Having [God] as my judge is good whether I be in the right or the wrong. I want him as my judge all the more when I am wrong, for then I most keenly need his wisdom. Would I have my mistakes overlooked? Not at all! Shall he not do right? And will he not set me right? I can think of nothing so wonderful!
— George MacDonald, Knowing the Heart of God, p. 51 (from The Landlady’s Master)
How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not allow this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this. Brothers, have you found our king? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were — no, not a truer, for the other is false, but — a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.
The God who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of nature; who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall understand him and be blessed; who never needs to be, and never is, in haste; who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity; who rejoices in the response of a faltering moment to the age-long cry of his wisdom in the streets; the God of music, of painting, of building, the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans; whose laws go forth from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of loss; the God of history working in time unto Christianity; this God is the God of little children, and he alone can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and devoted. The deepest, purest love of a woman has its well-spring in him. Our longing desires can no more exhaust the fullness of the treasures of the Godhead, than our imagination can touch their measure. Of him not a thought, not a joy, not a hope of one of his creatures can pass unseen; and while one of them remains unsatisfied, he is not Lord over all.
— George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, First Series, p. 22-24
Women have been blamed by society for their unhappiness while being told by their abusers that they have nothing to complain about. Verbal abuse seems so inhuman, so bizarre to anyone seeking mutuality in a relationship that, no matter how deeply she understands that an abuser abuses because he abuses and not because of her, the survivor will almost always find it incredible that any human being would treat another that way. She will conclude, “He wouldn’t do this for no reason at all.” This is why the partner is confused by blame. It is as if she is just not something enough.
— Patricia Evans, Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out, p. 86
It often takes time for the partners of verbal abusers to realize that the abuser is the one with the problem. Most women who are verbally abused spend time focused inward, soul-searching, taking inventory, trying to identify their “sins,” trying to find out what they did wrong. Because they have been blamed for their pain, they look inside for solutions. With no place even to turn their anger, unless against themselves, they have nowhere to go and no one who would understand. So they believe the lie. “There must be something I can do.”
Looking back on their lives, survivors have wondered why they spent any time at all in the situations they were in. Was it just low self-esteem? I don’t think so. I believe that never knowing quite what was wrong because they were always being blamed did much more than erode their self-esteem. It so totally denied their experience and invalidated them that eventually there was nothing they felt they could know for certain, nothing on which to base action. Being blamed is one of the most common experiences of the partner of an abuser and may do more than any other abuse to disempower the partner….
Sadly, many women go through their lives in pain and confusion trying to find out what is wrong while their culture tells them “nothing is wrong.” Women who went to many sources looking for help were told to try harder, as if the abuse was their fault and their suffering the norm. For them the whole world was crazymaking.
Once a woman is aware of the ways she is blamed by her culture (“What did you do to provoke him?”), she finds it easier to look outside herself. In a verbally abusive relationship, this is essential. She must come to realize that the abuse has nothing to do with her. It is very difficult for anyone, including the partner of the abuser, to grasp that a person who seems to get along quite well in the world, as many verbal abusers do, could suddenly lash out unprovoked at his partner for no apparent reason. Yet this is exactly what happens.
— Patricia Evans, Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out, p. 77-78
As you choose your path and how you will use your time in the present, you are actively creating an increasingly more satisfying future. You are also dissolving the imprint and impact of any verbal abuse you’ve heard. Any negative definition of who you are by anyone in any time or place has no meaning or reality. While you may have been the target, like a drive-by shooting, the comments were not your fault.
You are infinitely more deserving of love and care than any negative comments would say. They are simply little synapses that flew out of someone’s mind. They are less meaningful than the chirping of a bird. Knowing this you are wiser and stronger each day. Knowing this you can choose to do what is best and right for your highest self this week and in the weeks to come.
— Patricia Evans, Victory Over Verbal Abuse, p. 176
Verbal abuse is always about the abuser, not about you. When verbal abuse is directed to you, or to someone in your sphere, you can find the right words and demeanor to respond by remembering that their words and behavior stem from deep within them. Their words and behavior are not a true reflection of anyone else’s worth, value, or true spirit. Knowing this, you are able to calmly address the perpetrator as though speaking to a destructive child.
— Patricia Evans, Victory Over Verbal Abuse, p. 162
If we could get a little perspective, we’d see how absurd it is to hold, on the one hand, that the Gospels are the definitive word on Jesus, while holding, on the other, that he doesn’t behave like that anymore. God gives us his Son, and grounds the record for all time in the four Gospels. This is who Jesus is. Against all other claims, doctrines, accounts, this is Jesus Christ. But then — as many Christians have been led to believe — God changed the rules. “That’s not available to you now.” You can’t reach out to him in faith as did the woman with the issue of blood and be healed by his life as she was. You can’t cry out to him and have him deliver you of a foul spirit. You can’t lean upon his breast in intimacy.
It’s psychotic.
It’s also blasphemy. He is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.
Let’s be honest. What is usually going on — what has proven true in every case I have ever encountered — is something more like this: “I don’t experience Jesus personally, so we must not as a rule be able to experience him personally.” Or, “I don’t experience Jesus like that (his playfulness, generosity, freedom, intimacy), so he mustn’t do that any more.”
— John Eldredge, Beautiful Outlaw, p. 156-157
Resolve to focus on what you know to be true. If anyone defined you, told you who you are, what you want, think, or feel, they were lying to you. You don’t have to prove they were wrong. In fact, trying to prove they were wrong, or trying to convince them they were wrong about you, diverts all your energy away from your own development, from rediscovering what is true about you. That is what counts. You count.
When you tell someone to stop defining you, you act from truth….
When you act on your truth, the universe supports you in such a way that sometimes obstacles are later seen as stepping-stones.
— Patricia Evans, Victory Over Verbal Abuse, p. 132
[Photo: Waterside Inn, Chincoteague, October 22, 2016]
John remembers Jesus saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (chap. 14).
This is as wide and expansive a claim as a person can make.
What he doesn’t say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him. He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him. He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore the world is happening through him.
And so the passage is exclusive, deeply so, insisting on Jesus alone as the way to God. But it is an exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity. . . .
This kind insists that Jesus is the way, but holds tightly to the assumption that the all-embracing, saving love of this particular Jesus the Christ will of course include all sorts of unexpected people from across the cultural spectrum.
As soon as the door is opened to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Baptists from Cleveland, many Christians become very uneasy, saying that then Jesus doesn’t matter anymore, the cross is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter what you believe, and so forth.
Not true.
Absolutely, unequivocally, unalterably not true.
What Jesus does is declare that he,
and he alone,
is saving everybody.
And then he leaves the door way, way open. Creating all sorts of possibilities. He is as narrow as himself and as wide as the universe.
— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 154-155
Jesus is supracultural.
He is present within all cultures,
and yet outside of all cultures.
He is for all people,
and yet he refuses to be co-opted or owned by any one culture.
That includes any Christian culture. Any denomination. Any church. Any theological system. We can point to him, name him, follow him, discuss him, honor him, and believe in him — but we cannot claim him to be ours any more than he’s anyone else’s.
— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 151-152