• Last year the University of Chicago declared it would no longer host “safe spaces.” Nor would it endorse “trigger warnings” and oppose “micro-aggression” — hallmarks of “victim culture” that inhibit vigorous debate, healthy disagreement, and free speech. I don’t really know where to jump in on this, but a minimalist definition of “victim culture” might be: “those who choose to emphasize their oppression and marginalization in society” (from an Atlantic article). Those who self-identify as victims, in this context, are usually demanding social dealings free of any words or exchanges that might offend or wound them. It’s hard to not hear in this an implied entitlement to a life of cloudless skies, fair winds, and smooth roads.
• You can feel my skepticism already, but I want you to know I fully acknowledge the fact and power of trauma in early life (which is how psychology tends to account for the victim-minded). I was abused when young (a story I will most likely never tell) and certainly had my share of black moments that were seared into memory for life. From my middle-school years there is a particular moment between my parents that has never left me. The world felt different after that.
• As you know, early in high school Christ called me. I’m tempted to say that a reckoning with His immeasurable holiness, and my own depravity, kept me from seeing myself as a victim. That would be theologically accurate, but it’s not really the road I traveled. Rather, it was more being captivated by a vision of his beauty, nearness, and love — all of it bleeding and naked on a cross for my sake — that drained the power out of my own victimhood. I wasn’t shamed into silence; I just didn’t care about it anymore. Looking into the face of Christ, an institutionalized self-pity faded in power to almost nothing and stayed there, though of course I was still capable of self-pity and self-absorption when it suited me.
• In Matthew 5 Jesus tells his followers, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven….” It’s precisely for this kind of offensive circumstance that victim culture has created it’s doctrine of “safe spaces.” It posits a kind of ultimate wrongness in being reviled and persecuted. But nothing could be further from the truth. What is ultimately wrong is that Christ, who loves us and gave himself for us, would be betrayed into the hands of wicked men and crucified (Acts 2:33). And far from fretting over victimhood, Paul longs to be reviled and persecuted, “to share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Php 3:10). Paul longs not for a safe space, but a dangerous space. And of course, it’s what God gave him and the other Apostles who all died violent deaths, save John.
• I believe the self-absorption of victimhood is not so much selfishness as it is an anemic vision of Christ incarnate, Christ crucified, Christ risen. If you are a self-absorbed victim, it’s my job as a preacher to give you that vision of Christ glorious. You must decide whose pain will weigh the most to you. Pray for me in that!