I suppose I was naive,
but I was simply trying to live the sermon on the mount, and in
particular going the second mile. I had encountered him through
prison ministry. He told me many tales of woe, which at the time, I
swallowed hook line and sinker. Well he could lie brilliantly, and I chose
to trust him long after he had shown himself untrustworthy. I told
myself “If I don’t trust him, how will he ever learn to trust?”
But I woke realizing he despised me when said “You can’t say no
(to me).” He was wrong about that! Apart from that slip, he knew
exactly what he was doing, but many are not so self aware, and are
trapped in real or imagined victimhood. Please don’t get me
wrong, we need compassion, but compassion becomes toxic when we
don’t at some stage, encourage a victim to deal with bitterness
and unforgiveness, for their own sake, and to encourage them to take
responsibility so as to put the past behind them, and start to live
life again. I know of those who decades after a divorce still blame
their ex for everything that goes wrong. “Well he messed me up, and
left me unable to deal with life.” That is toxic victimhood, and
it’s not loving to enable a person to stay stuck there.
I still don’t know
how much of what my “friend” told me was true, but he was playing
the victim card to manipulate me, playing on my sympathy and
compassion. After the first world war the people of Germany were
victims of a punishing armistice. The injustice was real, and needed
to be addressed. There were other factors of course, but Hitler was
able to play on the injustice of it all, and he used this, his
hatred of the Jews, and the human propensity to blame to move Germany
forwards (but really backwards) towards what essentially was a police
state. They say that those who do not learn from history are
destined to repeat it, but I am getting a bit ahead of myself here.
What I am wanting to
say, is that with the best (or the worst) intentions in the world
(compassion), we can inadvertently (or deliberately) do victims of
real injustice, absolutely not favour. And we can do this by
talking and acting in ways that enable them to stay stuck in their
victimhood. I am not saying that we should not come along side and
help them. But it is a helping principle, that we should not do for
a someone what they can reasonably be expected to do for themselves.
To do more in the end, is to either enable victimhood, or to enable them to stay stuck in it. There is
also, it seems to me, to be a lot of cheap compassion out there, compassion
that cries loudly about another's injustice, but is not willing to
do anything but shout at the real, or imagined, perpetrators. Such
compassion does nothing to alleviate the suffering, and can too
easily keep the victims stuck in their victimhood.
Father, Your Word tells
us that we are to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. So
I am asking this morning Lord, that You help us to know and
understand when our compassion is likely to turn, or to be, toxic.
Help us Lord to act, and not just talk, and help us be wise in our
acts of compassion in Jesus Name Amen
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