Ephesians 5:29 “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church…”
Psalm 139:14 “I am fearfully and wonderfully made…”
In God’s perfect design we were supposed to have an innate sense of being “fearfully and wonderfully made” and to have a natural love and care for our own body. This in and of itself is not sinful but rather how we were created and a picture of Christ and his care for the church. Those who have been sexually abused as children often (or perhaps always) have had this innate sense distorted, or even destroyed, through what they endured. For whatever reason it is usually the child who will take on the shame rather than admit that person in position of trust and power acted in a way that was evil. For that person may have been the child’s very framework of love and care and even what God was like, so it must have been something in the child that caused the abuse, for to face the evil would threaten to destroy that child’s fragile framework that they so desperately need. As adults it is very important to separate the things done that were evil from their view of God. Those things never entered his mind; He is perfect and pure and nothing like the abuser and the evil that was done. Refusing to admit to the evil may cause incredible damage to your faith as you will subconsciously attribute some of the attributes of the perpetrator to God or let it taint your view of Him.
Worse still than the child taking on the blame is when the victimized child musters up the courage to share with another (often after half a lifetime of silence) only to be met with further blame. A woman once told me she tried to tell her husband about the abuse, to which he replied, “Well you must have liked it, or you would’ve gotten away.” What a wicked thing to say! We must refute these lies in our thinking as I believe it deeply grieves the heart of God and plunges further the deep wounds and the level of self-contempt these people experience.
In the book “The Wounded Heart,” the author states “Self-contempt is Satan’s counterfeit for true conviction. Contempt attacks the perceived source of the problem to gain control and then attempts to regain relationships with others and God through penitent deeds. Conviction humbly recognizes the need for grace and embraces a sorrow that leads to life and sacrificial love… A sorrow unto life is a merger of the bitterness that arises from breaking God’s heart and the sweet joy of being restored to His embrace… Repentance decreases shame, increases passion, and welcomes restoration.”
This is what I desire, true repentance! Sorrow unto life! All the sorrow of self-contempt was sorrow unto death and never produced life or true humility. I will share more on this topic of self-contempt and the self-harming tendencies after abuse that the Lord rescued me out of and helps me through on a regular basis in Part II.