One of the most important and difficult spiritual issue for children of abuse: forgiveness for the abuser.
If God condemns the evil but has mercy on the perpetrators, can we do less?
We have seen that children (and the families of children) who are being sexually manipulated find every reason to excuse the behavior of their abusers and blame themselves.
Such toxic “forgiveness” keeps them trapped in victimization and trauma and pain. In order to heal, it is vital that survivors of childhood sexual abuse redirect their blame away from themselves, first toward their abusers and those who failed to protect them, then toward evil, and finally in part toward the God who created those possibilities. Anything less is not authentic and to expect any child or adult survivor of sexual abuse or incest to buy into this is willing them to fail.
To demand that they forgive their abusers as any prerequisite to healing or to God’s mercy (or ours!) only invites a false and damaging resignation.
For me it was a long way down the line, after years and years of healing work, of prayer, and of raging (in therapy and in prayer) at my abusers, that I was ready to open myself to the possibility of forgiveness. No amount of willed or false or hopeful forgiveness was going to fix me or heal what had been done to me.
We can get to forgiveness, yes. But there are not shortcuts. And self-forgiveness and true healing must come first.
It is vital to remember, however, that forgiveness does not mean in any way that perpetrators should not be confronted or prosecuted, or that we are able to forget or minimize the abuse. Like Holocaust survivors, we must always remember and honor the full impact of what has happened. Neither does it mean that our outrage at the crime is no more.
Cynthia Crysdale writes of the damaging effect of the Christian “virtue” of forgiveness when it is seen as a silencing of the proper anger of victims. Forgiveness is a hard-won gift of grace, and, if it is to happen in a healthy way, it will probably happen after much healing work has already been done. It should never be hung over a survivor of abuse as an expectation. It is my conviction that a loving God would want us to withhold any “forgiveness” that would cause us to fall back into spiritual sickness. I also believe that God would not reject any abuse survivor who as not able to reach a place of forgiveness in this life. I have heard many sermons on forgiveness that have failed to understand the delicate dynamics of forgiveness for victims of abuse and it kept me from God instead of bringing me closer to him.
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