(Re)Revised Thoughts on Abuse
Table of Contents
This is a post about abuse. I’m beginning to learn what it is and what it isn’t. The difference isn’t always as clear as you might imagine.
My hope is to move away from first person narratives and instead go into a different style of writing. It’s about glorifying the King of Kings Yeshua and His Father, not displaying personality. However this article is just a blog post. This isn’t a teaching. Actually it’s more of an observation. None of these are scientifically valid points even in the least. They are simply my opinions.
The books of Exodus and Numbers in the section of the Bible called the Torah, or the Law, contain a message which seems harsh and rather cruel. A kind and merciful Yahweh appears to indicate that He intends to punish children for the sins of their fathers.
Exo 34:6-7 And יהוה passed before him and proclaimed, “יהוה ,יהוה, an Ěl compassionate and showing favour, patient, and great in loving-commitment and truth, watching over loving-commitment for thousands, forgiving crookedness and transgression and sin, but by no means leaving unpunished, and visiting the crookedness of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”
It is certainly not our place to seriously question the correctness of His judgement. Still, even dedicated believers can find themselves debating the morality of this statement, which is commonly referred to as a generational curse.
There is never a circumstance where it is okay or good to add to the Word or take away from it (Deut 4:2). However there are commands in the Scriptures which can leave someone scratching his or her head as to the reason for the decree. Food laws come to mind, as does forbidding the mixing of wool and linen.
The question of why Yahweh would choose to punish, or allow children to be punished, for the sins of their fathers is the focus here. We are not about to add or take away from His Word and say “This is this and that is that,” but in this case speculation seems appropriate.
Hurt People Hurt People
The mind sciences have a pretty checkered history. On the one hand treatments have been made available which help broken minds heal and allow patients to see past their brokenness into a world of far less oppression. When the oppression is in a persons mind then the oppressor is always immediate and never really goes away.
Therapy can help. Therapy from the point of view of biblical faith is far and away superior in my opinion, but there is no denying that many forms of therapy can be helpful.
On the other hand pioneers like Dr. Ewan Cameron, Dr. Jose Delgado and programs like MK Ultra, among many others, are dedicated solely to the manipulation or destruction of minds using the very same science. I won’t say much here, but those keywords can tell you a lot.
Abuse Doesn’t Always Look Like Abuse
In any case this post is about something as simple as unthinking, unintentional verbal abuse that each and every one of us is capable of. Perhaps it is about sexual abuse. Perhaps it is about spending more time on devices and games or with a bottle or drugs than with small minds in need of structure and stimulation.
Maybe it’s about physical abuse or neglect or psychological damage from war or poverty. Abuse can come from any number of other factors which can damage the mind and spirit. Abuse can also change the physical structure of the brain.
Not one of us can be a perfect parent. We all fall short of the glory of Elohim, and we all make mistakes as parents and individuals. Who among us has not mistreated a spouse or a friend or a parent at some point? Who has never insulted a stranger without cause?
The true answer is none of us. I’ve done all these things. In fact my intense interest in this topic was brought about by self reflection based on something I was recently a witness to. I have no right or intention to criticize too harshly.
Pardon Me, Sir
A well adjusted, so called normal personality, whether a believer or an unbeliever, is going to have lapses in judgement, maybe based on circumstances. Maybe we are moody or got stuck in traffic. Perhaps we stumped our toe or our employer was rude and we took our frustrations out on a bystander. Maybe we even hurt their feelings.
In consequence this well adjusted personality is likely to feel remorse and may apologize. This person will likely see the wrong in their actions and take steps to repair the damage, or at least not repeat it.
A person with a personality disorder, however, may do no such thing. They very well may not even realize they have done any damage. Some personalities wouldn’t care even if they did.
Personality Disorders are Caused By Abuse
Personality disorders—atypical ways of thinking about oneself and relating to other people—are grouped into three clusters: A, B, and C. Cluster B disorders are marked by inappropriate, volatile emotionality and often unpredictable behavior. The disorders in Cluster B are antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/cluster-b
I’d like to leave it to the audience to read about these disorders on his or her own time. I’m not a clinician and have no training in psychological disorders.
On the other hand I have a long history of dealing with psychiatric issues relating to myself. As with nearly all people who suffer from these disorders I also have a history of dealing with adult personality disorders in childhood as well.
Still, I’m not educated in the topic and have no ground to stand on in regards to educating someone else in the details. For what it’s worth I don’t regard psychiatry, or the practice of using drugs when dealing with the mind, very highly at all.
Cluster B disorders have at least two things in common. One is that people who suffer from them in a full blown disorder tend to leave a trail of destruction in their wake. It usually takes the form of broken homes, damaged spouses and children, hurt friends, desperate family members and prison records. Some of these disorders tend to leave a legacy of suicide as well.
Traits We All Share
All of us have traits associated with these disorders to some degree or another. When researching for this article… which I’ve chewed on for about a month… I was shocked, and pretty uncomfortable, to see such large parts of my own personality lumped in with these disorders. I seem to have some strong antisocial traits which tend to express themselves as an opposition to authority and a rebellious attitude, which I’m trying hard to be in recovery from.
The other thing these destructive personalities have in common is that in the majority of cases the one suffering has a history of abuse. In an article entitled Role of childhood traumatic experience in personality disorders in China we read that:
Conclusion: Early traumatic experiences are strongly related to the development of PDs. The effects of childhood maltreatment in the 3 clusters of PDs are different. Childhood trauma has the most significant impact on cluster B PD. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22172919/
It Could Be Me, It Could Be You
Anyone from any background can commit abusive acts, including those people affected by cluster A and C personality disorders. However the most damage to society and relationships is found in cluster B personalities.
Everyone has heard of antisocial personality disorder and narcissists. Narcissists are named after Narcissus, who saw his reflection in a pool of water and fell in love with it. However there is far more to know about narcissistic personality disorder, and there is more than one type.
The disorder presents in more than one way, not just the grandiose narcissist we all are familiar with. Some would argue that the more subtle, vulnerable narcissist is a much worse person to deal with. I tend to agree.
Borderline personality disorder is a heartbreaking thing to witness. These poor souls who are in desperate fear of abandonment do enormous damage to the loved ones they rely so much on.
Personal Responsibility
I have no intention of excusing abusive behavior brought on by adults with these personality disorders. We are all responsible for our own actions and there is no one else to blame for adult abusive behavior.
I have experience with some of these personalities, and these people are difficult to love. Very, very difficult. Sadly, in the case of marriages it is nearly impossible to maintain a relationship. The so called normal spouse will eventually be only a shell of him or herself. They will question their own motives, stay confused, be tired beyond comprehension and live in a perpetual state of exasperation. Obviously children suffer terribly, and this is where I jump back into the biblical side of things.
Exo 34:6-7 And יהוה passed before him and proclaimed, “יהוה ,יהוה, an Ěl compassionate and showing favour, patient, and great in loving-commitment and truth, watching over loving-commitment for thousands, forgiving crookedness and transgression and sin, but by no means leaving unpunished, and visiting the crookedness of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”
A person who actually, truly loves the Elohim of the Bible and His Son Yeshua will have no choice but to examine himself or herself and force change. That’s made possible by the Holy Spirit.
Child abuse is worse than a death sentence as far as Yahweh is concerned. Yeshua Himself said that “whoever should offend one of these little ones, it would be better for him if a millstone were tied around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”
Obviously this is a drowning situation, meaning it would be better to die by forced drowning than to abuse a child. The Prince of Peace said this. The Heavenly Father takes child abuse absolutely deadly serious and it does not appear to me to be something someone should test.
Ironically, the particular personality disorders responsible for so many cases of abuse were in turn usually brought on by abuse. Parents or someone more powerful than the child abused them. They developed personality disorders which include abysmal self esteem, self hatred. Some disorders include a blatant disregard for anything else that lives as in antisocial PD, or entitlement and a complete lack of empathy in the case of narcissism.
It’s crucial to remember that these people suffer. Abusers inflict suffering, but make no mistake, most of them suffer tremendously as well. Compassion is a must, regardless of how hard it is.
Almost all of the suffering was brought on by abuse. Almost all of it is entirely avoidable.
Abuse can be physical and most people understand that there is a difference between proper, necessary physical discipline and abuse. However thoughtless words or neglect are also abusive. Calculated, highly thoughtful words intended to demean or place guilt do every bit as much damage as a grown man’s physical rage. It may appear in more subtle ways, but the long tern consequences are no less damaging.
Sticks and Stones
The childhood rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” is a pack of utter nonsense. The tongue is a fire and words can destroy someone. Especially a child with no mature way to reconcile what was said.
You do not have to intend to abuse someone. In my life I’ve spoken things with the intent to hurt people and I’ve also seriously hurt people when I had no intention of doing so at all. At times I thought I was doing good and in fact I was abusive with my words and thoughts, and I never intended to be. When I was confronted about it and the word abuse was used I dismissed the idea, until recently.
I have children now. I was 40 years old when I became a step dad and now I also have a 9 month old son. It was never in my mind to think soberly about the impact that abusive words, neglect or even thoughtlessness and carelessness could have on developing minds which are incapable of processing an adult’s behavior, or even on other adults.
“Normal” May Not Be Normal
I was raised in a “suck it up buttercup” kind of way. In some ways it has served me well. However I believed that the treatment I received from certain adults in my childhood was normal, when in fact it was anything but.
This was not physical violence in most cases. Even so, the psychological damage from prolonged fear, anxiety, always having to guess what mood a person will be in, loneliness and isolation, being ostracized and set apart from other children within the household, frequently changing homes and schools, living in women’s shelters… These took a toll on me that I wasn’t able to recognize until I took a deep dive into the abuse I witnessed recently.
I was only able to consider what I witnessed recently as abuse because of the dreadful effect it had on the people involved. The behavior I saw in them was familiar to me. It was disturbing to see it in someone else.
After seeing the pain these people endured from the outside and noticing their behavioral patterns which indicate abuse, I was able to search out what it meant. What I learned was shocking to my core.
Changes in Attitude?
I truly hope my life is never the same, and I pray that I never ever treat people in the way that I believed was normal again. What I saw in these people was not normal, yet it was behavior that I had grown up with and that I had even done before to other people.
I pray for the ones I saw being abused recently, and I pray for the abuser. I’m beginning to see a pattern and recognize that it is nothing more than a natural progression for a generational curse caused by those who hate Yahweh and His way of life.
This is a simplistic argument and in no way does it fully explore the curse to the third or fourth generation. But I believe that generational abuse and everything that goes along with it, including alcoholism and drug abuse, violence, sexual abuse and addiction, habitual infidelity, suicide and a whole host of other unpleasant side effects can be traced directly to child abuse.
Looks May Deceive
Something doesn’t need to be considered socially awful to be abuse, and social norms in a secular world are perhaps not the place to look for acceptable parental behavior. Abuse does not require physical violence. It doesn’t even require intent.
It’s important to obey the Scriptures. It is not good to mix wool and linen, and I will not at all endorse an entirely psychological approach to spiritual problems. While abuse certainly injures the mind, I believe the root is a tainted spirit and the treatment needs to be spiritual as well.
Interestingly, I’m learning to hold the psychological community in fairly high regard for their diagnostic observations. Some of these descriptions of narcissists and antisocial types are eerily accurate. For treatment, though, and for a true understanding of the reason behind the damage I maintain that abuse and the trauma that occurs from it is a spiritual issue.
Abuse doesn’t require bad intent, but breaking the curse requires good intent. The solution to generational curses is to simply be the one to recognize and then break the cycle. That is done by submitting to Yahweh by believing in His only begotten Son Yeshua.
The Son is the Solution
Obey Yeshua, and in the course of time and effort and cleansing the abuse will stop. It has to, and He will reveal it to you. A lover of Messiah Yeshua cannot be a lover of abuse. The two are opposed, and given the healing that the Holy Spirit provides and time the abuse will end.
With Yah’s power even something so deeply entrenched as a personality formed in defense during childhood can change, if someone is willing to submit.
I hope for the sake of the most important resource the world has to offer, our children, that this will be a consideration in your own life. It has certainly become a focal point in mine.
Rather than appealing to secular society to define proper behavior toward our children we should search the Scriptures and see how a real man or woman should treat their children. We should learn to do it according to Yah’s way of seeing things.
True repentance… not church appearance repentance, but real, broken and circumcised heart repentance can break this cycle of a generational curse of abuse.
The Best We Can Do
This will not save the world. Not everyone will hear. But will you? Will your children be spared from this curse that was perhaps passed down to you? Yeshua is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and He is the only cure for generational curses brought on by abuse.
If you have suffered abuse maybe you don’t even realize that your own actions are abusive. After all, your idea of what is normal and a true meaning of what is normal are not at all alike. You were hurt, but you have no right to allow it to continue and you are responsible for your own actions. There is not going to be any condemnation coming from the likes of me. But maybe you can be the one who ends the cycle, and who breaks the curse on your family.
Glory to Yeshua of Nazareth, who reveals our hearts to us.
