The Hidden Victims - thoughts on the Denver Batman Shootings

Senseless tragedy strikes our world once again.  Early reports says 14 were murdered and 50 wounded by a gunman at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie in Denver.  Descriptions of what happened sound similar to scenes from earlier films in the franchise!

Quite appropriately people of faith are praying for the wounded, for the families who have lost loved ones, for traumatized survivors.  But in these situations we often fail to realize the parents and family of the alleged perpetrator are hidden victims.  Early this morning ABC news contacted a woman in San Diego identified as the mother of the man arrested.  How would you like to get that phone call or knock on your door?

Can you put yourself in her shoes?  Your child is accused of a horrible crime.  You are going to see him dragged through the mud of the 24 hour news cycle.  At some point some shrink may pompously bloviate on cable TV about how your parenting may have contributed to this tragedy.  You face the horror of contemplating your child doing prison time or even facing execution.  Have you ever seen a loved one in a jail jumpsuit or had to talk to them through a jail or prison glass?  It tears at your heart!

This man’s parents may have been awful parents.  But even most bad parents would be hurting right now (not all, sadly).  They may have been good or even excellent parents.  Things go wrong.  As children move through the teen age years and into early adulthood, they sometimes make tragically bad choices on their own.

When a teen or young adult child is accused and/or convicted of a crime the family is often ignored or even stigmatized.  No one brings meals to the mother whose son has been sentenced to prison time.  But she has suffered loss!  She has great pain!  She needs support and encouragement.  This is where the body of Christ can step up and act like the body of Christ!

Pray for the hidden victims in this situation as well as the obvious victims.  Every time you hear a story like this, pray for the family of the accused.  If someone near you is a hidden victim, gently reach out to them.  Let them know you care; you are praying, offer a safe listening ear.  That means keeping confidentialities and not gossiping! 

Even the perpetrator needs our prayers.  Jesus prayed for those who unjustly executed Him.  We need to pray for those who are evil, or misguided, or deranged.  If evil or misguided they need to repent and turn from their sin and foolishness.  If deranged they need healing and perhaps deliverance.

Getting to the Other Side of Loss and Grief part two

THEOLOGICAL TRUTHS TO CHEW ON WHEN YOU ARE READY. 

If you are in the midst of an excruciating period of life, you may not be able to receive some of this.  “True” is not always “helpful”.   (See my reaction to “She’s in a better place” in part one of this.)  When you are between the floods of trouble is the time it is the most helpful to consider these truths and store them up for the hard times.

Lamentations 3:31-33  ³¹ For no one is cast off by the Lord forever.

 ³² Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.

 ³³ For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone. (Lam 3:31-33 NIV)

            HE WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU & NEVER FORSAKE YOU – HE WILL BE WITH YOU TO THE END OF THE AGE!!

“Though HE brings grief…”  = God is Sovereign in all the circumstances of life, yet He is loving and wise!  “When God allows you to go in the furnace of affliction He keeps His hand on the thermostat and His eye on the timer.”

Romans 8:28 ²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 NIV)

            All things are NOT good.  Some are wrong, hurtful, tragic, even evil.  But God promises His children He will eventually work some good even out of this things!  If God causes it or allows it in the life of a believer, He will redeem it in some way at some time.

2 Cor. 1:4 ⁴ who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

One reason God allows us to suffer is it makes us better able to help others when they suffer!  Often when someone is suffering they can receive help best from one who has walked a similar valley.  After my first wife’s death, when I encountered believers who had lost a spouse at an early age I really listened to what they had to say!  One minister and wife who had each been widowed were especially helpful to me.  Wounded healers are usually the best healers!  Let God minister out your brokenness to other broken people.

1 Peter 5:10 ¹⁰ And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. (ESV)

Romans 8:18 ¹⁸ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

This really is not our home!  The best is yet to come.  If your faith is in Christ, a new Heaven and a new Earth are being prepared for you.  There we will have no sorrow, no sickness, no death.  God will be in our midst and He will be our God and we shall be His people!

 

Amen and amen!

 

Getting to the Other Side of Loss and Grief.

(This is a shortened version of a presentation I gave in a Sunday School class recently.)  Grief is not restricted to when we lose a loved one to death.  EVERY LOSS OF ANY KIND INVOLVES A GRIEF PROCESS OF SOME KIND – i.e. divorce, job loss, significant financial loss, moving, graduating, losing a friendship, finding out a respected person has been involved in major dishonesty, immorality or unethical behavior, etc.

WHAT IS THE MOST PAINFUL EXPERIENCE OF YOUR LIFE?  How was loss involved in this?  (i.e. What did you lose?)  How fully have you grieved this loss?

GRIEF IS PAINFUL AND MESSY.

                Many talk of “5 Stages of Grief” or“7 Stages of Grief” or“3 Stages of Grief”. 

                Reality – there are common emotions most of us feel during grief (sadness, fear, anger, anguish, loss, etc.) but EVERYONE GRIEVES DIFFERENTLY !  And it is likely that each time you grieve a loss your grief will be different.  And the process always hurts and it is always messy.

COMPLICATED OR COMPOUNDED GRIEF CAN BE EVEN MESSIER AND TAKE LONGER – I.E. Your husband leaves you for another man, you lose your job, your finances collapse and you have to live with the parents who abused you, and a beloved pet dies, and the next day your teenage son is arrested.  HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT?

IF THE LOSS IS SIGNIFICANT IT IS COMMON TO START WITH SHOCK AND DENIAL.  “This can’t be real!”  “This isn’t happening!”  “No, that’s not true!”

Pain, sadness, anguish are common emotions.  

DEEP GRIEF DISRUPTS YOUR EMOTIONAL EQUILIBRIUM!  = Don’t make major life decisions soon after a major loss.  You are not at the top of your game!

ANGER is extremely common in loses such as divorce, job loss, losing a friendship, but also is common in loss due to death.  You may be angry at your loved one for dieing!  You may be angry at God for allowing the tragedy that has struck you.

THE ONLY WAY THROUGH IT IS THROUGH IT! A man once told me that day after wife died he went on a 2 year binge!  When he finally sobered up all the pain and loss were still there!  Unfortunately, we have to feel the pain to get past the pain.  You can stuff it or run from it, but sooner or later in some form it will catch up with you.

HOW DO WE GO THROUGH IT?

                Give yourself permission to feel all you feel – even if it is numbness – that will pass!

                Choose to lean on Christ in the midst of storms that don’t make a lick of sense.  Think of Matt Redman's song "Blessed be Your Name", "You give and take away, You give and take away.  My heart will CHOOSE to say, blessed be Your Name!"

                Find safe people to tell your story to – probably over and over!  A huge part of the healing for most people comes in telling the story repeatedly.

                When you are ready, work at applying your faith and theology to your circumstance – don’t rush it, don’t let others give you pat answers.  – “She’s in a better place Pastor” = urge to maime!  True but not helpful at the moment!  Now that truth is very helpful. (See part two to be posted soon.)

                At some point down the road you have to choose to let go of the pain, the hurt, perhaps the anger.  We need to be forgiving even when our offender is unrepentant and undeserving of forgiveness.  We are the one set free when we forgive.

WITH DEEP LOSSES WE DON’T GET OVER THEM WE GET THROUGH THEM BY THE GRACE OF GOD!    Perhaps it is even better to say we learn to live with the loss.  Eventually we are able to do so with somewhat less pain if we honestly deal with it.

                Getting to the other side of loss and grief will always involve accepting a new normal!  Life is never the same after a life shattering experience.  WE are never the same.  We can be bitter or we can be better.

Feeling Fatherless on Fathers' Day

I have moments that I feel fatherless.  My natural father died this past November.  My step-father, who raised me from age 7, died in 2006.  My first wife’s father, who was a father to me from my teens, died in 2000. 

Much of my childhood I felt fatherless.  My step-father seemed cold and distant when he was sober, briefly warm and loving with a few drinks.  But he became dangerously angry and verbally threatening when really drunk.  My natural father wasn’t there (See “Lament for a Father I Hardly Knew).  As an adult I came to know that my step-father had always loved me in his own way, as much as he was able.  I suspect the same may have been true of my natural father.  But the 10 year old boy didn’t understand that.  I had a hunger and a wound and a feeling of incompleteness.  I felt inferior to schoolmates who had fathers who seemed involved in their lives.

God in His merciful providence brought good out of that, I believe.  I was determined to be the father I never had if I ever had sons.  I was not a perfect father – just ask any of my three sons.  But I was there for them and I tried to be involved in their lives. 

My freshman year in high school God brought me to saving faith in Jesus Christ.  After a year of trying to sort out what that was about, in my sophomore year I got grounded in a Bible teaching church.  A Sunday School teacher and the pastor filled some of the father void in my life.  But more importantly I discovered the truth of Psalm 68, ^ESV  Psalm 68:5 Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. (Psa 68:5 ESV).

I began consciously looking to God as my Father.  I turned to Him for direction, correction, assurance.  Loving He has kept bringing human father figures into my life.  He knows there are times we need someone with skin on them!

So this Fathers’ Day weekend I mourn the deaths of my earthly fathers.  I miss them.  I rejoice in what they positively did for me.  I grieve what their broken humanity kept them from doing.  I grieve that my brokenness kept me from reaching out to them more.  There are moments I feel fatherless.  And I chose by His grace to lean on my Father who has never failed me.

If you’re wondering, this was written with tears.  Tears and prayer, pain and hope.  Hope that I will see some of those men again and we will have talks we couldn’t have here.  Hope that the failures I had as a father were mixed with enough strengths by God’s grace that my sons have more of a foundation than I had.  Hope this blog might spur one father to seek God’s help to do a better a job.

Father?? Really?

William Tyndale’s translation laid the foundation for the King James Bible.  I find His translation of Ephesians 3:14-15 pregnant with meaning as I consider Fathers’ Day. “¹⁴ For this cause I bowe my knees unto the father of oure lorde Jesus Christ  ¹⁵ which is father over all that ys called father In heven and in erth.”  In the Greek the second occurrence of  “father” in verse 15 is “patria” (the first is “pater”).  They are related words.  Most often “patria” is translated “family”.  Of more modern translations the New Jerusalem Bible is the only one I found that follows Tyndale somewhat.  They translate, “¹⁴ This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every fatherhood, in heaven or on earth, takes its name.”  But several study Bibles or footnotes make note that “patria” could be rendered “father” or that it is related to the word for “father”.

“The Father of all fatherhood”…… “Father of all that is called father”…… 

I am tempted to say that God has chosen to reveal Himself as Father.  Yet Scripture seems to say something even more outrageous to our modern ears.  The first person of the Trinity IS Father. 

Even aside from feminist thinking, this is challenging for many people.  Some earthly fathers are scoundrels!  As a pastoral psychotherapist I hear horror stories of what some fathers have done to their children.  You hear similar stories in the news, stories of abuse, torture, incest.  It is far more potent when you are sitting a few feet away and looking in the eyes of a survivor who is telling THEIR personal story of mistreatment. 

Then on a different level there are the fathers who simply are not there.  There are fathers who are there physically, don’t beat their children with their fist, yet beat them down with criticism and put downs.  There are fathers who get drunk or high and scream in their children’s faces for hours.  Some fathers are wonderful, some are horrible.  Some are a confusing combination of violence and tenderness (see my previous blog about human nature).

Drs. Tim Clinton and Joshua Straub in their book “God Attachment” quote several studies that confirm what I always heard in Sunday School and sermons.  Our image of God the Father is powerfully impacted by our relationship to our earthly father!  Dads, you need to take this seriously!  If you are harsh and demanding your kids will usually instinctively expect God to be harsh and demanding!   If you seem distant and disinterested in them, at the deepest level of their wounded heart they will usually expect God to be far away and uncaring.  But if you are nearly always accessible, involved, caring yet firm then they will usually expect their heavenly Father to be the same. 

Many of us carry “father-wounds” of one degree or another.  This does not mean we are hopelessly broken.  It may mean for many that you will face challenges in experiencing God as He really is.  It may mean impairment in other areas of life.  But our loving Father has provided means by which we can find healing.  If you have struggles in this area seek out a safe, Biblical church.  If your struggles are deep enough you may also need to find a counselor who is aware of these things and able to help.