As a boy I was fascinated with pain. I often wondered how the pain I felt compared to pain others felt. I mostly kept this to myself, but there was at least one occasion I got into an argument with friends about who had experienced the most pain.
We all shared our stories: fractured limbs, concussions, road rash, and a hernia (that was my trump card). As each story concluded the storyteller would lean back, content with his story, expecting white flags to be raised in defeat. But, in fact, each of us was disappointed with the reception of our tales of woe. Our friends seemed unmoved by our ghastly pain and then would jump in with their own story, believing they could one-up the pain the last storyteller experienced.
I look back with embarrassment at the immaturity this pain one-upmanship revealed in me. My lack of empathy revealed a narcissistic heart. Thinking that my own pain was greater than anyone else’s only demonstrated my ego. Today’s culture of victim reveals similar truths about our collective hearts.
The Wild Draw Four Card of Victimhood
There is nothing more powerful in today’s culture than playing the card of victimhood. Like a kid holding onto the Wild Draw Four card in Uno, we hold tight to our victim card, pulling it out at just the right moment, expecting it to guarantee our victory.
It’s easy to see when someone else pulls out the victim card. We all think our voice is repressed. It’s because of our ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic class, or politics. Sometimes the only thing that appears to unite us is our status as victims: left and right, male and female, black and white. We hear others verbally lay down their victim cards and all we can think is that we’ve got a far more powerful victim card in our hand. We diminish their pain and multiply our own.
My point here isn’t political. My point isn’t that there isn’t victimhood. If you are a human being, you have been victimized. Some have been victimized more than others. I confess I have been victimized far less than most.
How Victimhood Robs Us
My argument is that such a mentality of victimhood robs us as Christians. Four ways it robs us are:
1) Victimhood robs us of gratitude: when we focus on the ways we have been victimized, our eyes grow scales and we become blind to the blessings that fill our lives.
2) Victimhood robs us of joy: the book of Acts, a book in which the followers of Jesus experienced great persecution, is a book punctuated not by a veil of victimhood, but rather joy. After their first arrest by the Sanhedrin, the disciples rejoiced that they would be “counted worthy to suffer dishonor” for Jesus (Acts 5:41), and that joy continues unabated to the very end of the book.
3) Victimhood robs us of repentance: we are all victims and victimizers. When we only focus on how we have been victimized, we become blind to the way in which we have victimized others.
4) Victimhood robs us of salvation: most seriously, our narcissistic focus on our victimization can blind us from considering the one true victim, Jesus Christ. Jesus was the only true victim that ever walked the earth. He was guiltless. And yet he was a willing, not unwilling, victim. He was a victim for the victimizers, for you and for me. On the final day, we will all join in song, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12). May our eyes not be blinded to the glory of the true Victim of God by fixing into the naval of our own victimhood.
Brothers and sisters, don’t be robbed by victimhood. May we look to the true victim, Jesus Christ, and may our hearts break by how we have victimized and be filled with gratitude for the great forgiveness of the Lamb of God, who has died in our stead.
Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash