Click here to read Part 1
Click here to read Part 2
Click here to read Part 3
Evil is such a heavy burden to those who have experienced it. If you doubt this, just ask anyone who has survived abuse, war crimes, torture, rape, or any other evil act that is out there. To a victim and a survivor it’s like suddenly becoming intimately aware about what evil truly is, and no matter how hard you try to erase this knowledge from your mind it will always be there.
I’m going to use sexual abuse as my example here, since this is the experience that I have had. Once you’ve been violated like that, it’s like a whole new world has been opened up to you…one that is harsh and unforgiving; a world where the innocent is suddenly the guilty. Those who prey on others are crafty and sly in all their ways; just as the serpent was with Eve in the garden (Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent was more subtil [cunning/crafty] than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made”). Sexual abuse is not just a crime against the body, but against the soul as well. The survivor is left feeling like they have caused this evil to come upon themselves somehow. Always wondering what it was that they did to bring about and to deserve such evil; that they must be the guilty one somehow. After all we must have done something to deserve it, or it wouldn’t have happened…that’s what our mind tells us anyways. We feel dirty and unworthy of love. How can we expect a Holy God or anyone else to want to have anything to do with such trash and filth? Oh, the lies…the lies we tell ourselves…the lies the devil whispers into our spirit. We can end up with such a disconnect between our hurting soul and a Holy and Loving God who cares for us. We find ourselves both searching for God and hiding from him. We search him out because we long to feel whole again, but hide because of the shame that we feel. For far too long I walked around feeling like a leper in hiding…normal looking on the outside, but disease ridden on the inside. It’s so hard to feel normal. Well, maybe I’m not, and will never be totally normal; and that’s ok because I know that God has a plan for my life. In Jeremiah 29:11 God tells me, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you…thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end”. He has plans to bless me and the struggles that I’ve been through. For God uses our trials and hardships to develop our character and to strengthen our faith. It will be the path that takes us from who we are to who we will become.
There are far too many victims of abuse whose family members would rather deny the abuse than have to deal with it. The very ones who were supposed to rally around the victim to help them fight; instead turn a blind eye, let it continue, or just deny the fact it even happened. I am thankful that my family believed me when I spoke up, but there are far too many victims who are not believed when they speak out. The victim can become the outcast of the family, and in some cases the victim gets disowned. Some victims find themselves on their own because they had to move out for simply speaking the truth of what happened to them. So many people wonder where God could be, but here is the truth of it all…Jesus came to set us free from sin, our past, our hurt, our sicknesses, from everything that keeps us from having a personal and intimate relationship with God. In 2 Corinthians 1:3 we are told that God is the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort. If we come to the cross, and lay our burdens down at the feet of Jesus he will be faithful to take our burdens upon himself…he will heal us of our pain. I’ve been there, and it’s the most beautiful place to be; to lay it all out in front of God, and to feel peace take over the hurt and the pain. If you are angry at God for all the pain in your life please read this other post of mine by clicking [here]. In the post I talk about mankind’s free will…you see God freely loves us, and wants us to freely love him in return. That’s why he gave us free will. We can do all kinds of things with our free will. We can choose to either harm others, or to do good to others. We can choose to curse or to bless others. We can choose to hate or to love. Our fee will empowers us to make choices. Which means that others can use their free will to either choose to do good to us or to do evil upon us. It is not God who makes the choice for us or for others as to what we will do with our free will. Our actions are our responsibility; just as the actions of others are their responsibility. I also share an experience I had while my aunt and her friend were praying for me. A vision God gave me of where he was and what he was doing while the abuse was going on. I hope you will read my post entitled “Do You Blame God ForThe Hurt In Your Life”.
Let’s continue, and look at the innocence of a child…they are innocent in every way; they trust those who are in their lives to only do good to them, and not evil. They do not perceive that others may not have their best interest at heart. A child does not have a concept of betrayal or deceit. I may not have been a young child when my step-dad, Jon, started abusing me, but I still trusted him. I trusted him to keep evil far from me. That even though he lied to others, I thought surly he would never lie to me in such a way as to bring harm and evil upon me. I was a teenager when the abuse started, and yes, perhaps I should have known better than to believe all the lies that Jon was telling me. It was so much easier to believe all the lies than to face the truth of being betrayed like that. I was naive and trusting…perhaps in the same way that Eve was naive and trusting of the serpent. I had no personal, intimate knowledge of evil at the hands of someone I knew and trusted. At a young age I had become aware that evil could be done by a stranger…when one broke into the apartment that my mom and I were living in when I was about 5 years old. I saw the two of them fighting, and when I screamed for my mom he let go of her and left. That somehow seems so different to me…we are taught to expect that a stranger might hurt us in such ways, but not that someone whom we trust would do so. Both are devastating!! It’s like your eyes are opened to a personal knowledge of what evil truly is. It’s an experience that weighs heavy on your soul, and you wish that it all could be taken away from you. I’m sure Adam and Eve felt the same way once they truly grasped the reality of what they had done.
I will never be able to be totally free from the memories of this intimate experience with evil. But praise be to God! I can be free from the effects that were left behind. In God I can find the freedom to feel safe again, to be free from the nightmares, to find out who I truly am in the eyes of my creator, to feel loved and cared for, to see that I have worth and am worthy, for all the hurt to be carried away and replaced with healing. I have to allow the knowledge of the goodness of God to outweigh the knowledge of evil that was forced upon me. I choose to dwell on the goodness of a living God who is Holy, and whose express being is love.
No Comments