I grew up in a violent home, and it took me decades to find terms and categories that finally let me understand that aspect of my childhood.
My first conversation partners and readings said I was a victim of abuse, but that framing was too passive to resonate with me. I believe the passive voice is valid, even essential. But when I discovered another framework, the child of war, I finally began to understand my past.
Personal History That Led to Thoughts of War
My father was a gifted professional, a compelling speaker who also possessed a shrewd wisdom. My mother seemed like a match—gifted, educated, and kind. But he was violent, even though for 16 years he was a pastor, and my mother couldn’t contain him. His behavior was our family secret, and if I hoped to understand it, I was on my own.
Eventually, I read stories about one-dimensional moral monsters called “abusers”; their children were “victims.” But my parents seemed too admirable to be monsters, and the idea that I was a passive victim didn’t label my experience.
I left home at 16 and essentially forgot the past until the month my father died. At that point, my readings on war let me see that my childhood had much in common with people who tried to resist and endure the aggression of a superior power. Terms like “resistance,” “war,” and “agency” fit better. They fostered understanding and healing.
My first sharp memory is as ragged as a torn fingernail. Four years old, I’m hiding in my mother’s closet, behind dresses that smell of dust and skin cream. My skin stings and a deep ache runs beneath the surface. I’ve been spanked enough to know how it feels, but this is different. I think, I did something wrong, but what? I must deserve this, but why did he hit me so hard? Why does it hurt . . . so . . . much? I’m baffled by what we call mistreatment and betrayal.
Fifty years later, I realized that 4-year-olds shouldn’t have the ability or experience to reflect critically on their beatings. And yet, because I could judge his actions, I could separate myself from him—he was “the” father rather than “my” father—and that gave me agency.
When I turned 7, my favorite birthday gift was a miniature cowboy wagon. It was cheap, and the father quickly detected a flaw in the plastic. “This will snap,” he declared. He tugged and pulled at it until it broke, then he handed me the pieces and said, “See, I told you that would happen.”
The playground had taught me that this was cruelty, so I decided to feel nothing, to sever his capacity to wound me. It was a foolish vow, one no child can fully keep, but it gave me a sense of agency or control. Two years later, it paid off. The chief gift for my 9th birthday was a basketball. When he decided I liked it too much, he stabbed it with a long knife. But by then, I’d hardened myself enough (agency again) to feel no grief, no surprise. It registered as a problem: Where would I get the money to buy another ball? How would I keep it safe?
Because I could judge my father’s actions, I could separate myself from him, and that gave me agency.
As time passed, my older brother and I began to resist him. We wore thick jeans when it seemed a belt might begin to fly. If a blow landed? Physical pain usually doesn’t last long. Social pains were tougher. The family moved often, because the father could always get a job but was too erratic to keep one. I attended five schools in seven years, chiefly in insular towns.
I discovered that my athletic skills let me make friends through one team or another. Yet it was wise to mask my academic abilities-—unless the boys needed a math champion to wipe the smirks off the smart girls’ faces. I was making a way, until the dynamics at home shifted.
Perhaps it was the alcohol. Perhaps it was the professional failure. The father was now reduced to the oversight of a tiny country church, two part-time jobs, and summer work for the Red Cross. Whatever the reasons, his behavior became ominous. He cursed and raged day after day, denouncing his enemies, excoriating communists, and raging at his sons. He continued to strike us, occasionally trying to cause real injury, when we were 12 to 15, but he also began to talk about killing us.
Eventually, he said it so often that we could ignore it—until we heard him scrape his gun off the top of his bookcase. When we heard bullets clattering, when we heard our mother scream “Run! Run!” we took off. Even if we had no shoes and no coat, even if freezing rain pelted us, we ran, then huddled and shivered under a bridge, trying to guess when his wrath would dissipate so we could risk a return to our house. Alas, there was no other haven, no friend or family or authority who knew. We were on our own.
The rages grew more frequent, more intense, and my older brother and I realized we needed to plan our defense, for it was now clear our mother could no longer defuse our father’s wrath, and some combination of groundless optimism and raw shame kept her from asking for help. Years later, I asked her, “How many times did you think he would kill us in the next 10 minutes?” She searched her memory and sighed, saying, “Four times. Maybe five.” We understood; we had to defend ourselves.
The strategy sessions were surreal but essential. Option 1: Escape. If we were downstairs, we would run out a door or hop from a certain window. Upstairs, we kept two windows unlocked, in case he blocked the steps. One led to a porch roof and a seven- or eight-foot jump to the backyard; the other was higher, but escaping with sprained ankle was better than being trapped.
Option 2: Kinetic action. We played a lot of baseball at this time. Wooden bats were the norm, and when they broke, we scattered them through the house, always keeping one near the back door and one at the front, in case we had no other choice. If he traps us, one of us has to attack him and the other has to get a bat and hit him—hard—on his feet and his knees. We know, but don’t say, that my older brother, larger and stronger, will attack him physically and I will swing the bat. It’s a terrible thought, and yet I may need to do it, if it’s life or death.
Please don’t think that I advocate fighting violence with violence. I only describe a short-term plan to not die. Our mother should have called the authorities. We should have too. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see that option at the time.
Whatever the reason, I could always detach from the death threats, which seemed like dreams or theater. Unfortunately, the father realized he could tailor his cruelty to each child’s weakness. Physical blows enraged my older brother, so the father struck his body. My younger brother was tenderhearted, so the father terrorized him with tales of demons and dark powers. He chose to wound my spirit with fine-tuned streams of insults that could last for 10, 20, 30 minutes a day. Why? Because I relied on certain skills to find friends.
He saw my confidence, so he tried to destroy it with a series of words: “You are useless, worthless, and helpless, and you always will be. You are weak, weak like a newborn kitten, blind and helpless, mewling for milk. Yes, a helpless, useless, worthless baby kitten.” As insults go, it’s not much, but it got under my skin, and he saw it, so he repeated it day after day, for almost three years.
The rule for these sessions was “You cannot leave and may not reply.” So I sat in a chair and listened. How could I fight back? Who can fight tanks with sticks? But I did what I could. I stared at him, unblinking, with all the disbelief and disdain my face and posture could muster. Then I listed my skills and shouted within, “I am not worthless. You are wrong.”
So my brothers and I tried, however feebly, to defend ourselves. It wasn’t much, but the effort counted. We felt we had a measure of strength, and that helped us survive.
We felt we had a measure of strength, and that helped us survive.
The sense that we resisted, defended ourselves, possibly fought back led me to consider us children of war. Yes, we were weak, but we were warriors, not victims. Not a typical war, however, an internal or civil war, for we battled our nearest neighbor, the man who gave us life, fed us, taught us, coached us, and also wanted to destroy us.
The father wasn’t the monochromatic monster I encountered in the literature of abuse. He loved to talk to us over meals, regaled us with vivid stories, and played Socrates, asking us question after question, driving us to think harder. We were in a civil war with a man we wanted to love. He was dangerous but admirable. This left us with internal conflict, but perhaps because he engaged us mentally as near-peers, it was possible to be agents, not victims, when he boiled with rage. So we suffered threats and violence and resisted with whatever tools children possess.
Another Perspective: Child of War
While I was sorting through these issues, David Powlison, a gifted psychologist, writer, and friend, pointed me to Psalm 129. It opens this way:
“Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth”—
let Israel now say—
“Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth,
yet they have not prevailed against me.” (vv. 1–2)
The words “me” and “my” in verse 1 lead us to expect a personal lament. But no, all Israel must join in! The congregation repeats the lament, word for word. Individuals suffer affliction, and communities do too. So the community joins a refrain and then adds a surprising conclusion: “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me.”
Although afflicted, we stand. This might be a shout of victory: “We defeated our foe!” Or it could be defiance without victory: “We survived. We stand.” The next lines show that the second option is correct, for the mood remains gritty, even woeful:
The plowers plowed upon my back;
they made long their furrows.”
The LORD is righteous;
he has cut the cords of the wicked. (vv. 3–4)
Strong plows tear up the ground, and a plow, if applied to a human back, rips skin, muscles, tendons, and blood vessels. Plows don’t make neat incisions. And since “their furrows” are “long,” we imagine them running from shoulder to hip. That kind of wound does heal, but not completely. Scars must remain. But we resist tenaciously: “They have not prevailed.” Why not? Because “the LORD . . . has cut the cords of the wicked.” This is a confession of faith, both for individuals and for the believing community. God doesn’t permit the wicked to prevail.
This prompts an objection: “But the wicked do prevail. Genocide can erase entire people groups. Adults murder children.” Yes, but we can assume that the author, an Israelite, knows that. He’s writing a poem and a song, not a treatise on the problem of evil. As a poem or song, its language galvanizes hope in the darkest hours.
Psalm 129 certainly gave me a tool to reframe my childhood. A plower—a father—plowed the backs of his children. He dealt blows, both physical and emotional. Powlison, reflecting on this text, interpreted the metaphor of the plow. If someone takes a plow to a human back, he said, the scars fade but never disappear. They last a lifetime; we never “get past” great cruelty: “You won’t get over it, but you do not need to be forever defined by [it].”
In short, we defend ourselves and the Lord defends us, so evil men will not prevail. In time, we may experience God’s grace until we sing another poem: “It is good to sing praises to our God. . . . He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (147:1, 3).
I assert that many children, women, men, and people groups endure abuse and exploitation. They’re captured, enslaved, and tethered to masters through drug addiction. Evildoers certainly abuse their victims, especially if they seem weak or defenseless. But the writers, speakers, and friends I first encountered spoke in entirely passive terms.
The passive voice is essential because many who suffer violence have not the strength to resist. But some can resist. For them, there’s another way to construe their experience. Many adults and some children resist, defend themselves, and deprive aggressors of power by fighting back.
The women and men who fight sex traffickers, slave traders, and warlords know the deceivers and oppressors who abuse women, children, and men. They also know that a community can rekindle an adult victim’s sense that he has options and agency. He can act on his own behalf.
The sense that we resisted, defended ourselves, possibly fought back led me to consider us children of war. Yes, we were weak, but we were warriors, not victims.
The best novels on suffering children make the same point. (Here, I assume great novels describe the human condition as well as scientific surveys). Charles Dickens, Pat Conroy, Barbara Kingsolver, and Roald Dahl all wrote novels whose protagonist is a mistreated and resourceful child. They’re victims and agents. They suffer abuse and they resist and chart a life for themselves.
In The Great Santini, by Conroy, the son finally fights his powerful and abusive father. Both David Copperfield by Dickens and Demon Copperhead by Kingsolver feature boys who suffer tragedy on tragedy but ultimately survive and thrive with a combination of timely help, innate gifts, and a will to persevere. In Matilda, by Dahl, the eponymous hero has parents who despise her and constantly tell her she’s “ignorant and stupid” when she knows she isn’t. When her father rips one of her books to shreds in a fit of anger, she thinks, “The only sensible thing to do when you are attacked is, as Napoleon once said, to counter-attack.”
We admire Matilda’s boldness, but it’s best to see that sufferers have several options. Experts say that when evil threatens, people freeze, flee, fight, or fawn over the oppressor to gain his favor. A trapped person may try all four options. Many people sense that freezing or fawning are the only options. Certainly, there’s a time to flee. Jesus told his disciples, “When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next” (Matt. 10:23; see Luke 21:21).
Let me repeat: The passive voice is essential. Violent people do abuse victims, who cannot protect themselves. But if we use nothing but the passive voice, we suffer from conceptual poverty. We can see abused children both as passive victims and as active agents. The problem of abuse is polychromatic; we cannot represent it accurately with one gray crayon. A father is cruel and hilarious. A mother is mean and she bears glorious gifts. If we have more words and concepts, we have more mental tools. That promotes understanding and healing.
To complicate matters, in certain settings it’s advantageous to claim victim status. It has cultural cachet. Victims garner attention and have a privileged voice. But if we spotlight passive categories, we obscure the need to resist wickedness. Happily, a growing interest in resilience provides another category. Resilient people survive, possibly by escaping, possibly enduring, possibly by fighting.
Some conceptions of violence are incorrect. Buddhists and Stoics urge people to endure suffering by detaching from it, for the less we care about this world, the less it can disappoint us. We certainly object to the ancient Greco-Roman world, where people with power exercised it as they pleased. They assumed that the possession of power conferred the right to use that power at will. They didn’t count it as “abuse” if a master beat or even killed a slave, because a slave was considered human but not a person with legal rights.
The Bible construes violence differently. It faces it, describes it, laments it, resists it, punishes it, and asks God to break its power. David prays, “Arise, LORD! Save me, O my God! . . . You break the teeth of the wicked” (Ps. 3:7). Comparing the wicked to beasts, he sings, “Tear out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD” (58:6).
There are exceptions, like Judges 19:22–30, but the Bible rarely speaks of abuse. Job and Elijah pity themselves at times (Job 3; 1 Kings 19:4, 10), but they aren’t commended for it. More often, we meet heroes of the faith who suffer unjustly but respond boldly. Joseph rebuilds his life in Egypt (Gen. 39–41). David flees from Saul and starts life anew (1 Sam. 19:10–18; 21–27). And Daniel defies an unjust law, knowing he might suffer for it (Dan. 6).
Again, I affirm the need for the passive voice. To adapt the wording of my colleague Sterling Webster, the passive voice rightly lets us say, “This happened to me. I was a victim.” The active voice lets us also say, “And now I will respond.” By using both voices, we cover more of our experience. The passive voice says, “I suffered harm and it’s not my fault.” The active voice adds, “But it is my problem. I must address it.” The passive voice is good and necessary, but if we omit the active voice, we may think we’re helpless when we aren’t.
To that point, Paul urges disciples to think of themselves as spiritual warriors: “Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:3, NIV 1984). When Paul closes 1 Timothy, he charges his protégé to “fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Tim. 6:12). In 2 Timothy, as Paul faces unjust execution, he says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). No doubt, Paul suffered violence and abuse, but he thought of fighting and endurance.
So then, the category of abuse is necessary but not sufficient. It’s valid, but there are other valid categories. Those categories have the active voice: resistance, endurance, fighting for oneself. Because the active concepts label essential aspects of suffering, they help “victims of abuse” and “children of war” see their past and address it, so the scars that never disappear may at least fade.
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