Notice that for Frankl, the abused can become abusers and the oppressed become oppressors because they can fall prey to a “danger (in the sense of psychological hygiene) [that] is the psychological counterpart of the bends.”7 For him, it’s not that external factors in such cases bring out what is already in people (i.e., their fallen natures), but that those factors induce a new condition in some people—it makes them morally and spiritually worse.

No one with a modicum of cultural awareness could have missed the fact that in the past few years a rather intense media spotlight has been shined on all types of abuse—physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual, etc. And nothing has served to more clearly train this spotlight on these subjects than the #MeToo¹ and #ChurchToo² movements. While these movements began as a way to bring charges of sexual abuse out in the open, they soon became tributaries to a preexisting river of online shaming³ known as Cancel Culture.⁴ Eventually, the current of this river began sweeping away innocent people.

It’s questionable whether any of these cultural phenomena would have even existed, let alone taken the shape they have, were it not for social media. But one thing is not questionable: once again, many Christians have been swept up in the unrighteousness of our age. We’ve not only enjoyed the blessings of social media but we’ve also succumbed to its hazards. Many of us have become eager participants in a culture more concerned with virtue signaling about justice than with justice that resides in the heart.

Lest anyone misunderstand the points I am about to make, let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with abuse victims truthfully sharing accounts of their abuse, even when it means publicly identifying their abuser. Further, there is nothing wrong with being a firm ally to abuse victims. These are both good things. What is wrong is when the abused become abusers, the oppressed become oppressors, and the victims become the victimizers.

The phenomenon of the cruel victim

As an Auschwitz survivor and psychiatrist, Viktor E. Frankl was in a unique position to observe how this can happen and explain it to us. In Man’s Search for Meaning, which I first read in high school, he recorded the attitudes and behaviors of some of his fellow survivors after their liberation:

Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was that they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences.⁵

Frankl explained this on the basis of his belief that some people simply can’t handle a sudden release from long periods of the kind of stress prisoners experienced at Auschwitz:

Just as the physical health of the caisson worker would be endangered if he left his diver’s chamber suddenly (where he is under enormous atmospheric pressure), so the man who has suddenly been liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health.⁶

Notice that for Frankl, the abused can become abusers and the oppressed become oppressors because they can fall prey to a “danger (in the sense of psychological hygiene) [that] is the psychological counterpart of the bends.”⁷ For him, it’s not that external factors in such cases bring out what is already in people (i.e., their fallen natures), but that those factors induce a new condition in some people—it makes them morally and spiritually worse.

But who are these “some people?” They’re clearly not people like Frankl, who observes them with a somewhat detached and clinical if empathetic gaze. No. Frankl tells us that these are “people with natures of a more primitive kind,” and because their natures are not as developed as those of others (like him) they “could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life.”⁸ The brutality of the camp somehow influences these simpler adults to become brutal, which assumes they weren’t brutal beforehand.

From a Christian perspective, this is obviously a very Pelagian kind of diagnosis—one that assumes we become sinners through external influences instead of being born sinners by nature. So, what’s his prescription? What’s his therapy?

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been [very grave]…I can still see the prisoner who rolled up his shirt sleeves, thrust his right hand under my nose and shouted, “May this hand be cut off if I don’t stain it with blood on the day when I get home!” I want to emphasize that the man who said these words was not a bad fellow. He had been the best of comrades in camp and afterwards.⁹

This isn’t a necessarily bad procedure, but we must be clear: it resembles what Reformed Christians call the 2nd use of the Law (to restrain evil), rather than the 3rd (to show us how to please God). In other words, it doesn’t lead to true repentance out of gratitude for forgiveness in Christ but only to an avoidance of bad consequences. Frankl’s concern is to help these simple folks readjust to civilized society, not to help them see that their own desire to take out their revenge on the whole world springs from a twistedness in their human natures and brings real guilt upon them.

He goes on to discuss other sources of bitterness and disillusionment as survivors returned home to their loved ones only to discover they weren’t there because they’d perished. If one isn’t at least tempted to weep reading Frankl’s account, one is barely human, let alone Christian. But even more tragic is the Christless perspective he brings to it.

The phenomenon resurfaces

Sadly, many Christians have followed secular authors who brought a similar perspective to sufferings of a much lesser sort than people like Frankl experienced at Auschwitz. Some went way beyond him and had audacity to compare growing up in a “dysfunctional family” (which was defined very broadly a quarter-century ago) with being a Holocaust survivor. Wendy Kaminer provided a helpful critique of how such notions became common in both secular and Christian literature in I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional.¹⁰

This encouraged a whole generation (of mostly Boomers) to find dysfunction and abuse just about everywhere, especially in their own families, and to respond abusively to those who disagreed with them, in ways that often resemble how Frankl’s fellow Auschwitz survivors lashed out at the world. To even question someone’s account of abuse made one, at the very least, complicit, and perhaps an actual abuser. Thus was born our culture’s first large-scale experiment in turning alleged victims into inadvertent victimizers.

Read More