This text is the first of at least three complaints that the Israelites made against God and Moses. They looked back at their slave experience in Egypt and decided it was better than to follow Moses and God’s instruction through the wilderness. This first complaint rose out of their fear that Pharaoh’s army was closing in from behind. They were accustomed to being victimized by the Egyptians. In this text they changed that status of their thinking to that of being a victim. The second complaint is found in 15:24 because they believed that they had nothing to drink in the wilderness. The third complaint is found in 16:2 because they were hungry. In each case they had no suggestions or ideas how to solve their own problems.
Instead, the only thing they knew was to complain. They made this transition from being victimized to that of having a victim mentality. In the case of the former, there was little they could do as captives. However, without looking to God for his own intervention, they saw themselves as victims of circumstances. The victim mentality is an excellent tool of Satan because we are frozen in our complaints. We see ourselves helpless. We see it as someone else’s fault. As far as we are concerned, God has nothing to do with how we think about ourselves. Emotionally and spiritually, we come to a state in which our hands are tied behind our backs. It is tragic to say but that is true of so many of us. I must confess that there have been times in my life in which I have seen myself as a victim to either circumstances or people. This is unfortunate for all of us because it could lead to so many other negative aspects of our lives.
We can become accustomed to seeing ourselves as victims that it becomes our way of life without any comparison to what things could be positive. In many cases, should someone point this out whether it be a counselor or a minister, we could deny it claiming that it is not true and we are doing the best we can. By seeing ourselves as victims, we can have a tendency to blame other people for any given situation. Victims are kidnapped by their own thinking. They are unable to make free choices. Their thinking follows a narrow path. Just like the Israelites in our text, we come to the conclusion that this is the way life is. We tell ourselves that we will cope the best we can. It is easy to give ourselves false hope or settle for hopelessness.
To make a radical change from our victim mentality to seeing ourselves as overcomers is a monumental step. It is very easy to give up because we tell ourselves we are doing all we can living under the circumstances. God never desires for us to live under the circumstances. What is a great help happens to be getting in touch with anger, positive anger, rightly experienced anger. Such anger is energetic. It is motivating. It is never satisfied with status quo. We make a significant step in our thought patterns that this will not stay!
To see ourselves as a victim, we need a persecutor. It could be a person. It could be the circumstances. There always has to be something or someone pressing down hard. As we challenge the victim mentality, it is most helpful to reassess the reality of who or what our persecutor really is. Probably, we have misconstrued something that someone said that we have taken to heart in the wrong way. Likely, we easily can see a circumstance without all the facts. Having a victim mentality can be so inbred in us that we even deny that we are in such a condition.
The Israelites who complained never took into consideration the positive aspects of their problem as new doors were opening. They only saw Moses as a Big Bad Wolf. This is important because it gave them permission to return to their former slave lifestyle. Quite frankly, it can be very difficult for a person to retrain himself for how he considers his own identity and how he relates to the world. The important part is that we must involve God for the strength and guidance we need in such a transition to a healthy mindset.
To self-evaluate, if you are a person that has a victim mentality, consider the relationships you have with other people for how troubling they seem to be. Ask yourself if you blame instead of accept responsibility for yourself. Determine how comfortable you are with a victim’s way of life because that also can tell how deeply cemented you are in this unhealthy pattern. Recognize that there is trouble in your own paradise. There is never tranquility in how you think or how you relate. This will require a new and improved relationship with God. The Israelites never considered this as a factor. However, we must consider it.
Christian Writer 