The summer I was 18, I went on an African mission trip. One of my teammates was abusive and cruel. But she was also very manipulative, and was able to twist everything so it was never her fault. The culture we were serving in was not as into cause and effect as the US. They saw everything as happening in a vacuum. For example, if you got angry with someone, they thought the problem was that you were angry, and didn't even consider that the person might have provoked it. This abusive teammate caught onto this, and used it to her advantage. This person attacked every word I said. She contradicted me very rudely. She called my faith into question in front of others. She ridiculed me. While we were teaching children, she would move the bookmarks in my Bible so I would use the verses she wanted. She destroyed a pair of my shoes. At one point during that trip, I was in a very scary situation of almost being abducted on the street, as well as molested by my would-be abductors. I screamed and fought, and this teammate just laughed, pointed, and took pictures happily. Our host got the men off of me, and I was physically trembling, and this teammate kept laughing. She kept asserting, "They went for Janelle because she's most scared!" I have to confess, I mentally committed murder against her (not just then, but many times that summer). When I couldn't stop shaking and crying from terror, I was told to get over it, it was over, and not everything was about me. This teammate constantly made contrary comments about me or anything associated with me. And in the midst of this, we were in a third-world country, pre-Internet, with no access to the US besides airmail (which took weeks). It wasn't until late 2021 that I was able to verbally even talk about the almost-abduction.
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| This picture was taken of another mission team I was part of as a college student--a year after my Zambia trip. I have so few pictures of the Zambia trip, because it was so traumatic. In this picture, I am in the front, at the right (the picture cut off on both edges when I uploaded it, for some reason, but I'm the furthest right you can obviously see in the front row, with the three other young women. I look happy, and I was, but I was carrying the baggage from the previous summer. Below are pictures actually from Zambia (no people are in them--I got rid of most of those when I went through therapy about that experience) |
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| Some monkeys who stole our lunch, then chased me! The natives got a kick out of that! |
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| Victoria Falls, on the Zambia/Zimbabwe border |
You can imagine, this was a very difficult six weeks for me. What made it much worse, though, was that I was not allowed to own what happened to me for a long time. If I so much as disagreed with this horrible teammate, much less corrected and confronted her obnoxious attitude, there was hell to pay. Suddenly, I was destroying unity. I wasn't keeping the peace. I wasn't getting along. I didn't have love in my heart and needed to study First Corinthians 13 until I could be more loving. I needed to get over it and move forward and get along. This teammate used this (sometimes making herself cry and getting everyone feeling sorry for her). She would say this, or get everyone else to say it. I was the bad guy. It made me feel crazy. Was I causing disunity? Was "letting it go" the right thing? It seemed like it just let her have a free pass to continue being abusive. She got to control the narrative, that what she was doing was perfectly acceptable, and I was the one who had a problem. To keep the peace, everyone else outwardly claimed to believe this narrative, and backed her up (though some quietly whispered that they knew I wasn't in the wrong).
This was not the only experience in which I've faced this. So many times, I have seen people do wrong. Then, when someone rightfully responds by confronting them, or even simply disagreeing with them, they turn it on that person, and claim that this person is selfish, needs to forgive and move on. Is it true that people need to forgive and move on? Yes. But the person who inflicted the problem has no business insisting on that. They are skipping an important step--making amends. This involves acknowledging their wrong, and changing their behavior. Even without an amends, should we forgive and move on? Yes, but that doesn't mean we have to accept their abuse. The abuser needs to be stopped. They are completely refusing accountability, and that is a problem. Rather than changing, they use the philosophy of "He who smelt it dealt it," to misdirect everyone. Attention is off the wrongdoer and his sins, and everyone is blaming the victim (or whoever is trying to stop the person in the wrong).
I once heard a pastor say that all confrontation is sinful, and if you think someone is doing wrong, it really means you're the one doing it. Do you realize how wrong that is if followed to its logical conclusion? This would mean that if someone broke into my house, and I caught them in the act, called the police, pressed charges, and testified against them in court, I'm actually the one who was the burglar. It would mean that if a police officer gave someone a ticket for speeding, the police officer was really the one speeding. It would mean Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were really the ones causing the Holocaust because they fought against Hitler and his allies. It would mean that the people in the World Trade towers on 9/11 were really the ones who flew the planes into the buildings. This obviously isn't true. It is a transparent smokescreen to avoid taking responsibility. I believe this particular pastor used this philosophy to keep from being accountable to his congregation, and to keep people from being able to question him.
We know from the Bible that confrontation is not sinful. One of the most famous examples of confrontation in the Old Testament was where Nathan confronted King David of his sin of adultery and murder (Second Samuel 12). John the Baptist confronted Herod's sin (Luke 3:19). Paul confronted Peter (Galatians 2:11-13). In Matthew 18, Jesus gives some directions for doing confrontations among fellow Christians. All of this should show us that confrontation is not sinful, nor is it an undue cause of disunity.
I often hear people accuse those who confront others of hypocrisy, saying to "take the plank out of your own eye." This can be a misuse of that scripture (Matthew 7:5). If I'm actively doing evil, but confront others for doing exactly what I'm doing, then this accusation fits. But if someone wrongs me and I call them out on it, this claim that I need to take the plank out of my own eye doesn't hold water. You don't have to be perfectly sinless in order to distinguish between right and wrong, and speak out when wrong has happened. When Jesus said that the one without sin should cast the first stone (John 8:7), He didn't mean that only perfect people can point out sin. He meant that we all deserve death, but His grace can save us, and lead us on to a better life in Him. He told the one in sin in this scenario to go and sin no more (John 8:11). People use these scriptures as weapons against anyone who dares get in the way of their power to do whatever they want and treat people however they want. But they are wrong.
A particular relative of mine (with whom I have a difficult relationship) once said some very cruel things to me about a dear friend of mine. I asked her to stop, and she refused, and continued with her uncalled for remarks. I wordlessly walked away from her, and left the gathering we were at. A few days later, she called, wanting to come to my place and do something fun. I told her I would love that, but we needed to talk about the hurtful things she had said about my friend. She went into a conniption fit, accusing me of hypocrisy, and how I needed to take the plank out of my eye, and how she wanted to commit suicide because of me, and how she wished I'd go to hell. Interesting, how she had wanted to do something fun with me until I confronted her wrong behavior. She wanted the freedom to be hurtful without being called to account, and for me to just enjoy being around her the next time. It doesn't work that way. The phone call ended badly.
The reason this has all come to my mind is that my husband and I faced a similar situation. I like to keep my political involvement separate from our mission work, and my writing, but there are times when these things converge. We are involved in our county's Republican Party. It is a very small part of our lives, but we deem it as important, because we want the children we share the Gospel with to continue having the liberties we as Christians enjoy. We want to create the best conditions possible for the Gospel to go forth. We want to do the best for our community and world in order to better fulfill the Great Commission. There are Christians who are not politically involved. And you know what? That's okay. People need to follow their divine calling from the Lord. But they also shouldn't criticize others for their calling. A lot of people criticize political involvement, and make a lot of statements that reveal a lot of ignorance on the real issues. I am not called to be a gospel singer, but I am also not critical of those who are.
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| Walter and me at a Christmas event with the county Party, December 2021 |
Having explained that, Walter and I have enjoyed being on the county committee. We have made many likeminded friends, almost all Christians, and some have even come alongside our ministry. Recently, we had a state convention, and our committee took nominations and elected delegates to represent our county and vote at the state convention. The election, which should have lasted two hours, tops, lasted nine hours, and we didn't leave until 2:30 the next morning. The people who were threatened of losing power made it very difficult, and were verbally abusive to our chairwoman. My husband and I were both nominated and elected as delegates. Most of us who were elected were likeminded people with values formed on Biblical belief. Most people in our county committee wanted those with our values to represent them. But the "old guard" as we'll call them, fought us tooth and nail. We had to vote three times, and they kept invalidating the election. But at the very end, they didn't object to the results, and we all went home. Three weeks passed with no complaint. Then, two days before the convention, these people leveled a complaint that we had cheated. They rendered us invalid as delegates. There was a hearing the next day (the day before the convention), and we all showed up to testify as witnesses. The "old guard" got there first and locked us out of the building. They were threatening and nasty to us. They had the police there (they claimed it was because they thought we would riot, but they were actually trying to intimidate us). One of the officers was a friend of one of our delegates, and he later told him that the people inside the building were being very petty against us. We prayed together as a group outside. We were perfectly peaceful. Our chairwoman was allowed in for five minutes, so it would look like they were being fair and letting our side speak. They also let our lawyer (also an elected delegate) come in for five minutes and speak. We waited out in the 101 degree heat. Nothing was resolved.
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| Picture of our delegation peacefully waiting outside in the heat. |
The next day, we went to the convention, in hopes that the other counties' delegates would vote to accept us in and dismiss the complaint. Some of them knew what had been happening (having seen the video footage of us locked outside in the heat the day before), and they hugged us and told us they planned to vote for us. It seems they saw us as heroes, which balanced out having the "old guard" and their ilk treat us like criminals. We weren't even allowed inside the meeting room. We waited in the hall until they decided, and at one point, we were shouted at to get out of the hall and go out into the lobby. We complied respectfully. My husband led everyone in prayer.
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| My husband Walter leading in prayer. At right in the coral outfit is our chairwoman Lorri, an incredible Christian woman and a great leader. |
We all thought our chairwoman and/or lawyer would be invited in to speak, but they were not. The "old guard" in our county shared their side. A few people spoke on our behalf, but before many could, we were told that the kibosh was put on that. In the end, we lost by only a few votes. This meant that our county had no representation at this event. If we had been able to share firsthand what happened, I believe we would have easily made it in. It was encouraging that, even with it clearly slanted against us, almost half the people there took our side. Once it came out that we lost the vote, we were ordered off the premises. Within 12 hours, all of us were getting messages from the other side, telling us we needed to put this behind us and get along with them and work together. Sound familiar? You can read a newspaper article about what happened here.
I had gone through so much of this misdirection and manipulation on mission trips and in other circumstances, and so when this situation with the Party happened last week, I was very equipped with a response for those who tried this tactic. Should we forgive? Absolutely. God has given me opportunities to be charitable toward those who did this. I feel no anger or hatred. I am not carrying a grudge. But I also don't trust. I refuse to be manipulated into pleasant compliance, when all we wanted in the first place was to serve all of them as delegates. They took our rights as elected delegates away from us. We can forgive, certainly, but we can't just forget about it. It should also be noted that nobody asked for our forgiveness. When I was eighteen, stuck in a foreign nation and being abused by a lunatic with no boundaries, I had no choice. My voice was silenced. But not now.
People need to be held accountable for their actions. I have already shared biblically how this is the right thing to do. It is actually showing the person love. We are told in Proverbs 27:6, Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. Likewise, Ephesians 4:15 says we should be speaking the truth in love... If the truth is that this person is in sin, so be it. There is nowhere in scripture where we are told to allow abuse. We are never told to have unity at all costs. We are never told to keep people happy. If someone is doing wickedly, whether it is abusing, manipulating, harming, or any other sin, we are told in First Corinthians 5 that Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. This may sound drastic, but we should mourn sin, and remove those caught up in evil from us. Why? This chapter goes on to say To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. It is for their ultimate good and eternal rewards.
One day, every person will give an account to God. Those who are saved will stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ (Second Corinthians 5:10). The unsaved will face God at the Great White Throne Judgment (Revelation 20:11-15). For Christians, our deeds will not be the determination of whether we will make it to Heaven. Our faith in the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ settled that for us. But our deeds will determine our heavenly treasures. We will face God, as a loving Father, and account for what we've done. First Corinthians 3:12-15 says, Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. This passage is both sobering and comforting. Sobering, because even Christians will face a level of judgment (though not condemnation). Comforting, because nothing can take our salvation--and God sees all things, and will make it all right one day. Those who have hurt you will be brought to account by God. They will admit what they did was wrong. They will face it. Keep short accounts with God yourself! Be accountable now! Be honest with others, and especially with yourself. Pray as David did, Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24). By all means, hold others accountable, and let them do the same for you. No one is above that need! If anyone ever tries to turn the tables on you and paint you as the villain because you lovingly and respectfully put down a boundary with them about their behavior toward you, they are the one with the problem, not you. Run--don't walk--away from them as fast as you can go!
Remember, Liberty and Justice for all are beautiful ideals, but unless we apply them, and are willing to have them applied to us, they remain just that. I'll close with a few comforting verse to those who have been treated unjustly, and then had the truth twisted by a manipulative person. Proverbs 26:27, Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling. Luke 8:18, For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.
You are so right about handling hurtful people & situations. I'm so glad this world is not our real home ...
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