In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be…and there was…” God created humankind in his own image; in the image of God he created him. (Gen 1)
For a number of years, I have been teaching myself Biblical Hebrew. I’m not as far along as I’d like to be because often life interferes and then I have to relearn what I’ve forgotten. However, one thing I’ve learned is Hebrew is a beautiful language with many deep meanings. For example, the Hebrew word דָבָר (pronounced as “davar”) means “word” but it also means “thing.” It is very odd that one word can mean two very different things. It seems like such an unrelated, random pairing, doesn’t it? Until you consider Genesis 1:
Throughout Genesis 1, the phrase repeats “And God said, ‘Let there be’…and there was…” He spoke “things”–light, water, land, oceans, vegetation, animal and marine life, into existence with His “words.” And, finally, He spoke humans into existence, making us in His image.
I often ponder that one of the ways that humans were made in the image of God is that we also have the power to create with our words. Genesis 1 says that God created mankind in His own image. I believe that one of the ways that we are an image of God is that our human words can also create things. We can’t create the sun and moon or plants and animals like God can, but there are things our words can create.
For example, authors have the fantastic ability to create people and worlds with their words. Really good storytellers bring their stories to life in a way that makes them feel real, makes us care about the world and the people in them, and makes us experience what they do so we endure hardship with them, fear for them, and rejoice when they succeed. But authors aren’t the only ones to create with their words. In the “real” world, our words can bring about strength or weakness, courage or cowardice, hope or despair, life or death.
Through words, advertisers can influence what people buy. Their words bring “things” into people’s lives. Politicians use words to try to influence people to vote for them. If elected, they gain positions of power through which they can greatly affect policies, laws, society, and even the world. Their words can affect the world negatively or positively. You can probably think of other things our words create.
I believe that abusers also create a reality with their words–or, rather, they seek to uncreate what God has created. God has created a world filled with life; abusers create destruction. God has created beauty; abusers create ugliness. God has created uniqueness and individuality; abusers erase it. God has created joy; abusers create misery and despair. God sets us free with truth; abusers enslave with lies. And so on. I’ve read that an abuser can take a beautiful, strong, intelligent, talented, funny person and turn her (or him) into someone who believes she is ugly, weak, stupid, untalented, and humorless person. The abuser has changed her reality; he has uncreated her.
I believe that abusers uncreate by destroying their victim’s core identity through various tactics and methods. One tactic is to subtly shift the blame onto their victims so they begin to think that it’s not the abuser’s actions that are the problem, but their own perceived lack of love, forgiveness, understanding, submission, etc. Abusers also smear their victims while hiding behind beautiful masks of respectability, compassion, godliness, victimhood, etc. In this way, they gain support from others, who side with them. The sad truth is that when a victim stands up to her abuser, she’s not just standing against one person. She also must stand up to–and often loses–family, friends, church, etc., as they support the abuser and turn against her. Helena Knowlton is an abuse therapist who has a wonderful website called Confusion to Clarity. She has written this about her own experience with abuse:
“I was living in an internal hell of confusion and self-doubt. Around and around I would go, “Is it me? Is it him?” “He says it’s me and he’s very convincing. But why am I so afraid? And if it’s me, what else can I do?” “It is abuse. It’s not abuse.” “He can’t really mean to be doing this.”
Helena also has written:
“We have literally been brainwashed by the abuser…Brainwashing Definition: the activity of forcing somebody to accept your ideas or beliefs, for example by repeating the same thing many times or by preventing the person from thinking clearly. Our reality has been changed to the reality the abuser creates. This is why, when we begin to see the abuse, we switch back and forth between believing it and not believing it. Every covert abuse victim goes through this because of brainwashing.”
“There’s no one outside of us that’s confirming our experience. We go to friends, pastors, even counselors, and are told the same thing our abuser is telling us…Nobody wants to believe that a seemingly normal person would want to destroy the persona of his partner…Everyone around us is confirming the brainwashing. We are being gaslighted by our whole world.”
I have experienced this back-and-forth torment. I’ve made much progress in my life overcoming this, but I occasionally struggle with it at times, like the ache of a wound that is not quite healed, like an echo of self-doubt: What if the accusations are true and I am just unaware of it? What if I am who they say I am? What if it’s my fault? What if I am a terrible person? Should I have left sooner or stayed longer?
The way to cut through the false reality is with truth. I think I’ve learned much through the years as I’ve sought the truth.
BELOVED DAUGHTER of the King 