Abused or Abuser?

In Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., an "inhuman" gifted with the new ability to manipulate vibrations, being formerly an agent, goes rogue being led astray by a hive mind for Inhumans. When, blaming herself and trying to protect her team from who she thinks she has become, she is glad she is in quarantine. When she returns one of the closest of her colleagues says he forgives her, and she refuses to accept. (View this scene) We have all done things we regret something more than others, and some things even which we do not tell anyone out of fear of their judgment concluding us to be different than who we are, than we wish to be. When we look into humanity's past all we see oftentimes, is those who used what they were given, what they had promised, and their own idea of goodness and imposed it on people often the minority to bring reality to those ideas. Unfortunately, a fallen man's idea of goodness is seldom truly good. Nevertheless, one may look at that same history and ask the question, which side then does the Church take does it side with the abuser or the abused. Yes, it does, but at the same time, it doesn't.

Indeed, there is pain on both sides of the same coin, but the dichotomy is not cut vertically as much as drawn horizontally. We often like things to be simple where black and white is what we write in, the bad is on one side of the blade, and the good is on the other. However, that is not how brokenness works (Matthew 13:24-30). The truth is we all want the good and to reject the bad, the questions are how comfortable we are with the evils, and what are we willing to settle for as good enough. This question is perhaps what makes us the abuser in one way when we remain abused in another. The Church chooses both the abused and the abuser because they are the same people. The Church, rather, looks at the problem differently, the abuse and the abused/abuser. The abuse is that which is simply said to be wrong, and the abused abuser is the Child of God, which He does not wish to lose to the grip of hell in terms of the present and the everlasting future. The whole point of everything God has done and is doing for us is to break our attachment of evils which is based on not believing God that they are bad and convincing us of what is good which we also doubt.

In conclusion, stop looking at the problem as a divide between people and start looking at the issue as between corruption of the heart and fallen humans. Let us draw the line, rather, between the good that God calls us to and the bad He calls us from. We are all abusers, and we have suffered from abusing and being abused. Perhaps it is easy to forgive others when you know you are forgiving yourself in doing so. Maybe it is easier to love those who hurt people when you realize they are not a category apart from you. The hard thing is loving amid so much darkness to be considered strange in longing for the best, and even to be hated because we are God's. Indeed, there is a dire struggle that we scarcely recognize ourselves a part of, but pain always brings us closer to the enemy unless we have God, love, and forgiveness. Maybe when we have been led astray by the hive mind of evil which makes us of our selfishness to drag the world away from God, we should learn to forgive ourselves and others. We should endeavor to do more good and less evil. Most of all we should see the wisdom when the Church chooses life for all and judgment only of acts and not persons. Maybe it's not about Nazis or non-Nazi, maybe it's about love and beloved. May it be that the asp and the squirrel be friends and seek harmony amongst themselves. When you look into the past and see pain don't blame people as much as sins, and maybe pain more than sins. Would that our pain as well as our joys lead us to the be joined to the one who endured everything that He might be with us in it.

Written by Carter Carruthers & also available soon at Missio Dei