Monthly Archives: July 2024

July 26, 2024 · 7:30 am

Abuse, divorce, denial and authoritarian men

Many years ago, back when I was first beginning to learn and write about the problem of assault in conservative marriages, I was in a conversation with another minister in my denomination.

He thanked me for my study and my work on assault, agreed with me that there was much work that needed to be done and asked what more could be done.

I mentioned that oftentimes the church has a very poor response to accusations of domestic assault and will force the woman back into the marriage over and over again, putting her life and the lives of her children in danger. He made all of the appropriate spiritual humming noises. “Mmmm, Mmmm, Mmmm.” You know how it goes.

I thought I was making progress.

He said, “What about repentance? Can’t an abuser repent?”

I said, “In most cases, repentance is a matter of saying some words, crying some tears, and other manipulative tactics to coerce the victim to put herself back under the power of the abuser. This is why” I continued “I never counsel or even suggest that an abused spouse return to the marriage. I always emphasize their safety above everything else.”

After making more appropriate spiritual humming noises, the minister responded, “We had a case just a few months ago. The wife would come to church year after year. We all knew that she was being abused. She had bruises and wore sunglasses. We could all see it. It went on for about 20 years. Finally she decided she had enough and moved out. We supported her.

“But then he came to the elders, and I’m telling you, Sam, I have never seen anyone as repentant as that guy was. He was really broken up about all his failings. He confessed them all and asked her forgiveness. But her heart was so hard and bitter towards him that she refused to take him back. We finally had to excommunicate her for refusing to forgive.”

I died a little inside. I shared with him that what he described is a typical abuser strategy; that all of them do the exact same thing in order to get what they want.

I even shared with him our confession of faith – that repentance is the dying of the old man and the making alive of the new man. It isn’t words and tears.

There is a sorrow that leads to death. Even if his sorrow was genuine, like Esau’s, it isn’t the same as repentance.

And there is one more thing that is even more crucial than that. Even if it were possible to read the heart and determine that a man IS truly repentant, this does not change the fact that his covenant is broken, and that HE is the one who broke the covenant. She will have damage and triggers for the rest of her life.

She will remember the hymns she tried to sing after he broke her jaw. She will remember the smell of the aftershave when he raped her. She will remember what was cooking when he punched her.

She will remember the words. The mouth that kissed her and spoke sweet nothings to her that now say, “I hate you. You disgust me. You are fat and ugly, no one wants you.”

Those wounds don’t just go away with words.

After this conversation, I realized that we still had a massive amount of work to do. I started it until I finally had to part ways with my denomination.

I found out then that most ministers and elders are actually opposed to abuse. They will speak loftily and spiritually about the horrors of domestic violence…UNTIL it actually takes up space in THEIR congregations.

Then, by far the easiest option is to side with the abuser. It is far easier if she would just be quiet and quit making a fuss. If he would just say sorry and they could go back to everything being normal again.

And this is where we lose most of the officers of the church.

The deplore abuse – BUT

“I know that guy. He isn’t an abuser”

“It wasn’t really abuse. I’ve seen real abuse”

“He was really repentant”

“It wasn’t really abuse; she just pushed his buttons enough and he snapped. Could’ve happened to anyone”

No matter what you say, there is always a reason why what is happening in THEIR congregation isn’t abuse.

We hate abuse. We just never see real abuse…you’ve all heard it.

We just saw it when it made national news.

But this has been going on for decades.

The heart of the problem is here:

Why is it that they believe that a group of white, middle aged, conservative men have absolute infallibility over the lives of women? There can be no error, they are so sure of their infallibility that they will literally put a woman’s life on the line over it.

What on earth is an “ecclesiastical divorce”? If you are in these circles, you’ve heard the term. It is the idea that one must get divorced in the church BEFORE they are allowed to get a legal divorce.

Why do we continually talk about “grounds for divorce” rather than talk about safety and liberty?

Why does the liberty we are given in Christ only apply to men? Are not wives and daughters co-heirs of Christ? Are they not worth protecting?

What gives a small group of men the right to determine what does or does not constitute abuse? Did not Jesus say that even saying “You fool” or “Raca” is abusive and the equivalent of murder? (he was not sin-leveling, but that is a different subject)

One step further:

Where is this woman now to go? She has been branded an “adulteress”. She has been expelled from her friends and her faith. She most like will never set foot in a similar congregation again, or ANY congregation. If you have not gone through a public “church trial” you have no idea what it does to you.

She was abused by her husband and found safety. She was abused by her church, and finally found safety.

And now, the same people that demanded that she return to her husband are also demanding that she return to church and “stop disobeying God”.

Do you think that these things might be related?

Jesus has his people everywhere. He knows his own, he gathers his own together.

But maybe those who belong to Christ need to flee for a time. Maybe they will gather in homes or caves or coffee shops or online. Maybe God meets with them two or three at a time, binding up wounds, releasing the prisoner, healing the sick and bringing justice to the outliers.

And maybe the church needs to repent just as surely as the abusive husband needs to repent.

Something to think about, anyway.

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July 23, 2024 · 7:02 pm

Important things

I would like to talk about values.

Being around certain circles for far too long in my life, I heard a great deal of emphasis placed on taxes and making sure that no one was taking away their “hard-earned money”. They said that they were “one issue voters” (abortion) but in reality, the biggest issue was how much or how little they were being taxed.

The other day, I overheard one gentleman  saying, “all that matters is how much money I have left in my pocket…”

I am all for responsible spending by officials at every level. I am all for minimizing waste. But to me there are issues that are far, far more important than how much money is left in my pocket at the end of the day.

For one thing, I know that I have a Father in heaven that will provide all things necessary for body and soul, so I don’t fret it (or at least TRY not to fret it).

So I thought I would give a list of things more important than how much money is left in my pocket. Here goes:

It is important that my neighbor has access to health care. That if they get cancer, they won’t have to lose their house to pay the bill.

It is important that my neighbor can go to college and get an education without selling her soul to a loan shark and pay for the next 40 years.

It is important that libraries stay open and free. That the community has a place to gather.

It is important that homeless shelters have the funding that they need to feed and protect those who need it.

It is important that women who are not safe at home have a place they can run to and receive care and protection.

It is important that those who are vulnerable and afraid have access to advocates who can stand with them as they seek for justice.

It is important that parents have a place to turn when their children aren’t getting enough to eat.

It is important that widows and orphans have access to food and housing and healthcare.

It is important that water and food supplies are safe and effective.

It is important that social services are funded and those who go to work every day ensuring that children and families are safe at home have all the resources that they need.

It is important that justice is served. It is important that our streets are safe.

It is important that teachers should be paid what they are worth and that they don’t have to buy supplies out of their own pockets every year.

It is important that children have access to food.

It is important that the disabled have enough support to live with dignity, pursuing happiness and life and liberty without wondering if they will eat, or have a home, or have anyone to help them when they need it.

It is important that those who protect our air and water and earth and plants be given the resources that they need to do their work. Fresh air and clean water is important.

It is important that immigrants are treated with dignity and honor, fed and housed and given a speedy hearing and not left in limbo in cages along the border.

I never want to live in a community where the hungry have no where to turn, where families are on the street, where mental health care doesn’t exist, where you can’t have access to medical care because you don’t have the right insurance…

The country of promise – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now for me it is important that these values are available for ALL, not just some few at the top.

All of these things are monumentally important. For me, a few extra dollars in my pocket don’t really mean a lot if we lose our humanity along the way.

 

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July 18, 2024 · 3:26 pm

Dressing with dignity

I am almost finished with a remarkable book, the Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse. It was published in 1991, which made me sad and a little defeated. If people have been saying this for over 30 years now, why are things worse and not better? And what can my voice add?

Anyway – like all great books, it gets one’s mind whirling and meditating. The authors have a passage on Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead that stopped me in my tracks. I’ve been meditating on it ever since.

38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Jn 11:38–44.

The first question that the authors ask of the text is this: “Why didn’t Jesus use his almighty power to roll away the stone himself?”

And the second, “And why didn’t he just bring Lazarus OUT of his graveclothes himself?”

The answer to these questions speak of something very important in the life of the Church (not the outward corporation that has gotten so corrupt, but the people of God wherever they are found – usually in exile and hiding). In Ephesians 1:31, the people of God are called the “fullness” of Christ. The Son of God considers himself incomplete without his bride, his body, his people. We are so united to Jesus that his death is ours, his resurrection is ours, and his glory is ours. This is the point of Ephesians.

It also answers the questions so many people have about the Psalms. Are they about David, Jesus, or the people of God? And the answer is “Yes”. David was the type. Jesus was the reality. And we all, as his members, experience the same things in this life and the life to come. We suffer. We rise. We are glorified. We reign. We go to the abyss. We are rescued from the abyss. We long for God. We were born for another world. We are sinners. We are righteous. We are loved. We grieve our sins. We feel abandoned. We feel God’s love.

And we wait for the salvation of God. These realities are ours, and also belong to Jesus. And also to David in shadows.

But I digress.

Do you remember in Genesis where it was promised that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent? We know that ultimately that crushing belongs to Jesus. But it also belongs to us, his bride.

20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.  Rom. 16:20.

Here is another example of our union with Christ our head (the head of our body, not our CEO – those are different concepts). He crushes Satan’s head on the cross. We crush Satan’s head taking up that same cross.

But I’m digressing again.

Jesus gives his people the astounding privilege of serving with him in his kingdom. He could, of course, have simply rolled away the stone. But he commissions his people to take their part in setting Lazarus free.

Only the Eternal, begotten Son of God can raise the dead. We can’t do that. But we CAN roll away the stone. We can remove the barriers. We can take away our own blinders, our prejudices, our hatreds and grudges – we can make sure that when the world stumbles, it is on the cross, not politics or laws or culture or gender wars or ANYTHING other that the voice of the Son of God who speaks and raises the dead.

Take away the stone and set the prisoners free.

And yes, they are still in their grave clothes. They are gross and they stink. We are all wrapped with the rags of all of those things that were our comfort in the tomb.

When you are dead, (using spiritual language) you still have the clothing of the dead. That clothing has brought your comfort. You thought that it would take away your shame and your disgrace. You thought that you could find significance, security and strength – and you hold really tightly to all of those things. It is terrifying to think of losing your graveclothes (still speaking in metaphor, people).

Before the voice of Jesus called you and made you alive, you tried to find dignity in the brokenness of this present evil age, and it wasn’t there. But it is even scarier to let those things go.

Remember C.S. Lewis in the “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” when he “undresses” the dragon skin off of Eustice? Eustice recounts that losing his skin was the most painful thing he could imagine, but that it also felt good watching it tear away like a scab.

This is what it is like to lose the grave clothes. And it is even worse when those called out of the tomb are ridiculed for their clothes. Shamed because of it. Excluded and disgraced because they didn’t get rid of them fast enough.

And how shameful it is when those called by God to “loose him and let him go” just stand by and say to themselves “I thank God I am not like that poor guy.”

The scribes and the Pharisees stood by and watched, then plotted to kill Jesus.

And when Lazarus and Abel and Jacob and Amos and Zechariah and Zacchaeus and Mary Magdalene and Bathsheba and Ruth and Junia and all the rest are called from the tomb, there will always be the scoffers, refusing to soil their hands helping a terrified loved one of Jesus remove their graveclothes.

But that brings me to the concept in the book that floored me. When Jesus rose from the dead, he left his grave clothes behind. He could have done the same thing with Lazarus. So why didn’t he?

Because Lazarus would have had to walk out of the tomb exposed and naked in front of everyone.

Wow.

By telling his people to “loose him and let him go”, he is preserving Lazarus’s dignity. The people of God can get him changed without exposing him to the ridicule and shame of the passersby, and that is huge.

Shame has never changed a soul. Reviling and disgracing anyone has never saved anyone. Jesus came that we might have life, and to restore the dignity with which we were created – human beings, image-bearers of God.

Men and women, slave and free, rich and poor – clothed with Christ, the grave clothes come off easily. But it still hurts. It still is terrifying. It is still a long process.

We need compassion and the people of God need that compassion – the same compassion that Jesus had when HE was stripped naked and crucified so that We might be clothed.

 

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July 10, 2024 · 5:07 pm

Repentance or love?

A recent post by Shane Pruitt reads:

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'ShanePruitt Shane Pruitt @shane_ @shane_pruitt78 pruitt78 In many churches today, you'll hear the word "love" a thousand times. before you hear the word "repent" one time. However, Elijah said repent. Isaiah said repent. Joel said repent. Jonah said repent. Jeremiah, Micah, Amos, and Malachi all preached repentance. John the Baptist said repent. Jesus said repent. The Disciples said repent. The message has not changed.'

Here’s the difficulty – when you pit love and repentance against each other like this, you don’t understand either one. Repentance becomes hard like iron, ruthless like fire, and as relentless as death.

Trying to define repentance over against love makes one cruel and hateful, as those who know this author can attest.

In the bible, repentance is turning away from your hateful, hard hearts and turning towards the love of God and his free invitation of redemption. The result of true repentance is a heart that loves God and loves one’s neighbor.

This is the same spirit that seeks to define holiness over against love and mercy, when God is not so divided. Holiness IS perfect love, perfect beauty, perfect goodness. Repentance is turning from our hateful, stone gods and to the God of love.

Repentance is turning away from the attempt of self-salvation, with its iron clad, man-made rules, making one censorious, judgmental, proud and contemptuous and turning towards love, compassion, mercy and humility.

In other words, repentance is the b-side of love. God’s love is the beautiful magnet that draws us to his bosom (which is what repentance IS) and away from the world that the modern evangelical preacher inhabits.

The modern preacher’s call to repentance is simply a call to remain in the slavery of Egypt, working harder and harder to make more and bricks of our own self-righteousness. The Love of God calls us out, and to the land of his love, resting in the joy of the Lord. This is Repentance.

The result of resting in God’s bosom is that our life and our words and our hearts begin to reflect the beautiful light of God revealed in Jesus Christ, as we become more and more like him in love.

Don’t pit repentance against love. You don’t know what you are talking about.

 

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July 4, 2024 · 9:04 am

July Fourth Ramblings

From the time of the ancient scribes, there has always been those who use the guise of religion to seek to assert power over others and establish laws designed to enforce a “Biblical World-View”, whatever that means.

Some of this drive comes from a simple fear of people getting away with things that WE want to do but don’t dare.

Some of it comes from a fear that God is going to punish us if we don’t do the right things or pass the right laws.

Some of it comes from our natural religion (which the Bible calls “The Flesh”) that we can buy our way back into Eden by doing proper things, offering the right sacrifices, making better choices, and driving out the sinners.

Most of it comes from the lust of pride – that if we could get people to do things OUR way, we can secure our own future; even if this means we have to dominate sinners and force them to obey or face the wrath of the law. God wants righteousness, does he not?

So for over 2,000 years, zeal for God’s law has sent millions to mass graves. Inquisitions, wars, genocides, enslavements, exiles…

It is precisely why our country was founded. Religious wars always end in mass graves, injustice, and cruelty, in the name of God. Exiles fled. But no one had ever thought of having a country without an official religion – until they realized something. If they were going to have an official religion, who gets to decide what that religion will be?

There were Congregationalists, puritans, separatists, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Baptists, Reformed, Presbyterians, Jews, Atheists and Deists.

Who will choose where to worship, which religion to support, who will pastor…

Look at this this way…the recent law requiring the Bible to be taught in schools…

Who is going to teach it? Will the curriculum be Doug Wilson’s cult? Charismatic? Will the understanding be covenantal or dispensational? Will it be Baptist, Puritan, Reformed or Presbyterian?

If you say, “Well, we just want it taught as literature – the stories and such…

OK – which stories? Who edits them? Who interprets them? What will you say about Jephthah and Samson, and the Benjamite concubine?

If you think that Christians who think that this is a good idea will just get along and cooperate, then perhaps study early American History – Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, the women in Salem, or the Jesuit inquisitors – all who claim to seek a “Biblical world-view” and seek to serve the same Jesus.

The only way – the ONLY way – to politically stop bloodshed is by the enforcement of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court in the seventies did not “take God out of schools”, they stopped potential war over who writes the prayers in schools. Will they be Muslim prayers, Praying in tongues, Jewish prayers? Mother earth prayers?

And now, states that are seeking to “put God back in the schools” have done no such thing.

If Louisiana wanted to encourage behavior that pleased God, they would not have posted some archaic, ancient code that needs experts to interpret it (“If we aren’t allowed to kill, why do you support war? Why do you support capital punishment?) – see? Not as easy as you think.

To encourage ethical behavior, rather than political posturing, they would have posted age-appropriate and socially appropriate rules:

Don’t bully people. Honor your word. Be kind. Listen to your teacher when she is giving you instructions. Don’t call people names. Don’t betray your friends. Don’t spread rumors…

But the goal of the politicians was NOT to encourage ethical behavior. If that were indeed the case, they would not be championing the man who has openly and unabashedly broken every one of the commandments and boasts about it.

But I digress. The reason why I am very concerned about the religious right is that if they succeed, they will be undoing 250 years of American political thought. This political thought has given us many, many years of freedom – especially after the same rules were applied to women, minorities, native Americans and children.

If we embrace “justice for all” rather than “justice for some”, then we could truly be a beacon of liberty to the outcasts and the exiles.

But fear has caused us to regress. Millions are hell-bent on following power-hungry criminals over the brink. They believe that they will have special places in the new order, but the joy will only last until it is their turn under the guillotine. When you see Robespierre, ask him how it worked for him.

Because if there isn’t justice for all, there is only justice for none.

If a Muslim girl cannot attend a school without intimidation and bullying, then eventually no one will.

If the local Jewish community cannot worship in peace, then soon no one will.

If a black man does not have the liberty to carry a weapon without fear of being shot, then soon no one will have that liberty.

In other words, liberty only exists if it is liberty for all. And this liberty, the American Dream, is under attack. The Christian Right pretends that it is seeking to establish liberty and justice, but that is a smoke-screen. This is about power, domination, and control. They truly believe that only by passing “Biblical laws” – meaning, “those laws which I interpret as Biblical”, can we usher in a utopian age.

This was also the belief of the Inquisition, the French Revolution, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Cromwell, Hildebrand, Pol Pot, and the despots of every age.

It can and does only end in slaughter, mass graves and gulags. There can be no other end.

To sum it up simply, righteousness does not come by the law. If it did, there would be no need for Christ.

It seems to me that the first confession of a Christian should be “Righteousness could not come by the law. I plead for mercy.”

To then turn around and insist that righteousness will come by the law if my people enforce it with enough force, to me that seems the pinnacle of foolishness and irrationality.

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