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Especially
around the anniversary of 9-11 we keep hearing about good coming out of evil
acts. How can that be? How can good ever come from evil, especially, in
particular, evil sexual acts when they have changed someone’s life
forever?
 magine the most
evil act conceivable: humanity kills the only Son
of God. What good comes of it? The redemption
of humanity.
But, from the psychological nuance
of your question, your words cloak a dark personal
conflict that must be brought to light before
you can truly comprehend the meaning of redemption.
Psychological
trauma, especially childhood
sexual abuse, can leave you with a confused mass of
ordinary human emotions. But this confusion can feel so painful that your
primary psychological defense to save your
life will be to “get away” from it all and to turn your back on
divine values such as love and
forgiveness, and mercy.
It’s a sad thing for this to happen, even though it may be the only
way for the child to survive. Still, it fulfills Christ’s warning: For
whoever wishes to save his life will lose it (Luke 9:24).
Thus you will find yourself in
a living hell with recourse to nothing but empty human weapons of
anger, bitterness, and fear.
And the guilt will linger as an unconscious secret
that you will struggle to hide—and run
from—for the rest of your life.
If, through the process of
spiritual purgation, you have the courage to
face all those emotions related to the abuse, tease them apart, and understand
how each one affects your behavior, then there is real hope. Otherwise you
will spend the rest of your life reacting automatically and blindly to your
emotions, blaming others and feeling
victimized by circumstances that are really of your
own making. Because, as hard as it sounds, when you turned from divine values
in the first place, it was your choice, and yours alone. It may have been
a tragic mistake, influenced by ignorance and fear—or even the social
pressure of “programming” or
brainwashing—but, at its root, it was still
your free choice.
Curiously enough, some victims
of child abuse even develop fantasies of being martyred, believing that their
living hell is a form of martyrdom. But, in truth, all that pain is the fruit
of their own betrayal of divine values, and the fantasy of martyrdom is just
a form of self-hatred, a desperate attempt to
hide ugly reality behind a facade of
superstitious devotional practices.
True martyrdom, after all, sacrifices
even life itself in its refusal to betray the divine. And so good comes from
evil.
Here, then, is true
redemption. For being a free choice, your original
betrayal can be remedied simply by your freely turning back to what you turned
away from in the first place. All you need to do is admit—to yourself,
and then to God—what you have been keeping secret all along.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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