One of the first temptations that someone who has been spiritually and emotionally abused by a senior church leader encounters, is to embrace the victim spirit. The victim spirit causes us to believe two devastating lies. One, that someone, somewhere, owes us something for doing something to us. And two, that we are somehow more virtuous because we are a victim of an offense of some kind. These lies are deadly to us on a spiritual and an emotional level. The victim spirit is so deceptive because it looks to be lined up with the heart of the Lord, but it’s far from God’s heart. The victim spirit causes us to take aim at fixing church “systems” and “institutions.” As if that will heal our heart break, even if its caused by the betrayal of a church leader. The victim spirit takes our focus off the Holy Spirit’s healing work in our own heart, and keeps us in the spiral of a defeated life. So how to we defeat the victim spirit?

 

Don’t pretend.

You have been legitimately wounded. Rejecting the victim spirit is not about pretending as if the deep wounding you encountered at the hands of senior church leader who spiritually and emotionally abused you didn’t happen. What the Lord is calling us to do is walk through your wounding to His redemptive healing. But the wounding still happened and it’s real. It has caused a chain reaction of consequences and circumstances to occur in your life (and the life of your family) and those consequences cannot be swept under the rug. From pain so intense that it paralyzes you from moving onto the next season of your life, to having to change the place where you live, work and worship, the consequences of the spiritual and emotional abuse you endured is real. Rejecting the victim spirit does not mean we ignore the issues and consequences that has happened as result of our broken under experience. What potentially keeps us in the spiral of pain and loss is what we choose to do with the temptation to stay in a spirit of victimhood.

 

The world twists the knife.

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. (James 3:13-16 NIV84). In the day and age we live in, the victim spirit is not just alive and well, it’s an industry. From entire national organizations dedicated to keeping entire people groups in victimhood, to government policies that keep people as victims on a socio-economically level, the message of the world is that you are most likely a victim of someone, and that you are owed something. So be very careful when a fellow believer or someone claiming to speak for Christ tells you are a perpetual victim, and that you deserve your piece of justice pie, they are speaking the world’s values instead of the values of the word of God. The victim spirit’s m.o. is “bitter envy” and “selfish ambition” and as James reminds us, it’s rooted in the world’s value system. You can never come to a place of peace in the power of the redemptive work of Christ if you don’t take the knife of the victim spirit out of you. Someone representing the world’s false “wisdom” is always waiting to twist the knife just a little more, usually as a legitimization of their own pain as they are caught in the victim spirit as well. When you struggle against the victim spirit in your breaking under, remember that if you look to the world and its ways for an answer, you will only encounter a system meant to keep your heart and mind captive to the pain you are enduring. But there is a better way, the way of Jesus…

 

Christus Victor!

When we gaze upon Jesus, so many things come into focus. Jesus, the most righteous and innocent person who ever lived was victimized on the cross for us. This makes what Jesus endured on the Cross for us the most unjust act against a human being of all time. All our grasping for fame, and all our accomplishments, and all our painful wanderings on this planet pale in comparison to the surpassing glory of Jesus and what He did on the cross for us (Philippians 3:8). When we are in Christ, who embodies victory over death itself, we share in His victory. The Christian life is one of victory in spiritual endurance. Being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. (Colossians 1:11-12 NIV84). Strength in power, sharing in His glorious might, having endurance, having patience, Joy in communion with Father God. These don’t seem like qualities of someone who is a perpetual victim. They seem like the life of someone who walks through the spiritual, emotional and even physical trials they are going through in victory in the Christian life, despite those struggles or even spiritual abuse. You know what the best part of this is? The last line in the text. You are qualified, along with the rest of those who know Jesus, to walk in this kingdom of light as a victor. Despite the pain, betrayal and injustice of it all. In Christ victory is your default setting, not a victim.

 

It is hard, I know. The world wants us to not only wallow in our victimhood, the devil and the world wants us to make it our identity. The thing is, our identity is in Christ! So, we get to share in Christ’s victory. So, push away the victim spirit, reject the temptation to identify with victimhood and instead stand as the child of God you, in Christ's victory.