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| It is hard to viscerally experience our ongoing need for the grace of God in our lives when we think ourselves more victim than sinner. Some of us who have availed ourselves of therapy because of abuse we suffered in early life are often most prone to this victim mentality, but it also afflicts many contemporary Christians simply because we are immersed in a “culture of victim-hood”. We find it difficult to take responsibility for our continuing sins when our society incessantly tells us that someone in our past damaged us for life through no fault of our own.
Now this is not to say that many of us have not experienced just that (and it is also not to condemn all therapy, especially Christian counseling which can be biblically-based and helpful). We are often in need of healing from wounds of the past and there is a special kind of grace for that very thing. But we also can become lulled into a sense of complacency about our ultimate need to take responsibility for the sometimes sinful ways we have reacted to what happened to us. It is a hard thing to face, but God often seems to withhold significant healing until we have forgiven our abusers. That task can take years and we may need to forgive again and again. I believe God knows this and is patient with us. In fact deep forgiveness is impossible without His very present help. However the truth remains that we must learn to forgive if, at the least, we want to know Him more deeply and enjoy the fruits of a full Christian life. Furthermore, we may find ourselves excusing sin that has nothing to do with the abuse in our past. This might be because of a general feeling that we have somehow “been robbed” in this life because we do not have the happiness that the world claims is supposedly our right. Sinning becomes justified as a form of self-medication when this feeling becomes lodged in our hearts. Few, I think, maintain such an attitude consciously. Most of us are biblically literate enough to know that such an outlook is anathema to the God we claim to worship, and so the sin we commit in this spirit is kept safely tucked away deep in the recesses of our psyche. Such sin, of course, finds us out eventually. All unrepented sin does. I believe no Christian on this side of Glory is free of the capacity to sin, and sin we do. The remedy to sin in the children of God is not perfect performance; it is the grace of God, but we cannot fully receive grace for sin we justify and cling to, whether on a conscious or subconscious basis. At the very least we are required to ask for mercy on our souls when we are in transgression, and that is unlikely to happen if a believer is living in denial. We have to admit to our guilt if that guilt is objectively true; even when we neither feel guilty nor want to feel guilty. It is imperative that every one who calls him or herself a Christian (and that includes this author) become willing to grapple with the evil that we continue to do every time we indulge the flesh. We desperately need to ask the Spirit to convict us of sin and be willing to feel the pain of that conviction. It is only then that we can become both open to, and desirous of, the grace that goes deeper than any transgression we commit. Once that sweet grace flows into our lives through the channel of humility we have willingly opened in our hearts we are healed, strengthened and once again blessed by the God who longs to not only give us life, but give it abundantly. |