HOPE FOR ALL OF US: #3 Hope For The Abused

By Dr. Gilbert W. Stafford
Scripture: I Peter 2:23-25

ABUSE IN A SCHOOL ROOM 

He is a 53-year-old man. Let’s call him Bob. With intense emotion he told us about being abused when he was a freshman in high school. His family had moved from a town of about ten thousand to a large city. He had been very popular in his small high school and had received some major awards.

First day in the big city high school! Some 500 students assembled for the purpose of filling out questionnaires to determine in which classes they would be placed. Bob was emotionally paralyzed. In this completely new environment, he didn’t know one single person. Furthermore, he felt strange because the clothes that were standard in his old school—blue jeans—were not standard in the new one. In fact, as he later found out, only gang members wore jeans.

So there he was in a strange world on the first day of school. Students were given a booklet with two tests in them: Test A and Test B. Instructions were given for all students to take Test A. But Bob, in his confusion, turned to Test B. As he nervously made his way through the wrong test, the monitor came by and noticed his mistake. “Stand up, young man” she barked. All 500 students turned to see what was happening. “Go to the chalk board.” Bob did. “Write an A on the left.” He did. “Write a B on the right.” He did. Then the monitor asked the whole class which letter was on the left. In unison all 500 called out “A.” “What test are you taking now?” she asked the assembly? “A,” five hundred voices said. “But,” she said to the whole assembly, “this young man is doing B and not A. Come back to your seat, young man, and see whether you, like everyone else in this room, can find Test A.” With shame oozing out of every pore, he returned to his seat. He felt the disdain of some 1000 eyes piercing through every inch of his body and soul. It was one of the longest walks of his entire life.

Finally, arriving back at his seat, he collapsed and nervously fumbled to find Test A. Within moments, however, the monster of a monitor came to his seat again. “Stand up, young man.” Again all 500 students turned toward him. “I might have known that you wouldn’t understand the difference between A and B. The blue jeans tell the story.” With that the whole assembly laughed.

When Bob went home that day, he wrote a suicide note. Although intervention kept him from going through with it, he told us that it took him some 20 years to work through the trauma he experienced that day.

Abuse comes in many forms. Psychological abuse as in the case of Bob. Physical abuse as in the case of the beating of a spouse. Spiritual abuse as in the case of religious leaders who, in the name of God, manipulate people into doing what they do not really want to do. Economic abuse as in the case of swindling the elderly of their money. And emotional abuse as in the case of leading a person to think that one thing is going to happen when, in fact, that was never part of the plan.

What are we to do when we experience abuse? I have two words of instruction: 1) Never make peace with it, and 2) Offer it to God. 


NEVER MAKE PEACE WITH ABUSE

First, Never make peace with abuse. Too many Christians think that we ought to accept whatever abuse comes our way. Not so! God is never pleased with any form of abuse. If someone is abusing you, you should never accept it as being normative. Avoid abusive relationships. Abuse, whether physical, psychological, spiritual, economical, emotional, or whatever is never of God. This does not mean we can always escape abuse. What it does mean is that we must never make peace with it.

When Jesus did not meet the expectations of his hometown people of Nazareth, some of the rabble rousers tried to hurl him off a cliff. Luke 4:28 says that “all in the synagogue were filled with rage.”1 Verses 29 and 30 read: “They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”

They abused Jesus verbally, physically and emotionally. He did not stay around for them to keep it up. He got out of there. He put distance between himself and his abusers. He didn’t continue subjecting himself to the abusive situation in Nazareth.

OFFER YOUR ABUSE TO GOD 

Sometimes we can’t escape abuse. It may be that physically we are not strong enough. Or, it may be that other considerations come into play. I think, for instance, of a pastor who took verbal abuse from a board chairman so the pastor could see his congregation through a difficult time, and so young converts would not be abandoned to spiritual wolves. While he never made peace with the verbal abuse of the board chairman—and let the board chairman know he had not made peace with it—he offered it to God for redemptive purposes.

The supreme example, of course, is Jesus who, even though he prayed that he be spared the cruelty of the cross, nevertheless, yielded to it in order to redeem the world. First Peter 2:23-25 reads: “When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.”

This passage about Jesus offering his abuse to God for redemptive purposes tells us a lot about how we should handle abuse that is inescapable. Notice that Jesus did not continue the cycle of abuse. “When he was abused, he did not return abuse.” When someone abuses you verbally, for example, the great temptation is to abuse them in return, isn’t it? That, however, is not the Jesus way. The cycle of abuse needs to be broken. You can help break the cycle by refusing to abuse those who have abused you.

Notice also that Jesus entrusted himself to God “who judges justly.” In other words, those who abuse us are not off the hook when, for whatever reason, we cannot extract ourselves from their abuse. They still face God who will bring them to justice.

Furthermore, we learn from this passage that when we suffer abuse of whatever kind, we can entrust ourselves to God knowing that God can use our painful experiences to bring about something good, and also we can know that he will bring our abuses to judgment. “’Vengeance is mine,’ sayeth the Lord. ‘I will repay.’” Abuse, which for whatever reason we do not escape, when offered to God, can be used for redemptive purposes. It was Jesus’ offering of his abuse on the cross that saved us from our sins. “By his wounds you have been healed.”

THE NATURE OF THE HOPE THE ABUSED CAN HAVE

Why, then, do the abused have hope? The abused have hope because God is always on their side. The abused have hope because God will in the course of time bring abusers to judgment. The abused have hope because whenever they offer their abuse to God, God will take it and use it for redemptive purposes. Finally, the abused have hope because God is a healer. He is able to heal us of our abusive wounds and our despair. He is able to heal our broken bodies, minds and spirits. Such healing, however, is never complete this side of death. In God’s time, which, of course, goes far beyond our few score years, God brings healing, health and wholeness.

According to Revelation 21:4 God will “wipe every tear from their eyes.” In verse 5 we are told that God is “making all things new.” That includes our emotions, our bodies, our relationships. While our healing will not be completed until the return of the Lord, the process is one which God begins here and now. We can have a foretaste in this world of that which will be brought to completion in the world to come. That is why there is hope for the abused. The whole story has not yet been written. The end of the story lies in the future, and, on the basis of God’s word, I assure you that it will be a truly happy ending.

And, in faith, we can even now see evidences of that happy ending in the things that happen in this life.

The 53-year-old man about whom I spoke at the beginning can have hope. There was hope because his father became his advocate and extracted a promise from the principal that Bob would never again be subjected to the abuse of the evil monitor.

There is hope because somewhere, somehow, the cruel monitor in that city school will be brought to judgment. There is hope because in God’s grand scheme of things, Bob’s experience of inescapable abuse, when offered to the Lord, will be used for redemptive purposes. There was hope for Bob who in the course of some 20 years, did finally experience a degree of healing. And Bob, though he still has scars from his abuse, can have the hope that in heaven, all things will be made new, even his emotions which were damaged in the ninth grade.

You, too, my friend, can have hope, whatever the nature of your abuse.

PRAYER 

Let us pray:

Gracious Lord, lover of all who suffer abuse whatever its form, shower your grace and mercy on those who this day are scarred emotionally, perhaps even physically. Start the healing even now. We pray this in the name of Christ, the abused one, our healer. Amen.

1 New Revised Standard version used here and throughout.

Script 2581 (GWS)
June 16, 1996
SERIES: HOPE FOR ALL OF US
3. Hope for the Abused
Scripture: I Peter 2:23-25