The Myth of the Weak Victim

The debate currently raging across America relating to guns is a sub-text of a larger phenomenon I call “The Myth of the Weak Victim”.

The Myth of the Weak Victim is a mindset that addresses all power imbalances by prioritizing strengthening the victim over the nullification of abusive power.  Although protecting victims and their rights remains an imperative, limiting our imagination to this empowerment is shortsighted and distorts the relationship between abuser and victim by focusing on the victim’s inability to cope rather than on the perpetrator’s insistence on victimizing.

The Myth of the Weak Victim is the lynchpin of the gun lobby’s argument for the unrestricted availability of dangerous firearms.  National Rifle Association Chairperson Wayne LaPierre’s argument that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” is the perfect embodiment of the Myth of the Weak Victim.  Rather than a commitment to take a societal stand against violence and the abuse of power enabled by unrestricted access to guns, the answer is to arm the victim.  One can argue that it is naïve and unrealistic—even dangerous—to expect bad guys to not have guns.  But this argument is born of a prior, unspoken assumption that admits, “We cannot stop power abuse and violence.”  Accepting this premise blinds us to alternative ways of thinking.

Guns are but one segment of society where this myth plays out.  Throughout our country domestic abuse prevention shelters are full of victims of abuse while abusers remain comfortably at home.  Why is it hard to imagine a society wherein those who have suffered abuse are comfortably at home while abusers populate temporary housing for treatment and rehabilitation?  When abuse happens in churches, perpetuated by either clergy or powerful lay people, the research indicates that more often than not the matter is dealt with by advising the victim to “move on” to either another church or judicatory while the perpetrators remain in place and the behavior unchecked.  Although social awareness of bullying is increasing, it is still the most common approach to bullying either in school or in the workplace to advise the victim of “strategies” of dealing with the bullying, including avoidance.  The ongoing plight of the LBGT community serves as another example of culture’s acquiescence to abusive power.  In each of these instances, the abuse of power and violence is managed by focusing on the victim and the victim’s options rather than taking a powerful stand against the abuse of power and its accompanying physical and emotional violence. 

The Myth of the Weak Victim is particularly relevant as we approach Holy Week.  Holy Week celebrates the “weak victim” that is Christ as he is brutalized and crucified by those who justified violence with religious and political claims.  The historical Church interpretation of the events of Holy Week is God’s self-sacrifice for sin.  The notion that Jesus “died for my sins” glorifies the victimization of Jesus while minimizing the cruelty of his attackers.  If Jesus’ death is atonement for sin, than humanity benefits from promoting the violence that leads to the crucifixion.

But this insistence upon the efficacy of Jesus’ death obscures Jesus’ message of the presence and nature of the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom of God is a reality rooted—not in the weak victim—but in the social inversion of power.  The first are last, the poor are invited to the feast, and power is expressed through compassion and not dominance.  The Myth of the Weak Victim grants as a given the ongoing presence of violence and abuse.  The Kingdom of God inverts and eradicates this distinction between power and victim.  In the Kingdom of God the weak need no encouragement but ascend to a place of perpetual safety. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Popular theology often disconnects the crucifixion from the resurrection.  One is the atonement for sin, the other the gateway to eternal life.  But if the crucifixion is seen as the unjust act of brutality that it is, then the resurrection becomes the astonishing miracle of forgiveness and second chance.  Jesus’ resurrection gives us the opportunity to reexamine our willful acceptance of violence and reevaluate ways in which we can eliminate crucifixion in all of its forms.  Rather than a world of the weak victim, we strive for a world that has no victim at all.