Up from victimhood

Pastor James Ward Jr. was a third grader growing up in Tuscaloosa, AL, at the time when the public schools there were forcibly integrated. He recalls being bused from his black neighborhood to the formerly all-white school and noticing how much nicer the homes and neighborhoods were on the “white” side of the river. Based on word of racial tensions elsewhere in the South, he expected a hostile situation to develop.

But his teacher, a very fine and articulate lady who also happened to be black, handled her students with class and encouragement. Young James found himself excelling academically under her tutelage, and something clicked within him.

I recognized that I was as smart as any other kid in the room,” he said in his talk at Legatus Summit East 2022 in Florida in January. “I recognized that I was everyone’s equal, and they were my equal.”

From that moment, “I did not believe in white supremacy,” Ward said, “because I didn’t believe in black inferiority.”

In his book Zero Victim: Overcoming Injustice with a New Attitude, Ward addresses the current state of racial divide in the United States and, more broadly, the tendency of many to descend to a victim mentality.

In August 2020, a few months after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis sparked waves of racial protest and violent unrest amid anti- police sentiment, another black man, Jacob Blake Jr., was shot to death by police in Kenosha, WI. A new wave of riots and destruction followed. Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, a member of Ward’s Insight Church in suburban Chicago, invited him to speak at her family’s press conference. Ward’s calls for love and forgiveness in the face of racial tensions drew him into national prominence.

“We’ve got to bring the foundation and the conversations of the spiritual and moral law back to America and for us, faith does that,” he said in a later interview with CNN alongside Jackson. “It is the mindset of Jesus Christ Himself, the only innocent man that ever lived, suffered the greatest injustice that the world has ever known, and He prayed for forgiveness. He prayed for love.

“That does not dismiss sin. That does not dismiss unrighteousness, but it does give us a new framework for dealing with it in a way that is acceptable and a way that we can move forward as a nation.”

Ward told Legates that he believes victim thinking permeates some of the racial tensions in this country. Critical race theory “grows out of the soil” of victim thinking; woke ideology he calls “a counterfeit revival.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “had a dream, but we have a vision,” Ward said. “America needs a new movement, a ‘zero victim’ movement, to be spiritually awakened and not ‘culturally woke.’”

Victim thinking produces toxic energy, he stated.

“Victim mentality is a perceived or conditioned mental tendency to regard yourself as a victim of the negative thoughts, words, or actions of others,” he writes in Zero Victim. “It often provokes an individual to respond as if he/she really is a victim even when there is inadequate evidence.”

He told the Summit audience that victim thinking is like wearing a set of dark lenses indoors and blaming others for not turning the lights up.

“That’s how victim thinking works,” Ward said. “It’s like people are wearing lenses, and they literally read victimization into every situation in life, into every relationship, into everything that happens.... And there’s nothing you can do to change that person’s perspective until the lenses change.”

Identifying victim thinking

Classically, persons with victim mentality embrace three primary beliefs: they believe they are destined to have bad things happen to them, that these bad things are the fault of other people or circumstances beyond their own control, and that it is no use trying to prevent or avoid these bad things because they will keep happening anyway.

Vicki Botnick, a psychotherapist with a practice in Tarzana, CA, says it begins when a person identifies most closely with the role of a victim. She describes five signs of victim thinking, each clearly linked to the beliefs describe above:

A sense of powerlessness. A person may feel downtrodden, but from their perspective they have no solutions to overcome or escape their pain. Botnick tells Healthline that while some people who embrace victimhood make a conscious effort to blame others and take offense, more often her patients have deep psychological wounds that leave them feeling hopeless.

A lack of accountability. People with victim thinking make excuses and do not take responsibility for their own behaviors, preferring a mantra of “it’s not my fault.” There are true victims, of course, but often individuals bear some personal responsibility for bad things that happen to them.

Anger and resentment. Victim thinking surfaces emotions that lash out at others and at the world, believing even loved ones don’t care and resenting people who seem successful and happy.

Poor self-esteem. Lack of confidence increases the sense of powerlessness. Trying to improve one’s situation and failing to do so can likewise reinforce the “I’m a victim of circumstances” belief.

Not seeking solutions. Those with victim mentality often descend to wallowing in unhappiness and rejecting the help of others.

It’s important to recognize that apart from those who embrace victim status as a means of manipulation, there usually is real pain that underlies victim thinking. Often it results from past trauma, a betrayal of trust, or a codependent relationship.

Nevertheless, “Having a victim mentality doesn’t excuse bad behavior,” Botnick said. But “also understand there may be a lot more going on than just wanting attention.”

The road to healing

Father Dan Leary, another session speaker at the January Summit, approaches the idea of victim mentality cautiously from a pastoral perspective.

“We see so much suffering, and everybody has a different capacity — mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually,” said Fr. Leary, a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington who is a missionary and chaplain to the Sisters of Mary. “But the Body of Christ is called to offer all of the suffering in humanity to God the Father for His mercy, grace, and love to be poured out on humanity.”

Everyone is a victim of the sin of Adam and Eve through original sin, but the response to that victimhood is the redemptive act of Jesus Christ, who was the ultimate victim, he said.

“When a person has the victim mentality, which is self-serving and doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to heal, they draw the attention to themselves with a lack of willingness to change,” Fr. Leary explained. “It’s almost like giving a sick person medication, and they choose not to take it. They want to remain in this cycle of sadness and isolation.”

But people can rise above victim thinking, said Fr. Leary. The cycle can be broken through prayer, sacrifice, and sometimes counseling.

In his work especially with children in the mission lands who have experienced sickness or trauma, he finds that getting them to focus on others — telling them to be “missionaries” of God’s healing and mercy — changes the mentality.

“They come out of the pain and out of the suffering,” Fr. Leary said. “I call them ‘little Lazaruses,’ because they come out of the ‘tomb,’ and the work we must do is to untie them and set them free.

“That’s the work of every Catholic in the world: to untie people and set them free.”

When we are freed from victim thinking in other words, we must help others join their own pain to Christ’s redemption as an act of love.

“If somebody is suffering in our life, you have to ask them, ‘Where is Christ in this pain?’” Fr. Leary said. “Invite Him into this pain, and then unite with Him. Invite, then unite.”

Pastor Ward also sees such a spiritual conversion and a turn to Jesus as keys to overcoming victim thinking.

“I know that God is for me, so no one can be against me,” he said, evoking Romans 8:31. “White people can’t be against me because God is for me.”

Christ demonstrates “zero victim” thinking, Ward said. “While the victimization and the injustice is still taking place, Jesus is already praying, ‘Father, forgive them, because they know not what they do.’

“The standard for how we should deal with injustice in our society is the love of God, the power to forgive by the cross of Calvary,” he said. “Our only reconciliation, our only hope, is in Christ.”

GERALD KORSON, editorial consultant for Legatus magazine, is based in Indiana.


How to develop a "zero victim" mentality

In Zero Victim, Pastor James Ward offers four techniques “that will bring you freedom from offenses and injustice with a Zero Victim Mentality”:

1. Develop humility to be able to pause and discern. Avoid quick-trigger reactions. Your perceptions may be wrong. Act with prudence and self-discipline.
2. Engage in constructive dialogue before choosing the wisest response. Extend forgiveness to release you both. Offer a redemptive response rather than a punitive one. An unrepentant offender does not deserve restoration, but we are morally obliged to forgive and seek to make amends.
3. Cultivate clear vision to keep looking ahead. Victim thinkers often think and speak of past wounds and complain about how things are in the present. Zero victim thinkers believe neither the past nor the present dictates their future success. Keep everything in proper context.
4. Affirm your identity: you are not a victim. Victim thinkers embrace victimhood as their identity. Do the opposite: reject the role of victim, even when you have every right to feel like one. Identify as a non-victim in all circumstances