I once had a student who wrote about her molester. Raw, tender, beautiful young girl whose deacon touched her in bad places. Told her not to tell. My throat screams injustice as my stomach churns with the thought of the injustice she has endured.
She was a victim of child molestation. But is she really a victim?
Racism breeds its hot hatred year after year, day after day. Moment after moment we are bombarded with the clashing tension. Blacks demanding a voice in a world that has historically oppressed and whites screaming back that we live only in the present and cannot be held accountable for the sins of our fathers. Spouting ignorance about the realities of cultural degradation runs rampant in all of us. We are all victims of our upbringings, buying into the abcs of our youth. But are we really victims?
Daniel and I talked about this the other night. Black, white, rich, poor-so few actually change from what they have known. Stuck in the cycles of the familiar, we may venture a bit from the nucleus but fail to find implosion that launches us into brand new spheres of orbits.
I guess I see it like this. It is pretty easy for me to sit in my comfortable life and throw stones at someone else and tell them their poverty or their depravity is their own fault because if they would only work harder they would rise above their situation when the honest reality is even the richest white man rarely moves beyond his own situation in which he was raised to fill. We often live impressed under the cultural norms of whatever life has looked like day in day out. We fail to move beyond what we know because we are victims who lack courage and strength and perseverance to make a change. But does it have to be like this? Are we really victims?
As a Christian, my default is to take all questions to the context of how God would answer this question. And as often happens, he points me to the cross.
Jesus was the ultimate victim. Bruised and beaten for his perfection, outcast for belonging to God, rejected for refusing to follow the norm, he died for me to pay my price and set an example for me to fall hard into. From every angle I look, Jesus was a victim. But He would deny every ounce of that claim. He says we are only victims if we choose the flesh. When we choose the spirit, we are never a victim. Through His Spirit, we step outside the flesh into a life where nothing that happens to our flesh can destroy what He has done in our Spirit, and it is then that all of us-black, white, rich, poor-move beyond victimization and into abundant life.
Blacks and white alike, if they choose secular over spirit, are all victims and frustrate progression of life because living a victim leaves us unable to make a change, choosing instead to displace responsibility and live stagnantly blaming others with no hope of rising above our circumstances.
My student is no different. Her flesh was victimized-cruel, heartless beast of a man who took advantage of her. Every part of me cries sorrow for what has happened to her, but I would do her an injustice if I simply offered a tissue with no hope for something better, especially since I do have something better-hope for a life outside this flesh that draws us closer to death with every passing breath. I can offer her life in the spirit that rises above all the hell of this world.
It is only when we embrace the love Jesus offered us on that cross that we can be anything more than the filth of the life around us. This same sweet promise applies to us all-from the privileged white man residing in a white house to the colored man kneeling on the grass. We are all victims of the flesh who desperately need to choose to live life in the spirit and be a different kind of victim-a victim of love.
