Joh 8:31-32 So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; (32) and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

This is a topic I have written about before, but it is also a topic which bears repeating. Perpetual victimhood is a trap that people who have been the target of evil, perpetrated by a RASN (reviler, abuser, sociopath, narcissist) can be trapped by. Perpetual victimhood will make a slave of a victim and even morph the, into the shape of the very one who abused them. Perpetual victims, in other words, can to one degree or another become abusive people themselves.

You may have come across such people. While every survivor of narcissistic abuse, for instance, experiences certain “trigger” scenarios which set off unpleasant emotions and in a sense “re-traumatize,” as time goes along – especially if the survivor is a real Christian – as time goes along, the Lord’s healing is at work. A Christian experiences the love of God and increasingly grows in believing the Lord’s promises. Promises, for instance, to one day deal with the wicked, to one day once and for all put an end to all suffering and crying and pain and evildoers. These truths are freedom! The truth really does set us free.

But where an abuse victim chooses to remain a victim, where victims do not believe in or focus upon the truth of God’s Word, this nasty business of perpetual victimhood can put down its roots.

Have you ever been around a perpetual victim? Just as they once had to walk on eggshells around their abuser, so now everyone around them must walk on eggshells, lest the trigger get pulled. Such people are angry, angry people who lash out at anyone who says or does something which they deem “insensitive.”

This is not a path any of us should go down. A choice to do so will erode and destroy any new relationship. I once had the unpleasant experience of knowing such a person. She was an angry, bitter, and yes…abusive person. Years earlier she had been in a marriage that was a disaster. But years later she had allowed herself to become what she once was the victim of. Her adult son told me one day “my mother is an angry, bitter person, but….” and what he went on to tell me is that myself and everyone else had better walk on eggshells around her and never rebuke her for her sin toward others. This lady had everyone in her circle enslaved and fearful lest they trigger her and set her off.

Christ sets us free. That lady did not know Christ, though she claimed to be a Christian. But her fruit evidenced that she was not. She had chosen to be a perpetual victim….and indeed, she became a perpetual victim of her own doing.