The Tough Topic is abuse. Yesterday we established that
- You must be in, or get yourself to, a safe space now. That is the number one priority.
- No matter what happened to you, and regardless of whatever anyone may have told you, it’s not your fault. If someone told you it was your fault, and many abusers do, they were lying.
- There is no shame in having been abused. It just is a fact about some people and not about others. It’s like having had the chicken pox. Either you did, you didn’t, or you don’t know whether you did or not. But whichever is true about you, it’s not shameful, it just is. Same with having been abused.
Why is this in a Blog for new Christians?
Because as you start trying to rid your life of sin and live more like Jesus, you are going to run headlong into your own abuse. You probably already know it was a sin. But whose sin?
You likely were told it was your fault, and maybe you believed that. It’s completely normal for you to have believed that. The problem is, it’s a lie.. Little kids aren’t in a position to be skeptical. They need to figure out whom to trust, and then believe what that person tells them.
If the person who abused you was a person you trusted (and many times they are) you believed them when they said you brought it on yourself. And you might have tried really hard to believe them when they said, “That never happened.” You began to doubt your own sanity because you could swear you remember it. But the person you trust the most says it didn’t happen. You start to think you are crazy and you can’t trust your own experiences. These are very common experiences among those who are abused as children.
You come to Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and discover that you need to be honest with Jesus. You need to confess your sins and they will be forgiven.
You probably know down deep inside yourself that you are a very, very, very bad person, and that your sins are so shameful and horrible that they must never be spoken about. Ever. To anyone. For any reason. Often you can’t even figure out what you did (or ARE) that is so very, very bad. You just know that you ARE unspeakably dirty, sinful, and toxic.
The thing is, this is false. It’s not true. It is what you were taught when you were too young and too vulnerable to question it.
Your having been abused is not YOUR sin. It is a sin, but it is a sin of your abuser, not YOUR sin. You do not need to be forgiven for having been abused, because you did nothing wrong,
That doesn’t mean there is no damage there. You may still feel very damaged, and maybe you are. But this damage needs healing, not forgiveness.
Don’t misunderstand the Word of God by thinking the abuse done to you is your sin for which you need to be forgiven. You will have other sins. Only Jesus was without sin. But the abuse that was done to you is not one of them.
GodChild 