There is evil in everyone, but freedom through Christ

To The Daily Sun,

I'm writing about the series on sexual abuse you've been running for the past few days. It brought home memories for me of when I began the process of dealing with my own abuse. I self-identified as a survivor and found a support group of other survivors I met and shared with at meetings. I remembered what that was like.

There was a good side to it and a not so good side to it. The good side was that, after a year of therapy, the sense of shame I had carried my whole life turned into sadness. That was very healing. It meant that instead of internalizing the guilt and shame that properly belonged to my perpetrators, I was instead, for the first time in my life, living my own emotional truth. I had nothing to be ashamed of. I had done nothing wrong. I was not the criminal. I was the victim.

But there was a negative side to identifying as a survivor. I developed the sense that my victimhood somehow elevated me morally. It gave me a sense of self-justification. Any harm I had ever done to anyone else was because of the abuse. I developed dysfunctional ways of relating that were not my fault. I was blameless. This is a trap many survivors fall into. I saw it among the members of my support group. I believe the left wing of the Democratic party is now promoting this idea of victimhood as a claim to the moral high ground, and in a sense turning it into a religion. Any member of a group that has traditionally been oppressed is somehow entitled to feel superior to anyone who hasn't had their experience.

What I know now, many years later, is that being a victim of sexual abuse does not make me any better than anyone else. My victimhood doesn't purify me or impart some kind of righteousness to me. The only righteousness I have today is the Lord's righteousness which was imparted to me when I accepted the sacrifice He made on the cross as payment for the evil inside of me. Yes, there is evil inside of me. There is evil in everyone; abuser and abused, black and white, male and female, etc.... There is no one righteous except Jesus Christ. His righteousness will be ascribed to you if you receive the sacrifice He made on the cross as payment for your sin.

If anyone balks at this, I want to tell you that, since I accepted Christ as my Savior, I have known a freedom I never had before. It didn't come all at once. It's been a slow process. I can sum it up in one basic idea. What I'm learning is that I am not the person who was formed by what happened to me. Those dysfunctional behaviors and ways of relating and coping were not who I am. I thought they were. I am starting, a little at a time, to become who I really am. I'm seeing things in myself that truly surprise me at times. Even though I'm a sinner, I'm actually a nicer person than I thought I was. Because I'm not so afraid to be myself anymore because I don't need your approval as an indication of my worth. This has freed me to let my softer side show. Because if you see the vulnerable side of me and you don't like me, it's okay. It doesn't really matter. I know Jesus loves me. I know He has justified me.

I never was able to achieve anything close to this freedom any other way. And because I'm saved, I know where I'm going when I die. To Heaven to be with the Lord. This freedom and assurance is available to anyone who wants it. Just believe.

Hillarie Goldstein

Franklin