1.21.25 ~ There’s no Neutral
Good morning!
I arrived safely in Honduras. The trip started with a dynamic conversation trip to the airport...briefly delayed at the check in: toothpaste was too big :-). De-icing of the plane in Grand Rapids and the rest was warm safe travels. Thank you for your prayers! Keep up the great intercession!!
Hidden in the Exodus story is a lesson on abusive relationships and how to break the traumatic cycle of abuse. Huh? Yep.
Hang on and let's go :-)
Within our studies this week, I want to define what it means to be a victim, an abuser, a savior, and how to break the vicious cycle of abuse (spiritual, emotional, physical, relational and financial); while eliminating the concept of any innocent bystanders.
In the Exodus story, God is not just taking His 1st born son (Ex.4:22) out of Egypt, He's revealing to us an example of what it means to intervene in an abusive family relationship and how it was critical for God to not only remove His people from the abusive relationship, but also to show them how not to be passive when faced with an abusive situation and its connection to Shabbat/Sabbath. Double Huh?
Over the years, dealing with myself and others, I've noticed something when it comes to domestic violence. With domestic violence, some sort of abuse, some sort of terrible trauma that's happening in a family, I've noticed that there are basically three roles that almost everybody in the family plays. It's one of these three roles, and I've noticed that people cycle through the three roles. So their position isn't fixed. They may start somewhere and then migrate to one or two of the other roles:
Perpetrator
Victim
"Innocent bystander"??
Savior
The first idea I want to share with you, from warm Honduras, is that there is no such thing as an innocent bystander. "How can that be", you ask? The way that domestic violence dynamics play out in a family is that whoever is witnessing the violence and doesn't intervene in the crime, but rather stands up to do something about it...then they're complicit to the crime. And within this dynamic there is a counterintuitive idea woven in that says, that people cycle through all these roles. Once someone is a participator in this culture of abuse, someone even who's a victim, who's totally in touch with how horrible it is to be a victim, that person is at the risk of making the same mistake that the perpetrator makes, because they've learned some patterns of behavior from just having been a part of that painful event (Deut. 5:15; 15:16; 16:12; Deut. 24:18,22). Scary! In a strange way, an individual can move from victim to savior, or the savior can become victimized.
My mind goes back to a particular event in my elementary school days (and I see it constantly on the adult playground of life). There was a bully on the playground that was shoving people down slides, harassing and scaring everyone. There was one of my friends who was getting terribly harassed, bullied and beaten up by this kid, and the teachers weren't there or they didn't know about it. It really bothered me. So, I told my dad and he said, 'you can't sit by and do nothing'! You need to stand up. If you have some standing in the class, you basically have to stand up to that bully and say, you know, you can't do that to my friend. Of course, the danger of standing up is that you can become a victim yourself. And instead of being a savior, it puts you at risk to become the victim. It's tough! Do you 'innerstand' what I'm saying?
There's no such thing as neutral in a situation like that.
The problem then arises, if I don't speak up, within that neglected opportunity, I am allowing the abuse to continue. Now I'm perpetrating the abuse. So it's no longer neutral, but a negative choice. In other words, the power of the abuser becomes magnified when bystanders, like myself, stand by doing nothing; their complicity sort of empowers the perpetrator/bully (Ex. 2:11, 12). There are people who actually see this and allow it to be, and hence the system is rigged against us, so to speak. Before you know it, you have well-meaning people who confine themselves with their silence, doing things like having to rationalize to themselves why they're silent, and before you know it, they're rationalizing the abuse (Eze. 3:18,19). Otherwise, why are they silent? It must be they did something to deserve it. And they really are on the side of the perpetrator. Oh what a web is woven within the details of life's abusive realities.
It's a very scary dichotomy, because the stakes for the bystander are very, very high. It's easy to expect someone to stand up and intervene, but it's asking quite a lot of them to take on that savior role. The gap between the heroism of the savior and the villainy of the bystander-turned-perpetrator is a very, very wide gap. You can choose to be the hero, or you can choose to be a criminal. There's no in-between. It's a hard position to force someone into.
Can you imagine yourself being the bystander in such a case, mentally thinking to yourself, 'I didn't ask for this'. Why can't I just remain neutral? I don't want this choice forced upon me, and yet it is. If I can't rise to the occasion, it's a soul-destroying experience. This was Moses in last week's Torah portion (Ex. 2:11,12) and, chances are it's probably you today.
So what does all this have to do with Torah narrative of the Exodus story?
More tomorrow!
I'm having issues with my phone! But, more importantly, pray that every encounter and every word shared will be impactful and life transforming (I always need it!)
Shalom
Hidden in the Exodus story is a lesson on abusive relationships and how to break the traumatic cycle of abuse. Huh? Yep.
Hang on and let's go :-)
Within our studies this week, I want to define what it means to be a victim, an abuser, a savior, and how to break the vicious cycle of abuse (spiritual, emotional, physical, relational and financial); while eliminating the concept of any innocent bystanders.
In the Exodus story, God is not just taking His 1st born son (Ex.4:22) out of Egypt, He's revealing to us an example of what it means to intervene in an abusive family relationship and how it was critical for God to not only remove His people from the abusive relationship, but also to show them how not to be passive when faced with an abusive situation and its connection to Shabbat/Sabbath. Double Huh?
Over the years, dealing with myself and others, I've noticed something when it comes to domestic violence. With domestic violence, some sort of abuse, some sort of terrible trauma that's happening in a family, I've noticed that there are basically three roles that almost everybody in the family plays. It's one of these three roles, and I've noticed that people cycle through the three roles. So their position isn't fixed. They may start somewhere and then migrate to one or two of the other roles:
Perpetrator
Victim
"Innocent bystander"??
Savior
The first idea I want to share with you, from warm Honduras, is that there is no such thing as an innocent bystander. "How can that be", you ask? The way that domestic violence dynamics play out in a family is that whoever is witnessing the violence and doesn't intervene in the crime, but rather stands up to do something about it...then they're complicit to the crime. And within this dynamic there is a counterintuitive idea woven in that says, that people cycle through all these roles. Once someone is a participator in this culture of abuse, someone even who's a victim, who's totally in touch with how horrible it is to be a victim, that person is at the risk of making the same mistake that the perpetrator makes, because they've learned some patterns of behavior from just having been a part of that painful event (Deut. 5:15; 15:16; 16:12; Deut. 24:18,22). Scary! In a strange way, an individual can move from victim to savior, or the savior can become victimized.
My mind goes back to a particular event in my elementary school days (and I see it constantly on the adult playground of life). There was a bully on the playground that was shoving people down slides, harassing and scaring everyone. There was one of my friends who was getting terribly harassed, bullied and beaten up by this kid, and the teachers weren't there or they didn't know about it. It really bothered me. So, I told my dad and he said, 'you can't sit by and do nothing'! You need to stand up. If you have some standing in the class, you basically have to stand up to that bully and say, you know, you can't do that to my friend. Of course, the danger of standing up is that you can become a victim yourself. And instead of being a savior, it puts you at risk to become the victim. It's tough! Do you 'innerstand' what I'm saying?
There's no such thing as neutral in a situation like that.
The problem then arises, if I don't speak up, within that neglected opportunity, I am allowing the abuse to continue. Now I'm perpetrating the abuse. So it's no longer neutral, but a negative choice. In other words, the power of the abuser becomes magnified when bystanders, like myself, stand by doing nothing; their complicity sort of empowers the perpetrator/bully (Ex. 2:11, 12). There are people who actually see this and allow it to be, and hence the system is rigged against us, so to speak. Before you know it, you have well-meaning people who confine themselves with their silence, doing things like having to rationalize to themselves why they're silent, and before you know it, they're rationalizing the abuse (Eze. 3:18,19). Otherwise, why are they silent? It must be they did something to deserve it. And they really are on the side of the perpetrator. Oh what a web is woven within the details of life's abusive realities.
It's a very scary dichotomy, because the stakes for the bystander are very, very high. It's easy to expect someone to stand up and intervene, but it's asking quite a lot of them to take on that savior role. The gap between the heroism of the savior and the villainy of the bystander-turned-perpetrator is a very, very wide gap. You can choose to be the hero, or you can choose to be a criminal. There's no in-between. It's a hard position to force someone into.
Can you imagine yourself being the bystander in such a case, mentally thinking to yourself, 'I didn't ask for this'. Why can't I just remain neutral? I don't want this choice forced upon me, and yet it is. If I can't rise to the occasion, it's a soul-destroying experience. This was Moses in last week's Torah portion (Ex. 2:11,12) and, chances are it's probably you today.
So what does all this have to do with Torah narrative of the Exodus story?
More tomorrow!
I'm having issues with my phone! But, more importantly, pray that every encounter and every word shared will be impactful and life transforming (I always need it!)
Shalom
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