Repentance and Indignation

For those who have suffered as the target of an abuser, indignation is a familiar experience. The abuser will be indignant about all kinds of things, but mostly it will be sourced in petty grievances that allow them to maintain an illusion of superiority. The list of offenses, whether they are real or contrived, serves to bolster the abuser’s sense of entitlement, and they will use them freely in order to justify their own behavior.

The victim will experience their own righteous indignation at the injustice of the abuser’s self-righteous cruelty, and they will rightly sense God’s indignation against the wickedness that the abuser excuses. The abuser, who claims to be a Christian, will work over-time to deflect appropriate indignation away from themself and toward the victim, and when this is effective, the victim will experience the unjust indignation of misguided onlookers who have bought into the abuser’s lies.

The kind of indignation that a victim will least likely see is the indignation of a repentant abuser. This is the third characteristic of a repentant person from 2 Corinthians 7, and it can be understood as “irritation” or “vexation.” A repentant abuser will be bothered by every aspect of their sin, but an unrepentant abuser may also appear to be bothered by their sin. You can recognize the difference by observing the locus of responsibility and of grief.

Without repentance, the abuser’s indignation will be directed at their past, at some circumstance, or at any other thing that might have plausibly “caused” their behavior. Their discomfort with respect to the reality of their own wickedness, and the destruction they have caused, will cause them to withdraw from taking full and unqualified responsibility for their sin. They will tend to be annoyed with any attempt to hold them personally accountable, and they will use a twisted version of “forgiveness” as a way to shortcut around the natural consequences of their behavior. In such a case, the victim will not be “allowed” the time and space necessary to work through what has happened to them.

Without repentance, the grief expressed by an abuser will be directed at what they have lost. They will grieve the loss of control in their relationship; they may grieve the damage done to their reputation; or they may grieve any number of other self-centered consequences. They will not truly grieve the damage done to their victim, and one way this can be seen is when they expect the victim to quickly “get over” the abuse that they have endured. Such an expectation can only happen in an environment where the abuse, and the damage it has caused, has been minimized. This is not the spirit of indignation that Paul describes.

In contrast, a repentant abuser will be grieved about their sin; they will be grieved at their own heart condition that gave rise to their behavior; and they will be grieved on behalf of God for both. They will also resonate with the grief expressed by their victim, and they will learn to be sympathetic with the victim’s need for distance and time to heal and be strengthened. They will see the victim’s insistence on accountability as being just and understandable, and they will agree with God’s righteous indignation against their sin. While they may hope for some measure of grace and forgiveness, they will willingly accept justice as a righteous consequence of their sin.

This righteous indignation cannot exist without empathy, and the truth is that a profound lack of empathy is one of the most significant problems an abuser manifests. They are so self-focused that they do not consider the heavy consequences that their behavior is having on their “loved” ones. They cannot relate with the enduring damage that they have done. When there is genuine repentance, a renewed empathy will be observable and persistent. Anything less is not genuine repentance.