Playing the victim
My partner and I once visited a synagogue and its adjacent museum. One of the synagogue members began to take us through the synagogue itself, reasonably assuming we knew little or nothing of the Biblical traditions. So, I said, "It might help if we owned up to being Uniting Church ministers. We actually know some of these stories!" She looked at us, considering. "Well! A clergy couple! I've heard about such things, but I've never seen one." We had a great time.
Later, our guide introduced us to the museum, and left us to work our way through. Something began to bother me, and eventually I was able to articulate it to my partner: Everything in the wonderful, terrible, story of Israel being told in the museum was cast so that Israel saw itself as the victim.
It took longer for me to realise why I found this quite so discomforting. I knew that characterising ourselves for too long as "the victim"—even if we are a victim—is unhealthy for all sorts of reasons, but my response was not an intellectual judgement. It was something visceral. Eventually, I realised my deeper self was telling me. "This is you! You play the victim."
As a little kid, I suffered some school bullying which was devastating to my sense of myself. I survived it by constructing an image of myself as a "righteous victim," using ideas and feelings I had absorbed from aspects of my family history and, I suspect, whilst in the pews of our local Methodist church each Sunday.
I think life would have been much worse for me had I not done this. As a counsellor later said to me, by doing this I had been able to survive. But at age 33, that same counsellor said to me that my survival method was now undermining me, and my ministry. And the museum, which knew a lot about real suffering, was discomforting me so much because it was bluntly telling me I was playing the victim.
We play the victim because it helps us feel better about ourselves. It lets us avoid responsibility for our actions, and it lets us ignore uncomfortable or unwelcome truths about life. We are fine; we are good, we are simply being victimised... again. Playing the victim is self-righteousness, and cheap self-righteousness at that. We grant ourselves a grace and forgiveness which one not ours to give.
Self-righteousness erases our ability for compassion. It blinds us to our sin even as we point out the sin of others. And its shortcut to faux "grace" blinkers our observation and judgement of reality. It warps our perception of everything because, above all, we must be the victim.
Israel, of all peoples, should be compassionate to others, yet the Zionist state, in pursuing Dahiya,1 is enacting another holocaust, often whilst complaining of antisemitism when people dare point this out.
But this post is not an attack on Israel. Israel has given me the Way to life. I grieve for her. Zionism is simply the illuminating horror of the moment. With far less suffering to complain about, vast swathes of the United States seem about to re-elect a pathological monster whose playing the victim may destroy us all. Self-righteousness warps our reality. Who do these resentful voters think will save them? None other than one of the same uber rich who have exploited then! And why this warped hope for salvation? Because he also affirms their self-righteousness. The sins of misogyny, slavery, racism are all transformed into victim-hood and are no longer a cause for shame. This mentality is increasingly familiar to us here in Australia.
Self-righteousness leads to self-entitlement leads to social conservatism, which is the desire to hold power (and be comfortable) without moral responsibility, whilst holding other people morally responsible. Without wholesale repentance it will destroy the biosphere which supports our life.
The church too often allows itself to be seduced by such conservatism. We far too often play the victim, particularly given that rather than making us victims in life, the Christ makes us victors in life. (And if that sounds too much like the forms of Christianity I am complaining about, it is witness to how badly we have been infiltrated by victimhood.)
As Christians we have been graced to see the anatomies of self-righteousness and playing the victim! We have been graced to see the truth about our almost innate tendencies to play the victim. (The less sexy name for this is that we have been shown our original sin.) We have been graced to see that being victimised is never the whole story of reality, or even our own life. There is always more to life. In my case, I am alive! I have survived! I am being healed. As Christians we taste the first fruits, as if were, of a far richer way of being human.
Someone said "nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: we find the present tense and the past perfect."2 Yet, as the book title says, The Good Old Days—They were terrible.3 They were the flesh pots of Egypt, full of racism, sexism, poverty. and violence, all now warped through our victm-hood tinted glasses.
My witness is that playing the victim is a personal disaster. In a very real sense it transmogrifies us into a victim, albeit a victim of ourselves. The habits I laid down sixty years ago are now autonomous responses that foul my life even before I know I have crapped over everything all over again. And that's before the pain and damage I cause others. Don't go there! Glory in what you can do for others rather than what has been done to you.
(Andrea Prior 26 October 2024)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
[2] Owens Lee Pomoroy quoted at: https://wit.substack.com/p/the-wits-guide-to-nostalgia
[3] Author: Otto Bettman, see https://archive.org/details/goodolddaysthey00bett/page/n11/mode/2up?view=theater
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