Thank you for your request for some information and resources regarding how to handle the abuse that you are confronting in your church. I hope the following information proves helpful to you, and I would invite you to call us if you have any further questions or if we can be of any further assistance to you.

Responding to abuse is delicate and potentially dangerous for an abuse victim. Some relatively common approaches to marriage problems will actually have unintended consequences that can be very destructive for the person you are trying to help. You should also know that an abusive person will attack anyone who challenges their control, including those who try to help anyone that they believe they have a right to control. If you are unwilling to risk or confront this kind of anger, and even violence, you are better off NOT trying to help an abuse victim.

The following are five key principles that you should consider as you interact with both the victim and the abuser.

The harmless principle: The first step along this journey is to understand just how deeply abuse can harm a person. It is not uncommon to hear someone assert that we should only be considering physical abuse as something to address as abuse, but this stems from a grave misunderstanding of the impact abuse, both emotional and physical, can have on the body. There is an excellent, and indispensable, book on this topic called, “The Body Keeps the Score,” by Bessel van der Kolk. This book will help you understand the tragic and long lasting effects that abuse has on a person.

We are called to be harmless, but frequently actions taken by church leaders produce great harm, albeit unintentionally. The first, and most common, cause of harm arises directly from a misplaced dependence on personal judgment and experience. On a personal / spiritual note, It is always important to cultivate disciplines of humility and patience, but in dealing with abuse, these are critical. You will be challenged in both of these key areas as you seek to address this deeply deceptive and seductive problem. Most importantly, you will need humility in order to maintain a healthy skepticism of your own personal judgment.

In order to help cultivate this skepticism, we would recommend the book, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Khaneman. The book surveys many ways in which human judgment can be perverted. It is very important for you to know that abusive people become very good at using these cognitive “blind spots” that Khaneman outlines in order to hide and perpetuate their own mistreatment of their victim(s). These are key components to facilitating the abuser’s lies.

There is one very common denominator among people who deal with abuse as a profession: the longer a person does this work, the more they distrust their own independent judgment. Abusers often present as victims, and victims will often take the blame. It is not uncommon for an abusive relationship to present as a minor conflict, with both parties identifying the problem that needs to be fixed (usually the victim’s problem). Be wary of conclusions that are arrived at with little to no extra validation. Stay skeptical and open to more information, especially that which will challenge your own conclusions.

One more piece of helpful advice is important. You can counsel each party as if they are telling the truth, but avoid counseling the one party as if the other party is telling the truth. You may offer counsel if they are both agreed, but even this can be problematic when there is an abusive relationship. Where abuse is suspected, it is important to separate the parties and counsel them independently, preferably with each having their own counselor. 

The Wisdom Principle: Wisdom is the correct application of knowledge, and in order to effectively recognize and respond to abuse, you need to be familiar with common patterns that accompany abusive relationships. Thankfully, abusive dynamics are fairly consistent and often predictable, once they are understood. For a book on this topic, we recommend Lundy Bancroft’s book “Why Does He Do That?” This book offers an excellent survey of characteristics that are common among abusers. It will be helpful to read this book alongside a study of some key abusive characters in the Bible: Cain, Lot, Saul, Absolom, Diotrophes, etc…

It is also useful to study a couple repentant abusers: David and the Apostle Paul, as well as a female abuser (Jezebel). The bottom line is that the Bible has a lot to say about these types of people, and how Scripture handles their stories provides us with a good amount of information, both with identification as well as with addressing the abuse. Further, Psalms and Proverbs are full of information about abuse and abusers, but the words that need to be considered include: fool, scorner, talebearer, mocker, etc. and there are other words should be studied such as: oppressor and oppressed.

If you would like a more detailed and comprehensive approach, that is built on an exegetical treatment of how to recognize and respond to abuse, we offer three courses. The first one is available through our website, Introduction to the Four Tools System. The other two are offered on an individual basis, at this time. These are guided study / mentoring programs teaching how to apply the 4 Tools System to the victim and then to the abuser. You can contact us, if you would like more information.

The Truth Principle: This may actually be the most important principle, but it also may be the least commonly understood, since cognitive bias and wisdom both tend to muddy the waters. So, for example, a person might speak truthfully to the fact that they have been abused, but as a helper, I cannot know that this is true. The helper can truthfully state what they have been told, they can truthfully say that they believe the report, but it would be inappropriate to state that the helper knows it is true, unless there is sufficient observable and independent information to draw such a conclusion. This is important, since a great deal of damage can be done when we act with greater certainty than is warranted. 

This is also important to be humble about the limits of our own knowledge, since abuse is deceptive, by nature. As such, abusers can use true statements to craft a lie, and it is entirely possible for a skilled manipulator to say things that lead you to a conclusion that is completely erroneous. For this reason, it is terribly important to recognize when other people are being loose with the truth and especially when they are asking you to come to a conclusion (either by implication or by omission) that is unwarranted.

The problem here is that the only way to accomplish personal growth in this area is to wrestle deeply with difficult questions, and develop habits of thinking that are deliberate, careful, and precise. There is simply no shortcut to this kind of thinking, so one of my favorite examples of this is found in Alvin Plantinga’s book, “Knowledge and Christian Belief.” While the book does not address abuse, it does provide an example and pattern of careful handling of matters of truth, knowledge, and belief that should transfer well to your handling of truth in the practical application of Scriptural knowledge.

The Love Principle: As you move toward confronting abuse, the most important truths that you will need to confront are related to leadership, submission, and love. These are, by no means, all that you will need to confront, but in the context of abuse in the church, these three topics will be critical. If you have not read Alexander Strauch’s book, “Leading With Love,” you should definitely consider this excellent exposition and application of the principles in 1 Corinthians 13. 

At its root, abuse is an acute and complete failure to love, which necessarily requires dying to self and serving the interests of the one who is loved. As such, secular ideas of leadership, drawn from a culture that understands leadership in terms of power, are inadequate and misleading (at best). More frequently, they are utterly corrosive to any form of unity in Christ. His leadership is the template, and no leadership can be Christlike without selfless, sacrificial, service. The bottom line is that all biblical leadership eschews anything that looks like lordship and embraces a posture of service and principled submission.

This is as important for the helper as it is for the abuser and victim. Without a firm commitment to these principles, an emphasis on worldly ideas of leadership and submission easily creep into our understanding of how the family should operate. As a result, our churches and marriages are infected by a toxic endorsement of the power-struggle that was introduced by the fall and repudiated by the loving, sacrificial, service of Christ. 

Love cannot coexist with fear, because fear is introduced by including an element of punishment in the relationship. Once the leader assumes the right to demand compliance and the right to force compliance, the resulting mechanism of enforcement will introduce fear. Love diminishes while fear grows, and abuse will be present to a greater or lesser degree. This principle is true in all of our relationships, and the only way the Bible can be used to justify this type of relationship in the church or family is by twisting scripture to endorse a type of leadership based on power rather than service.

The Repentance Principle: Here is where we begin to bring what is broken into the light so that the Scripture can both correct and heal. One of the greatest tragedies in how the church deals with abuse is the fact that recognizing repentance, and understanding both what it is and what it isn’t, is not very well understood and rarely taught. Usually, we treat matters of repentance as if the verbal statement is sufficient to demand full and trusting reconciliation. This is both false, and incredibly damaging. Since abuse is deceptive, it loves to make demands based upon minimum effort, and then stop short of demonstrating full repentance.

On our blog (found at www.psalm82initiative.wordpress.com), we have written many articles specifically dealing with abuse, in the context of repentance. For an excellent exposition of the topic, pick up a copy of “The Doctrine of Repentance,” by Sir Thomas Watson. It is written in older language, but it is still clear, accessible, and an excellent resource. Without a robust understanding of repentance, it will be impossible to help an abuser, and it will also be impossible to help an abuse victim.

It is lazy and sloppy counseling that allows a shallow view of repentance to drive an abuse victim back into a relationship prematurely. Such leadership is spiritually abusive, since it lays a burden and requirement on the victim that God neither demands nor allows the church to demand. One more point is essential here: regardless of what you believe about divorce and remarriage it is a severe cruelty to place a burden of suffering on a wife, allowing a husband to behave with cruelty and oppression with the church’s implicit (or sometimes explicit) blessing.

The Freedom Principle: This brings us to the final principle. No counsel by any shepherd of God’s flock should lead or drive one of His sheep deeper into an oppressive relationship. Christ has come for freedom, and while a child of God may, indeed, be on a path that includes suffering, we are never told that we must suffer. Rather, God teaches us that suffering is a common plight of the human condition, and He teaches us how to suffer. Even within such circumstances, God calls us to freedom.

We may, for the sake of the gospel, put up with suffering for a time, but it is cruel and satanic to use Scripture as a means to demand suffering, especially at the hand of one we treat as part of the church! Any who would bring suffering into the life of those they are called to love should not be treated as if they are following God. Their sin should not be minimized to the level of a mistake or a weakness. 

God has called us to freedom, but that freedom is to be used carefully. Just as we submit to the government and other social institutions for the sake of the gospel, we are called to live cooperatively in community with one another and with society as a whole, as much as possible. It is wrong to use Scripture as a means to turn the Christian’s responsibility for cooperative freedom into a demand for suffering under a professing believer’s cruelty. 

It is only by calling the abuser to the love of Christ and holding them accountable for a thorough demonstration of repentance that we can begin to effectively address abuse. In the meantime, we are called to freedom and love, shielding the oppressed from the cruelty of those who would harm them, especially under the name of Jesus and with the mangled false teachings of a worldly and hypocritical church.

My dear friend, consider this: our freedom in Christ is an essential and primary principle of our faith, yet we so seldom actually apply it beyond abstract affirmation. Much more frequently we acknowledge it in principle but then offer advice and use the church’s authority in a manner that is inconsistent with this freedom. In so doing we place a burden upon others that is neither demanded by Scripture nor required by conscience. We cannot claim to call people to freedom while simultaneously demanding that they remain in bondage.

We owe no such allegiance to any, except Christ, and His yoke is easy. His burden is light. He has set his love upon us, removing condemnation and fear. He has set us free, indeed, and we must lead others to live in the light of these truths. Nowhere has the church more badly applied these principles than in matters of dealing with abuse in the church. We must do better, and we are greatly appreciative of your desire to participate in standing up for those who are otherwise under great distress.

For an excellent resource, consider this resource: Martin Luther's Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (1535): Lecture Notes Transcribed by Students and Presented in Today's English. His testimony and teaching call us away from bondage and into our freedom in Christ. 

The above principles, and the accompanying resources, should provide a good starting point for learning how to recognize and respond to abuse in your church, and that brings us to one final observation. Statistics will show around 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been abused by an intimate partner (spouse). This means that if you have a church of 100 people, at least 25 percent of the relationships in your church will be abusive to some extent. That doesn’t even begin to address the presence of sexual abuse, which is far more prevalent than most pastors would like to admit.

Think of it this way, 30 out of every 100 of the people in your church have been victimized by some form of abuse, but they are mostly afraid to come forward. This is at the root of many counseling problems, but it is largely unspoken and hidden. How you handle the abuse that does come forward will signal to the rest of your church how you would handle them, if they came forward. More importantly, this is not optional. God calls on both civil and religious leaders to deal with abuse effectively. 

“Free them from the hand of the wicked.”

Your servant,

The Psalm 82 Initiative, Director