Wounded by God's People (3 page)

Like Rahab, I wonder if you've been considered an outsider … on the periphery … for a long time. Perhaps generations of your family have lived separated from the one living God — separated from
truth, real goodness, righteousness, and holiness. Wounding can actually be a byproduct of our culture's creed …

Don't get mad, get even.

Don't let anyone walk over you.

Insist on your rights.

Assert yourself.

Whatever feels right is right.

If it works, do it.

Successful people don't fail.

More money means more happiness.

Tell people what they want to hear; never mind the truth.

Grab all the gusto you can.

If you don't put your interests first, who will?

Because you've been raised in this culture, have these misguided values trapped you in a fortress-like environment that is suffocating your spirit? Like Rahab, do you feel you are hopelessly stuck behind walls and walls of sin that impact …

Sin that's like a powerful Canaanite fortress from which you can't escape? Sin that has separated you from God and placed you on the outside.

As you read this, if your own heart has been quickened with longing for a different way of life, a longing to be set free, for true
salvation from sin, then I invite you to cry out to the God of Rahab. He is the same today as He was in her day. He has ears to hear the heartfelt cry of one person, no matter who you are or where you are or how long you have been there. Use the words of the following prayer if you need help articulating your cry.

Listen quietly with the ears of your heart. Can you hear the sound of His feet rushing up the stairs into your life …
You're saved! The God of Rahab has commanded Me to save you
.
¹⁸

Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold
.

From the Negev he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier and where he had first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the L
ORD
.

Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together. And quarreling arose between Abram's herdsmen and the herdsmen of Lot. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time
.

So Abram said to Lot, “Let's not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. Is not the whole land before you? Let's part company. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left.”

Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the L
ORD
, like the land of Egypt, toward Zoar. (This was before the L
ORD
destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company…
.

The L
ORD
said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”

So Abram moved his tents and went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the L
ORD
.

Genesis 13:2–11, 14–18

W
hen do wounds begin? Who can remember the first one?

And who can claim a life without them?

Among my earliest memories of being wounded is an experience I had in grade school. My fifth-grade teacher was a retired Presbyterian missionary. She was what my younger sister and I described at the time as an “old maid.” She looked like she came from central casting — gray hair pulled back in a tight bun, granite-like face seamed with wrinkles and carved into a disapproving frown, mouth tightened in a constant grimace, sharp eyes that missed nothing — and she did not like me. Her stern demeanor, our dark classroom, and lessons that seemed to drag on forever were a deadly combination for an energetic child. So from time to time, a deep and spontaneous sigh escaped from my lips. She glaringly told me one afternoon in no uncertain terms that if I sighed one more time in class, she would slap my face! I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and, believe you me, silently. My mother never understood why it was so hard for me to view missionaries as she did, as the aristocracy of heaven. If that were actually true, I surmised, I'd be very happy to remain a peasant.

As I remember my own childhood, it's sobering to contemplate the impact that a stern, unattractive, unloving, unkind adult can have on a child. Especially if that person is also considered to be a mature Christian. Had my fifth-grade teacher's demeanor and actions not been more than offset by my own deeply spiritual mother, whose
beauty, wit, grace, and compassion were so charming, I'm sure I would never have had such a strong desire to be a mature Christian myself.

But the first time I remember being more seriously wounded by those who called themselves Christians was in ninth grade. My parents had sent me off to a Christian boarding school where my older sister was also in attendance. While my sister was practically a poster child for the school, seated at the head table during meal times and introduced to any and every visiting dignitary, I was shuffled to the periphery. I was criticized and yelled at for no reason that I was aware of. When I developed a close friendship with another student as a buffer to the mistreatment, the headmistress actually accused me of having homosexual tendencies. I didn't even know what a homosexual was. I remember looking up the word in the dictionary and still not comprehending what it meant or how it could possibly apply to me. But one thing was clear. I was definitely on the outside of any inner circle. Within three months, I had been reprimanded for talking back to the headmistress, made something of a reputation for myself as a rebel, and landed in the infirmary with a persistent illness. And I learned the hard way that wounds inflicted on us, even if they are only wounds resulting from the laceration of words, can make us physically ill. My mother removed me from the school for several months so I could recover at home, but then sent me back to finish out the year. At the end of that first school year, I was transferred from the boarding school to the public high school in our mountain county in Western North Carolina, where I thrived.

A couple of years later, I became interested in fashion modeling, and my mother helped arrange some low-key but fun jobs for me in nearby Asheville. As a result, I began wearing makeup, bleached my
hair, and one Sunday morning had the audacity to wear a man's hat, such as I had seen on a
Vogue
model, to the little Presbyterian church we were members of in Montreat. I can still remember sitting in the fourth row of the church with my mother and siblings, waiting for the service to begin. I watched as a distinguished elderly lady rose from her seat, walked stiffly over to my mother, and with a stern look pronounced judgment on me — and on my mother for allowing me to wear a man's hat, especially to church. “And, by the way,” she added, “I've been meaning to speak to you, Ruth, about the way you've allowed Anne to bleach her hair and wear makeup like that.” My mother smiled, thanked the lady for her advice, then winked at me and told me I looked beautiful. Unique, but beautiful.

This seemingly small wound that took place in church was the first of a series of others that I endure to this day. Wounds inflicted when those within the church have pronounced judgment on me, not for the way I look, but for the way I speak … and where I speak … and to whom I speak.

These are just a few of my earliest experiences of feeling hurt and alienated by God's people. They may seem mild all these years later, but I remember them keenly because of how much they hurt at the time — and because they were the first of many such experiences to come. I will share more stories as the book unfolds. But through all of these painful situations, God, in His infinite grace, helped me to distinguish between His people and Himself. With each hurtful experience, I was confronted with a choice:
Would I reject Him because I was rejected by them?
Rather than rehash the decision every time I was rejected, I decided years ago that once and for all I was committed to live my life for God, regardless of the way He was represented by others. In other words, other people's treatment of me would in
no way affect my relationship with Him, unless it was to drive me closer to Him … to strengthen my faith in Him … to intensify my pursuit of knowing Him as He is and not for the tarnished image of Him that His people sometimes reflect. It was a decision that has proven valuable. Because as protected and prayed for as my family is and has been, without going into detail I can tell you that there have been wounds on top of wounds. Betrayal, adultery, rape, drunkenness, theft, drug addiction, lying, and other acts of the sinful nature have manifested themselves in my extended family.
¹
Actions motivated by jealousy, ambition, pride, lust, and greed —just plain old sin — have resulted in wounds that have inflicted untold damage on the wounded. Does that surprise you? That a preacher's extended family not only includes deeply wounded people, but also includes wounders? Yet it does. Which is one reason I know that God's love heals. He can redeem the wounded. And forgive the wounders.

When we think about it, why should my family be exempt from wounds anyway? The Bible says that all have sinned — that the heart of man is desperately wicked — and we live in a fallen world.
²
I dare to say that all families carry wounds inflicted by each other to a greater or lesser degree. Family life can be hard.

And “family” life was increasingly hard for Hagar. As a slave, wounds were woven into the very fabric of her existence. When she left Egypt, as devastating as this could have been for a young girl, I wonder if she may at first actually have viewed it as an adventure! She may have been filled with excitement as she anticipated exploring beyond the palace walls and Egypt's borders. She may have been thrilled to escape the authority of the palace officials and Pharaoh himself, and eager to serve Sarah, the breathtakingly beautiful princess. Perhaps to Hagar this seemed like the great escape from her
wounded life that she had dreamt of but never thought she would actually experience.

Reflecting back on the early years of our lives, I expect most of us tended to view the world with bright, eager eyes. We were filled with the anticipation of adventure and discovery. The possibilities seemed limitless to our young imaginations and dreams. But then reality set in.

When did real life hit you? Our dreams can die when we find ourselves, like Hagar, with the odds stacked against us — perhaps because of a dysfunctional family, an absentee parent, a sibling who tormented us one minute and hugged us the next, abuse by a friend or extended family member. Maybe as you grew up, you were wounded by …

Did your big break turn into a big bust? Sometimes a great escape from a wounded past can turn into something worse as we discover the wounds were not just from without, but they were within. So
regardless of where we go, what we do, who we are with, we carry those wounds with us.

Life can be hard, can't it? From the moment we leave the comfort of our mother's womb and the doctor or midwife slaps our little bottoms to make us cry our first deep breath, we are hurt. Everyone who lives longer than a day experiences a variety of hurts. Life hurts! Because life
is
hard.

Hagar's life with Abraham and Sarah may not have been hard initially. She appears to have lived comfortably and happily in Abraham's household for about ten years after leaving Egypt. She may have felt she had left her hard way of life behind her for good. With her youth, I expect she learned their language quickly, adapted to their nomadic lifestyle easily, and became accustomed to their ways without any difficulty. If she had not fit in well, Sarah would never have thought of recommending her to Abraham, as we will see she did in the next chapter. So while Hagar could have been homesick for Egypt and all that had been familiar, there is no indication that she was. The impression is that Hagar must have embraced her new home, her new family, her new way of life, and her new future without resentment, but with acceptance and flexibility.

I wonder what she thought the first time she observed Abraham building an altar and heard him calling on the name of his God.
³
Did she ask him or Sarah or one of the other servants for an explanation? Surely she was given the answer that Abraham was worshiping the one true living God, the Lord God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.
⁴
As she cleaned up after the evening meal and attended to Sarah's needs, did her mistress explain to her how God had spoken to Abraham when he was living in Ur? That God had told Abraham if he would follow Him in a life of obedient faith, he would be blessed
to be a blessing to the world.
⁵
Did Sarah tell Hagar that one primary aspect of God's blessing to Abraham was the promise of a “seed”? A son?
⁶
There was no need for Sarah to tell Hagar that she had been unable to conceive that seed and bear a child. That would have been obvious. Not just by the fact that there was no son, but by the pained, empty look on Sarah's face when she spoke of the longing … and the promise.

Hagar's masters were surely kind and good to her, and she must have related their treatment of her to their “God.” The contrast between the way they lived and the way the Canaanites around them lived must have made her take their God and their faith in Him seriously. With her Egyptian background, Hagar must have recognized the Canaanites for what they were … obscene, pornographic, selfish and self-centered, greedy, cruel … yet wealthy and attractive. While not as sophisticated as the Egyptians, the Canaanites were very much like the culture in which she had been raised. But Abraham's family was different.

She had witnessed firsthand the difference when fighting broke out between Abraham's servants and those of his nephew Lot.
⁷
Abraham immediately acted to resolve the tension, while Lot used the crisis for his own advancement, seizing the best of the prime pasture-land for his flocks and herds. Lot walked out with what appeared to be everything, leaving Abraham to live in a tent under the trees. What must have amazed Hagar and provoked her grudging admiration was that rather than being bitter, Abraham seemed content. Unlike the Canaanites and the Egyptians, he did not insist on his rights, or flaunt his position, or fight to acquire more possessions, or wield his power to force others to comply with what he wanted. He seemed to let go of everything and trust that God would give him what was best
in the long run. Abraham seemed to be living for something bigger … more … greater than the here and now. It was intriguing. Hagar must have slowly come to realize that it wasn't
something
bigger. It was
Someone
. Hagar must have increasingly come to realize that the difference in Abraham's life was his God.

As the years passed, I wonder if Hagar began to care about Abraham and his family. Did she begin to desire that their prayers would be answered? Did Abraham's confidence in God's promise spill over to Hagar so that she anticipated the day he and Sarah would have a son? Over the ten-year period she served them after leaving Egypt, she must have settled down and begun to respect them as well as to care about them and trust them.

Hagar's lengthy relationship with Abraham and Sarah must have made her wounding even more agonizing. Because while all of us experience bumps and bruises along life's journey … injustice … unfairness … unkindness … meanness … Hagar's story is not about those kinds of hurts. Her story is about wounds that were inflicted by those with whom she once felt safe and least expected to be wounders. Wounds inflicted by those she loved, respected, and trusted. Hagar was wounded by God's people.

If you have been wounded by God's people too … wounded by those with whom you had once felt safe and least expected to be wounders … wounded by those who you have loved, respected, and trusted … then you understand the pain is not something you can easily or quickly overcome. In fact, you and I can carry those wounds around with us until they begin to revolve in a cycle of pain, and we, in turn, become wounders ourselves.