10.23.2012 ALLENDER ON REPENTANCE

taken from 'wounded heart'
197.1..the process of change begins with honesty, which is a form of repentance. repentance is an about face movement from denial and rebellion to truth and surrender-from death to life.

in the beginning,honestly facing the characteristic lies and denial associated with sexual abuse usually intensifies the experience of victimization. for the fires time, memories return that rip apart the pretense of a happy childhood or a loving family. not only is the perpetrator faced as wicked, but other family members are seen as aiding the abuser by their complicity, denial or minimization of the harm. often the abuse victim realized that the same patterns that allowed the abuse to occur and go unaddressed are equally operative in her life today. victimization is usually not only an event in the past; in most cases, it is an ongoing, day by day experience.

the return of horrific memories, the exposure of past and current betrayal, the acknowledgment of internal damage, the recognition of current self protective, destructive patters-all are nearly overwhelming. thankfully, the process of absorbing the data is slow and progressive, rather than sudden and final. nevertheless, the process is disruptive and tumultuous. it is impossible to say what the internal process will be like for the honest abuse victim, but a general path that many experience may serve as a guide.

first, the process of honesty opens the door to stunned acknowledgment. the initial shock is somewhat analogous to physical shock. reality is seen, but in slow motion. the observer sees the awful truth, frame by frame, as a known but distant memory. often the unreal, distant memories arrive through current disappointment in a relationship. a birthday forgotten or the inability to receive a complement shakes the foundation of current coping strategies. the pretense that the past is the past and the present is satisfying begins to crumble in the face of deepened hunger and discontent.

disappointment often turns into rage. rage at the hypocrisy of the family. rage at the idiotic illusion of the good life. rage at the failures of those who claim to love but seem to adore only the image of being loving. RAGE IS THE THRASHING OF THE SOUL WHEN IT FULLY AWAKENS FROM THE NIGHTMARE LIE.

rage may be directed first and foremost toward the self. the self contempt infused through the past abuse may come to the surface with a vengeance, though the victim will often direct some of the rage toward the abuser, family, friends or spouse. because the rage is in fact there, the process of sanctification will include facing its ferocious intensity. growth never allows pretending. recovering the anger, however..is not the cure. it may feel good, freeing and energetic to face one's rage, but simply owning anger is not maturity. no matter how alive the soul feels in the midst of recovered anger, rage does not heal the wound or satisfy the soul. in most cases, the rage will lead only to deepened despair.

despair, or a fatalistic, who cares emptiness, is the pendulum swing from honesty to a second round of deceit. the question that surfaces-now far deeper than during the first round-is,
'what use is there in dealing with reality or God of my pain or those who harm me or my sin?
once her emptiness overtakes the initial experience of disappointment and rage, the victim must face a major crossroad. the path taken is either toward more radical denial and plastic functioning or toward deep change through repentance. if honesty is the first phase of the healing process that is experienced with shock, pain and anger, then repentance is the second phase that is entered through sadness, grief and sorrow.
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sorrow alters the damage of the past and present. the process of honest grief over the damage of the abuse and one's autonomous response to it integrates the past into the present without carrying over the burden of hardness and vengeance. sorrow begins to melt the victim's callused hatred toward herself and others.

not all weeping is either restorative or repentant. grief may permit deeper acknowledgment of past pain and restore a greater sense of wholeness, but it may equally strengthen the resolve never to be hurt again.

grief may lead to two separate routes:
the path of sorrow unto life and
the path of sorrow unto death.
one route involves a reowning of lost parts of the soul for the purpose of humbly crying out to God with all that we are for grace and strength to live the God glorifying, other centered life. the second is a reclaiming of lost parts of the soul for the purpose of developing a case against the abuser, a wicked world, and ultimately against a God who did not intervene-a case that supports our right to exist independently of a disappointing, cruel world and the God whose eternal kingdom will replace it. the difference in the paths of sorrow is found in a contrast between repentance and penance.

before defining repentance, let me state two important points. first, the abuse victim is never called by God to repent about the past abuse. many victims have anguished before God, crying out for forgiveness for what occurred or for what they experienced-things that are in no way their fault.
second, repentance is a surprising, wholly unexpected experience that is rarely, if ever, a simple choice of the will to do right and not do wrong. repentance is poorly understood and rarely enjoyed. it is not necessarily transforming for those who labor to simply do right. for that reason, we must clearly define what is and is not repentance.

REPENTANCE IS AN INTERNAL SHIFT IN OUR PERCEIVED SOURCE OF LIFE. it is recognizing that our self protective means to avoiding hurt have not ushered us into real living (the reckless abandon to God that ultimately leads to a deep sense of wholeness and joy) or to purposeful

THE WEIGHT OF THE HOLY REQUIREMENT OF PERFECT, UNBROKEN LOVE IS MORE THAN ANY PERSON, EXCEPT JESUS CHRIST, CAN BEAR. 
love silences explanation,
penetrates excuses
and humbles the heart,
preparing that heart to be captured by the gospel of grace.
ultimately, repentance is a hungry, broken return to God.

one of the greatest pictures of repentance is found in the story of the prodigal son (luke 15.11-32), which makes several points about the coming home process.
first, repentance begins...with dissatisfaction. the prodigal..admitted..
'i am eating garbage.
others are happy; i am not happy.
i am not staying here.
i'd rather risk untold shame, facing rejection from my father and taking the lowliest position..that stay in this muck.
it takes brokenness of soul to move back toward the father,
admitting what is true...

..the response of the prodigal's father (God)..
he weeps
restores and
celebrates.
the father is a fool, at least a fool in the eyes of his older son and undoubtedly in the eyes of his community...
he must have felt pressure either to turn his back on his child,
or at least to require a period of penance before allowing his boy to return to the family table.
instead, the father threw a party,
a public spectacle that restored full rights and privileges to the errant son.
the father did not even listen to the penitent litany the son rehearsed before he came into the father's presence...

the contrast of such a response of life is the reaction of death,exhibited by the older son. he viewed the father as a stringent taskmaster who could be pleased only by discipline, obedience, and a martyr's denial. he blamed the father for never giving him a party. the father's response indicated that a party was all his for the asking, but the older son never humbled himself to ask. the tragedy is that the older son actually despised the father more than the young prodigal. the prodigal, at least, trusted the father's goodness enough to ask for the money in the first place and to return in hunger once it was gone. the older brother asked for nothing and, in arrogant self justification, chose to avoid the party to prove he was more righteous than the father. Jesus told the story to shatter the presumptive facade of the righteous pharisees; in so doing he tears away our false assumptions about what pleases God.

what is repentance?
although difficult to define,
REPENTANCE INVOLVES THE RESPONSE OF
HUMBLE HUNGER
BOLD MOVEMENT and
WILD CELEBRATION
WHEN FACED WITH THE REALITY OF OUR FALLEN STATE AND THE GRACE OF GOD.
the Father wants us to be hungry and satisfied with our pigpen cuisine.
He wants us to return in absolute dependence and dine on the fatted calf.

repentance flows from the energy of being stunned, silent and without excuse for the harm we've done to ourselves and others and for breaking the heart of God.
it includes a hunger based refusal to wallow in anything that
makes us less human,
strips anyone of his dignity or
damages our relationship with the Lord.

...biblical repentance always leads us toward coming alive for the explicit purpose of having more to give to others for their well being and to God for His glory. without a radical commitment to seeing our entire existence as wrapped up in furthering God's purpose in other people's lives, recovering our souls can strengthen our tendency to think more about all that happens withing and to require that others treat us with tenderness and respect. longing for love from others is a beautiful part of our dignity as image bearers, but it is self centered to recognize our existence in a way that makes our longing for involvement the most important reality of life.
the point of living is giving, not getting.
by God's grace, we've already received what we long for  (and all we need) but do not deserve. now we are privileged to enter into the very nature of ultimate reality:
other centered relating.
repentance moves us in that direction.

repentance vs. penance
what is the difference between true repentance and what might be called 'penance'?
TRUE REPENTANCE ADMITS HELPLESSNESS;
PENANCE PRESUMES THE ABILITY TO MAKE AMENDS ON ONE'S OWN
repentance is a humble declaration of longing;
penance is a self abasing declaration of arrogance.
the arrogance (and rage) of penance..assumes that sin is not that awful; therefore, it can be resolved by right behavior. the father is a slave driver with no heart, who cares only about himself; therefore, it can be resolved by right behavior.
penance is a payback; repentance is a plea for mercy.

the effects of repentance and penance are entirely different.
repentance softens;
penance hardens.
repentance creates a willingness to be humbled.
the person who knows the joy of being lifted up by God is willing to transform laughter into mourning and joy into gloom in order to humble herself before the Lord (james 4.8-10). if she knows that forfeiting her self centered agenda opens the door to life, then she can view trials of various kinds as friends and not enemies (romans 5.3-5; james 1.2-4)
repentance takes away her terror of shame because her soul has already admitted it is naked, wanting and undeserving.
in being accepted as a sinner, she has nothing to hide or fear;
therefore, she is free to love others without fear of their response or rejection. (luke 7.47)
being restored to the Father plants her hope firmly in His goodness and the coming day of perfect justice and union with Him for eternity.
she realized that not even death can destroy her; she need not fear obliteration.
therefore, she is fee to live passionately and boldly because she knows that whatever injustice is served her on the path to loving others will one day be vindicated.

...genuine conviction of sin, on the other hand, leads to a softening of the heart that dispels other centered contempt in the wake of the recognition that we are no better, at core, than those who have abused us.
self contempt is satan's counterfeit for true conviction.
contempt attacks the perceived source of the problem to gain control and then attempts to regain relationship with others and God through penitent deeds. conviction humbly recognizes the need for grace and embraces a sorrow that leads to life and sacrificial love.

a sorrow unto life is a merger of the bitterness that arises from breaking God's heart and the sweet joy of being restored to His embrace. the bitter heartache of wounding the heart of God and the pleasure of dining in His presence, welcome and wanted, is unlike any other emotion. repentance decreases shame, increases passion and welcomes restoration. penance increases contempt, decreases life and resists involvement.

what will repentance look like for the abused man or woman? it will involve a turning from death and a movement toward life in the internal and external arenas of life...
the internal shift will involve at least three elements:
1.a refusal to be dead
2.a refusal to mistrust
3.a refusal to despise passion.
each refusal must finally be energized by a realization that offering all that we are in the service of to others is the essence of life.

the external shift will look different for each individual, but it will be characterized by an active humility before God and a deepened commitment to vulnerable involvement with others.

...deadness..is the choice to rob others of our god given humanness.
it dehumanized relationships, making the response to others robotic and mechanical.
most of all, it is an assault against the creator God, who is the author of life.
to live as a dead being before the living God is to say that death is preferable to life with Him.
in essence, the choice to be dead is the choice to turn one's back on the author of life,
to deny Him the opportunity to touch our lives deeply and
to use us fully according to His good purposes.

THE REFUSAL TO BE DEAD is the choice to admit and embrace our existence:
'i am not a shadow,
a quiet ghost,
a substanceless vapor.
i am a person who can enjoy and be enjoyed by God and
 who can relate to others in a way that draws them to an enjoyable relationship with God.
it is the recognition that nerve endings exist in the soul as well as in the body and they are good.
a victim refuses to be dead when she gives herself permission to acknowledge and feel the reality of both past and present.

...i asked an abused friend who hates herself for being uncomfortable in the presence of people (especially men)
what she would do if my nine year old daughter withdrew from Her:
would she warmly pursue her or
ignore her in disgust?
if she saw my little girl cry, would she angrily accuse her of wanting attention or
would she gently hold her while she wept?
of course, she said, she would pursue my child without disgust or anger;
but she would never allow herself to want someone to pursue her without feeling disgust for herself.
her alive heart felt grief over her capacity to be tender toward others but not toward herself.
the difference between how she would deal with my daughter and herself allowed her to weep over her sin of contempt for the first time.

repentance involves admitting we were victims who were unrighteously deprived of life.
from this juncture, however, we have two distinctly different paths from which to choose.
the path of sorrow unto death faces grief and in turn vows,
'never again
i have a right to life and i will never be deprived again.
this approach to grief actually exchanges self contempt for even deeper other centered contempt.
the second route, sorrow unto life,
moves from grief over our own victimization
to an acknowledgment of the damage we have done to others as a result of our choice to live dead and dormant.
a biblical path to handling life always steers us away from self centeredness and reflects the foundational christian ethic of loving others for their sake.

 a refusal to be dead sets the stage to deal with A REFUSAL TO MISTRUST.
repentance in the areal of trust is difficult to explain.
the opposite of mistrust would naturally seem to be trust.
therefore,  it might seem that an abuse victim ought to trust those whom she currently doubts or suspects of harm.
nothing could be further from the truth.
the problem with mistrust is that many persons are not worthy of trust, or at least deep trust; therefore, to encourage an abuse victim to trust is tantamount to asking her to more deeply doubt her intuition and open herself to more abuse.

the opposite of mistrust is not trust, but CARE.
when we view a person with mistrust, it is as if their life no longer matters.
we 'write them off'.
mistrust prejudges their every word and deed so that they cannot ever reach our heart.
a protective shield descents whenever we're around them and relationship is severed.

to review comments made earlier, boundary building often encourages us to harden our heart so that care, or a receptivity to relationship, is lost. repentance, or a refusal to mistrust, reengages the god given desire to care, to be kind, to comfort, and to be concerned about the temporal and eternal destiny of those who have harmed us.

a refusal to mistrust, however, is neither gullible nor stupid. it looks at evidence, evaluates the past, and makes decisions about trust based on conclusions reached through deductive reasoning. the Lord Jesus commands us to be 'wise as serpents and innocent as doves' matthew 10.16.  evidence may force a woman to see that her spouse is an enemy, one who is bent on doing harm...trust is conditional; however, care is not. to care is to use all that we are for the good of others while not walling off the deep parts of our soul. by not writing off others, we tenderly and strongly offer relationship.

...the deepest harm of mistrust is perpetrated against God. God is seen as a games player, a cosmic sadist who twists the screws of pleasure to entice and pain to frustrate His victims. God is somone to placate and ignore or disdainfully despise. the one who does not care is indifferent. she is the kind of person Jesus described as neither hot nor cold;
'I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. i wish you were either one or the other! so, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-i am about to spit you out of My mouth revelation 3.15-6. lukewarm indifference
'I JUST DON'T CARE
is more destructive to relationship than hatred.

..REFUSAL TO DESPISE PASSION..
passion, for most abuse victims,is dangerous.
passion is a door that, if opened, may allow rage and lust, violence and promiscuity to pour out like the opening of a pandora's box.
PASSION can be defined as THE DEEP RESPONSE OF THE SOUL TO LIFE:
THE FREEDOM TO REJOICE AND TO WEEP.
one of the most difficult commands to fulfill is..
'weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice' romans 12.15
it requires open hearted, other centered, reckless involvement.
passion is tasting pleasure with delight, brokenness with tears and evil with hatred.

a gifted counselor asked me to supervise her work. in one of our interactions i commented on how she uniquely intertwined gentle acceptance and relentless pursuit in her dealings with clients, two qualities not often found together. she first politely thanked me and then over a few minutes turned formal and cool. something significant had changed in her demeanor and style of interaction. we eventually talked about what had occurred. she acknowledged that she felt  initial delight and then terror when i commented on her character. it turned out that she had a significantly unaddressed history of sexual abuse. she literally became nauseous when she received a compliment or felt pleasure.

a refusal to despise passion embraces pain and pleasure-particularly pleasurable arousal of the senses-as God given, wonderful and desirable. it also embraces the sadness of ambivalence. (feeling good and bad at the same thing) a fear of passion makes it nearly impossible to receive deep involvement from others. to some extent the abuse victim has lived in a flat, two dimensional world distant from human touch, tenderness, and ardor. i worked with a woman who admitted with terrible shame that she was more devastated when the family dog died than when her father passed away.

...sadness opens the door to grief-a grief over the loss of unself-conscious spontaneity and unashamed responsiveness to the human touch on soul and body. the loss is permanent on this side of heaven. a child's freedom to cuddle in her daddy's lap with complete confidence and sensual comfort will not be imaginable for the abused person who never experienced it...

repentance will always have one central quality: the purposeful movement of a humble, hungry heart toward a God who will receive and lift up. james stated the picture in the most profound and simple words:
'wash your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts, you double minded. grieve, mourn and wail. change your laughter to mourning and you joy to gloom. humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up james 4.8-10.

repentance is facing what is true;
i am a sinner and double minded and
i deserve to be separated from God.
it is a shift in perspective as to where life is found.
it is a deep recognition that life comes only to the broken, desperate, dependent heart that longs for God.
it is a melting into the warm arms of God,
acknowledging the wonder of being received when it would be so understandable to be spurned.
it is taking our place at the great feast,
eating our fill, and
delighting in the undeserved party being held in honor of our return.

repentance is a process that is never accomplished once and for all.
it is a cyclical, deepening movement that, like a snowball, picks up weight and speed as it rolls.
repentance opens the heart to the bitter taste of sin and the sweet joy of restoration.
it clears the senses in a way that exposes depravity and affirms dignity.
it awakens our hunger for our Father's embrace and deepens our awareness of His kind involvement.
and when we are deeply, truly touched by His love,
we will move boldly into the bittersweet privilege of loving others.