The relevance of repentance in response to abuse

Two things I hear that rationalise abuse too often:

“Don’t judge yesterday by today’s standards,” is one, and “None of us is without sin,” is the other, usually using Jesus’ sticking up for the woman caught in adultery as prooftext — “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” ([John 8:7])

Well, the problem with the latter rationalisation is context.  Jesus was protecting a weaker party who had no power against a throng of powerful religious leaders who had a legal right to kill her.  We cannot use that context to protect a more powerful person by minimising their acts of abusing someone far more vulnerable.  We cannot use the ‘none of us is without sin’ rationale to protect someone who has done wicked deeds to another AND who has continued to deny it.

The contexts are worlds apart, though we could easily imagine Jesus advocating for the survivor of abuse who is being maligned to spiritual death — which happens.

The other one is about applying some kind of ‘yesterday’s standard’ argument.  The standards for sin do not change.  What was a sin 50 years ago is the same sin today.

Perhaps as a society we’re finally waking up to what’s appropriate versus what’s inappropriate.  Or maybe we’re conditioned less to overlook the abuses that are injustices for all time.  There will no doubt be many sociological reasons why, but what is wrong now was always wrong and will always be wrong.

One of the matters that’s central to all this is the truth that we’re all sinners.  But some sinners are more equal than others in terms of God.  Let me explain what might seem like a bizarre statement.

Those who have acknowledged their need of God, their need of forgiveness, those who have repented; these we call believers.

It’s not too far a stretch to apply that to the believer’s sin: they acknowledge it when they do it, they seek forgiveness for it, they repent of it.

This is what we might call an example of faith in action.

Conversely, a sinner who does not acknowledge their sin, who does not seek forgiveness, and who doesn’t repent — whether before God or a fellow human being — really isn’t a Christian; a Christ-follower.  Their behaviour isn’t consistent with the character of Christian faith.  They may believe in Jesus all they like, but as James 2:19 says, “even demons believe that — and shudder.”

Faith without deeds, the lack of repentance in this case, is the practice of heresy because Christian faith is not just about the words we preach, it’s much more about action.  How have we met our obligation to love one another?  This is the key question of our expression of Christian faith.

The fact is we have all sinned, and we all do sin, BUT why do we protect the one who says they haven’t, especially when another has a claim to a different narrative — where a person is known to have transgressed yet refuses to own it?  (Also, in this context, refer to 1 John 1:8-10.)

The initial sin can become almost immaterial when there is a blatant denial of serious wrongdoing.  The initial sin was horrendous, but how much worse is the cover up?

So, with all that, we can know that there are different standards to apply to different responses to sin.

When sin is acknowledged by the perpetrator, forgiveness of the abused is sought, and repentance is apparent, all varieties of restoration are possible.  Jesus’ final command, “Love one another” can still possibly be fulfilled.  Such justice on earth as in heaven.

But when the perpetrator refuses to own what they did, they don’t seek to be ‘forgiven’ (because they probably felt entitled to do what they did or thought they would get away with it), and therefore there is no repentance, justice is required as well as vindication of the survivor.

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Before you point out my sin to me, come, learn a little of my story first

We’re all prone to a little pre-judgment, every single one of us, but when we’re the ones caught in the backdraft of horrible things done, when we have secrets to keep of things done to us, it does us even more harm when people point out our sin rather than become curious about why we think and behave the way we do.

It’s like the case of a homeless person.  It’s pretty easy to think they’ve only got themselves to blame for their lot.

A few years ago, I was given the opportunity of being a street chaplain for about a year.  My service was just about 3-4 hours per week on a Saturday night, and the occasional preach at the church.  My job was simply to sit at the tables the homeless ate their meal at and just engage them in conversation — be friendly, be curious about them, listen, show interest in their lives — pastoral care 101.

In reality, I learned a great deal from the experience, and there were three very crucial relationships that emerged that helped me understand the depth of the struggle.  These conversations impacted me greatly, here’s one I wrote down at the time: A Homeless Indigenous Man’s Compassion.

I came away from this overall experience enriched and a little less ignorant.

Questions we can ask ourselves.  What’s going on deeper down inside someone who is driven to drink themselves into oblivion?  Isn’t it masking pain?  What trauma do these people bear?  Just how many daily travesties have some people endured?  Crimes happen to homeless people regularly because of their vulnerable situations.  What have they suffered, and what do they continue to suffer?  What about the anger, depression, loss, anxiety, loneliness?  Do you think there is any joy in them when they’re cursing the world?  And shouldn’t we pray that those who are at war with themselves would find peace?  So many seek peace and cannot find it in those environs. 

Now what about the person who has survived abuse, who appears bitter, relationally dishevelled, disabled to fear, cautious to forgive and trust again, is easily ‘triggered’, and who since has had some poor life outcomes indeed?  Many have diagnosed conditions like PTSD for the trauma they’re endured.  And for so many it’s a plethora of conditions like depressive, anxiety, dissociative disorders, etc.

Could it be possible that events in their life — events beyond their control — where they should have been cared for and were instead betrayed — have taken them on a path they, most of all, would never have chosen?

People who have never been abused or who have suffered very little often don’t know how blessed they are.  Life is just normal, and there’s much less pain to face or deny.

We each have choices when it comes to the stories of others; to be suspicious or be curious; to be close-minded or open-hearted; to listen or go straight to judgment.

But be aware that being curious, open-hearted and prepared to listen depends on our own hearts, knowing that we each fall short, and that suffering is real in many people’s lives.

The transactional analysis ‘critical parent’ in us can too often think that if someone puts forth a claim of any sort that it’s unkind and ungracious and that it invites rebuke.

Instead of pouncing on it to quash it, why not give it the hearing the person having the courage to share it deserves.  It takes them real courage to speak up for themselves.

Most of us find it much easier to speak up for others, and many people won’t even do that.  It takes enormous courage and vulnerability to defend ourselves — especially as Christians.

This is posed in the first person, but it applies universally.  Before you point out my sin to me, come, spend a few moments, or a few hours, get to know me, and learn a little of my story.  Then, you might understand why I behave and think the way I do.  Then judge.

Everything makes much more sense when we understand more of the story.

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Opening up, sharing, sounding boards, support and stuff like that

There would hardly be a soul who would not want to share if they needed to, if they felt they could, when they needed to.  So many do.  Many cannot help opening up.  But so many also either struggle to open up or find they cannot give themselves over to vulnerability, for a whole range of reasons.

Sometimes people have been so hurt and betrayed by those who were supposed to support them that they find it nearly impossible to share anymore.

One of those reasons is people literally don’t have anyone available, who is prepared to listen, give support, encouragement and wisdom.  They don’t have anyone they could trust who could hold and contain them.

I remember a time in my life — nearly ten years ago now — when my main support, my wife, found it very hard to help me.  I would share, but I would often get it wrong.

I was so often either inconsolable or quite angry about a circumstantial depression I was in. Occasionally, however, my approach worked, and I was able to draw on her support instead of upsetting her.

We determined at one stage that she never minded listening and supporting me if she didn’t feel personally attacked in the process.  The problem for me is I was so wound up in the problem a lot of the time I would come home after a day’s work and occasionally explode.  Other times I would just come home, sit with her and pour my heart out.

Most of the time I’d come home and there were no D&M’s, but we always remember the heady days and not the boring ones.

It was the latter approach that was a help to us both, because in not feeling attacked, my wife was able to give me the support I needed.  She just listened.  And asked questions gently.  She provided a counselling method of sorts.  It was always appreciated.

Many people who would like to share don’t know if they can trust the other person entirely that they’ve got available to themselves.

Others don’t know what to say, or they feel afraid of being vulnerable — for a range of reasons.

Others again have the opposite problem that my wife had — rather than being upset at the attack, they attack the person back.

The person in the sounding board role is playing a shock absorbing role in allowing a certain emotionality to emerge.  Emotions are part of the sharing experience.

People who want to share don’t know if they can trust their own emotions to the space created.  People who are prepared to listen may often worry that they may not be able to give the support required, or they may fear being triggered themselves, or there could be some safety concern, or they may not have the energy reserves.

For the person sharing, it’s always worth the risk of exposure when you’ve already decided the sounding board you’ve chosen is trustworthy.

Your sounding board will often feel privileged that you trust them.  So take courage, don’t worry if you feel you’re muddled and all over the place with what you say.  Just trust the flow of your words.  It doesn’t have to come out in perfect linear fashion.

For the person being trusted, you have what it takes in your empathy.  Their problem is not your problem.  You don’t need to own their issues, and they’re not asking that of you.

They’re not asking or requiring you to fix what they bring to you; perhaps they just want to be heard (there’s a lot of momentary healing in just that!) and a little feedback on where their thinking’s at.

Listen, affirm, encourage, and then leave it at that.  Being there, being faithful, over the journey is about as important as anything else.

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Staying sane and safe in these uncertain, pressured, anxious days

The normal life right now is one that attempts to manage an insane number of priorities, tasks, burdens and relationships — which seems the requirement for life in this Covid time.  If life wasn’t insane before, it has certainly become that now.

Nobody ever wants to normalise insanity, and we certainly don’t make light of it, but so many are battling with the incessant combination of balls to be kept in the air, all seemingly very much in competition with one another.

Sustaining ourselves amid the frenetic unceasing demands is the key issue for so many people.

There are the time-and-attention demands where people must balance home and work, children’s care with work tasks, and an increasing number of things they cannot switch off from.

There are the financial demands, and if there’s ever anything that drives us straight to the edge, it’s the lack of money or an insecure supply of it, particularly when there are unrelenting institutional demands.  There’s nothing quite like a lack of money or being broke — or so much worse, in debt — to send a person to despair.  Money equals resources and when we don’t have access to the resources we need, our living hope flashes off in a millisecond.

There are the employment demands, and not just lack of work, though that’s probably the biggest issue, especially when there’s nothing you can do about it.

But with work, there are a number of issues just as serious as not having work.  For instance, work intensity, whether it can be helped or not, where people are literally burning out from month after month of relentless service.  And there are also the complications that go with doing any work remotely and flexibly.  Those watercooler chats don’t happen like they used to.  And we haven’t even touched on the conflict that comes between employees and employers, between employees, etc.

There are the social demands where loneliness is the tip of the iceberg as far as issues is concerned. These demands that impact our mental health viscerally and suddenly are far more complex than stereotypical loneliness.

There are so many inherent social dysfunctions in our way of life in this pandemic era.  Managing the social and psychological needs of our children is one complication that often seems so far out of our control — scary as that is to say.

Having read all the above, whether I’ve identified your particular version of craziness or not, I hope you’ll be encouraged that the way you feel is normal for such a time as this.

God would want you to know that, if you can hold on in faith, respite will come, even as you press into whatever support will get you through one day at a time.  Moments and entire seasons of weakness call for the humility to reach out in prayer and to other more tangible support.  Even if it’s again and again and again that we do it.  Anything to keep you afloat.

Maintaining hope at a time like this, especially when there are children watching on, waiting for parents to provide safety, vision and direction, is tough.  It can feel impossible.

I can’t say much to change your lot, but I can say you’re not alone, you’re not the only one confused and overwhelmed, and you’re not the only one exhausted — though it’s normal to feel you’re the only one.

You are also not the only one who feels rather mental, full of doubt, confidence shattered, feeling vulnerable and completely exposed before your world.

What I can say is employ what has worked for others: take life one day at a time, and where necessary, each moment.  Get through them one by one, not attempting too much at once.  When life is especially overwhelming, focus on one important thing to do and try not to be driven from one crisis to the next.  Your satisfaction will increase if you can do the important thing, and urgent things will always be there.

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How do I possibly bear the pain of this anxiety and depression?

I’ll never forget the first time I was cast into an oblivion of pain.  It descended so suddenly.  I could not have predicted it beforehand.  On one side there was one life, and on the other I entered the vast and dark in-between.  I was there for months.

And in some respects, it lasted well over a year, and in all honesty, there are still intermittent reminders every now and then, as if echoes of that time long past.

In the swing and tumble of grief, anxiety came in the form of plummeting panic attacks where I literally had to move in flight to escape to safety.  The surges of what felt like adrenalin shooting straight into my heart.  The sheer sense of dread.  And to top it off, there was the steady drip of despair that plagued me, most of the time.

The depression completely transformed me from a self-starter who managed the many facets of life well into someone who could barely move, could hardly eat, where hours felt like entire days, where I occasionally cried myself to sleep, and to wake up was an instant reminder that I’d woken, again, to a nightmare.  I did not want to be alive.

The worst moment was a complete breakdown where my parents and children witnessed me catatonic; the grief, depression, anxiety, and state of my life was unmatched in my 36 years of life experience.

But the fact my life hopes had plummeted into the abyss wasn’t 100 percent bad.

I never knew life could be so hard.  I’d been utterly ignorant.  It completely opened my eyes.  Suddenly I was awakened to the pain everywhere in the world.  And once the eyes of my heart opened, they could never be shut again.

I also reached out for support, because I just could not do life without it.

I had several men in my life who I’d met in AA and a few women too — all people I believe God sent me not only to keep me alive, but who gave me meaning and encouraged me to believe there was purpose in recovery.  I also drew purpose from being with my daughters, five, eight and eleven at the time.  They did what they could to help me and something in me ensured as much as I could that they always succeeded.  And I also had the marvellous support of my mother and father who often just listened.

Anxiety and depression are predecessors for recovery, even if we resent the fact that we need to enter some kind of ‘journey’ to get there (I did).

In seasons where anxiety and depression descend and remain as uninvited, insistent and even bullying ‘guests’, our spirit within us moans and wails, which is a paradox, because moaning and wailing takes energy, and much of the time when we’re in these states we’re too exhausted for it.

When we’re in struggle street, we so often ask ourselves, “How do I possibly bear this pain?”

The fact that we endure it means we’re a day closer to healing.

But we must have some vision for the prize ahead.  Perhaps hope of the old life is gone, but all that means is a new vision must be dreamed up.  Every time the pain cranks up, we remember where we’re headed.  We imagine that the pain is worth it.

All this pain is impossible to bear without the support of wise and caring people who can listen patiently, who can love us without words, who have the knack of saying the right things in few words, who are there for us over the long haul, and most of all, don’t tell us what to do.

Whenever we’ve survived such a time in our lives when pain threatened our existence, there is always some compensation or consolation.  If we’re able to look for it, we can find it.

Your job if you’re in that place is to refuse to ever give up or give in.  Always reach out.  There is help at hand.

International helplines: https://checkpointorg.com/global/

An empath does for others as they only wish would be done for them

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the empath-narcissist relational combination.  What I’m discussing is not a clinical dynamic by any means, it’s just that very often one bears more the serving characteristics in a relationship and the other expects to be served.

The serving in most relationships tends
~ though not always ~
to go one way on a consistent basis.

This is a generalisation, and although it’s not a perfect rule, it’s more useful than not.

Let me be perfectly clear from the get-go: if you exist to be served, you are NOT an empath.  

There are people who think they’re empaths who are not.  If it’s the case that you’re more prone to have expectations of others, and especially when you don’t empathise with others and don’t consistently serve them, you’re NOT an empath.

If you’re constantly the first one to apologise, however, you’re the empath.  If you’re right (in your own eyes) most of the time, you’re NOT an empath.

DETERMINING TRUE VICTIMS FROM WOLVES IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

People cavort as victims all the time, claiming disappointment and betrayal at a whim, but it’s only those who are characterised as living for others that are the genuine victims when they do cry foul.

Anyone can accuse, but the only one who has a true claim is the one who has served and served and served, and who has never received anything (or comparatively little) in return.

Of course, the heart is involved too.  Anyone can serve with an eye on what they’ve done — to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be recognised, praised and congratulated.  The empath serves because they love loving people.  They don’t have a heart for recognition, but for the pleasure of serving.

We can see a narcissist from a mile off — they claim to be victim whilst never really engaging with empathy for others.  They have no interest in others, yet the worst ones feign an interest.  They’re only capable of self-interest.  Plenty of Christians are like this.

In other words, they feel entitled to exploit others for not measuring up to their exorbitant standards whilst they would never go close to measuring up to even a minimum standard of care, let alone their own standards they set for others.

Besides, the standards narcissists expect of empaths are always fluid — there is no way an empath can satisfy a narcissist.  Even if they meet a momentary expectation, there’s suddenly a shifting of the goalposts.  Empaths keep pouring themselves out in the hope they’ll satisfy the narcissist, but they find that an unattainable standard.

An empath does for others what they only wish others would do for them.  That would be the gold standard of the golden rule (Matthew 7:12).

But because empaths go above and beyond to outreach others, because they’ll take the gospel both seriously and literally about ‘loving one another’ and ‘loving their neighbour’, they are sure to be partnered with others a lot of the time who will exploit this ‘weakness’.

Of course, loving others through serving their known (and even at times their unknown) needs, will often be seen as a weakness, i.e., as if they need to be needed.  No, the empath GETS the gospel, or indeed, the gospel has GOT the empath.

In other words, it’s not needing to be needed that motivates the empath, it’s loving to love people that lights them up.

SUMMING UP

Notice how in Matthew 7:12 Jesus sums up the Law and the Prophets (the entirety of the substantive Old Testament) by saying “do this” and — in the simplest terms — you obey God.  Everything before Matthew 7:12 and everything after it point to this verse.

How can we equate true LIVED Christian faith in this day?  What term could we use that best depicts how faith is lived?  It’s the term ‘empath’.

Someone who pleases God even when they would prefer not to.  Someone who serves others even when they get nothing in return; even when they know the other person — who may have the audacity to call themselves Christian’ — won’t return the service.

This is why I use the term ‘empath’ for the living expression of a true Christian’s faith.  Someone who GETS the gospel because the gospel has GOTTEN them.

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The role of unconscious bias in everyday abuse that occurs

Arguably the most dangerous individuals we can encounter are those who not only won’t reflect on the presence of bias, they refuse to acknowledge they have any bias, or they commonly justify their bias. Much of this is because it is unconscious to people.

Yet, even if it were made conscious to some they would virulently and steadfastly hold to their position — and I guess most of us can be a little like that.  But the fact that a person won’t look deeper within for the presence of bias might say something about them that reads like a red flag.

Unconscious biases, also known as implicit biases, are the underlying attitudes and stereotypes that people unconsciously attribute to another person or group of people that affect how they understand and engage with that person or group.

Until we acknowledge unconscious bias is in us, we cannot do anything about it.  

And unconscious bias is in ALL of us.

Our only hope is we acknowledge it and then respond well by ensuring we treat people as fairly as we can.  Failing to respond well having acknowledged it is like driving a vehicle at full speed and refusing to use the brakes, while failing to acknowledge it is like driving the vehicle blindfolded.

Those who meander through life without checking their unconscious bias are those who live without account.  Those who take responsibility for how they impact people and groups, on the other hand, are more inclined to own their biases.  But they still need to make themselves aware of their bias on a moment-by-moment basis.

Abuse occurs where a program of bias is deliberately entered into, affecting a person, people or group, whether consciously or unconsciously.  Christians have the word ‘sin’ for this.

There are a range of biases that are deeper within each of us: 

1.             confirmation bias – drawing conclusions in favour of personal desires, beliefs and prejudices (which leads to discounting unbiased merit)

2.             affinity bias – tendency to connect with like-minded others (which can lead to excluding others)

3.             attribution bias – judging another person on our observations of them (judgements occur from little, and certainly insufficient, information about people)

4.             conformity bias – peer pressure, groupthink, consensus (when people don’t give their own views, but go with the majority)

5.             halo effect – elevating certain people, placing them on a pedestal, because they’ve impressed us (leads to giving certain people power and refusing power to others)

6.             horns effect – opposite of the halo effect (viewing people unfavourably having learned something unpleasant about them)

7.             contrast effect – as humans we tend to think in twos, judging two things in contrast, one good, one evil, and so forth (when the world is not that straightforward)

8.             gender bias – preferring one gender over another (commonly this is people either seeing women or men as the downtrodden)

9.             ageism – negativity toward a person or group because of their age (too young or too old)

10.          name bias – research has found a bias toward Anglo names (which has a negative effect on names that are less Anglo)

11.          beauty bias – people attribute success and competence to those who appear attractive (which goes against those who are deemed as less attractive)

12.          height bias – being too short or too tall (and this varies depending on what the context is)

Anyone desiring to treat people well could engage with this list of unconscious biases and learn to incorporate them into their being — to become more cognisant of where they may feature; where they might be used to abuse people or groups.

We can well imagine an abuser engaging in multiple forms of bias at a conscious level, but we must also know that people abuse people and groups when these biases are purely unconscious.

If we’re genuinely interested in eradicating abuse from where we stand, we can first wrestle with the unconscious biases in our own lives, before then coming to an understanding of the biases in the lives of those who impact us.

The safest relationships we can have are with people who account well for their biases, just as we become safe for all others when we’ve accounted, a moment at a time, for our own.

The truth is not in the person who says he or she has no bias (1 John 1:8-10).

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