Do you feel like a doormat?

Are Christians supposed to live their lives as doormats?

1 Peter 2:18-24, doormats? [1]

A reader and I have been both struggling with the issue of injustice and abuse. It’s an extremely complex issue and you don’t read or listen long before you hear phrases like, "But on the other hand" or "But I don’t mean by that". I suppose we talk about the matter to keep from saying nothing or because someone in their pain and bewilderment asks us what we think.

How much should a Christian take? Are there no limits? Does "turn the other cheek" (see Matthew 5:38-44) mean we’re supposed to see ourselves as doormats and act accordingly? That tough passage in 1 Peter 2:18-24 seems easy enough to understand until somebody starts sticking it to you. When that happens we don’t say it isn’t the word of God, but we’re inclined to read all the different versions and commentaries to make sure it means what it looks like it says.

It makes for a hard life if you’re daily suffering injustice and being abused and someone says to you, "God called you to this so take it patiently." See 1 Peter 2:20-21. It makes for a hard life if someone abuses you in this way and you’re told to offer yourself as the object of abuse in another way (compare Matthew 5:38-44).

We can’t function in life without generalisations but we’re idiots if we’re not fully prepared to accept that there are many exceptions to our generalisations. Bearing that in mind, I tend to think that Western Christians—generally speaking—whinge too much and want too much and expect too much. Setting aside—as hardly worth even talking about seriously—the sinful and sickening lunacy of the "prosperity gospel" preachers I think it’s true "in general" that when Western Christians ask for "more" that something is badly out of whack.

Nevertheless I personally know people—lots of people—and you do too, that go through daily purgatory. It’s bad enough that the emotional or physical abuse is severe and painful and enduring, what makes it worse is their uncertainty about how they should to respond to it. Are they supposed to just take it?

My impression is that it’s only the very sensitive believers that go on enduring daily and marked injustice. Those less devoted to God (I’m guessing) will quickly walk away from the situation "no matter what the Bible says." That makes sense at one level; "don’t delve into scriptures to see what they say, if it gets where you think it’s too much just walk away and don’t look back!"

Sounds like good advice. Sounds like the kind of advice that society at large operates on (compare marriage vows). But it leaves untouched the kind of texts cited above. What are we to make of them? Should we go through the scriptures and take what pleases us and dismiss the rest? Can sensitive Christians consciously do that kind of thing?

That’s the major problem with the advice but there’s also the question, what’s "too much"? For some of us it would appear that even a criticism is "too much". And you hear of marriages foundering because "my emotional needs were not being met" or "I have a right to be happy and he/she wasn’t making me happy." It seems clear that there are people whose every other sentence is something like, "Damn ‘community’ what about my rights?" Friendships collapse because the expected "gush" of gratitude wasn’t always forthcoming. That kind of thing, while others have the skin stripped from their bones by a merciless tongue day after day. That kind of peevishness about minor dissatisfactions, while others are deliberately and consistently mistreated and/or physically abused by those who swore to provide the reverse. I think it’s fairly easy for us to spot what we would call the "extremes" but it’s that broad area in between that’s hard to define—isn’t it? Even the sufferer has a hard time convincing him or herself about the meaning of "too much". The definition of that would depend in part on the nature and make-up of the sufferer so those that are on the "outside" offering advice need to be confident that they have a good grasp of the situation.

But what about those texts—the kind we mentioned earlier? Do those not deal with extreme situations and still they call the sufferer to stay and endure as part of his or her life for Christ? I don’t think it’s that simple.

I think we should make a distinction between what we can’t alter and what we’re at liberty to alter.

Take the case of the slaves in 1 Peter 2:18-24. That’s not a text about "employees" who can change their jobs if they aren’t satisfied with the boss or the prevailing conditions, so we mustn’t use it as if it were. We can’t tell employees that 1 Peter 2 teaches that they can’t change jobs but that they must endure the injustice and abuse heaped on them by the bosses. The text isn’t dealing with a relationship shaped and sustained by mutual commitment so we mustn’t use it as if it were. Peter isn’t writing to people that have been rescued from an oppressive society that owned slaves the way people own shoes so we mustn’t use the text as if it were.

Peter speaks to people as they find themselves, in a situation they can’t change and calls them to live out their lives in that situation as people that belong to Christ. The passage says nothing about the evil of the "slavery system" but as sure as God made little green apples the gospel of Christ is the death of all such tyrannous arrangements. The passage works within the existing circumstances and doesn’t forbid a free man or woman appealing to the proper authorities about injustice (compare Paul’s appeal to Caesar—see Acts 25:10-12).

I would say if a Christian can change an oppressive situation that he or she has the right to do so. How that change might be effected depends a lot on the situation. And I’d say that given the right set of circumstances that a Christian would have the responsibility as well as the right to work to change the situation. The oppressor might need something more than another cheek turned to him. In a case such as that, the sufferer is no "doormat". To rebuke oppression and protest against it is no crime—we learn that from Christ and some overturned tables. It’s true that in that temple incident Jesus was standing for someone other than himself but injustice is injustice! And if it turns out that the one that needs the cup of cold water is oneself the need is still real.

Of course it’s perfectly acceptable from someone who has the power to escape injustice to choose to forfeit his or her right to do it. Christ could have called for divine aid and put a stop to the injustice being heaped on him but refused to do it because the will of the Father was better served by his self-denial. And don’t we all know people who, for reasons best known to and understood by themselves, refuse to walk away from an oppressive relationship?

Relationships are rarely simple and for the sake of others or with certain goals in mind, or moved by commitments made, those that are being hurt choose to remain. When you choose to remain the "doormat" notion vanishes. If you choose to endure abuse to gain something more precious to you than an abuse-free existence it doesn’t matter how it appears to others.

I’ve told (page 149) of C.S Rodd’s rehearsal in The Expository Times of a wife who’d run off every so often and live for extended periods with some man and then come back. The husband received her back every time it happened. A friend tried to bring it up to the husband but he whispered with intensity, "Not a word! She’s my wife." She came back after her final absence, sick, and wouldn’t get better. The husband gently nursed her until the day she died in his patient arms. Rodd mentioned this in a sermon and on his way out of the building a psychologist said to Rodd that "the psychological problems of the husband need to be looked at."

Maybe, maybe not. Had the husband been firmer would the wife have lived differently? Should he have given her an ultimatum? God knows! But I find it interesting that a family counsellor who knew no more about the situation than you or I do, was willing to conclude that the husband was a disturbed man.

The one who gladly paid the awful price needed therapy?

The above article was written by Jim McGuiggan a beloved brother and one of my instructors at the preaching school in Lubbock, Texas. It has been copied and posted with permission.

Jim McGuiggan was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  McGuiggan has studied and taught the Bible in America at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Since he has returned to Ireland,where he has worked with a congregation of God's people outside of Belfast. Jim is the author of numerous books, including The God of the Towel and Jesus: Hero of My Soul, both Gold Medallion finalists.