Victim

Speaker 1 00:00:03 I'm trying to get this going here. That's not, that's not it. It's trying to find the right button here. I got all of these, all of these buttons. I can't find the Speaker 2 00:00:11 God bless you all. May God protect our troops and take care of these two bunny. No, that's not it. Speaker 0 00:00:19 Where is that? There it is. Woo. Finally found the right button. You may not know this, but this podcast thinking it through is produced directive edited by yours. Truly. I don't know if I should admit that at this point. Welcome to thinking it through. I'm your host, Greg Jarvis. This is a podcast put out by village church, East on a variety of topics impacting our changing culture. I think I've been the victim of my soundboard. Actually. I think maybe you've been victimized by my soundboard. You ever run? Speaker 1 00:00:53 No about that word victim. It sure is tossed a lot out these days. Don't you think right off the bat, there are some serious victims in this world and we need to talk about that before we discuss how victim is used in our culture today, right off the bat, the international labor office estimates, there are upwards of 40 million victims of forced labor conditions or forced marriage or sexual activities going on without consent around the globe. Most of these are in central Asia, Africa, Arab States, even some in America. Although the numbers are not nearly the same as they are on the globe. Sex trafficking is a huge industry, however, in America and should be prosecuted aggressively. These are precious little girls victimized by these horrible humans actually. And um, but uh, victimization goes on around the globe in the African continent. It's not unusual to have people kidnapped and forced to work in mines or kidnapped as children enforced to become children's soldiers by terrible desk boats. Speaker 1 00:01:49 Uh, the sex trafficking is huge. It's alive and well. Even in this Chicago area, these are, these kinds of victims are not what this podcast is about, but the world is full of vulnerable people. And we need to be aware of that. There are still many bullies around the globe who take advantage of people. However, in American popular culture, everyone seems to be clamoring to get to this word victim, to get this word attached to their chosen people, their chosen organization, becoming a victim in America is actually trendy. Now, to be honest, the more common we make these words, the more it belittles, the real victims that are going on, and that I have to deal with these certain circumstances like this around the globe, our popular culture has popularized the use of the term victim. Why is this happening? Well, it accomplishes two objectives right out of the gate. Speaker 1 00:02:38 It lowers the perceived offenders moral status, and it raises the moral status of the victims. It elevates one for the sake of the other many researchers believe this elevation of victimhood in popular culture is actually the same thing that started the whole dueling process. Back in ancient England, you have offended me. So you have offended. My wife's honor, whatever it is, you pull out a glove that apparently everybody wore in those days or had them laying around in their vests and then slap you slap the guy in the face and you request a duel for her honor pistols at Dawn. Remember politics. When, when this was a thing Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Bird, the two of the most famous duelers Hamilton was secretary of treasury. Burr was the vice president of the United States. Borough found out that Hamilton disrespected his character and an elite New York dinner party. He challenged Hamilton to a duel and on July 11th, 1804 burst shot Hamilton who died the following day. Speaker 3 00:03:42 He went Speaker 1 00:03:42 Out with his dignity, I guess sociologists call this kind of behavior back then a culture of honor. This is a culture where a person's reputation is paramount. Anyone seeking to do away with the dignity of that person or what that person represented, uh, or maybe the girl that was represented by that person. They get challenged to a duel that ignorant person needed to be taught a lesson. And the duel apparently restored your honor, or, or you were incredibly maned or died or dealt with some sort of a life-threatening death from lead poisoning, whatever it was in this kind of culture. Reputation was King. What others think of you is the highest quest. I want to say that maybe honor, culture is making an reemergence in our day to day. We don't reach for swords or muskets, but we do reach for dignity. And this is good. Speaker 1 00:04:30 In some ways we just spoke about this in church, God upholds the dignity of the oppressed and those victimized by potential oppressors in society. God is concerned about the dignity of every human being. No matter what their situation is, let's call this version like God's version and we'll call it dignity culture. Instead of honor, culture, a dignity culture has moral veil values and behavioral norms that promote the value of simply being human being made in God's image. However, like many other things, our culture has taken a good idea to a bad place in an effort to provide dignity. For some, our culture has necessarily imposed villain hood on others. Victimhood not dignity has conferred the highest moral status. These days as one group is elevated. Another is moved down. Victim hood relies on villains and victims, oppressors Speaker 3 00:05:20 And the oppressed. And as Speaker 1 00:05:22 We've popularized this value system, our list of victims just continues to grow. As the list grows, it only increases the incentive to publicize grievances. More people want to be more victims. They become louder, they become stronger. They become more popular with more groups. We've increased the potential impact of the injured parties in society as well. It's no longer an individual or small groups. It's, it's not one person slapping another person with a glove. Now the offended parties have social media for instant appeal and immediate support. Any small infraction becomes a blowout attack on somebody or someone's choice of people, groups, the gloves come off and instead of slapping, one face a million glove slap a million faces based on what the perception of those groups are. Furthermore, you don't even have to try to prove your case. If you feel like you've been victimized. The very fact that you claim the title victim automatically bestows on you, the highest moral ground from which to speak, you have been wronged. Speaker 1 00:06:19 You have been victimized. This claim of victim status may not be completely unique to this generation, but running to it like our culture has done these days is unique. Everyone's carrying around gloves. Everyone's carrying neuron, dueling swords. You have offended me, sir. And then slap dignity must be restored in our current culture. Claiming victim-hood is the ideal perch from which a person can not be attacked. The category of victim is now a moral, absolute, no argument to the contrary can stand against somebody who believes that they are a victim, victim mentality, values, feelings above all and diminishes factual evidence. If feelings are not acknowledged and pendants offered the conversation only escalates until the demands for conformity are met by the oppressor and this activity, verbal slights, or the name of the game, citizens of this culture, demanding recognition of various victimhood status and are increasingly unwilling to engage in any form of civilized dialogue with anyone, with whom they might disagree. Speaker 1 00:07:24 I saw one video recently where a student was attacking her professor at Yale. She was surrounded by other students. The professor apparently had sent out some email on rules and she took it personally. She said that this email hurt her, caused her to feel like she was not a part of the university any longer. It took away her feeling of family. It stole her safe space. From there. The crowd only got more riled up until they were shouting. This professor down, calling him everything from bigot to racist, to homophobe, every, every name in the book. He continued to plead his case that it was just an email and he didn't have didn't mean to victimize anyone, but it didn't get him anywhere. She appealed to the crowd and eventually the screaming overtook logical debate. The implication of those arguing from victim status is that the person disagreeing with them is an inherent moral failure. Speaker 1 00:08:14 If they cannot agree with the emotions expressed by the victim, they're a moral failure. The more the discussion goes on, the more the victim will feel comfortable, heating it up until their emotions are addressed, not their grievance and to which the argument will never suffice. This is an appeal to not a debate, but it will eventually turn into an ad hominem attack. And the name calling begins. You ever wonder why, why we have all of these names coming up so quickly. Racism turns to white supremacists and now to white colonization. I mean, we're just upping the ante on the words that we throw at each other, like gloves, slapping faces. We just keep throwing out more and more words. You always need stronger terms to appeal, to emotions and find support for your viewpoint. And in a victim culture. If anger from a victim is met with anger, from a perceived depressor, the point is made you are the aggressor, and now you're proving it. Speaker 1 00:09:10 This analysis may be best described why our culture values victimhood over logic, arguing from a victim mentality, gains the moral high ground and any attempt to a conversation diminishes the emotions of the victim and belittles their experiences. The problem of victim hood is that every victim will inevitably try to out victimize the other victim. You, you can't knock somebody off a Meritus victim perch. All you can do is find a place for your own victimized group to stand and push them aside so that you could take a seat on the perch next to them. Eventually every group will attempt to become a victim group. Some have already labeled this kind of behavior or oppression Olympics who has the greatest one group of people being oppressed. Eventually there'll be no victims left. Jesus never allowed those. He came to save to play the victim card. In his day, Rome had stolen everything. Speaker 1 00:10:10 It had taxed, the Jewish people into poverty. Their own households were not safe for their children. Rome had victimized a nation. Jesus should have played to this, but Jesus never spoke to his own people like they were victimized. In fact, he said, when a Roman soldier asks something from you be generous. You're probably thinking to yourself, Craig, where in the world would Jesus say, be generous to a Roman soldier. I'm glad you asked it's right in the sermon on the Mount Matthew five verse 40. If anyone would Sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak also. Well, okay, this is generosity, but what does that have to do with the Roman soldiers while the next verse says, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him. Two miles. You see the law in the Roman books was if a soldier goes on, leave from the battlefield, he has to walk home with everything he's carrying. Speaker 1 00:10:59 He carries all his stuff and he walks the entire way. And, and on the way, as he's going through Roman territory, he can ask any person, Roman citizen or a part of the Roman territory to carry his stuff, but he can only ask them to help him carry it. One mile. Jesus says, if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them. Two miles. Jesus is referring to this Roman law. If a soldier asks you a soldier, that's pro persecuting you in your own land, asks you for help for one mile, go to creating victims may be the best that our culture seeking justice can do. We need to seek justice, but not at the expense of any other group or any other person. God has a better way. We're not after victims. We're after dignity. The effusion church turned to Christ left and right as they did that, their mindsets changed on what was going on in their society, in their culture. Speaker 1 00:12:02 One of the things that was going on was emphasis had a field at the side of the city where the fathers who did not want their children could discard their babies or leave them out to die. The law on the books in the Roman world, where the father had the final say over these children, if it was a child with a health disparity or some maybe learning disadvantage, and the father had the say, and they could go out and they could leave this child on the edge of the city and their animals might pick them up and, and, and tear them apart, scavengers might pick them up and put them in sex trafficking. They might simply die from exposure end up in the slave trade. The, this was a terrible thing that Rome was doing a law on the books. And you know what the efficient people started doing, you know, what they decided that they were going to do because they wanted to protect the vulnerable. Speaker 1 00:12:53 They wanted to help those who are truly victimized. They decided that they were going to go to the dump and they collected the infants at their own expense. They brought in these children and raised them as their own. They didn't know where they came from. They just knew that they needed help. Have you ever wondered why adoption is such a huge theme in Ephesians? In fact, if he's in starts this way in love Christ chose us before the world began to be adopted as sons and daughters. The fact of the matter is sometimes the justice system is simply not equal. We need to strive to make application of the law equal for everyone, but not from the vantage point of victimization. Rather from the vantage point of dignity, we need to help people with empathy, but we don't want to ever turn empathy into permission to be a victim God's plan is that we don't elevate victimhood, but we do our part to elevate victims. Speaker 1 00:13:47 People need to be rescued body, soul, and spirit. There are some who've been wronged in this world who need justice and they need mercy. And there are some who are wronging others bullies in this world who need to be shown justice. And we need to follow the law of the land and me God's method of delivery, his heart, his hands and his feet to all those around us. One police officer, I was talking to just recently said, this is why he got into the police force. He hates bullies. We can be those who uphold the needy and the broken and the fallen, but we don't need to promote a culture of victimization in order to do it. We need to promote a culture of dignity. Hebrews 13 three reminds us to continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison. Speaker 1 00:14:35 And those who are mistreated as if you were yourselves suffering. Remember dignity, culture, not victimization. Every human life has dignity. Every human life should be protected and valued, but we don't move to victimization to find an oppressor to blame someone else. We take advantage of the justice system, make your wishes known, speak up for the vulnerable, defend those who are oppressed, but don't cling to victimhood to find your dignity or your cause. You'll never find it there. That barrel labeled victim will only give you more reason to find anger and rage. We need to realize those who have been hurt by others. I pulled the dignity of every person worked to support those who have been treated unfairly. We as believers, as followers of Jesus Christ, don't want to build the society for our children based on one that constantly needs victims to thrive. Like the professor at Yale who supported every cause his students did in an effort to identify with them. Speaker 1 00:15:34 Eventually he found out he himself was viewed as the oppressor with victimhood. There can never be enough oppressors. If there's a victim in this world, that was our savior. Jesus Christ. He alone is completely faultless. Jesus alone is the exception to this rule. And what did we do? We killed them. Actually. We killed them for not being like us. He voluntarily died on that cross so that we can know the freedom he offers to all of us, his own oppressors and his offer is open to you as well. I want to tell you he can change any heart. He can turn any victim into a Victor. He can give you his heart and you can find purpose in him, not in what others think of, you know, gloves out, slapping people on the cheek. No, instead we follow a savior who loves us, and we provide dignity for every class, every citizen, every culture, every person in the land, because we are all made in the image of Christ. And we all have inherent value. Listen, if at all, as always, if you liked this podcast, there's more where this came from. Visit us online at village church, east.com. We'd love to have you let us know you drop by. Would ya? And I'll send you a quick little note. I hope you'll join me again. Next time. As we spend a few moments together on another topic, tangy and through until then, we'll see you next time. Be merciful, walk in justice and humbly before you're gone. See you next time.