The Art of Abuse & Forgiveness

What makes one kind of abuse worse than another?  What separates one violation from another?  After all, all souls violated are violated souls whatever the violation.  What difference does stranger, friend or loved one make, male or female make, innocence, age or faculty make, physical violation or emotional violation, violent abuse or psychological abuse, after all, all violation is violation and all abuse is abuse, isn’t it?  No violation or abuse is acceptable or appropriate, is it?  Does man’s confusion and pain excuse his behaviour?  All people have different pain thresholds, is one pain threshold more acceptably violated than another pain threshold? I think not.

Time is irrelevant to the healing of a soul, where in violation all the world is crushed into the present cell, the violated one dragged through each and every millisecond . . . magnified. Magnified moments spilled over into days spent grieving, in which tiredness reigns relentless, and innocence is betrayed supreme.  All pains endured, diluted only within their own time frame, future shocks and abuses shocking-as-ever are and aren’t desensitized.

Shame filled man in his fallen humanity may be desperate to restore his dignity, often on the back of his already grieving victims good name, whereby his first or else last form of defence is attack.  But there is a counter weapon to attack, revealed to us all by our sacrificed Lord in all His violated graceful majesty.  Attack is to be diffused and rendered powerless with the grace of forgiveness and faith as in Luke 23:34 when Jesus pleads ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do’.

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Only searching for understanding in the brokenness of humanity forges a clearer way to forgiveness in which forgiveness forges a way to understanding more clearly, in time, when time allows.  Forgiveness does not say that the behaviour was acceptable, forgiveness says I forgive your failure to act with Love.  For when it comes to the mammoth grace of forgiveness, no such measured distinctions as is befitting in justice to the acuteness of violation, will be made. Forgiveness can not be in part, only in fullness, regardless.   One learns that in order to not become a prisoner of fallen man, one has to bear the hurt, search for understanding, grieve, and then somehow God transforms the sorrow into forgiveness, the forgiveness into compassion, and the compassion into Love ever enduring.

And so it is hopefully with fully repentant man, having travelled his own journey of acknowledgment and repentance for his sins forgiven, and with God’s mercy and grace bestowed upon both sinner and those sinned against, only then may one consciously else unconsciously lift themselves up, and in return help lift up the fallen other to higher than he ever were before he fell.  And where man falls short, I am absolutely sure in His own eternal time, God will prevail.

As will Love . . .

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. . . Thank God.

“To err is human, to forgive, divine.”  ~ Alexander Pope