Learning about abusers, apologies and saying sorry well

SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT:
Decoding the Hidden Tactics of Abuse – and
Freeing Yourself from its Power
By Wade Mullen
Tyndale House. 240 pages. £13.50
ISBN 978 1 496 444 707

Has someone ever said sorry to you, but deep down, you felt they didn’t really mean it?

Maybe this was completely obvious. Their wrongdoing was explicit and personal but their apology is anything but: ‘I’m sorry if you feel I’ve offended you’ questions whether it actually happened; ‘I’m sorry you feel hurt’ almost makes you feel as though you’re the one in the wrong for feeling hurt. Both ‘apologies’ deny the reality that you were hurt and it was clearly the other person’s fault!

Wade Mullen studied all these kinds of response statements for his PhD. His focus was on ‘impression management’ within churches in the US, but this book is a very readable, thoroughly relevant distillation that really is essential reading for any Christian in our culture. I know it can be a cliché for a book reviewer, so let me put it another way. If you said ‘yes’ to my first question, then you have been treated wrongly. Something’s Not Right speaks to you in this situation, and speaks to you if you’ve ever apologised badly.

Wider principles

Mullen breaks down the possible responses when someone or a corporate entity (whether a church or other organisation) offends. Mullen’s focus is abuse, but the principles are applicable more widely. Not all sin is abuse, but all sin ought to be repented of properly, whoever it is committed by.

The offender might try and dismiss the allegations outright, perhaps by appealing to all the good the offender has done elsewhere, or the ‘greater good’ of the cause for which they work. They may ask you to keep secrets or prevent you from otherwise speaking out.

The different processes that an offender uses to charm their victim are described, whether flattery, or offering/seeking favours, or giving you special responsibilities. The offender might also seek to damage your relationships, whether within yourself (e.g. attacking you personally) or amongst those who might step in to help.

‘Fauxnerability’

Once squashed, the offender is then much more able to crush you further. Their actions may provoke fear, designed to silence you further. Or you may experience the opposite: a false humility (Chuck DeGroat calls it ‘fauxnerability’) whereby the offender pleads with you and exalts you as the one who can save them.

All these are elements of what may appear when an offender is confronted with the truth of their sin. We see it in microcosm in our daily dealings with one another.

As if all this wasn’t helpful enough, the concluding chapters provide even more valuable insights. They analyse what a person or organisation might say should they actually make some kind of statement. With helpful illustrations, to root this in Christian living, Mullen shows how public statements can be mere concessions, which in fact condemn, appease, excuse, justify, self-promote or seek sympathy – or any combination of these!

Helpful framework

Most helpfully, he also gives a framework of what a truly sincere apology might look like. There will be a deep sense of surrender. ‘I am sorry because… ‘ is followed by a confession ‘I was wrong when…’ and crucially, taking personal responsibility, ‘It was my fault’. In any truly repentant statement, there will also be a personal recognition of the harm caused and a demonstration of sincere empathy for the damage inflicted. Mullen makes the very helpful point that true repentance will be accompanied by restitution. If I steal five pounds from you, and you challenge me, then I would do well to say sorry properly, to apologise, to admit it publicly and no doubt more, but I won’t have shown I’m truly sorry unless I’ve paid you back your fiver (or at least given it back in whatever way is possible).

Something’s Not Right gives a voice to victims. When we suffer sin, the silencing of the event and its consequences pours further pain onto our wounds. It also teaches sincere sinners how to say sorry well. A home group or leadership could helpfully discuss this and give permission to one another to spot where we are failing in proper confession and repentance. I would go so far as to say that no Christian organisation or leadership should issue an apology again without having carefully read this book. Yet again – such a bold statement! But the day after I finished reading this, I happened to hear a report on the news of a senior cleric in another country apologising for historic child abuse. I heard half a dozen ‘alarm bell’ phrases that Mullen had highlighted and, more sadly, heard nothing from the framework of a sincere apology.

Whether the apology comes from a ‘big name’ speaker or well-known organisation, or your own minister or home-group leader, this book will equip the wider church to discern more wisely what is true and good. As we grow in humility, so confessing more fully, we can only expect Christ to be more glorified.