Do some of us focus too much on victimhood?

[com7fy8]

Sometimes it is the ones who didn't suffer much, who are the most vocal about their past suffering.

Well, they need to read how Joseph handled being abused. Ones are not very creative, if they try to get something from people who don't know how to love them!

Westerners have felt superior

Well, there might be the few who have invented things, but others have simply used the inventions and have not themselves been very creative > learning how to love each and every person is the challenge, and there is creativity in our Creator's love. So, how many really are superior? A real genius, I have found, is the one who can communicate and do well in a marriage That takes love genius

The true victim there was middle aged white male because they were lowest on the food chain.

But look at how Joseph started as a slave and became ruler of Egypt > Genesis 37-50.

In my case, I started maybe as sort of the church peon. But I kept serving, and ones dumping on me went their ways. Or it got to the point where ones who stayed knew I knew what was going on with a thing or two, since I had been doing various things. So, now, people come to me to guide them about what needs to be done; ones who want to help come to me. And I encourage them to make sure they have spent special time with their good friends whom they have not seen all week, help people who need help, then they can come and help me. Sharing in love as family comes first.

Joseph did things in a family caring way, I think, even while he was in the prison.

So, if people try to get sympathy from people who don't know how to love . . . what are they seeking? How can they find out how to love?

Joseph did things with family love, and he got family love, eventually even with his brothers who sold him into slavery.

But I suspect there are people who are only trying to see if there are enough complainers who can be hooked into doing a rebellion to take down the government. This is how Adolph did it, according to what I have been told > he pushed that people were victims, and blamed the so-and-so's, until he got enough people and power. And now while we ourselves can be hurting ourselves more than anyone else could, the Muslims are the blame target . . . or the police . . . or whoever won the election

But this can decoy our attention away from finding out how to love and how to live > "without complaining and disputing" (in Philippians 2:13-16).

 

[MrLutrinae]

There are many victims in this thing we call life.

I could play the victim card in stating that Christians do their best in asserting I am a horrible individual because I am an atheist.

However, I know that I am a good person despite what belief system to which I adhere.

The only victims in life are not related to such trivial belief systems, but rather what is unjustly done to them by others.

 

[Godlovesmetwo]

And what about the message of Christianity and victimhood?" Christ, the Lamb of God, was the victim. The willing victim? Victims who sacrifice themselves in love for others are the "good" victims? I don't want to be disrespectful to Christians because I am one myself.
But Christ didn't go around complaining "oh those awful Pharisees, do you see what they said to me?"
or "and you know what Pontius Pilate did? Nothing. he just handed me over to be slaughtered."
"if I just had better parents than Mary and Joseph, it would've been OK"
His death on Cavalry wasn't a "look at poor me, how much I've suffered for all of you" to make us feel guilty. It was an expression of how far he was prepared to go, to express God's love.
In some small way, I see that a sibling or parent who donates a kidney as a transplant to a family member, is showing a glimpse of Christ's love on the Cross.
Christians welcome to correct my Biblical theological error here.

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

Christ, the Lamb of God, was the victim.

No, he was the hero. The victim was humanity in bondage to sin.

 

[Godlovesmetwo]

No, he was the hero. The victim was humanity in bondage to sin.

Oh OK. I guess at the time he was arrested, he started to look like a victim/loser to the Apostles. Then he became the hero after the resurrection?

 

[com7fy8]

However, I know that I am a good person despite what belief system to which I adhere.

The only victims in life are not related to such trivial belief systems, but rather what is unjustly done to them by others.

But I have done more harm to myself, than anyone else has. Mainly by making the wrong choices about what was done to me. I could have chosen to hurt others, after others have hurt me; or I could choose to be kind to others, like the good examples I have known. But I have chosen to become the bully and aggressive person, like predators and bullies and abusers have been to me. But then Jesus got me

"And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, and offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma." (Ephesians 5:2)

And yes it is wrong if I claim to be a Christian but make a project of saying certain people are all bad. Jesus wants us to be humble. This means I need to not be going around boasting how good I am, how great I am, and how I am so better than anyone else. Jesus used the example of the Pharisee who looked down on the publican. The Pharisee was wrong to look down on someone else.

So, the Pharisee was his own victim . . . his own worst enemy, I consider.

There are people who don't know how to love; their comparing of themselves with atheists or with Christians can keep their attention away from the example of Jesus and how our Father is able to truly correct us better than we can correct our selves, as humans > Hebrews 12:4-11. We can limit our own selves, being our own victims more than anyone else can make us be.

So, if someone claims to be a Christian, but is self-righteous against me, and then I become self-boasting in competition with that, I am letting the self-righteous person be the one who chooses and controls how I am!! And often I can still do this sort of a thing > someone is evil against me or I imagine someone to be, and then I too act in an evil way against that person, so that one is being reproductive helping me to become the same way > there are victims who have done this, becoming predators like their predators.

So, it is wise not to let self-righteous people be my excuse to be conceited and also self-righteous.

"not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing." (1 Peter 3:9)

It is too easy to compare ourselves with what wrong people have done, in religious history, then claim they represent all who call themselves Christians. And then excuse ourselves from the standards of Christ. This is letting wrong people decide how we are . . . not a good idea.

But someone might say, "But I don't know anyone who is a really Christian person who is worthy to be my example."

Actually, it takes one to know one. Our own character can keep us from being able to see who is really right. It takes our Heavenly Father and His correction to make us able to know who Jesus is and who His real examples are. So we need to depend on God so we are not our own victims of our own character

 

[quatona]

as I said in my OP, some of you have suffered awful trauma, that none of us could ever imagine. I think KA would be in this group too. They need weekly psychotherapy maybe for the rest of their lives. I don't really mean these people.
I mean the ones who have suffered mildly which I put myself in this group.

It´s hard to measure suffering objectively.

 

[Khalliqa]

nvm.

Reason: wrote b/c emotional didn't think it through

 

[paul becke]

It´s hard to measure suffering objectively.

Yes, we all have different thresholds of pain. One person's tragedy would be looked at as a 'doddle' by another, in comparison with their own experiences.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

It´s hard to measure suffering objectively.

Or being offended. When driving I know someone is out to get me, so when he or she finally shows by doing something dangerous or stupid I just laugh and say to myself, "What took you so long. You usually show up within three blocks of my house".

 

[OldWiseGuy]

dp

 

[OldWiseGuy]

tp

 

[OldWiseGuy]

qp

 

[paul becke]

To use one's own personal suffering - real or claimed - as a tool to manipulate others, or pretense to promote hatred against anyone or anything that stands between you and what you want, is absolutely contemptible. The moment somebody tries pulling that on me, they've lost my sympathy.

-------------------------------

Their poverty is never, ever, caused by the poor and the indigent, although the go-getter Haves, who have been immemorially identified in Scripture as the actual culprits, have always blamed them. Jesus doesn't pull his punches in his Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount. It was been said by a theologian that the Beatitudes are not pious hopes of what shall be, they are congratulations on what is.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say, but if you are blaming people for fighting in defence of the poor and oppressed, by word and deed, you are condemned by the words of Scripture again and again : eschatologically 'dead meat', never mind a soldier of the king.

----------------------------------------------

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

People who wear "victimhood" as a badge of honor are generally not impoverished. Otherwise, they wouldn't be common in universities and among the professional classes...

 

[Moral Orel]

Or being offended. When driving I know someone is out to get me, so when he or she finally shows by doing something dangerous or stupid I just laugh and say to myself, "What took you so long. You usually show up within three blocks of my house".

You ever notice how everyone who drives slower than you is a moron, and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac? -- George Carlin

 

[Steve Petersen]

Now there are among you, some victims of awful abuse who are still suffering PTSD. I'm not including you.
The average Paul though, like the rest of us, who may have suffered some bullying in their life but managed to recover and lead semi-respectable lives. ( or even very respectable )
I'm thinking of one person in particular when I say this. he will recount the times people treated him badly in the past. He has all the sins of other people stored in his memory, never to delete. Yet there were times when his behaviour I remember, was not exemplary. And he was acting the bully or manipulator. Yet he has selective amnesia for these events. He only remembers the time when he was the victim.
I can do that too, I admit. Focus on times I was treated with contempt or just ignored. Yet there were times I ignored someone or teased them.
I think it is step 4 in AA, make a fearless moral inventory. This is a useful step for any of us to explore, and notice that our behaviour in the past was not always as great as we think. I don't mean we have to spend hours of self-loathing. Rather to come up with a balanced picture of our past behaviour and perhaps as a result feel more compassion for other sinners.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/opinion/the-strange-persistence-of-guilt.html

 

[OldWiseGuy]

You ever notice how everyone who drives slower than you is a moron, and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac? -- George Carlin

Actually this is true. I encounter this every day.....

Drivers at the head of the line dallying when the light turns green, as if they were the only car on the road, preventing others from getting through a 'short green'.

Drivers who accelerate past me, not slowing for a stop light just ahead. What's up with that?

Truckers on the interstate are jerks as well. They like to play games with passenger vehicle traffic, like driving along side each other for miles at speeds below the limit while cars pile up behind them. They do this to amuse themselves.

These jerks are all over the place.