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There are those who attack survivors with the narrative that if you have any feelings of anger about the abuse, you have unforgiveness in your heart. 

This is not truth. It could be true if the survivor is filled with bitterness and rage against their attacker, and over time would need to work on that with God. But just having feelings of anger against the abuse and what the abuser did is actually a healthy part of healing. The survivor should feel anger at the betrayal and crime. 

Attacking a survivor with this is switching the script and shaming the survivor for having legitimate feelings. It’s making the survivor bad. It’s also making the abuser the victim in this scenario because it is saying the survivor has no rights to these feelings so the abuser is getting blamed for something the survivor has no right blaming them for. 

God is the God of justice.

I love this Scripture in Leviticus 20:2

“Again, you shall say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that gives any of their seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones.” 

So God had them kill those who put their children in rituals. That was God’s heart and I find comfort in that. He didn’t have the survivors attacked with the “sin of unforgiveness.” The blame was on the abusers. The survivors were left to heal. 

God’s heart for survivors is clear in the Bible. He is a God that’s sees us (El Roi: The God Who Sees) and The God Full of Compassion (El Rachum). He loves us so much and we can trust Him. 

Isaiah 61:1

“…He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”

Paul has a passage in Philippians 3:13 that says, 

“Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching for those things which are before.” 

So much victim shaming comes from this verse! This verse has been used to say that abuse survivors should “forget” their abuse and “just” look forward. Oh, that we could! If someone would just tell us how, we would gladly do that, wouldn’t we? 

The fact is, Paul was never referencing trauma at all in this verse. If you back up in chapter 3, Paul is referencing his pedigree. He was circumcised on the 8th day, from the stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a “Hebrew of Hebrews,” with zeal he persecuted the church, with teaching the law he was a Pharisee. But he looks at all that he tried to do right and counts it all loss for Christ because he was looking at his own righteousness. That is what he is forgetting. He is going to focus on the resurrection of Christ and going forward in all that God would have him to do.

Don’t let anyone use that verse to shame you, that you are unable to “forget” your past, as if you are making a choice to dwell in it. 

The victim shaming doesn’t stop, but we can know the fallacies of what they are saying to use with our buckle of truth as part of the armor of God He has given to us. So buckle up and use it along with your shield of faith to knock off those arrows of the enemy. 

The name of Jesus is beautiful and powerful. It stands on its own because God gave Jesus the power to stand behind His name. 

At the name of Jesus every knee will bow is referenced in Philippians 2:10-11. 

John 14:13 says that whatever we ask “in My name”, He will do. 

John 16:23 says that whatever we ask the Father in His name, he will give it to us. 

If you study “the name” in the Bible, you will see it throughout the Old and New Testaments. It is a beautiful study of God's character. He reveals Himself through His name. Jesus came to reveal the Father, and He also reveals God’s character through His name. 

The enemy came to smear God’s character in Eden and therefore His name and has been doing it throughout time. It has never stopped. Rituals are all about smearing the name of God. 

Leviticus 20:3

“…because he has given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.”

One of the biggest ways they do it is through the use of blood. They do this to blaspheme the blood of Jesus, which means the purpose of Salvation that Jesus came to bring us. 

They are going against the power of the name that His blood was bringing through His resurrection to come. In rituals, perpetrators smear that blood all over their victims. 

Then they brought that blood ritual idea into the church with the usage of “pleading the blood,” washing people in the blood, the idea that Jesus’ blood is still flowing, and the idea that demons won’t flee unless you invoke the blood of Jesus. 

The church has accepted this anti-biblical teaching because they don’t realize they are ritualistic at their core. 

When Jesus prayed, things happened because He declared it. He never used blood against any demons when He prayed. 

When the disciples and apostles prayed, they prayed in the name of Jesus only. They never used the blood of Jesus in any of their prayers. We shouldn’t either.

If someone teaches that one must use the “blood of Jesus” to pray, they are saying the name of Jesus isn’t powerful enough. This is watering down the power of the mighty name of Jesus. That is a Doctrine of Demons that is destructive and from the pit of rituals.

Please listen to my heart. I have been in rituals and have sat in many churches. I have had good hearted Christians pray “the blood of Jesus all over me.” I have had them pray that I be “washed in the blood of Jesus.” This ought never to happen. If ritual abuse could be taught in churches, I believe these teachings would quickly be seen as false and fall off. 

Think about this: they are watering down the name of Jesus with the blood of Jesus. That shows you how diabolical this is! Straight from the pit of hell. 

Jesus died and his death is precious as was the blood He shed. That blood paid for our sins and set us free from the death we so deserved. But His blood isn’t still in play. 

May the name of Jesus be magnified in our life in all it’s might and power that it is in the understanding of all it is. His name makes demons tremble. It is the power that we can depend on. It’s a fascinating study that I cannot more highly recommend. 

May the mighty name of Jesus bless and keep you. May His face shine on you and bring you to all truth.  

Survivors of generational trauma are raised without the allowance of any boundaries whatsoever. They are abused physically, emotionally and spiritually, and to the extremes in these areas in SRA. 

As a result of these lack of boundaries in all areas, the trauma survivor is left not being able to see red flags in relationships that non trauma survivors would easily recognize. Family members, friends, counselors, and minsters are assumed by the survivor to be safe because that is what we are told and cognitively need to believe. If that person is toxic, we tend not to see those red flags for what they are. 

It takes extremes in these relationships for the survivor to finally see the toxic or the unsafe person for who they really are. Then there is a long period of going back over that relationship, that usually spans years or decades, or sometimes their whole life, in a hunt for the red flags that were missed. The survivor is then hit with the amount of red flags that were missed and just put in that box of “that doesn’t make sense” and dismissed. The survivor then has shame over not seeing those red flags and doesn’t understand why they were missed. 

When the survivor finally reveals what happened with this person to someone on the outside, the person innocently asked, “Didn’t you see the red flags?” 

This throws the survivor into a tailspin of shame because that question is already being asked of herself/himself. “Why didn’t I see the red flags? What’s wrong with me? Am I broken?” 

The fact is that we were never taught that we didn’t have to put up with the behavior that caused the red flags. We were never allowed boundaries. We were never allowed to stand up for ourselves or expect better. 

Then in the present we are faced with people victim shaming, because asking that fateful question of “Didn’t you see the red flags?” implies it is the fault of the survivor. The fact is the person who was toxic or evil was at fault all along. The survivor was just continuing to be a survivor. 

As survivors we are still healing. We need to be treated with so much more compassion and understanding that what we get. 

What if instead of putting the focus of these conversations on the “fault” of the survivor in some way, we would empathize and show some anger against the person who was toxic or evil? What if we were listened to without the stones being thrown so we don’t have to go off and hate on ourselves? 

Survivors would go a long way to stop being survivors if we would be treated better in the reactions of people we chose to disclose to. 

This isn’t a survivor problem. It’s a support person problem.