• Many fear trusting God because they do not understand why God allows what has happened or may happen to us.
• Understanding God’s response to sin and those afflicted can help us see that God is on our side for good.
• Does our scar tell us God did not care, or are they a witness that God cares even more than we do?
1. Introduction 2. The World Is A Battlefield 3. The Church: A Feast for Oppressors? 4. How Did We Become Victims? 5. How do victims communicate? 6. Being a victim of an offense and victimhood 7. Learned Helplessness 8. Victim-blaming 9. God’s solution to sin 10. How Satan uses the Bible to force us to submit to him 11. The Good Shepherd 12. Victimhood as a weapon 13. The Victorious Christian 14. Practical exercise towards freedom. 15. Restore your trust in God. 16. Why God allows difficulties. 17. Church Tribulations 18. Final Victory 19. Afterword
A trauma survivor dreads the unexpected. The fear of being in a situation over which we have no control can cause us to avoid many confrontations but also cause us to doubt that God is in complete control. This induces us to live a life in fear to feel control, even though living like this only gives us little control and much misery. Many survivors of trauma cling to their fears, feeling that their alertness somehow protects them from danger. This happens at the cost of peace and happiness.
In faith, the apostle Paul says: “God is faithful, and He will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing, He will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it” (1.Cor.10:12-14).
What happens to us and how we handle it are not always the same for everyone. Some experience minor traumas but are saved from what they feared. Even if they pray and God helps them, they continue to be afraid. Constantly, they are tortured by the thought of “what if it happens again” and they lose the next time? They experienced something difficult, but God made a way out, yet they did not endure it. This is because some fear what could have happened and what can happen as if that is what happened. And the trauma is built around that, and they do not find peace in their deliverance. In this way, God can seem untrustworthy rather than trustworthy, and they are determined to save themselves from a similar encounter, limiting their life and freedom in the process.
Besides those struggling who escaped what they feared, there are many who did not escape the bad situation without getting severely wounded. Many have experienced things that have made them lose trust that God is in control. For many survivors of trauma, bad things did happen, and although they are now out of it, they cannot break free from the fear of it happening again.
With our freedom in life comes the chance of encountering people who sin. Just like we have sinned and others have suffered consequences for that. With all choices comes risk, and taking risks is part of our freedom. With risk comes the chance of getting hurt.
God lets people choose to sin for multiple reasons. The first is that to be able to destroy sin and sinners, we must understand why God must destroy them. He cannot eradicate it without our willingness to let it go, or else a future society will be forced-based, and we will be subdued while living in it. Creating a paradise for mankind requires man to willingly give up sin. If we are not willing to do that, we will not be free even in His paradise. He can destroy all humans, but God wants to save humans and give us a future. Thus, he needs us to understand why sin is wrong.
If no one suffers any negative consequences for others’ selfishness and evil, there is nothing to condemn or expose. The consequences themselves even chastise the transgressor. Sin is forbidden in God’s paradise because it does so much damage that everyone will be afflicted by it. All you need is one sinner to create misery and stress that afflict an entire family and neighborhood. If God made it impossible, in a world of sin, for people to be afflicted by sin, there would be no argument against sin. If someone could hit another repeatedly every day without leaving them physically and mentally harmed, the world would still not be a good place. Because the man who hits is still a rotten person without good character development. Even if it does not hurt the other, the man who hits is still selfish and unkind in the heart. Even without physical harm, there will be mental harm. If God removes both harms, man is no longer a thinking, processing, free individual who can evaluate right from wrong himself. Rather, he will be a puppet, not understanding anything happening; logic is gone, reason is gone, and all we will be is just a product of instinct and desire. It is not an intellectual society, nor is it freedom. No one can lead or be led. God loves intelligence. He created man to be intelligent. He is not threatened by intelligence, as the serpent told Eve in the Garden of Eden; rather, God encourages it. If a man harms and sees the harm he causes, if he is a conscious man, he will regret and rethink his behavior and his emotions and try to change.
God did not want mankind to learn to be good this way, which is why he forbade Eve from knowing the result of “the tree of good and evil”. Notice, the forbidden knowledge was not just evil, but also “good”. There is a good knowledge God did not want man to experience, which likely seemed strange to Eve at the time. This good knowledge involves understanding how goodness is when beholding evil. Meaning when you get acquainted with awful behavior, you understand and appreciate good behavior differently. The second is the good knowledge that follows bad knowledge. We might try to save someone from experiencing something harmful that we have experienced. It is a good deed, but the knowledge was received from something bad. When people look at the world and say there is still a lot of good in it, that good usually follows something destructive or something bad first. Yes, a group may gather money to help the poor. But this good deed would not be needed if poverty did not happen first. Poverty is usually the result of bad leadership in a country. Corruption, war, and collective trauma are why people starve in the first place. So, when we admire the goodness of those handing out food rations, it is the type of goodness that is born because of acts of sin.
So, we become seemingly good, and we appreciate the good more because of the existence of bad things. This is not God’s paradise. God’s paradise is the existence of goodness without evil.
Now that sin has entered the world, God cannot remove the consequences of sin because it is the only thing that holds people back from doing even more harm, and these consequences can inspire them to act differently.
To make a bold example in the Cold War between Russia and the USA. No country wants to use nuclear weapons against another, not necessarily because they are good, but because they know they might get a bomb in return. Fear of retaliation holds men partly in check. A woman might wish to kill her neighbor for hitting her cat with his car, but knowing she will spend a lifetime in jail, she keeps her rage in check. It would be better if she loved her neighbor as God wanted, and that kept her from wanting to harm him; that is the ultimate best. But if the love is not there, fear of consequences can prevent her from harming him instead. Some people choose not to bully others for the sole reason they fear being bullied in return, not because they empathize with being bullied. In a world full of bad people who do not listen to their conscience, fear of punishment can pacify their evil rampage. Thus, even God has in Bible history made evil people without a conscience fear Him to prevent them from doing more harm, just like governmental authorities do. It is not the ultimate and best way to control people, but occasionally, it is necessary when people do not reason.
Many thieves do not steal because they fear punishment. The fear of consequences and retaliation forces even you to reconsider doing something wrong. Shame has long been considered a bad thing in popular society. What they fail to understand is the strong influence shame has on keeping people from harming others and themselves. Shame can be a good force for keeping the sinner under control. There is, of course, misplaced shame, but shame placed correctly upon the one who harms rather than the victim can prevent them from continuing or doing the same to others. A grown person desiring to watch the molestation of a child on their computer should feel shame, even if they are not caught. It will keep him from acting out his fantasy. A man who cheats on his wife should feel shame. If people do not feel any form of shame when doing something wrong, they will usually escalate and do even worse. Shameless people are dangerous.
If God removes all consequences and marks left on our body and soul from sinful acts, then He is taking away the little humanity has left to chastise themselves into becoming more compassionate human beings. If we see the suffering caused by someone’s actions, we are less inclined to find it funny or worth it to do the same. Our scars train us to think differently, but they are also a living organic record God will use on judgment day against everyone who did not repent from their harmful ways.
Every scar afflicted upon us because of someone else’s sin is evidence in the court of heaven of why sin is bad and cannot be continuously permitted on the earth. Every damage down to the cellular level —every damage to the brain, the heart, the nervous system, in the DNA—is God’s testimony against sin and the existence of it. He will use the recorded evidence in our bodies as His argument to destroy sin and end the suffering here on earth. We are living recorders; our bodies are witnesses. He is going to use it to save us. Just like we would in a court of law here on earth, but here we only recognize some damage. God sees all the damage, all the chain reactions caused by one sin. A rapist does not afflict just their victim and their family. But the whole neighborhood, the whole town, all the relatives. They are all scared by the fear and harmed by the stress the perpetrator has created in their society. God judges with a far greater perspective than earthly courts do. God does it for the future of mankind and our home, the earth.
For those who are living a happy, successful life, God also lets them have the fruits of their good labors. If God takes from them the benefit of doing good and working hard, they will lose motivation to do good, innovate, and bring society forward. If their hard work will not benefit their children and grandchildren, why should they try at all? Just as bad consequences keep someone from doing something wrong, the hope of reward can help someone choose to do something right. It focuses on opportunities rather than limitations. Being inspired to do good by good results, rather than focusing on not doing wrong out of fear of punishment. The first will be happier and feel freer, while the other will feel oppressed. So being free is not so much tied to one’s situation as to where our focus is. And so, God will not take the blessings from honest, hard-working people and give them to those who have lived selfishly in self-pleasure and sin. This is why God allows consequences to continue down into generations, because it too is a witness of good and bad. Stopping generational consequences would mean hiding the cause and effect of people’s choices in the long term (Exo.20:5-6). A good example is communistic and socialistic countries, where they try to eradicate this cause and effect, and the result in society is less innovation and economic growth, which is why most socialistic-structured countries succumb after a longer period of time. The Bible, both the New Testament and the Old Testament, is clear that God expects those who are successful to help their fellow men who are not. Usually, those who struggle have experienced family and community trauma, and victim-blaming is not going to help them. They need a helping hand to get back on their feet. God expects those with fortunes to help those who don’t have ways to help themselves and to have compassion on them, but He won’t stop people who are working hard from succeeding and eradicating the long-term changes life choices have. This would be hiding and covering the consequences of sin and crime, and taking the courage away from those who try to do the right thing. So, God wants us to have compassion and help those who have fallen, but He doesn’t remove cause and effect so that the difference between good and bad choices cannot be distinguished anymore.
Good people who work hard and love their children will reap the blessings of their good choices. Their children and grandchildren will be healthier and happier, just like bad parents afflict their issues upon their children and grandchildren. Sin is generational because children often repeat their parents’ mistakes. Over time, the effects of sin and good choices can be seen for hundreds, even thousands, of years. People today usually only care about today, but God looks at even these generational effects when judging against the existence of sin. The universe must see the long-term effects of sin to understand sin rightly and trust God’s solution. Therefore, God does not remove cause and effect. God has a greater mission, to bring peace and harmony back to Earth and the universe. It cannot be done by hiding the truth about the damage sin creates. If God had hidden the long-term effects by removing all consequences, He would be deceiving both humans and angels. God has no other choice if He wants to eradicate sin; He must expose it and let its harm come to light. To expose it, both mankind, heaven, and any other planets must be allowed to see cause and effect, and God cannot tamper with the evidence. Our planet is a “spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men” (1.Cor.4:9).
God has promised that although our decisions and choices might get us into trouble, He will not allow any of His children who come to Him for help to be abandoned in the hands of evil or trapped within a generational cycle if we wish to be free. He will find an escape or a way out. He will help. If we step out of a generational cycle and do good, we become witnesses to the effect of turning to God and how easily a curse can be broken.
If our expectations of God are that He will clear every path we walk from difficulties, we harm only ourselves. We lose trust in God that way. God helps us through life’s struggles and difficulties, making a way for us, but He cannot at this point create paradise on earth. Not because He does not wish us well, but because it would not be a paradise if we continued as before. He can remove all illness, death, and poverty, and it would still not be paradise because man would use his luxury and spare time to do even more harm. God would have to run after man and constantly clean up his mess like a foolish servant, and mankind would never improve.
The Bible teaches us that wealth does not equal being good. In the cities that were so ungodly that God had to destroy them, it was said: “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters…” (Ezek.16:49) The place the city lay was compared to the Garden of Eden: “And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan,that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD…” (Gen.13:10)
You can have plenty, be healthy, and still have an evil disposition. Where there is no gratitude, there is no satisfaction. That is why Satan rebelled in heaven. The moment he stopped being grateful for all he had, he discovered dissatisfaction and started lying, stealing, and killing to achieve his goals. Happiness is not and can never be achieved through selfish gratification. It is impossible. For a long time, we have seen celebrities who seem to have it all: fame, money, properties, and influence, yet they succumb to mental illness, drugs, and suicide. At the end of the day, it is what is in the heart that matters, not what is in your hand.
For the many Bible critics who claim God is the cause of all misery if He does not remove all the consequences of sin, they fail to see that if God is to remove it, He must remove all mankind with it. Because we are the ones doing it. Therefore, it is physically impossible for God to create paradise on earth if man is unwilling to change his ways. Either he has to remove sin by removing man, or he has to remove sin from inside the heart of mankind. These are God’s only two options.
To create a paradise, all mankind must agree not to sin, and they won’t do it. They are busy creating laws that justify sin and refuse to see cause and effect in the bigger picture. They hate God and love sin. The law in society is focused on self-gratification and short-term solutions. Thus, the only way to judge us is for the universe to see why sin is bad and how it harms us.
God did not want the universe to have to gain this knowledge, but because He was not trusted because of Satan’s false accusations and His moral law was doubted, He had to allow sin to manifest itself so that we could choose it away willingly. In the end, He will separate those who want Him to remove sin from those who wish to legalize it, saving only those who have repented.
When God creates thinking beings, He is bound to also give those beings space to think. If not, God creates a thinking being inside a bodily and social prison. What is the point of allowing someone the ability to reason only to forbid it? To give people free will for the purpose of forcing it? It is a contradiction. Our ability to reason is itself evidence of who God is, and that intelligence is not a threat to him.
You cannot create intelligent beings and then stop them from thinking and evaluating. Either God does not create intelligent beings, or He creates them and must give them the freedom of choice and reason.
Paradise can never be obtained by force. Paradise is not a paradise for anyone forced to live by its principles. Thus, paradise can only be obtained through choice and understanding. For us to understand, we need to see cause and effect. We are in the middle of a moral war zone. Unfortunately, this means people will experience bad things in life; they will be scared and hurt by their actions, by their family’s actions, and by the actions of others.
God is against all sin. He tells people not to sin, or there will be consequences. But He does not allow people to sin and then remove the evidence—the consequence of selfish choices. There is no way to create peace when people’s gratification is at others’ expense. It does not have to be an individual problem; it can be a greater societal problem. The Western world has plenty because they are exploiting workers in foreign lands. Stealing even the resources from that land. The unspoken policy behind this is that plenty should be gained without a personal effort to obtain it. One does the hard work, and the other enjoys the fruit of that work. This is part of the unfairness of the world. God’s principles do not work with unfairness. He could let it rain “manna” upon the badly treated workers, so they would not have to starve, but how would that solve the sin behind their condition? Would God not just legitimize the exploitation by compensating their pay? Rather, God wants us to take responsibility for our actions and stop greedy exploitation. The heart of the exploiter is the problem, not just the result of it. Thus, it is with all kinds of sins. God does not want us to constantly fix what we break; rather, He wants us to stop breaking things.
Jesus said: “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mat 9:13) Sacrifice represented coming and asking for forgiveness. Mercy means doing the right thing. And so Jesus is here saying that it is better to repent and do mercy than doing the wrong thing and then asking God for forgiveness. Jesus tells them to go learn the meaning of this, indicating that they found piety in pleading with God for mercy more so than actually doing good.
The point was made in the Old Testament as well. God said: “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isa 1:4.11.17)
He places the problem in our hearts, not in the consequences. The consequences of our actions are evidence of what is in the heart; thus, the problem of eradicating sin is to start where the sin is born.
Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man `unclean’” (Matt.15:11) Sin almost always comes from a selfish disposition.
James wrote: “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.” (James 1:14-15)
God’s repeated plea is to allow Him to move and change our hearts: “And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.” (Deut.30:6) Loving God means loving who He is and what He stands for and being inspired by that. When you worship God and behold Him with admiration and love, your eyes are drawn from yourself to something greater, and it changes you. If your admiration is for worldly influencers, pop stars, movie stars, sports heroes, or fictional characters who all act with a selfish disposition, we will be inspired to do the same. We will often find ourselves loving those who do not love us back. Thus, to be more like those we admire, we must do what they do, be selfish, and desire others’ admiration. The rapid increase in narcissistic expression in the world is due to people admiring narcissists and copying their behavior in the pursuit of happiness.
When we behold God and admire Him, we are inspired by someone with greater moral and character traits, and his self-sacrificing love for us inspires us to want to be more like Him. It will make us better people. Who we admire and worship are the ones who influence our hearts and who we are. No one is influenced by anyone. Even atheists who reject God are not free from the influence of others. No man is completely original in his expressions and choices; everyone is inspired by, influenced by, or admires someone who becomes their example. Usually, there are multiple people we take inspiration from when we form our path in life. Not wanting to believe in God, they are forced to choose someone or something to admire in God’s place. Whatever they choose, they will become more alike. Although people would like to think they are independent, we are not. Therefore, who we are and become is tied to who we are inspired by. God asks us to be inspired by Him to be more like Him so that we can be good people. Beholding God, worshiping God, and trusting God therefore change our hearts. Those Christians who fear God and hell and use that as their motivation as Christians are not going to have their hearts changed. We need to admire and love to be able to and inspired to reflect the one we behold. Thus, in God’s law, if kept, it represents paradise. God forbids the idolization of man, animals, and fictional characters so that man’s hearts are not scattered and inspired by faulty images, bringing them into a morally degrading state. (Rom.1:22-32) The ones we look up to are the ones whose moral laws we live by. If it is a man or a fictional character created by a person, it will have a selfish disposition behind the moral, and thus we end up following a faulty standard. So, in God’s law, He asked us to love Him as our only God and moral influencer. When we worship God, it is for our own good. We are lifted by it; we are lifted to a higher moral intellect and standard. By elevating God in our hearts, we elevate our hearts with Him. Jesus said: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment” (Mark 12:30)
Thus, even God asking for our worship is for our growth and benefit. When we love God, we become more like Him.
When there is sin in the world, the fruit of sin will manifest, and we will be inflicted. Some are harmed less than others. The amount of affliction someone suffers is not always tied to their sin. Some have little tribulations in their lives, and they have not done something specific to deserve an easy life; they are just in a good place. In some countries, the land was built by good, morally strong Christian men and women, and the rebellious and immoral descendants are still harvesting peace from their work. It will not last, as shifting behavior will also shift circumstances for the next generation. The result of either good or bad politics and societal changes does not manifest as well in the generation that created the change but in their children’s and grandchildren’s. Cause and effect are not always immediate.
We harvest what our ancestors sowed, even if it’s not our sin. If they made countless poor decisions, we are likely to continue them and even suffer from theirs. This is part of what God allows: for people to understand cause and effect and change their ways willingly.
No matter how or why we are in a difficult or good situation, God has promised and wants us to trust Him that if we come to Him in our troubles, He will help us. He is always present. Despite God having to allow the consequences of sin to manifest themselves to judge the guilty and eradicate sin, He will not abandon someone who cries for His help. When someone loses hope, their progress is over. No matter what has happened or what we or our ancestors have done, giving mankind “hope” is the only way to inspire us to change. This is why God says in the Bible that regardless of what the past is, He can still give us a future.
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity..” (Jer 29:11-14) There is a chance to “turn around,” and God will forgive us and help us aspire to a new and more successful life. He can turn our weaknesses into strengths. He can take victims and make them warriors for good.
This is our trust and safety: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble;I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.” (Psalm 50:15) “I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies” (2.Sam.22:4).“In my distress I called upon the Lord, And cried to my God for help; He heard my voice out of His temple, And my cry for help before Him came into His ears” (Psalm 18:6) “He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him” (Psalm 91:15)
Spite everything that happens; spite cause and effect; spite sin in the world; God is willing to put all that behind you and save you anyway. This is the hope and power that we need to cling to when we are stuck, and it even seems deserving. In the end, God is our Father and life-giver. And just like a father is willing to give his sons and daughters new chances when they mess up, so is God. Without love and hope, there is no driving force to bring us forward.
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me” (Isaiah 49:15-17)
He also comes to the aid of those who do not call upon him: “I permitted Myself to be sought by those who did not ask for Me; I permitted Myself to be found by those who did not seek Me. I said, ‘Here am I, here am I,’ (Isa.65:1)
God has promised to help those who come to Him, and although we might not see the deliverance straight away, we can know that since we gave Him our difficulties, God is already working for our good.
Jesus said: “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows” (Mat 10:29-31).
Don’t put God in a difficult position to save you.
There is one situation that can be a difficult place for God to help you in. We must not be in that place when we cry for His intervention.
If we have blood on our hands yet, pray for Him to punish our enemies.
If we have committed great injustice, yet wish God to judge our neighbor. Here, we put God in an impossible situation. How can He save us “from the hands of the wicked” if we commit wickedness? We therefore need to convert and stand against our wickedness, or God will be deemed unfair if He helps us. Some may pray for Him to punish us or give us the consequences of our actions as well. To give a rough example, if someone just robbed and harmed someone and the police are about to find them, should God intervene and save them from being caught? If you just spread lies about someone and harm their chances, can you pray not to be exposed? God needs to be fair for the sake of the victim and their family before the perpetrator.
God must follow His own justice system in everything. When Joshua was about to fight the battle of Jericho, he did it at God’s command, not out of personal desire. When the captain of the Lord’s angel army came to assist Joshua’s army, Joshua asked: “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” (Jos.5:13) And the Captain of the Lord’s army answered “Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come” (Jos.5:13-14). God does not work according to our personal or even our country’s justice system, but according to His own. He represents the courts in heaven and is true to them. That is partly why He is trustworthy. He does not accept bribes and is not moved by flattery. He evaluates everyone against a set standard.
Even if you are wronged according to God’s justice system, God might say you ought to forgive that person as you yourselves have been forgiven a similar transgression, and so He might not help you punish them if God just showed you mercy for the same thing. Jesus explained this situation in the parable of the unforgiving servant. It is a story about how a man was in financial debt and faced prison, but then his employee had compassion for him and deleted his debts. Then the man goes out and ruthlessly demands that another who owed him money must pay, and when the other pleads with him, he has no compassion for him and has him put in prison. Christ said we cannot expect God to help when we are behaving this way. (Matt.18:21-35) That should make sense. If you steal from your neighbor and are forgiven by him and God, and another neighbor steals from you, and you tell God to punish him and show no mercy to him, God might not want to side with you.
Jesus helped many who were suppressed, yet when a man came and asked Him to take sides in an inheritance struggle, He declined. “And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?” (Luke 12:13-21) We cannot expect God to intervene in all situations to our benefit. He has many children He must consider, not just us. We look at things from our perspective; God looks from everyone’s perspective.
Many of the disciples might have thought God destroying Paul would be a good thing, as he persecuted, tortured, and made their lives impossible. God knew Paul’s heart and knew He could save him and have him help them instead. Jesus had taught them to pray for their enemies, and many of the disciples probably did pray for Paul’s conversion rather than his destruction. So, instead of destroying Paul, Christ managed to convert him and give him his new name and life. Paul then became a spiritual soldier on the frontier, helping Christ’s followers and encouraging them in dark times. To this day, long after his passing, his letters comfort Christians about to give up. To persecuted Christians, crushing Paul might seem like the best option, but God, seeing a greater picture, chose a different approach to the problem.
God does not want us to give up on people too quickly, even if they wrong us. If there is still a chance to save them, God will choose that first. He wants us to value people’s lives to a greater degree and not judge too quickly, easily, or harshly. God has said He is “slow to wrath” and “overbearing,” and so we cannot pray for God to be impulsively vengeful instead. Our prayers do not change His character traits. A confrontation arose between Christ and his disciples, who were offended at a wrong done towards God and themselves: “And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. or the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village” (Luk.9:54-56)
God is not acquitting anyone of their evil without atonement, but He will try all He can to save them if it is possible. This might seem brutal to the one who is wronged, but, in this knowledge, lies the understanding and hope that God does the same for us when someone accuses us. He does not give up on us lightly. Countless trauma survivors harm others and need grace for themselves. God asks us to try and bless those who hurt us before cursing them. Especially in the little things in life. Being worked up to anger against each other over little thoughtless offenses and wanting great recompense is not something we can expect God to help us do. God’s mercy is part of His greatness. If we are to reflect His image to others, we need to have room to offer people some grace. Sometimes if we pray to God to fight our enemies, He will use time. He will try to speak to their conscience, persuade them, and warn them before acting too harshly. This demands our patience and trust in God even when things seem to take time.
On the other side, if we are condemned for our own sins, or being punished for our own crimes, God cannot always intervene on our behalf as He must be fair to those we have harmed as well.
Make sure your hands are clean or that you have tried to make amends for your own faults before praying for deliverance from your enemies.
“When your dread comes like a storm And your calamity comes like a whirlwind, When distress and anguish come upon you.“Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; They will seek me diligently but they will not find me, Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord” (Pro.1: 28-29)
“And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood” (Isa 1:15).
Remember, God is long-suffering; He gives many chances. Every so often He is forced to let us suffer the consequences of our actions because of the afflicted who demand justice. But still, God will intervene to help us when we cry to Him in honest regret.
He might forgive us despite our transgressors wanting God to destroy us
This is why Christ said: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Mat 6:14)
Demanding justice and God’s intervention while not wishing to give others justice and help places God in a difficult situation where we might not experience the help we desire.
Notice that when the Samaritan village did not receive Christ and the apostles, they went to another place. They did not try to force themselves on people who rejected them.
Christ advised His people not to stay in abusive situations but rather to move. “But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another” (Matt.10:23)
God sometimes waiting to punish our transgressors does not mean we are supposed to stay in harm’s way. Let God deal with them, whether to save or judge. Go find peace somewhere else. Trust God to take care of justice, unless it is a crime that should be reported to the government. If it is not something the government can’t do, then be patient and place yourself out of harm’s way while waiting for justice.
Too much tolerance.
With victims of long-term abuse, it can go both ways. Either they want God to judge people too quickly because they fear any traits that remind them of their abuse, or their tolerance for evil is too high. With God’s mercy and law, there is a perfect balance, but within our hearts, that is not always the case. We can judge too harshly, like in the parable of the unforgiving servant, but we can also have an exaggerated mercy. Paul normally preached mercy, as he had received such great mercy himself. However, in his letter to the church in Corinth, he said their mercy was misplaced and told them to judge the injustice that had happened there.
Likewise, trauma victims’ “mercy compass” might be wrongly adjusted. They can expect God to demand more of them than He does, thinking they honor God by staying in severe abuse at the expense of all their strength.
Using scripture in the wrong situation continually happens. Those who expect God to support them against everyone in everything and those who think God takes pleasure in their suffering and dare not ask for even minimal help are both wrong.
If you, as a victim, have learned you do not deserve basic human rights, “do not judge” and “show mercy” are not to be used against your release from suppression. If Scripture is not placed in the right setting, it becomes a lie.
Satan is an expert on this, and when trying to tempt Christ in the wilderness, he used scripture to try to distress and provoke Christ into harming Himself.
Satan can use scripture to take away the freedom and courage of a victim, making them think God wants them to accept repeated abuse and mistreatment. That God’s love for their abuser and transgressor is greater than God’s love for them. This is not hard for a childhood trauma victim to believe, as they have learned throughout childhood that their needs are not relevant and that their health and happiness are sacrificed for the selfishness of their parents or peers.
Be alert, therefore, that none of Christ’s words should be used to favor an abuser over or at the expense of its victim. The parable of the unforgiving servant is the story of a man in need of forgiveness who becomes abusive. He is punished for his behavior. This cannot be used to force a victim to stay in an abusive relationship; it is an entirely different situation.
Everything must be seen in context. If your neighbor borrowed your toolbox and some tools are missing, perhaps a little forgiveness is the right response rather than creating a war to get repaid.
Here Christ’s words of not judging and being merciful are very rightly placed.
For victims who are being destroyed more for every day they suffer, telling the victim to show “mercy” and “not judge” the abuser is misplaced and wrong. Such a victim, according to scripture, should be helped to be free. Mercy must go to the victim first, and then, if possible and constructive, if repentant, it must be offered to the transgressor as well. Like God said: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” (Isa.58:6)
Mercy is not to be used to help the transgressor continue his transgressions. It is for the one who repents and wants to recompense and change his ways. In this lies the key to knowing when to show mercy and when not to.
Where there is no admission of guilt or fault, there will most likely be no change or growth without them getting a consequence for their actions. If someone has heartfelt regret and takes responsibility for their wrong, additional punishment is not always necessary, and mercy will help that person grow to be even better. It is all about discernment.