Hubby and I watched a movie, a thriller called, “I See You.” I don’t necessarily recommend it, in fact you should probably avoid it, but I did feel that nudge from the Holy Spirit that said, “you need this story.” And it turns out I did, it was perfect, it was just the tale to soothe my soul.
Briefly, these kids are phroggers, they hide out in the spare rooms and crawl spaces of people’s homes, “living” in the house after everyone goes to work. So they sneak into the house of a perfect, upper middle class family, mom is a psychologist, dad is a cop, and they got the sullen teen-age boy to prove it. You know something is all wrong in part due to Helen Hunt’s rather brilliant portrayal of the completely numbed out wife and mother trying to hold it all together. She actually scared me with some of her deadpan.
Complete spoiler alert here, but it turns out that the dad is a child molestor/serial killer, and the phrogger is really one of his first victims, now a teen ager, but once a little boy whose trust was betrayed, who was kidnapped by this cop. He knew this man’s secret, he’d been deeply wounded by him, he knew he had killed other children, and he wanted revenge, justice, to understand “why,” to reclaim his power and to expose this man. You don’t catch that truth until the very end of the movie. For most of the movie you’ve got this psychotic phrogger kid and his bizarre behavior versus this perfect family man, this upstanding member of the community who’s just working really hard trying to catch a serial killer.
That really is what abuse is often like, crazy making, and you apparently are the “crazy.” I enjoyed this movie in part because we had a male victim and his bizarre behavior was the behavior of a trauma victim, it was defensive, not offensive. It was reactionary and reasonable, not psychotic and unprovoked.
Which brings me to Ravi Zaccharus scandal, to this great debate over the nature of empathy that has been going on. Many people, myself included, have been feeling betrayed, let down, disgusted not just by Ravi’s double life, but by the Christian response, everything from “shut up he’s dead now,” to “judge not,” to “just forgive.”
Right, because when admired religious leadership is shown to be a complete hypocrite and you have also been betrayed by those who were supposed to protect you but instead acted like a numbed out, emotionally unavailable wife who just wants to drape a paper towel over the whole mess and pretend it isn’t there, you should just “get over it?”
But what really got to me, what really drove the nature of the problem home, was that a number of pop culture Christian men who have brought up the fact that we’re all sinners and we could all fall into sin at any time. Their empathy led them to understand, to self identify with Ravi. But for the grace of God there go I, which is an awesome Biblical concept but in this context it just completely misses the boat.
You all empathized, self identified with the perpetrator, with the bad guy. It didn’t even occur to any of these guys to empathize with the victims! It didn’t even occur to them that they could be a victim, to self identify in that context, to relate to what that part of the story might feel like.
“I see You,” gave us this little boy who trusted this kind cop, who believed in things, who was eager to have a relationship, who was full of innocence and thought people were good. All of that was taken, stolen in an instant, in what basically amounted to the theft a child’s mind, body, and soul. If just one of these pop culture Christian guys weighing in on the Ravi scandal could just show a tiny drop of empathy for somebody besides the perpetrator for once, my soul would just do a little skip.
Like, this isn’t about you and your virtuous and generous compassion towards sexual sin, this is about thousands of people including the women Ravi had contact with, feeling betrayed, let down, rendered powerless, sold a bill of goods, conned. I mean if Ravi lied about that, what else did he lie about? Faith?Jesus? Can the people who once trusted him, ever trust their own discernment again? Was he even really saved? Where was God in all of this?
And of course some have just blamed the women instead because that’s always easy and tidy, and allows men to avoid taking responsibility for anything, ever.
I feel silly saying this and I’ve been saying it for some 30 years now, but it’s not actually “empathy” when you can only empathize with the bad guy’s power and not with the victim’s powerlessness. In fact, hearing how much you understand why it happened is really not helpful. This is why #MeToo is still around and #Churchtoo, and why the church in general continues to get such a failing grade when it comes to dealing with sexual abuse.
The implications are far reaching, far more profound then we even realize, and contribute to a myriad of social problems in the world, from addiction to politics, from divorce to abortion.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Well said IB. I wonder how many Christian lives have been affected by RZ. How many have started questioning Christianity at all? How many close to choosing Christ, just turned back.
God Bless you IB.
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Thanks, George. God bless you, too. 🙂
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Insanitybytes
I saw the movie which added a new twist to serial killers and their families who will bear the stigma for the rest of their lives for a family member.
The problems were recorded 3000 years ago and the harsh results
5 You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me. (Exodus 20:5 NASV)
In ancient times fear of the Lord was used to attempt to warn people that their personal actions will reflect on their family into the future for four generations.
While in our contemporary times, the innocent bear no blame, the families are going to be affected regardless.
The New Testament in a better sense proclaims if you love your family, you don’t want them to have to suffer for your sins.
What is sad is religion is on the wane in the USA ever since the government took control of the schools.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Good points, Rudy! As you’ve mentioned, something else the movie got right was the impact of your behavior on your family, on the people around you. The Western world is plumb full of “rugged individualists,” and we often seem to have trouble accepting that our actions and choices are going to impact others, even those who aren’t born yet. People tend to just do what’s right in their own eyes.
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Insanitybytes
I agree, some “people do what’s right in their own eyes” instead of either God or Mans laws.
In my opinion, you will find more people who never introduced to God’s laws are more prevalent to do exactly what your stated.
Perhaps someday, there will be a movie to depict what happens to the innocent family members who wind up living in a single-family household because of a parent actions that resulted in his being jailed or how society treats the family after they are associated with the criminal parent.
Most social workers are well acquainted with what happens. However, I doubt it will be a blockbuster movie.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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This is a good post IB and a reminder that we cannot forget the victims of evil, whether it’s from a horrible individual or a government ideology, those hurt by them must be seen and helped.
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Thanks, Tricia. I think what’s really maddening for me, these things don’t happen in a vacuum, this is not so much about the behavior of one individual man, but decades of cover ups, enabling, protection. Some of those victims went through years of silencing, cancel culture, intimidation, extortion, having their lives ruined, all committed by his ministry team, by his organization. The guy was actually running spas, which we all know is code for brothels, and nobody even bats an eye.
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Good post, IB. And what does Jesus say about such abusers? Something about a millstone and the depths of the sea. Jesus, along with unconditional forgiveness for all sinners, is all about empathy with the victims and rescue for the oppressed. J.
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Yes! Thank you, that’s it exactly, Salvageable. Jesus speaks of millstones and also how, “what you do for the least of these you do for me.”
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Thank you for this post! It was well said!
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I get crazy triggered every time someone says, “I’d never allow myself to be abused,” because the flip side is, “People who are abused allowed it to happen.” (Even just writing this is making me mad)
So yeah, society definitely needs more empathy for the victims.
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I did not know of this minister until just a few years ago when I began reading Nabeel Qureshi’s blog— the young apologist who documented his conversion from Islam to Christianity along with his personal battle with cancer— a battle he would sadly lose.
This zacharrius fellow was his mentor—
It makes me wonder what nabeel knew or if he did know anything at all.
And so jump over to my own world, the huge college football fan that I am—It was no secret I greatly admired Joe Paterno. A man who seemed to be larger than life and was a positive leader and mentor to countless young man—this during his decades of coaching. I had read a marvelous Guidepost story about him- I even wrote to him when I was still teaching because I knew of the need and importance of positive male role models for our young men—
So then we learned about the Jerry Sandusky scandal and there became little doubt that good ol Joe Pa had to have known for years of this darkness living out in his own locker rooms and offices— how could he not.
I threw out his book, my Penn State football memorabilia and felt deeply troubled— here I was a parent, a teacher and a fan— imagine those abused young men and their parents-imagine how they felt— violated.
Our gullibility, willingness to be so trusting and lack of willingness to question those in authority hinder us so often in life— we will continue to be let down by man—
May we all look upward and not simply toward each other 😔
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We tend to sympathize with the people we know. Ravi Zacharias was a well known and skilled preacher. It is unfortunate that he made a mess of his ministry.
When I hear about something like this, I think of King David, who abused the trust he was given. Adultery. Lying. Finally, murder. Eventually, he repented. But the damage his lust created lasted well beyond his lifetime.
Our legacy, if it is to be worthwhile, has to be a gift of the Lord. If we think it is our own doing, we will abuse our gifts and botch it up. We will forget our victims are people we must love as the Lord loves us, not our toys.
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It’s devastating, truly devastating. I feel for his wife and the victims, and the MANY who his preaching brought them to Jesus, I pray they will come to understand the difference between the gift and the person. He was gifted. He was corrupt. Utterly.
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That’s really well said, “the difference between the gift and the person.” Good point, thank you for that.
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I hadn’t heard of the RZ Scandal. I remember listening to Zacharias on the radio when I was still a young boy and admired his knowledge of Greek and because of what he did in Vietnam. (back in the day, they had a pilot program to begin classical language studies in elementary schools—now of course they don’t even teach English; and my uncles also served in the Vietnam War). I didn’t know he’d since grown into a big empire.
I read a little summary of the scandal, and to give a bit of opinion here, it sounds like he really was into some bad things and his ministry was hopelessly corrupt. But until I saw the proof, my first inclination was NOT to believe the victims.
The problem in our culture is that there are so many false accusations; so many elastic definitions of ‘sexually inappropriate’; so many powerful men who get targeted by people with agendas; and our social ‘Cult of the Victim’ that real cases of abuse are met with skepticism. I remember the ‘high-tech lynching’ of Justice Thomas, the innocent people jailed on the flimsiest evidence of abuse during Hilary Clinton’s ‘Believe the Children’ witch-hunts; the number of long-dead priests accused by the Pink Mafia of abuse hoping to bankrupt the Church with lawsuits; the constant tying of foreign leaders out of favor with the Deep State to sexual perversions, etc. It’s not unheard of in certain professions that women are bribed to make accusations against some man in a position whom cabals within the organization want out of the way. These scandals are usually hushed up in exchange for the target being allowed to resign quietly. Even if he’s innocent, a man’s got no chance of fighting and winning in that situation.
I won’t detail all of these, but there are a lot of high-profile cases where I believe men have been jailed/destroyed unjustly with no more than media-driven outrage and flimsy rumors as evidence; meanwhile, you have a certain class which seems to be untouchable no matter what mountains of documented evidence there is—even of rapes and murders. I think that before we can really address the problem of sexual violence and abuse in our culture that we need to come to grips with some sense of Reality instead of letting media hysteria, fanatical social activists, and opportunistic politicians grab the scandal of the moment and run with it. The system we have is set up to make real victims subjects of media mudslinging while rewarding the fake victims as courageous heroes. What’s especially sad about it is that before we can have any actual sense of empathy for the real victims, one almost has to put themselves in the position of an impartial judge and hear all of the evidence first—which is not easy with so much fake news going on.
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I think you make some good points, Night Wind. People have been falsely accused, set up, sometimes for political purposes. Other people are completely excused and protected in the midst of overwhelming evidence. I think as a culture in general we tend to have some unhealthy attitudes towards sexuality and that also contributes to the problem. There’s a big difference between having an affair and being a pedophile for example, but at least in the West, the church has often failed to make good distinctions. I don’t want to pick on Mike Pence personally, but he’s a good example of what these stereotypical Western evangelical values look like, where he practices the “Pence rule” and won’t even have lunch with a woman least he fall into sexual sin, and yet he’s holding up Ravi who is actually running brothels right in front of everyone, as if he were some great paragon of Christian virtue! A bit ironic how those puritan attitudes play right into the secular world where anything goes except perhaps healthy, natural, heterosexuality.
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“It’s not actually “empathy” when you can only empathize with the bad guy’s power and not with the victim’s powerlessness.”
Amen. Well said. While we do need to verify the claims, we should not practice cronyism either, giving our exalted spiritual heroes a pass, which only makes the pain worse for the actual victims.
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