Revelation 12:9-10 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world–he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.
Deviled ham. Deviled eggs. You little devil. When we use the word “devil” in these ways, we don’t really mean that the ham or the eggs or the child is literally of the devil. In fact, when it comes to the “little devil” child, we actually mean he’s kind of cute. “Why, you little devil!” after he has raided the last of the cookies.
But here, I want to talk about the abuser as devil. And as I do, I in fact mean that the abuser is a literal child of the devil who shares in his diabolic father’s nature and uses tactics that Satan himself uses. Specifically, I want to talk about the abuser as accuser and how this trait truly does reveal that abuse is satanic. [Note: Of course every person born into this world is dead in sin and a child of wrath. See Ephesians 2 for example. But the abuser operates in a manner that is particularly and classically satanic. He murders. He accuses]
John 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
We all know that abusers are never, never, ever wrong. Even if they admit some kind of “mistake” it will be a halfway admission disguised as a full one. Now, in order to deflect blame from themselves, abusers accuse. Call it blaming or guilting, it is the same thing. Accusation of the innocent. Not only does accusing the victim turn blame away from the accuser, it serves as a powerful means of control. When we are accused, when we feel guilty and when we doubt ourselves, we are weak. We don’t see clearly. We believe what is said about us instead of being able to see things as they really are. Accusation, we say again, is a very, very powerful tool. Accusation is used by bullies, by false religious leaders, by political tyrants, all designed to shame and control.
A few years ago you may have watched the Dr. Phil show about Renee Kopp and her ex-husband/abuser Kirby. He is the one who hit her “for her own good” with a wooden paddle. As Dr. Phil interviewed him, Kirby exhibited the classic abuser trait of accusation. He is hitting Renee, but she is to blame. He abused the children, but she is to blame. And what is very interesting about Kirby’s accusations is how remarkably quickly he is able to spew out those accusations, twisting the facts in order to accuse Renee. I mean, he can vomit out these accusations without even thinking about it. It is who he is. It is what he does.
If you have experienced this kind of thing directed at you, you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t, it is hard for those of us who have been targeted by the abuser accuser to explain its dynamic to you. The accuser is never wrong. No matter what has happened and no matter how obvious it is to everyone else that he is wrong, he will accuse instead of confess. And his accusations many times take a virtual bizarre and ridiculous form. One very common example of this kind of accusation is when I have pointed out to such a person that they did an abusive thing at such and such a time to specific people who I named. Those other people all witnessed the abuser abusing. And the response? “You made me do it!”
As I said, this is a very difficult thing to describe – this tactic of accusation. Because you feel it as much as you see it, and the feelings are hard to explain. The accusations spew out of the abuser so smoothly and so naturally and with such apparent certainty that even people who witnessed the abusive event start feeling doubts about what they saw and heard. And the victim, when accused by such a person, starts feeling badly about themselves. You start to feel guilt which, objectively, is not yours at all.
When you confront the abuser accuser, you will soon realize that you could go on confronting him for hours and hours and hours and it will do no good. He will just keep deflecting the truth and fire off accusations at you. And if he starts to run out of more current examples of your guilt, he will start pulling them out of your past. I wore the guilt of such accusations more than once before I woke up to the nature of the abuser and realized that not only was I not guilty of the accusations, the events that I was supposedly accused of never even took place! The abuser was citing fiction.
Whenever a person repeatedly accuses you, you can know that they have selected you as a target to be brought under their evil control for their own selfish purposes to which they insist they are entitled to carry out. Real friends do not accuse you. People who love us do not level accusations against us. They do not watch us with a motive of looking for accusatory cannon fodder. The devil does. And so do his servants. He is by nature a murderer, a liar, and an accuser of the righteous. So are his children.
So true.