“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour,” said Viktor E. Frankl, the psychiatrist holocaust survivor. It reminded me of a few situations that have occurred to me over the past five years.
The truth is, when we’ve blindsided by some action done to us through an abuse of power, whether it’s in our marriage, at our church, at the workplace, or somewhere else, it’s easy to forget something—as Christians I mean.
The immediate thing we’re faced with in our abnormal “reaction” is shame for behaving in a way we would not have normally. But we forget that we didn’t instigate the action that provoked the reaction. We may have had no idea what was coming.
Too easily we can be fooled into thinking we need to be a good Christian and repent of that reaction by quickly forgiving our abuser. We don’t like the feelings that course through our bodies for having been betrayed. We feel we can control the situation; if we forgive them, they’ll own what they did. But then they don’t.
And when they don’t own what they did, we’re subjected to a significantly worse abuse. A trauma bond occurs in the original abuse not being reconciled.
In situations where an abnormal situation of abuse provoked an abnormal reaction from us, we’d be better advised to worry less about forgiving the abuser—to try and bargain for a reconciliation (that they’re not interested in, remembering that if they abused us in the first place they will not be sorry about it)—and focus more on the fact that God understands our abnormal reaction.
Read that again: God understands and forgives the abnormal reaction.
Even though we’re sorry, God requires no apology, because we are sorry. He knows our heart.
God understands it, because, quite frankly, he knows that we’ve just encountered evil, and any encounter with evil will be such a traumatic experience that we won’t be able to help our reaction.
As we imagine receiving God’s pardon for the behaviour we feel ashamed about, because it doesn’t meet with our ordinarily high standards for the respect of people, we imagine that God reminds us, “You are human, and pure of heart to the point that you could not have expected what happened to you… I lament the situation you faced… and know that I was with you.”
Worry less about forgiving the abuser. We ought to be more concerned with getting support for how that abnormal situation affected us. Worry less about the abnormal reaction.
Photo by Casper Nichols on Unsplash
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