Biblical Christianity (is there any other kind?) speaks of love for one, love for all. But what about in instances where love doesn’t seem to work?
If 1 Corinthians 13 is Paul’s definitive comment on love, can we apply it to love for the abuser? Let’s try it out, shall we...
Allow me to interact with the text of 1 Corinthians 13 (NIV) itself to see if we can discover something through an unusual lens — loving someone with the truth.
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
Okay, Paul sets out to convince us that love is the summum bonum — the highest good. Indeed, Henry Drummond wrote just that in his book, The Greatest Thing in the World. We are a nuisance, and we have nothing, and we gain nothing without love. So love we must. Nothing unusual so far except that we cannot wriggle out of love if we hope to have any positive impact in this life.
Let’s take this next section in turn:
“Love is patient, love is kind.
In terms of abuse, one is patient and kind with oneself, just as God is. That patience and kindness that has been extended to the abuser — that which was disrespected and exploited — is now to be turned in onto oneself. So, what does patience and kindness look like to a victim of abuse? It is the space of freedom to remove oneself from the orbit of the abuser. Patience and kindness speak of space and safety to be wholly and fully oneself. To be loved and to love, that is freedom and life.
As a gauge for how others interact with us, if someone isn’t patient or kind with us, that’s a reminder of our need for safe boundaries with that person. Maybe there is something going on within them that we can empathise with, but if it’s a pattern we can learn to trust patterns — i.e. patterns of anger and unkindness are abuse. Just as we would not be surprised for someone to hold us at arm’s length if we were disrespectful, we have that opportunity, too.
It honours God to love an abuser with the truth.
“It [love] does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
We must all be on the lookout for speech and actions that indicate superiority, for none of this is of Christ. “Specialness” is closer to narcissism than it is of the Kingdom of God; Christ dwells with the lowly; those who are broken and contrite of heart are those that God cannot despise. So, do be careful when Christians call their church ‘the best’ and themselves and others, ‘world-changers’, for the devil cloaks himself secretly in the pride of grandeur. Specialness is exclusivist and that’s just not Jesus!
The abuser is full of him or herself, and this is one way we can see that love is not in him or her. We cannot abide in pride. And note why envy is carried in the same sentence as pride; those who are given to the heights of pride are also given to the depths of envy. The soul is shallow. That one is capable of self-elevation just the same as they are of the denigration of others. But this isn’t the case with the person committed to the gospel.
The servant of Christ is careful to check pride and envy at the door even as they clothe themselves in compassion, kindness, humility, patience, and gentleness upon walking wherever fellowship abides.
“It [love] does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Abuse dishonours those made in God’s image and therefore it dishonours God.
It is self-seeking, even if it feigns fondness of others, as it so often does, manipulating favour with schemes. Abusers are easily angered, even if that’s a seething anger that doesn’t get mad but gets even. Narcissists keep records of wrong, and not so much to remember, but as fuel for revenge.
It is an abuse itself to expect victims of abuse to love their perpetrators patiently and kindly; those who dishonour them and harbour vengeful anger against them. It is a more accurate love in situations of abuse to patiently and kindly remove ourselves from further harm, and to never stop praying that God would reach their hearts.
We must resist judging ourselves as poor in terms of love when we’ve been punished for loving others at the hand of their abuse.
“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
If it is a truth that a person has been abused, they can rejoice that the truth vindicates them to separate themselves from the sight and influence of the abuser. Because the abused person cannot delight in the evil that the abuser delights in, they have the perfect recourse to remove themselves from the abusive situation.
If a victim of abuse has the courage to stand up to the evil, they show God’s delight for they have rejoiced with the truth. This is propounded forth in evidence of safe fellowship. Every person has the right to feel safe. It is God’s design for relationship.
“It [love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Love protects, but abuse destroys. When a person is abused there’s always a flow-on effect. It’s not just the wife who is insulted, intimidated, manipulated, scared, assaulted. Children watch on. Parents stand by shaking their heads. Friends are dismayed. There is a deep and godly desire for justice.
Love trusts God and in abuse situations our Lord blesses the courage to depart.
Love hopes, for a gospel hope is sure and certain. Yet, waiting for an abuser to change is the essence of false hope.
Love knows how long to persevere for. Love trusts patterns, not words. Patterns are to be trusted. It’s easy to overlook an offence or three. But staying in a prolonged pattern of offence in a false belief it will change is an insanity.
“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
The abuser is given to all manoeuvring of prophecy and every other emptiness (I am NOT saying that all prophecy is manoeuvring) and they never take God at divine word that soon they’ll cease.
Tongues without Spirit are an abomination.
Their knowledge puffs them up, for they don’t know love, because if they did know love, they would not need a platform of pretence.
The abuser puts stock in their own completeness in the astounding reality of the bereftness of their soul. They see as if they have God’s sight and their folly should be obvious to them, but their alliance with the enemy has blinded them.
The safest and wisest spiritual position is ‘God’s not finished with me yet.’
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Love screens out everything else. When all is said and done, love is all that matters. We can know this when we live to the standards of love; a love we’re committed to give, and a love we’re prepared to receive.
It’s got to be a problem for us whenever we don’t give and receive love, for love is God’s design for the life we’re called to live.
For LKA.
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