No Fake Apologies, Please
Abuse thrives in an environment of deception and secrecy. It requires being able to convince someone that something is good and right (or at least allowable), when in reality it is destructive and wicked. When religious people are abusers, they are not actually righteous; they only want to appear that way. That is why such people become very good at making spiritual sounding arguments that appear to defend their own position. They are also experts at sounding like they are repentant, when in reality, they aren’t, nor do they believe they should be. They are a modern-day embodiment of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.
Jesus pronounced woe upon these religious leaders by saying they were like whitewashed sepulchers, nice on the outside and rotten on the inside. Jesus called them out for arguing minutiae while ignoring God’s larger priorities: justice, mercy, and faith. In the same way, the abuser perverts justice, acting with malice and cruelty while blaming their victim. The abuser refuses to show mercy, clinging to every minor fault as if it is a major offense that somehow overshadows the perverse wickedness of their own sin, and the abuser denies faith by contending that their heart condition has nothing to do with their own behavior.
They claim to believe God, but they live in a way that resembles the filth of Satan more than the Jesus they profess to be following. These are hypocrites of the worst kind, and they are called by God to repent, but sadly, they will not usually repent. Instead, they will argue their point, and they are very good at convincing others that they aren’t that bad or that their victim is the real cause of the problem. They will minimize their sin, even as they pretend to take responsibility for it. Such apologies are fake and bear no resemblance to biblical repentance.
The second characteristic of repentance in 2 Corinthians 7 reads “clearing of yourself,” and it is translated from the Greek word, “apologia.” It means, “to defend; or to make an argument.” Non-repentant abusers have refined their ability to use arguments in order to deceive others, and sometimes even themselves. They will put up a strong defense for themselves, but they will avoid defending any truth that would expose them or proclaiming the justice that would condemn them. This is the opposite of repentance. Where the abuser gives excuses, explanations, or fake apologies that argue on behalf of themself, a repentant person will actually argue against their own behavior.
Because the repentance that Paul describes starts with a diligence to make things right, the repentant person’s argument will be thorough and searching with respect to their own heart’s deceptions and depravity. They will pull the cover back on their own sin and agree with the truth about it. They will have to agree that they have been cruel, unloving, perverted, and wicked. They will have to get to the place where they can portray their own behavior, and the heart from which those actions sprung (“out of the heart”), as being the perverse and twisted reality that it actually is. That is the confession of a repentant person, and that is what it means to “clear yourself.”
Anything short of should will be obvious to their victim, and it should be soundly rejected. The problem is that from the outside, this can look like the victim is not being forgiving, but that is not accurate and exactly what the religious abuser wants the outsider to think. On the one hand, the victim may have years of dealing with all kinds of cruelty, buried under mountains of lies, and they are now sorting through all of what has happened to them in order to understand the truth. All by itself, we should expect that to take some significant time.
At the same time, we should expect a repentant abuser to be diligently searching themself, but rather than taking the time necessary to expose their whole problem to the scrutiny of truth, the abuser will often try to shortcut the process, make a show of sorrow, and press for the victim to “get over it” quickly. However, by the time a victim has chosen to confront the abuser’s behavior, they have usually endured years of lies, cruelty, self-righteousness, and a whole host of other destructive behaviors. So when the victim removes themself from the abuser’s influence, they quickly begin to see more clearly the depth of the harm that they have endured at the hands of their abuser, and the more they begin to realize that truth. If they are taught what repentance should look like, any attempts by the abuser to minimize or stop short of true repentance will be rightly rejected.
The victim must be supported through this difficult time, and the abuser must be called to this kind of repentance. The church must call the abuser to do the hard work described by this “clearing of yourself.” This will require a full and complete reversal of the lies, hypocrisy, and heart corruption that is found at the root of their sin. A person who is repentant will not defend their sin in any way, nor will they minimize either the wickedness of it or the harm that has been caused by it. Be careful at this point, because fake repentance comes with very real sounding fake apologies.
This is one reason that we do not give an abuser a list of things that they must do in order to reconcile with their victim. Such an action would encourage the opposite of this diligent work required to fully grasp and confess the depth of their own sin. Rather than only doing what is expected regarding matters that have already been exposed, a repentant abuser will show a thorough diligence in searching out the truth, undermining their own lies, and questioning themselves on every point. It is unwise to accept anything less, and the best gauge for this is the victim’s own assessment.
The abuser should be able to detail their sin in such a way that their victim recognizes it as thoroughly and entirely true. It is imperative to understand that any outsider is not in a position to be able to know if the abuser has exposed all that their hypocrisy and lies have hidden from public scrutiny. Only the victim is going to know if a thorough and complete change has occurred. Do not lose sight of the fact that such a change is difficult to recognize precisely because the abuser has been living a lie for so long that it is second nature to deceive you.
Also, you need to know that there is a great danger in calling an abuser to repentance!
If you stand with the victim as they confront their abuser’s sin, it is critical that the victim be educated on what true repentance will look like and that they are completely confident that there has been genuine repentance before even beginning some kind of reconciliation. If the abuser is able to give a convincing but fake apology, the moment the victim is back under their control they will be sure to assert their control and continue their abuse. If that happens, the abuse will almost always eventually escalate, and the victim’s situation will become much worse. It would be better for the victim for you to ignore the abuse than to confront it and then stop short of insisting on full repentance.