Silence of the Lambs

Those who are strong enough to defend themselves would not understand. They have never found themselves helpless and powerless. Those who were from the beginning, taught to function from a position of love and affirmation, could not help but lack comprehension of the shame. They weren't told that it was all their own fault.

Shame is not a thing that we are born for, or a burden we take up willingly. It is forced on us from outside ourselves. Our consciousness internalizes a flood of denunciation, which is set on automatic repetition, driving us to despair. We cannot unhear our condemnation. We cannot unfeel our rejection. Innocence trusts, not realizing vulnerability, that there is one who would take advantage, who would use others to temporarily silence and satiate their demons.

The abuser will not bother to explain it to his victim. He is too busy defending what he sees as his position of power, his victory over weakness, that he has won, in his own story of innocence lost. He is a slave to a cycle he feels driven to repeat, so he can force the story to turn out right for him. In defending the terrified child within, he passes on his curse to another.

Victims of violence must go through a process, which involves the repetition of images and emotions that they experienced. They relive their trauma over and over. The intensity of the event makes it unavoidable. Dark knowledge becomes part of them and who they are. Different eyes look out on the world, with perceptions altered by the new light. They can never return to who they were, to innocence, and would choose to not give up what they have learned, that light of knowledge and understanding. If we cannot be grateful for the lessons we have gained, then we are left with only the shame. If the truth is not told, then we remain in the hell forced on us. We will have suffered for nothing. Silence only justifies what was done to us. We will become the same as our abuser, if evil is not exposed so healing can begin.

When God tells us to forgive, He means that we are to trust Him for justice, that He will make good come from it, so that our suffering is not in vain. We don't have to do the work of actively protecting ourselves, and thereby pass on the curse to another generation of victims. Forgiveness does not take back what we have learned, does not shut down our new skill of recognizing evil. Instead, forgiveness enables us to make use of the truth to help others, to support the brothers, to build them up from our new conviction, and make them strong. It makes a negative (anger) into a positive, passionate energy, so that we don't become another abuser in an endless cyle of destruction. Truth does that! Silence, however, still kills: the spirit, truth, and love. Do not be silent! By passing on God's own knowledge of overcoming, of keeping the faith, we do what He did, when He showed us how it's done!

Ephesians 5:11 Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them.

Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.