Drink the Poison or The Truth Will Kill You – My plea to the victims of sexual abuse

Being sexually abused is horrible. Not being believed is death by slow, unremitting suffocation. Of the fair amount of victims that I have counseled I have noticed that being forced to share a dark secret with their abuser and required by circumstances to become an actor in the charade that shields the abuser from any responsibility stifles their soul, shrivels their personality, and debilitates a healthy, spiritual growth. The truth kills them. Slowly.

This is especially true when the abuser was not another child, but an adult or authority figure with powers to intimidate and silence the victim.

Some women hold the dark truth in their souls year after year, holiday after holiday, church service after church service, in the very presence of the man who violated them. They see him honored, cheered, celebrated, and happy. Meanwhile, they fade. The truth infects their inner being. Sometimes they get inexplicably sick. Physically sick. Sometimes they start eating. Or not eating. Sometimes they start drinking. Sometimes they get cynical and disbelieving. Others get naive and spineless, stupidly following after every abusive man that gives them attention. Many times they try to seal off that compartment of reality, that dank closet of filthy memory, and pretend as if their lives are normal, innocent, and unviolated. How victims cope varies, but the one thing they have in common is a nasty secret shared with the abuser. A fact, a naked reality. A sharp truth.

But God did not make people to live with hidden truth and thrive. In the cosmic battle against Satan the issue at stake is the glory of God in the Church now. Satan knows that his destiny is sealed. He knows he has lost. He knows Christ has already made a public mockery of him on the cross (Col. 2:15). He also knows that God is getting glory from the Church now and magnifying His wisdom and glory now in and through the Church and therefore Satan fights against that present goal (Ephesians 3:10). Since he’s fighting against God’s glory in the Church now, it is imperative that we arm ourselves properly to participate in the Gospel goal of glorifying God now in the Church. And one element of that armor is factual truth. Paul’s “belt of truth” is not referring to abstract theological truth; it is referring to the facts.

No person can truly magnify the glory of God and enjoy the thrill of His exaltation when she is intimidated into concealing plain facts. Christian people, of all people, should be people who embrace the truth, the facts. There is no need to spin our past. We are who we are. And if we are anything useful it is because we are who we are by the grace of God. Am I proud of the fact that my own grandfather did jail time for sexually abusing small children? Of course not. Do I hide that fact? Not at all.

The reason I don’t hide the skeletons is because if the goal of God is the glory of God in the Church (all redeemed people) now, and if Satan is wrestling against that goal right now, then the reflection of that glory is in God’s trophies, trophies of grace. In fact, before the foundation of the world we were chosen for the praise of His glorious grace (Ephesians 1:6). Trophies of grace exalt God. If there is no sin, no ugliness, no weakness then there is no amazing grace. That is why Paul candidly said, “formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” (1 Tim. 1:13). No need to hide the ugly roots. Not necessary to disguise my weakness. “I am what I am by the grace of God” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

The intense commitment many show to protect family and institutional reputation to the point of covering up the facts is to make ourselves more vulnerable to Satan’s relentless ambition to rob glory from God in the Church now. That is why in order to stand in the evil day we must fasten on the belt of truth, factual truth (Ephesians 6:10-18). The Gospel is only relevant in the sphere of reality. Christians who plug their ears and yell louder and louder to protect the reputation of their family and institution from the natural results of disclosed facts are people who have their sense of identity more in family and institution than in Christ. Wear the facts. Strap on the ugly truth. Nothing frustrates Satan more than a Christian who wears the facts about himself, his family, his school, his past, his nature. Because in so doing the Christian celebrates another indisputable fact: he is saved by grace and one with Christ who has already made a mockery of the Evil One on the cross and is now causing the universe to adore the skill and wisdom of God through a Church of messed up people.

However, the point of this post is to discuss something far more complex. What if the past is something intimately painful like a personally experienced molestation? What if the abuser is intimidating and threatening, forcing his victim to keep the secret? What if a boy or girl have already leaked out the truth, the facts, to other trusted people only to be dismissed, ignored, or — worse — rebuked? What do you counsel a woman who has been holding a secret about an abuser for years? What if the statute of limitations is up and there is no possible legal recourse anymore? What if the person tells you that when she was a little girl she was blamed by her pastor for causing her daddy to stumble? What if a woman unfolds her heart to you about horrible experiences that are so detailed and so plausible you know that she is giving you the truth but she panics and will not pursue a resolution or confrontation with the perpetrator? What do you say to a person who has already tried to get help from pastors and teachers only to sense an uncomfortable vibe from the ones that should be giving light?

I believe that your counsel must come down to this: Drink the poison or the truth will kill you.

In Numbers 5 there is a very bizarre trial by ordeal that is designed by God for women who are suspected of infidelity. In short, if a husband felt a “spirit of jealousy” he was permitted to bring his wife to the priest and make her go through a trial by ordeal that would prove whether or not she was innocent. She had to declare her innocence to the priest who verified that she understood the seriousness of the charge and the consequence of lying by having her repeat the solemn word “amen” twice. She then would drink poison. If she was innocent, she survived without harm. If she was guilty the “womb would swell and the thigh rot away.”

Before we investigate how I believe this applies to victims of sex abuse, it is necessary to address some questions about this weird trial by ordeal.

First, moderns as we are, we are appalled by the whole notion of trial by ordeal. Trial by ordeal is something that was done in, say, the Salem witch hunts. Some trials by ordeal would require that the suspected woman be bound to a chair that was weighted down by rocks and cast into the river. If she didn’t drown she was innocent! Hardly a recipe for justice. Scandalously unjust.

But it is the omnipotent and omniscient God who has designed this trial! Our Holy God specified the ritual. Furthermore, it seems so unfair that there is no trial by ordeal for husbands, likely cheaters as well, who are being suspected by their wives who may have a “spirit of jealousy.” How could this blatantly sexist discrimination be tolerated in a book we refer to as the Holy Word of God? Two thoughts about the purpose of this trial by ordeal here:

Thought #1 about the Trial by Ordeal in Numbers 5

1. The purpose for the Law was not primarily for civil justice, but to reveal the redemptive plan of Christ. The Law and the Prophets wrote about Christ, Jesus claimed (Luke 24:44). More succinctly stated, God communicated to the world redemptive truths not only in theological words, but with graphic illustrations that are recorded in God’s Word. One such illustration is the trial by ordeal in Numbers 5.

Throughout all of Scripture the relationship of God with His covenanted people is illustrated as one of a marriage in which God is the husband and His people are the wife. Thus, Gomer the prostitute wife of the prophet Hosea represents the covenanted people of God while Hosea represents God. The illustration in Numbers 5 suggests that it is the people of God, not God, who have a proclivity toward unfaithfulness and therefore there is no provision in the law for a woman with the mere suspicion of her husband’s infidelity to force him to a trial by ordeal. It has nothing to do with preferential treatment of men or the assumption that men are more faithful than women, or that it doesn’t matter if men are unfaithful. It is probably not a gender issue at all. It’s merely one more graphic illustration that God has given to the world of the nature of the relationship between mankind and God.

With this in mind the imagination cannot help but glory in the picture of a mediating priest who ministers the water of bitterness and declares the mind of God for the innocent woman if she is found to be innocent. More on that later.

Thought #2 about the Trial by Ordeal in Numbers 5

2. It is best to imagine the scenario in which this trial by ordeal may be called for in light of the Lawmaker’s self-description. In the Lawmaker’s first first-person self-description in the Law of Moses (Genesis thru Deuteronomy) He emphasized His gentle and loving character. Again, as you read this text, remember that this is the first self-description in the first person given by God about Himself in the Holy Word. I think this is an important interpretational point. It seems as if this is the first impression that God wants us to get about Himself. He defines Himself as,

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).

Do you note the emphasis on love, grace, mercy, forgiveness? Do you see His resolute commitment to justice? Would this God who had the power to draw water out of a rock and separate the seas fail to vindicate an innocent woman who was going through a trial by ordeal? Would the poison hurt her if he intended to vindicate her? Is it possible that this trial by ordeal was actually a ritual given by a loving God to protect women instead of discriminating against them?

Imagine that you were falsely accused of something that you knew was not true about you. Imagine that God had ordained a trial by ordeal in which you were given the opportunity of proving your justice by being tied to a chair weighted down with rocks and thrown into the river. Imagine that you had an unshakeable confidence in both your innocence and in the omnipotence of your God. Imagine that you knew He would not fail, yea could not fail, on His commitment to prevent you from drowning. I think you would be happy to be vindicated by a trial by ordeal that Omnipotent and Just God had ordained.

The truth of the matter is that this trial by ordeal, if ever used, may have saved more lives of innocent women than if it had not existed at all. In the day it was no big deal to falsely accuse a woman of anything worthy of divorce. And divorce was easy. Once divorced, without dowry, and shamed a woman had no hope left at all. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to think that a woman, previously abused, might be discovered by her husband to not be a physical virgin. Nor does it take much imagination to see the poor woman fearful for her very existence, knowing that she is really innocent, casting all her hope on the fact that the God Who Sees will not let the poisonous water swell her belly and rot her thigh because the only option she has left to her is to drink to the last dregs the “water of bitterness.” Her husband and circumstances have dragged her to the priest for a trial by ordeal.

As I contemplate the nature of sexual abuse and sexual accusations, I can see how merciful it was of our gracious God to provide for the weakest people in society, women,  assurance that an accused woman could place her life in the hands of God’s mediators, the priests, hear his words of warning, solemnly protest her innocence, and with sober and resigned spirit drink to the bottom the chalice of poison. In faith she had to believe that God loved women.

Observations for Counseling Victims

While I cannot be certain of all the reasons for this trial by ordeal, I think there is some wise counsel to be derived from this for my readers who may be suffering with a dark secret. Let me enumerate them for you.

1. The truth will kill you. If you were a Hebrew woman, or a woman who had been captured to be the wife of a Hebrew, your very life depends on the integrity of your claims of virginity and innocence. There is no job for single women. There is no life for a woman outside of the protection of the man that is accusing her. In fact, his accusation, if believed, could result in your death or in your banishment from society. But you know that you are innocent. You know that physical evidence of your supposed non-virginity is because you were violated; not because you were unfaithful. But it is not enough to know this. It is not enough to say this. It is not enough to accuse your accuser or another man. You know a truth that will not be believed.

Because we are created in the image of God we are  incomplete unless we are believed. This is, of course, why people lie. No one lies to not be believed. Being believe empowers us. Being believed protects us. Being believed opens up doors of opportunities for us. In ancient times the man in power was the man who always had the benefit of the doubt. The man, for no other reason than that he was male, was believed. The woman, on the other hand, had to bear the burden of being unbelieved simply because she was a woman. Things were hard for women back then.

Or is it much different now? The most troubling commonality in the stories of victims of abuse is that they began to shrivel up and die inwardly simply because they were not believed. The harshest reality of sexual abuse is that the victims face an unbelieving society or a community unwilling to hear the facts. But as I said at the beginning of this article,

No person can truly magnify the glory of God and enjoy the thrill of His exaltation when she is intimidated into concealing plain facts.

Since the victim was created to glorify and enjoy God she (or he) longs to be able to glory in the gospel of God and enjoy the thrill of his exaltation by celebrating grace, but she (or he) has been forced to hold an evil fact and debased to the less-than-complete humanity of being unbelieved despite having a gruesome, indisputable, ever-present FACT that relentlessly dominates his (or her) worldview. And, as I stated before,

The Gospel is only relevant in the sphere of reality.

So, first observation: the truth will kill you. It will gnaw away at your soul because God made you, my dear brother or sister, to be believed. Your desire to be believed is because you are made in the image of God. You must deal with that fact, but you have to deal with it God’s way.

2. The second observation that I think we can glean from God’s trial by ordeal for accused women is this: God knows the facts. It was an abused woman who made this observation first. Hagar, so relieved that God saw her and knew the reality of her plight, worshipped God and gave Him a name we cherish. “So she called on the name of the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are a God who sees me’” (Genesis 16:13). Hagar felt the grace of being believed by the God of Abraham. She – she! – had seen Abraham’s God! Read that verse again and imagine this helpless and abused woman shooed away from the camp for no other reason than that she had been sexually abused by Abraham and Sarah and now they didn’t want her around anymore. Read her words again:

So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are a God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘Truly I have seen him who looks after me (Genesis 16:13).

I can hardly help but weep when I imagine her joyful relief. She had seen the God who knew the facts. And He looked after her. And, ironically, it was Abraham’s God!

3. Thirdly, you need to see Hagar’s God. He is the same God that designed the trial by ordeal in Numbers 5. This God sees you. He saw your tragedy. He saw the time that trusted loved one became your violator. He has seen every detail. He knows every motive. There is not one ugly thing that He has not seen and yet Hagar’s God looks after you.

So many victims feel thrown out. Discarded. So many suffocate under a killing truth that stifles the life out of them because they don’t now if anyone will believe them. Tragically, some begin to think that even God Himself will not deign to look on them. Or they wonder if God has abused them. I have no doubt that some of my readers are going to know exactly what I am talking about and I want you to imagine that these words are for you and you alone: Hagar’s God is calling you and wanting you to see Him. You must by faith believe in the sovereignty of Hagar’s God and the fact that He knows everything. Yes, everything. There are no secrets with Hagar’s God.

4. Fourthly, there is only one way to meet Hagar’s God. That is to be dragged to the priest with your ugly secret. A priest is a mediator between man and God. The Scriptures tell us that now we do not have priests like the ones in the days of Moses. Instead, our priest today is “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26). It is Jesus, the image of the invisible God, Hagar’s God, the God who sees everything. The Hebrew Apostle, Paul, asserted this about Jesus: “There is one God”, — and we know that he speaks of Hagar’s and Moses’ God — “and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Therefore, the only way to meet Hagar’s God is to trust the fact that though circumstances have been foisted upon you they are compelling  you to a mediator for ultimate vindication where Hagar’s God will stand by you.

I keep saying

The Gospel is only relevant in the sphere of reality.

This means that you will never be able to come to Jesus without bringing your secret. He will gently make you own your shameful secret so that you realize that He loves you as  you are. When an abused woman tried to be healed by Jesus while keeping her secret from Him, He stopped the throngs that were around Him and asked, “Who was it that touched me?”

And when the woman saw that she was not hidden,  she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace (Luke 8:43-48).

It is as if Jesus has provided a trial by ordeal to prove to you His unconditional love. He dares you to be so enamored with His attention and His affection that you are no longer victimized by your secret. He frees you to be who you are; hurt, damaged, abused, and wounded.

If you have not met the mediator between men and the God of Hagar. If you have not experienced the joyful relief of seeing the God who looks after you, come to Jesus. There must be no sweeter words in Scripture for the abused person than Jesus’ invitation:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).

Gentle and lowly. Easy. Rest. Is there not some irony that the only person that can give a victim of sexual abuse is the only mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus? But this man calls you to realize that not only does the perpetrator of those heinous things done to you need to be saved, but that you also are a sinner with no natural right to Abraham’s God, even as Hagar had no presumptions about Abraham’s God except to cry out for mercy. And yet this man invites you to recognize that your whole life of abuse has been an ordeal, a trial by ordeal, in which you are invited by faith to come into His presence and say, “I need you to vindicate me. Save me not only before God, but save me before men.”

Perhaps the most interesting part of Numbers 5 is that the woman, upon hearing the curse on unfaithful liars, is asked to say, “amen, amen.” This, to me, is fascinating. The first occurrence of this most popular Christian word appears in this bizarre setting, the setting of a woman dragged before the priest for a weird ritual of trial by ordeal in which God, and God alone, could prove her words to be true.

Did you know that the word “amen” which mean “so be it truly” is also one of the names of the man Christ Jesus?

And to the angel of the church in Laodicia write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.

Your priest, Amen, calls all you people with dark secrets and the pain of being disbelieved to trust Him and in His name do the unthinkable:

5. Drink the poison. Put on the belt of truth. Wear the facts. Trust Jesus and find the courage to pursue justice. Not in vindictiveness. Not in bitterness. Not in retaliation. Pursue the exposure of the facts for the sake of God’s glory now.  You cannot live with your secret because you allow the abuser to live with his secret. His secret is more dangerous than yours. His secret is the kind that will be judged in the last day:

On that day, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus (Romans 2:16).

Your secret, forced upon you, is one that must be brought to light so that you can enjoy the glory of acceptance in Christ and the exaltation of the grace of God. Your abuser’s secret is his damnation. Jesus, the mediator between you and Hagar’s God, assures you by His unfailing love that He will not allow the process of “coming forward” to destroy your productivity. To use the Hebrew image, your belly will not swell and your thigh will not rot. Literally, you will still be able to have babies. Or, as I’m using it to illustrate the compassion of Christ for the weak, you will have a productive life.

This process of coming forward with your accusation is one of incredible importance. You must come forward with it. But you must have Gospel intentions. Please don’t be allured by the Cult of Self Empowerment and vengeance. Come to Jesus for healing and let Jesus give you the full confidence that there is nothing in your life that He has not seen and ordained for the glory of God. Let Jesus tell you that you cannot be –yea you do not want to be — hidden. Find disciples of Jesus who are open and joyful about who they are, skilled in advising, and embrace God’s trial by ordeal as your only means of escape.

Tell everyone why you come to Jesus. Be who you are without shame. Experience what it is like when Hagar’s God vindicates you and gives you the overwhelming joyful relief that He is watching out for you. And watch Jesus hold your hand while you drink the poison.

Drink the poison or the truth will kill you.

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