Taking a stand

The helpless are crushed, sink down, and fall by his might. He says in his heart, “God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it.” Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand; forget not the afflicted. Why does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”? But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands; to you the helpless commits himself; you have been the helper of the fatherless. Psalm 10:10-14

I'd like to thank Thabiti Anyabwile for posting this video by Jackson Katz. The topic of Dr. Katz's TED talk is "Violence Against Women - It's a Men's Issue" which specifically addresses the problem of shifting the blame/focus from the abuser to the victim.

Now as soon as some people hear/read the word "victim" their hackles go up. Yes, there are people who have worn that label to avoid responsibility for something that should clearly be laid at their door, but just because that word is misused should not cause us to throw out the category. Being a victim is not a denial of being a sinner but an appropriate term for those who have suffered at the hands of others through no fault of their own. The children who were murdered in Connecticut were not culpable for the gunman's actions.The victims at the Boston Marathon were not responsible for the bombs, and neither should the victims of domestic abuse share blame with the abuser.

Also, abuse is not sporadic bouts of temper or irritability that can be mollified. If we think so, we are sadly mistaken and end up offering bad, even life-threatening advice. This is abuse:

Abuse is fundamentally a mentality. It is a mindset of entitlement. The abuser sees himself as entitled. He is the center of the world, and he demands that his victim make him the center of her world. His goal is power and control over others. For him, power and control are his natural right, and he feels quite justified in using whatever means are necessary to obtain that power and control. The abuser is not hampered in these efforts by the pangs of a healthy conscience and indeed often lacks a conscience.

While this mentality of power and control often expresses itself in various forms of physical abuse, it just as frequently employs tactics of verbal, emotional, financial, social, sexual and spiritual abuse. Thus, an abuser may never actually lay a hand on his wife and yet be very actively terrorizing her in incredibly damaging ways. 

Abuse in any of its forms destroys the victim's person. Abuse, in the end, is murder. (Source)

Given these definitions of abuse and victim, please watch the video. Please read the comments. They are a sad object lesson of the mindset that would still like to divide the blame between the perpetrator and the victim.  This only re-victimizes the victim because blame-shifting is a prime tactic of an abuser.

Blaming is one  of the chief mechanisms by which the abuser traps his victim in false guilt and shame. This is why we are led to feel guilty when he is the one who has done wrong. He is often so masterful at this that his victim actually begins to believe that the fight last night, or the empty bank account, or the adulterous relationship he had - are all fundamentally not his fault. Instead, the victim pushes his buttons or stressed him out so much he had to go out drinking and spend all the money or she doesn't take care of herself anymore so how could he help not being tempted by that other woman?¹

The self-doubt and distrust of one's own perceptive abilities produced in abuse victims by the abuser's distortions of reality, lying, accusing, and blaming produce a profound degree of guilt: false guilt. This promotes an even greater sense of shame and loss of personhood.²

I've highlighted part of Pastor Thabiti's comment from May 30 at 7:28 AM below (bolding mine). God bless him for making this statement. May the church-at-large stop siding out of ignorance with the abuser and stand firm on behalf of the oppressed, the widow, and the orphan.

It is never right, okay, permissible, or even understandable that a man should put his hands on a woman in any way other than to communicate love, care, and protection. ALL abuse at ALL times is wrong, sin, damnable.

1. A Cry for Justice, Jeff Crippen and Anna Wood, Calvary Press Publishing, 2012, pg. 83.
2. Ibid. 140.