Lent Day 42: Spiritual Abuse

I’ve mentioned a term several times during the course of this whole project that may not be familiar to you. It is a fairly new concept to me, as well. It took me a long time to recognize it for what it was and be comfortable in labeling it as such. This is the concept of Spiritual Abuse. At the outset of this piece, I’m going to reference a book that was very helpful to me as I explored this. The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by David Johnson and others opened my eyes as I read multiple stories that sounded much like my own. I also was going through this with the help of my therapist. I have feeling that some of you have been a victim of spiritual abuse. I know that this is an awkward topic, as anything labeled“abuse” always is. But I believe that shining light on problems is the way to solve them, not continuing to bury them under the rug. That all being said, I am not a mental health professional. I’m just a person who has been through some shit who wants to help other people who also have been through some shit. I wanted to get all of that said at the outset. 

I grew up in an abusive home. Anyone who has read these posts knows that. There was physical abuse, emotional abuse, and verbal abuse. So I do NOT use the term “abuse” lightly. The word carries very strong connotations. There were times earlier in our marriage when Heather called something I did out as being verbal abuse or emotional abuse, and I would flip out at the accusation. How dare she? Accusing ME? Of all people? A person who lived through that. Let me tell you what, I’ve been through abuse - and THAT was not abuse. And she would sit quietly, listening to me rage - knowing that the irony of the situation would eventually be clear to me. I was the classic victim of abuse, who learns how to abuse, and who usually keeps the cycle spinning. Thankfully, due to Heather’s patience and strength, God’s mercy, and a few great therapists, I have largely been able to break that cycle in me. And hopefully that has short-circuited the cycle in my children. The term “abuse” feel icky. It makes our skin crawl. We picture atrocities from movies and television shows. We want to believe that we are incapable of it, and we want to lie to ourselves that nobody we know would ever be involved in such a thing. It is reserved for other people, lesser people. No. No it isn’t. It lives in every socioeconomic status, every city, every nationality. 

So what exactly is “abuse?” Merriam-Webster defines “abuse” as “to use or treat so as to injure or damage.” (Isn’t that such a cliched way to answer that question? I sounded just like a high schooler delivering a crappy report.) Google’s preferred dictionary link defines it as “to treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.” I think the important words that jump out from the definitions deal with intent: so as to injure or damage, with cruelty and violence. The second definition also mentions that there is a frequency to the action. Notice that the definitions are not limited to physical violence. A person can be cruel verbally. They can be injurious and damaging emotionally. That’s why abuse covers so much more than just getting smacked around. But, looking at those definitions, it isn’t too difficult to see that there can be a spiritual element to this as well. Have you ever had someone in spiritual leadership be cruel? Ever had someone try to injure you spiritually? 

Beyond just the definition of abuse, we need to look at the purpose of it. Charles is one of the other pastors at our church. He and I have gone to coffee a few times, and I feel like we are kindred spirits in some ways. I joke he is the Black version of me. We rant over similar ground. He’s been through the wringer in his life as well. One time he told me something very profound. “Power and control, David. Almost everything can be explained by power and control. People want power; people want control. And so many things are about getting that and keeping it.” Durn. That’s some good stuff right there. And you can apply that to why people are abusive. I would wager that a large majority of abusive incidents happen because of those two things. When I met with my first therapist and told him how I had been labeled an angry man, he disagreed. He said he had met with angry people, and I was a far cry from that. He said I was a person who often felt like things were out of control, and that I lashed out in an effort to gain control again. Power and control. Trying to make sure people know who is in charge. Think of an emotionally abusive spouse who keeps his wife from speaking with people or from engaging in normal interactions. He’s trying to control her, show her he is in charge. Physical abuse is all about establishing dominance. I’m in charge, dammit. I’m bigger than you, stronger than you, and I am NOT afraid to beat the shit out of you. Verbal abuse is like physical abuse, but with your mouth. Same exact goal, same exact outcome. Making someone else feel small to make yourself feel big. (Sexual abuse - I don’t really even want to get into that because it feels like it is on a completely different plane than the others.) Can that happen in a spiritual setting? OH HELL YEAH. Power and control. 

So let’s put all the pieces together here. Abuse is to try to injure or damage someone with cruelty or violence in order to exert power and control over them. Mull over that for a minute. It is easy to use that one sentence to examine and prove physical, emotional, and verbal abuse. Can we use it to define and identify spiritual abuse? Coming from the position of a former church staff member, the answer is a resounding YES. Not even a question. I’ve been the target of it. I’ve watched friends be the target of it. What makes it spiritual abuse, though? Wouldn’t those situations just be emotional or verbal abuse, but in a church setting? Good question, and you are correct. I’ve been emotionally and verbally abused in a church setting, by employers or supervisors or church members. So let’s look at what it takes to make it spiritual abuse. If it is physical abuse, it happens in the physical realm with physical things to our physical body. Emotional and verbal abuse kind of are a tag team. You can’t abuse someone with your emotions, like staring at them really hard and firing really intense feelings. Oftentimes, a person will use verbal abuse as a way to abuse emotionally. So spiritual abuse would be using spirituality - Bible verses, sermons, religious dogma - to damage someone with cruelty to exert power and control. NOW, can you see that happening? Back to the oh hell yeah. 

It usually helps to process big concepts like this by using personal examples. I’m not a therapist with a wealth of stories of clients whose names will be changed to “Clint” and “Mary” to keep them anonymous. So that means I have to use my own experiences. I’ve been pretty vulnerable to this point on ye olde blogge, and I’ll continue that here. And that means that I am ashamed to say that I have practiced spiritual abuse when I was a young minister. I can hide behind the fact that“it was what I was taught” or “that’s what was modeled for me.” But it still hurt just the same, like my behavior with my family hurt them. So some of these examples will also have me on the delivering end of things. We’ll start simple. A student misses Bible study one week. They show up the next week and say, “I’m sorry that I missed last week. I had a test to study for.” And I respond, “Man, thankfully Jesus didn’t have a test the day he died on the cross.” Hey hey hey. Settle down. Put down the rocks. THAT situation was for laughs. I would say it because I had heard other ministers say stuff like that for serious. My students knew I didn’t mean it, largely because I would laugh afterwards and say I was kidding. That made it all okay. (Narrator: it did NOT make it all okay.) Also I would tell them I didn’t need excuses; I was just glad they were there. And they had tons of interactions with me to know that I didn’t mean it. But still, that is an example of how someone can use spirituality to wound someone. Let’s get into some uglier examples. 

• A couple is struggling financially. They are both working hard, earning as much as they can. They have a young child at home. When they talk to someone at the church about their financial struggles, they are asked if they are tithing. Then they are told that they need to start tithing, so that God will bless them financially. 
• A couple is struggling financially. Same thing as before, except THIS time a study they are in says that most Christians who struggle financially do so because they harbor unconfessed sin in their hearts. They are being rebellious, so God is punishing them with financial struggles.
• A person is dealing with health issues that are very severe. When they talk to someone about it, they are told that they should pray and claim they will be healed. When they aren’t healed, their faith is questioned. 
• A dating collegiate couple meets with their minister because they aren’t sure that they should still be dating because the guy’s dad is in disagreement with them doing so. The minister tells them they need to obey the parent, even though they are both adults, because he is still in authority. So they break up. 
• Parents of a young person who has come out as gay asks the minister what they should do. He advises that they should cut the child off until they get right with God. 
• A child is troubled by nightmares and panic attacks. When he talks to his parent about it, he is told that he shouldn’t have a spirit of fear. Then he is sent back to bed with the instruction to pray.
• A couple is struggling financially. The husband stays at home with his kids. but he is told that he should man up and find whatever job he can find because he needs to take care of his family. He is also told that a man should never make less money than his wife because then he is not the spiritual leader of his home. 
• A traveling evangelist tells the church that if you cannot remember the exact moment of your salvation, you probably are not really saved. And that you should pray again to make sure. This is a big one - the continual questioning of someone’s salvation when they aren’t doing what the leader wants. 
• A child is told that maybe she is praying to a demon named Jesus. That’s all. Just the fact someone said that to a child. 
• A woman is told to stay with her abusive husband because the wife should be submissive to the husband. 
• A young woman in the church gets pregnant out of wedlock. They church shames her and criticizes her due to her loose morals. The guy gets off scot free. 
• A church telling their membership that they need to go above and beyond their normal tithes to help to pay for a new $40 million church building when they already have multiple buildings. And that God had said this was the way. (“This is the way,” they all say in unison like on The Mandalorian.)
• Actually, let’s just put that whole “God told me” line of reasoning on its own line. A spiritual leader that God told them something is really hard to argue against. Basically, to argue you have to say that the leader is wrong in hearing God, God is wrong for saying it, you know more than the leader and God, or that you don’t believe in any of that. It is a lose-lose situation for the person receiving that comment. 
• Questioning someone’s religious commitment because they have tattoos based on some random verse in Leviticus 19. Or because they listen to the Devil’s music by showing them the video series “Hell’s Bells” which dives into back masking and satanic messages in rock and or roll music. Or because they don’t boycott Disney, Target, Netflix, and Proctor & Gamble. Or because they DO boycott Chick Fil A, Hobby Lobby, or Magic Pillow. 
• Equating political conservatism to Christianity. Acting like being a member of either party does or does not signify a commitment to Christ. (Dang it, how did that one get in there?)
• Stating that a natural disaster is due to God’s judging an area for being sinful. 

In the words of the great theologian Captain America, “I could do this all day.” But that should suffice for now. You’ve probably read at least a couple of things that you’ve seen or experienced. And you probably read several that made your blood boil. Hopefully you can recognize the abuse in these examples. Somebody uses Scripture or tradition or dogma to shame someone or wound someone. Power and control. The church trying to control its members’ finances. A pastor trying to control his flock. A group of people trying to gain power. Like my friend Charles said, almost all of these are about power and control. And in all of these cases, spirituality is used as a weapon. I know that the Word of God is likened to a double-edged sword, but it isn’t supposed to be used to bash people over the head in order to demand compliance to some set of rules. It isn’t supposed to beat people into submission. 

Some people will stick around, continuing to get beat up and hurt because they think that is what church is supposed to feel like. Others will finally walk away. That’s what we did. We got tired of the constant abuse, and we left. When people leave, you will see the church leadership respond exactly like an abusive partner will: blaming the victim who left. This plays out in pastors passive aggressively posting about how people want an easy religion. Or how people keep leaving churches because they are offended by the truth. Or how if your church suddenly takes on an influx of members from another church, be prepared because they’re going to do the same thing to you that they did to their last minister. Or how quickly a Christian family can devolve into one who doesn’t know Jesus at all because they are out of church. A Christian shouldn’t forsake the fellowship of believers! Get into a church. You have a problem with hypocrites? Don’t look in the mirror. Sound familiar? 

Maybe the people don’t want an easy religion; maybe they just want one that isn’t cruel. Maybe they aren’t offended by truth; maybe they are offended by bad behavior being ignored and excused. Maybe that influx of people coming from another church left because the pastor there went on an ego trip and starting lashing out. Maybe that family is trying to protect their kids from they abuse they felt. Maybe they don’t want to leave other believers, but they can’t take the pain any more. Maybe they are trying to find a church, but they can’t find one that isn’t going to beat the crap out of them. Maybe it isn’t hypocrites that are the problem; maybe it is the pastor. I have sat there for years, reading these accusations. I see my pastor friends lashing out as their numbers dwindle. I see them blame everyone in the world except themselves. And I know that during that entire time that we were out of church - which was seven of the last ten years - not a single Sunday went by where I didn’t wish I had somewhere to go. My faith never wavered. My trust in God never disappeared. My desire to do the right thing never dipped. I kept going back, again and again. I may take a break for a little while to recover, but then I was back to try something else. And I am not alone in this. You may be shocked at how many people - especially people in my age bracket and a little younger - have shared the exact same stories. That’s how we even found our current church. Another couple heard our story, said they had the same experiences, and invited us to come try the place they had found. Spiritual abuse is a pandemic in the American church. Just like other kinds of abuse that went on unabated for decades in the church, spiritual abuse has flown under the radar. No, that’s not right. It was outright encouraged. It was taught in seminaries. It was modeled by pastors. It was rewarded by personnel committees. The average church member didn’t even know it was wrong. Ministers were dropping like flies because they were victims of it. And now a large portion of church members are refusing to be subject to it. If the Church doesn’t put a stop to it, it will destroy the entire institution.

So what can you do about this? Well, first thing is to stop doing it yourself. We all do it to some level, so knock it off. Don’t use Scripture to beat people down. Don’t use it as a weapon on your children. Don’t throw it like darts at your political enemies. You can only control yourself, so work on controlling your own use of it. Second, don’t keep getting abused. I would never tell someone to stay in an abusive situation at home, and I would never tell someone to stay in an abusive situation at church. Get away, even if just for a little while so you can assess what is happening. Is it that you’re upset because they said something you don’t like? That isn’t abuse. Are you getting ripped to shreds by someone waving around the Bible like a katana? That is probably abuse. Third, start calling it out when you see it. Don’t let the pastor get away with it. Yes, this is risky. Yes, you may be called a spawn of Satan for daring to stand up to an out-of-control minister or lay leader. But if enough people stand up, things can change. That is what happened at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. Enough people finally stood up to their pastor Marc Driscoll and ended his reign of terror. And it has happened other places as well. Blindly following church leadership is not a requirement of being a church member. If it is, you’re in an unhealthy church. 

One last thing, if you are in an abusive place of any kind, get help. There are so many resources out there now to help people with every type of abuse - except spiritual. Those are coming along, but the people who would spearhead that (thechurch) are the same people who don’t want to admit it is happening. At the very least, contact me. If you’re reading this, chances are good that you know how to get in touch with me. I’m not a professional, but I will be glad to help in any way I can. And if I ever was responsible for hurting you, I am more sorry than you could ever know. I hope that enough people standing up and talking about things like this will allow for healing and restoration. That is my goal. I don’t want to take the Church down. I love the Church. I am so thrilled to finally be in a healthy church - I feel better than I have in years. I want to see things fixed. So let’s start.