen a loved one suffer abuse that is completely not their fault, and we see them hope beyond hope for it to stop, month after month, year after year, and it never stops, and we see their hope falter and fail, we see the devastating effects of abuse first hand.

Humanity is afflicted with a condition that fails to care unless failures are experienced, and then there can only be the response to care.

One of the hardest things to bear is having been abused and not believed, or worse, seen as the one at fault for the abuse that has been exacted out against you.

Why is that we don’t take a person’s perception of their experience as valid?  Why is it that we hear their story and the jury’s still out?  Why is it that we need to have experienced the truth of that pain they’ve gone through for that pain to register in us?  Why is it that so many people, and yes, people with influence a lot of the time, nod in agreement, yet still remain passive, ambivalent... silent, no less.

I’ve known so many people who have literally had their lives changed through a single event that completely changed their perspective.  It’s as if it was one life then, another life now.  God can and does change our perspective through events that impact our lives, our children’s and our grandchildren’s lives, and our parents’ lives.

One thing that this truth challenges is the one of perspective: to value another human being’s perception as their truth, valid in and of itself.  What a cherished thing it is to believe a person their experience, or to be the one who is believed.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash 

Some of the traits of the psychologically abused

 Trauma begets trauma and it’s a sad fact that many who have been traumatised can end up being perpetrators, but so many people who bear the marks of trauma (and it’s more than we might expect) are always the victim; they always submit; they never fight.  Even if they mount some resistance there is never enough power to meet what the aggressor will bring.

People who have been psychologically abused tend to:

§     Feel they’re unworthy – those who have been treated as if they’re unworthy do tend to believe they’re not worthy.  This is the horrendous effect of abuse.  It leaves us doubting that which should never be doubted.  We all belong here as much as the largest star in the universe.

§     Constantly apologise – they will even apologise for things they have no control over, for the lack of patience and anger in the ones who abuse them, for everything that goes wrong.  There is a belief that if a person apologises, they might calm the aggressor down.  Well, we know that doesn’t always work, and for some it never actually works at all.  Constantly apologising can be an attempt at restoring the power imbalance; and that’s a sad fact.

§     Be especially sensitive to criticism – when the soul is eroded by the constant drone of contempt, the soul is embittered toward itself and it doesn’t know why – no plant can grow or even survive in a toxic garden, and the same applies to humans.

§     Need more assurance than they wished they’d need – there is a place where reassurance is necessary and appropriate, yet when we know we’re craving it, we can know why, and we can begin to resent that mistreatment caused it.

§     Breakdown unexpectedly and uncontrollably – when there is low confidence, self-concept and self-esteem, there’s a constant self-barraging going on in the mind, a constant self-doubting that can only bring about the state of misery.  The scariest thing about this is a person knows just how abysmal the abyss is – how cavernously deep and bottomless is that pit.

§     Hide their feelings – they don’t feel safe sharing their feelings, because they have learned that the people they trust betray them.  The only hope anyone has in these relational circumstances is to shift the dynamic and begin to only associate with safe people so recovery can commence.

§     Struggle to trust – when nobody has proven trustworthy – or so few it doesn’t affect the calculation – you can resolve that trust is a folly, that it’s just not worth it.

People who have been psychologically abused bear scars that can only begin to heal once they’re safe and out of harm’s way.

Photo by Jordan M. Lomibao on Unsplash