JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS
COVER
Men. The word triggers conflicting
emotions. My mind automatically freezes as I struggle to sort prejudice from
truth, and truth from experience.
On the one hand, I’ve had
positive experiences with my Dad, older brother, and numerous brothers in Christ.
My uncles, grandpas, and cousins never did anything to harm me. But all it took
was one young man in the context of childhood sexual abuse and my five-year-old
mind immediately drew the connection between gender and fear. After that, I was
never 100% sure that any man was safe. It was like being hit by a car and
knowing better than to play near the road again. Or be near a car, for that
matter.
At first, I pushed all men
away, including the respectful ones, determined to put up a safe distance so I
didn’t get hurt again. But it wasn’t that simple. In pushing men away, I grew
up with a skewed perception that no men could not be trusted no matter what
they said or did. The more they tried to be friendly, the more I thought they
were trying to trick me. As I grew older, I learned to be awkwardly polite, but
to be alone with a man was at the top of my list of Top 10 Things to Avoid,
along with crocodiles and drowning.
By pushing away truly
honorable men, I also pushed away the spheres in which a young woman should
naturally feel treasured and safe. I cared about many of them, but was
constantly on guard simply because they were men. It was easy to pretend normality
in a crowd where I could fake busyness or silently observe from the corner. But
if a man’s attention suddenly zeroed in on me for polite chit-chat (as they so
often did in the friendly church I grew up in), it took all my willpower not to
have a meltdown in front of them (and sometimes willpower wasn’t even enough). It
was exhausting, this constant watchfulness for danger, because men existed
everywhere I went.
In the meantime, I was
starving for male attention and love. I longed to be pursued, but dreaded the
moment when a man would. It was like a cyclic nightmare. A word, a gesture of
kindness, a smile, and I was over the moon. But let one get too close meant
vulnerability, and vulnerability meant exposure and pain. The thought of rejection
was too much to bear and my prison of fear grew stronger.
Until one young man saw
the challenge and accepted it. He pursued me and loved me even when baby steps
of trust took months and years. As my confidence grew, my fear of men retreated
to the background. Here was a man who truly loved me despite my quirks. I was
so sure that this man would put my fear of men to rest.
But the honeymoon was
short and marriage was hard. I discovered I was married to a man who wasn’t
perfect, whose love wasn’t enough to cast out my fears. Vulnerability wasn’t
easy, and I couldn’t escape into a corner anymore.
For the first few years of
our marriage, I struggled as my strong distrust of men returned and marriage
triggered things from my past. The old panic reappeared, and with it, shame
directed at my beloved husband who had never been part of that chapter. I was
falling apart, but I refused to tell my husband anything because I was afraid
to lose him. Old patterns of dissociation and pushing people away kept me
locked in another reality as I fought to keep the past out of the present.
But I could not truly
escape. At night, I had recurring nightmares of being raped, pursued, seduced, and
betrayed. I often woke up disoriented which affected my perception of men during
the day while fear attacked on so many levels. You never told your husband about the abuse before you got married; if
he finds out, he’s going to divorce you for living a lie. You’re deceiving so many
people who care about you; no good churchgoer wants to be friends with a
hypocrite. Your fears are immature; it’s time to grow up and get over them. You’ve
lived this long without telling anyone and survived; what’s a few more years?
It was as though God was
making my life miserable on purpose. Like He was trying to tell me something
but I was afraid of what it would cost. I had been fostering this fear of men
all my life, justifying it because I’d been victimized. But I also knew the
damage it was doing. The pain was so great that I found myself fantasizing
about being abused again because I thought it would be easier to live with reality
than the torment of waiting for the inevitable.
But thank God, He is not
content to give up on His children. Thank God, He responds to brokenness by taking
initiative and doing something about it, rather than passively waiting for them
to accept His terms. In recent years, God has forced me to walk through the
fiery furnace, but I have not been alone. He has shown me that the problem is
rooted in something much bigger than gender.
MEN ARE NOT THE PROBLEM
I was raised by Christian
parents who took the Bible very seriously. I heard the Gospel regularly at
church and home. God mercifully saved me when I was around fourteen years old
and I was baptized shortly after. But there was an experiential gap.
I never completely trusted
God. I could not see Him, but I knew He was real which was unnerving, like a
presence I could never escape. I knew what it felt like to be out of control,
but no matter how well I tried to organize my life, somehow the circumstances never
happened according to my plans. My life felt so unstable and fragile, and I was
afraid to love anything or anyone because people were also changing. Constant change
fueled the fear that God wasn’t who He said He was. That everything I believed was
a lie.
Even so, I was drawn to
God, to the fact that everything the Bible said about Him was nothing I’d ever experienced
in a male. And it intrigued me. God is
not like us.
From Genesis to Revelation
and everything in between, God never responded to circumstances like people
did. His response was always bigger, His perspective always broader. It was as
though He was working on a completely different level at all times. But it was
the way He related to people that always made me hesitate in fully trusting Him
because my experiences didn’t line up with who He claimed to be.
He is the Creator of all
things in this universe (Isa. 45:18). He is the Father of those whom He has
caused to be born again (Rom. 8:14-15). He is the Redeemer of souls in bondage
to sin (Isa. 47:4). He is the Head of the church, the promised Husband of the
bride of Christ (Eph. 5:23).
The problem is when these relationships
are distorted in our experience. How I initially responded to men after my
abuse is a perfectly natural human response. It’s natural to point the finger
at the opposite sex just because there are certain tendencies within genders
that emerge. Men are often stronger and see life as one giant competition
between the sexes and amongst themselves. Men are wired differently and often
take advantage of women and children. Fathers fail, and even provoke the very
ones they are supposed to care for and protect. Those of us who’ve experienced freedom
from bondage often become enslaved to other manipulators. Husbands don’t consistently
love the woman they’ve promised to cherish until death. Many times, men take
advantage of those who are weaker, even within the local church.
But when God originally
created a good and perfect world, He also created the beauty of male and female
gender when He made a perfect Adam and Eve. Moments later, Adam imitates God’s
enthusiasm when he says, “This is now
bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she
was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:23)
Adam and Eve’s gender differences were designed to complement one another, not
destroy each other.
But with the first sin came conflict.
Instead of confessing his
fault, Adam blame-shifted, saying, “The
woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:12a). Immediately there was a barrier between the sexes. He tried to excuse his actions by throwing his wife under the bus. Ultimately, Adam blamed God who had created them. And by
blaming God, he also twisted everything God had revealed Himself to be.
In spite of Adam and Eve’s
sin, God’s standards of truth and obedience never changed. There were consequences for their actions, including separation from God. Sin continues to separate every person from
the presence of God. Gender is simply one of the systems through
which the overflow of the heart is channeled.
Romans 3:10-12, 23 emphasizes this point: As it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.”For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Both men and women abuse
children. Men and women murder others. Both rebel against their parents. Both
twist the truth and tell lies. Both commit adultery and immorality. Both are
selfish and fight for their rights at the expense of others. Both hate God.
Both indulge in pornography and human trafficking. Both use His holy name as
curse words. Both have hearts full of bitterness, malice, and gossip. Both
ignore God’s special day of rest. Both abandon their families. Both steal what
doesn’t belong to them. Both ignore what the Bible says. Both are equally
deserving of eternal punishment in Hell for their sins.
My problem with men is not
their gender. It is rooted in my first-hand fear of evil. I’d tasted it at an
age that could not comprehend its darkness, only its effects. I understood the
depravity of mankind, but very quickly that good fear of evil morphed into terrified
distrust of men.
Which gradually turned into a distorted fear of God who was
also male.
Which in turn, alienated me from the very relationship my soul needed
and longed for.
UNLIKE ANY MAN I’LL EVER
KNOW
I was no different than
Adam and Eve who blame-shifted rather than holding each other accountable for
actual sins. Yes, I had done nothing to deserve abuse, but my good
response of fear of evil quickly merged into fear consuming me and judging people
based on their gender. It was humbling for me to see how quickly a good thing had
slid into a bad thing. My fears needed to be reconciled with the truth.
Whenever the Bible talks
about truth, it does so within the scope of the bigger picture. Our shame and
guilt are not limited to what we’ve done or had done against us. It also impacts our relationship with our Creator. Even though God compares Himself
to male relationships we can relate to, He is not limited to our understanding.
God is unlike anyone we will ever know. He is the standard through whom our
experiences must be viewed, not the other way around. He is the true Father,
Redeemer, and Husband. To know truth starts with having a right understanding
of who God is. Only then will our broken experiences start to make sense.
Proverbs 3:5-6, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding [including experience!]. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.
Romans 11:33-36, Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
Who better to show what
God is like than God Himself? And yet He had to do it in such a way that would get
close to sinners without also consuming them in His wrath. This is exactly what
God did. The word of God is truth, and the Word of God became flesh in the
person of Jesus Christ who is the way,
the truth, and the life (John 14:6).
John 1:14 says, And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Jesus is God with us,
Immanuel. To know what God is like, I cannot compare God to every male sinner
I’ve ever known. This is a road of fear. I must look to Christ who is the
perfect representative of God because He is fully God. As our perfect
representative, He is also a fully male yet sinless human being, and unlike any
Man I will ever know.
Even though He is God,
Jesus did not wield His power in a macho display of chauvinism, but emptied
Himself, becoming a servant of both men and women in order to save them. Out of
His love and compassion, Jesus accomplished everything necessary on our behalf
through His perfect life, death, and resurrection.
Out of His holiness and
justice, Jesus holds every sinner responsible for their sin.
Out of His grace
and mercy, He offers Himself as their only hope, and changes people from sinners to saints through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Out of the bigger
picture, He does all to the glory of God.
John 3:16, For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
WALKING FORWARD BY WALKING
BACKWARDS
Because of Jesus, I have also
experienced that God is unlike any
man I’ll ever know. When I realized this, I found myself at a crossroad. Throughout my life, my
fear of men had distorted how I viewed God, but now I needed to confront my
past with the truth of who Christ is and what He’d done for me.
Let me just say that first
baby step was the hardest. I didn’t know how it would end. I’d been trying to
escape from my past since I was a child, but now I knew God wanted me to turn
around and face that nightmare with Him.
So I went to the very
beginning. The distorted thinking regarding men had started with my abuser.
Because of him, I grew up thinking all men wanted to hurt me. It spread to the
way I viewed my father when he didn’t believe me about the abuse, so I couldn’t
trust any man in authority to protect me. It spread to the way I viewed other
men when my fear pushed away the male companionship I longed for. It idolized
my husband to the point where I lived a lie and was more afraid of losing him
than giving him the opportunity to show compassion when he discovered the truth.
Ultimately, it contaminated my view of God because the tangled mess deceived me
into thinking I was too broken for God to love.
I realized the problem was
never men. The problem lay deep, even deeper than what had been done to me by
men. I’d been afraid of the pain involved in trusting God with my past, just as
I’d experienced pain in trusting people. I was afraid He was just like them. And
just as I’d feared, the pain came.
But this pain was
different. It was the pain of eyes squinting against the brightness of a
sunrise after shivering so long in the night. Like growing pains, it had
purpose and hope. And joy upon joy, I saw the bigger picture of the truth, that
God had always been there in every moment of my life working all things
together for my good and not harm.
He was there in the
darkness as well as the light. He was there in the pain as well as the joy. People
had failed me. People had sinned against me. People came and went. I had been walking
in the shadows of fear for so long, focused on surviving circumstances that
insisted on being out of my control. But now I saw the bigger picture, the winding
path God led me on from place to place, and the lessons He showed me about His
character. It was here that I saw once again that it’s not about me. It never
has been.
God has always been there.
His goodness, mercy, and love never change. Throughout the years, His faithfulness
continually focused and re-focused my gaze on Jesus. He knew about my past. He included
my story within the scope of His in order to lead me to true comfort in Him. God’s
fingerprints are scattered over my entire life and I can trust His
orchestration for my future. He is the One in control. And the more I see Him,
the more I trust Him.
Now as I look forward, it
is freeing to know that my problem with men is so much bigger than gender. God
calls both men and women to repent of their sins and believe in Jesus Christ. Through
Christ, there is no distinction between male and female in the offer of salvation
(Gal. 3:28). Through Christ, gender receives purpose again as brothers and
sisters in the greater organism of the church (1 Tim. 5:1-15; Titus 2). Through
Christ, the power of fear is overthrown as God’s love proves stronger (1 John 4:18-19).
The problem with man is
sin. My problem with men is fear.
Jesus is the perfect solution to both.
Further Resources:
Read Psalm 118.
Notice how the Psalmist focuses his heart on who God is (verses 1-4) before addressing
his own fears (verses 5-14). He then redirects those fears to hope in
the Savior which God would provide (verses 15-24). The Psalmist ends with a
prayer and places his fears in the hands of God who loves him (verses 25-29).
Spend a few moments praying this Psalm to God in light of your deepest fears.
Bridges, Jerry, Trusting God
Gannon, Pamela, In the Aftermath: Past the Pain of Childhood Sexual Abuse
Holcomb, Justin, Rid of My Disgrace: Hope and Healing for Victims of Sexual Assault
Mack, Wayne, Courage: Fighting Fear with Fear
Packer, J. I., Knowing God
Pink, A. W., The Attributes of God
Welch, Edward, Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest
Note:
All Scripture references used from the New American Standard Bible (NASB)
unless otherwise noted.
Public Domain Photo Credits:
Man in the Hat – George
Hodan
Statue of Man – George
Hodan
