“Oh, my word, is it just me or is it really humid today?” “Is it just me or was that pizza really salty?” “Is it just me, or is that man really staring at us?” “Is their music really loud or is it just me?”
Nobody wants to be alone in their perceptions. We all need confirmation once in a while that what we think we’re perceiving is indeed what’s there.
Also, nobody wants to be alone in thinking something’s wonky. The reality is, everybody has to put up with some nonsense from time to time.
“No, it’s not just you. You’re not alone.” That’s all we wanted to hear and then most of us move on to what’s next.
Unless you’re a victim. Then you can’t move on, you’ve begun to identify with being wronged, and you want others to join your pity party, pat your back, and feel your pain.
Has someone ever told you, “Don’t take it personal?” When someone treats you badly, how do you not take it personal, and avoid becoming a victim?
There are victims of crime and there are victims of circumstances, and there is a victim-personality. There are so many victims these days, who have to blame someone or something for their pain.
Once upon a time there was a victim of a crime. A young man was senselessly murdered by another man vested with authority, which he doled out badly.
Almost immediately, that criminal and his cohorts were divested of their power and authority, and soon thereafter their freedom, as is usual in the first steps up the ladder of the American justice system.
But, before anything orderly or coherent could progress throughout the system, “the system was hijacked” by victim-hood, confusion and hate. Powered by fear, greed, disadvantage, hurt, and uncertainty, a storm gathered victim after victim until a great fault divided the shores, valleys, prairies, and mountains of this land.
When I think about victims of crime, circumstances, or even those who might have a victim-complex, I associate them with scapegoat-culture. Since, the word victim derives from the Latin victima, meaning sacrificial animal, I began to muse on the concept of the scapegoat.
My scriptural memory store associates the scapegoat with the story in Genesis 22, of Abraham heading on a journey with his young son, Isaac, up a mountain at the behest of God, to sacrifice his boy, of promise. After having prepared the altar and strapping Isaac to it, out of the wilderness, wandered a ram. God prepared a substitute for Isaac; a scapegoat.
So, scapegoating is the practice of singling out any individual or group for “unmerited negative treatment” or “blame.” There has to be someone to blame for my poor self-esteem, my declining mental health, my crappy circumstances; for things turning out “wrong,” in my life. Or does there?
Sometimes you just want everybody to move on and live their lives. Many “victims” can’t do that. They’re always churning up chaff. I think people who are members of “victim-culture” are metaphorically allergic to wheat; just tossing chaff, or blame, into the air willy-nilly, for the rest of us to choke on.
Can you think of any individuals or groups in the world today, or in your own world, who serve as scapegoats, undeservedly bearing the brunt of blame for wrongdoing, real or imagined? Holy moly, the list is as long as my arm, yours and a whole slew of arms joined together.
It’s a blame-game culture, me thinks. Not to mention a culture chock-full of victims, who repeatedly cry out, “The system is unjust.” “I’ve been wronged.”
How can we stop this cycle of madness perpetrated by this “they?” I wonder if it’s forgiveness.
In the Hebrew account of the scapegoat, once the scapegoat was sacrificed, effectively taking on the blame for another, all parties are forgiven. End of account.
I hear echoes of “that’s not fair.” Fairness is relative and it can’t be measured on a scale. It’s also a rather childish notion, compared to the grown-up concept of forgiveness.
It’s a tall order, forgiveness. Most of the time, forgiveness is undeserved, just like scapegoating.
Shall we give a modicum of credit to Christians, most of whom believe, Jesus was the ultimate scapegoat. Was that fair? Fair or not, his sacrifice ended it, if you believe. He sealed the sacrifice by saying, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”