Dealing With Those Who Have Been Victimized

  As I research Biblical counseling, I realize that there are some people with situations that are not so easy to deal with. It is not as easy as telling them that they need to repent and put their trust in the Lord. There are some people who are so broken that you don't know if they will ever be repaired. Here is something that David Powlison said in one of his sessions on Psychiatric Disorders: "We are dealing with things that are so broken and there is no promise at all that we will make it all better."
   There are two different types of people we deal with in counseling. The first group are people who are people who are generally not ensnared in the complexity of sin that would keep them from understanding and responding to the Gospel. The second group is the group of those who have been victimized. Before I go too much further, I already know the stigma that goes with this. We think that people who are 'victims' are those who are presenting a 'victim' mentality. Yes, I think they generally do, but there is a bigger picture we have to look at. That is what I am going to cover on this blog.
     I would like to start by saying a few things. All of us are victims, in one sense. We are victims of our sin, and the sins of others. I used to think of myself as a victim. I came from a pretty average home. We went to church, so we really were fairly moral people. Although my parents didn't talk about sin or the Bible, they had many of the principles down, possibly because those principles were put into them. I had a dad who was very quiet and didn't talk much at all to his family members. Throughout my school years, I was quiet and the other kids bullied me around. The only way I responded was to them was by crying. So, as I grew up, I was affected by the way other people treated me. I came to Christ and responded to the Gospel at about the age of 16, and I thought, as a young adult, that there were too many things that were wrong in my childhood, that made it so I couldn't overcome certain things. Without realizing it, I had a 'victim' mentality. But like I said before, we are all victims of some things, but realistically speaking, I was not a victim of anything that was too difficult to work through.
   But there are people who have such complex difficulties that really are not their fault. There are people with medical conditions that affect their thinking. There are people who are schizophrenic and hear voices. There are women who were raped many times during their childhood. Do you think it is as easy to say to a rape victim, 'Just forget what was done to you when you were little. Concentrate on the Lord and it will be ok."? Her life and her whole way of thinking has been shaped by those traumatic events in her early life. Our job is to help her learn to renew her mind and learn the truths of who God is and what He is like. There is no five-step plan for doing this. It takes time and patience. It takes a lot of work. There are many things for the rape victim to overcome. If we expect her to just come out of her shell and stop distrusting God, we are losing the battle with her. Yes, the goal ultimately will be for her to be delivered and set free from everything that Satan put into her to hold her down and keep her from understanding and believing the Gospel, but it is how we go about doing that.
    Some people have such complex problems, and if you listen to their stories, you will find some very interesting things. For example, did you know that there are adults who were victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse? Do you realize what the ramifications are for a person who has come out of this horror? Some day I will have to post a message just on Satanic Ritual Abuse. It would be an understatement to say that SRA is bad. It is bad in such a way that the person who is coming out of it had strong Satanic holds on him or her that have to be broken, through deliverance, and much Biblical counseling. You will have to walk a such a person through many seasons of healing and deliverance. These people have been victimized and need help. Many, if not most, have no clue of what their families are involved in, or why they need to be set free. Let me be more specific on this issue. Children that are born into families who practice Satanic Ritual Abuse are trained or conditioned to do what the parents or perpetrators want them to do or be. If the parent wants the child to never show emotion, the parent will put electrodes on the child and shock him or her as soon as the child shows emotions. Imagine living a childhood where you were always being shocked when you did something that displeased an authority figure. This process is called 'Conditioning'. We do it with out pets all the time (not in a cruel way). For example, if the dog goes out at 9 pm every night, and gets a cookie every time he comes back in, he is conditioned to know that a cookie will be in his mouth when he comes in from his nightly outing! Some of the conditioning that Satanic Ritual Abusers do involves using rape. Not only are the SRA people into sexual perversion, but they also know that if they continually rape a little girl, they will fracture her mind and create a situation where the child will basically blank out, and during the trauma, she will create personalities with her subconscience mind that will be aware of what goes on during the trauma. The ritual abusers know that if they fracture her mind, they will basically have her as a slave the rest of her life. After they are gone, the little girl, who becomes a woman, will normally gravitate toward a perpetrator. She is told that she will need a perpetrator the rest of her life to survive. Her life now depends upon a perpetrator, of whom she will be his slave. She has been conditioned to believe this lie, and now she won't be able to get free from it unless there are compassionate people who can reach her. It will take much time, perhaps years, before she can 'get it'. Her whole thinking pattern has to be reshaped with the Truth. Unless that successfully happens, she will not ever be free. Her understanding of the Gospel will always be clouded and twisted.
   On the other hand, there are people like me, who really aren't victims of someone else's sins against them. It didn't take months and years for me to grasp the Gospel. But there were still things that held me back from growing that had to be dealt with. There are still things I need to be set free from. I understand that there are people who really don't want to be free from their sins too. They might come in for counseling. Maybe they have low self esteem. Perhaps they are out of work. Maybe they are lazy and don't want to work. Maybe they are sick and really don't want to get well, but they are tired of being sick. Some of these people will not be benefitted from Biblical counseling. Their heart doesn't want to leave their sinful pattern. They do not want to pay the price for being well. When counseling with these people, there will always be reasons why they can't repent. They want benefits from God, but they are not willing to be changed by Him. These are the people with the 'victim mentality' that are so hard to deal with. They are not trapped by what someone else did to them necessarily, but they seemed trapped by their sin. The problem is in their heart. They are not really looking for an answer for their problem, nor are they looking for an answer for their sin. They just want an open ear to listen to their complaints. When they finish telling you their sordid life tales, they will go onto another person to tell their stories to.
   So the key is to become very discerning. How do I know when I really have a victimized person or a person with a 'victim mentality'? Sometimes, it is hard to tell. You have to take time with the person and probably spend many hours listening to his story. After a while, you will be able to see some motives. You will see some inconsistencies if the person is really telling his story in order to complain. After some time, maybe a very long time, you will be able to know though. It will help you decide if you are really helping someone, or if you are just spinning your wheels. Of course, pray for wisdom and discernment with everyone you encounter in counseling. People can fool us for a while, but God is never fooled.