How Should the Church Respond to Reports of Marital Abuse?

Marital abuse is possibly the most difficult form of abuse to expose and receive help for. That is largely because it occurs in very private settings between two adults. Of course we all know that any two people bring their own sin and shortcomings to any relationship, but what must be recognized is that abuse goes FAR and AWAY beyond the normal parameters of regular relational missteps, and it is almost never a response to anything the abused could have done differently to prevent it. Abuse originates within the abuser.

It is NOT simply out of control anger. It is a deep-seated need to overpower and harm another person, and in most cases, the other person is the person most intimately related to the abuser. Most psychologists believe that the reason for this is related to the abuser's own subconscious self-loathing, and so his malicious behavior is enacted upon the individual most intimate to himself--usually his spouse.

Churches simply are not equipped, in most cases, to help abused women. The reasons for this are many. Most Christians have been graciously spared from a personal knowledge of abuse. Many conservative churches lean toward patriarchalism--in which a man can rule over his family any way he sees fit, and women are strongly discouraged from ever speaking out against their husbands in any way, no matter the circumstances. In many of those settings, it is expected that the man speaks for his family, and the woman or children are not even considered to be voices for their own stories. To be so would be to deny the ritualistic external applications of "male headship." Women in these settings fear to speak out. No one wants to be the contentious woman, and every one of us who ventures to ask for help will be labeled as such before any help will ever be offered, no matter the actual facts. It is a knee-jerk reaction to abuse, "If he attacked you, you must have deserved it," and it is a lie. But it is a lie that a woman, already in a broken and weakened, usually paralyzed and debilitated state, must somehow find the strength to face and add to all the other accusations against her if she is ever to have hope to live free of her torment.

If the church is going to be Christ's Body on Earth, then the church simply must wake up to the reality of marital abuse and the slander against God that it carries. God reveals his relationship to his church as one of marriage. If marital abuse is accepted or swept under the rug, what are we saying about God? Would any pastor or church leader, or women's ministry leader, or young woman's mentor ever think of standing before God and calling him an abuser? To justify male abuse in a Christian home as a form of headship authority is to blaspheme the God who instituted marriage and called himself the Groom.

Elisabeth Klein has some valuable thoughts on the matter of what too often does happen in churches and what ought not to happen in churches. Her first-hand experience parallels far too many, including the experience of at least one here in our group. Please read and share this with your church leaders, male and female, even if you are not aware of marital abuse in your congregation. Prepare. Be ready, so that you can recognize the crime and help the wounded. This is the heart of God, to bind up the brokenhearted and to visit the widows (and their children) in their time of need. Do not turn your back on these women as they are being slowly murdered at the hands of the ones who stood before witnesses and God himself and took a vow to "cherish and nourish" her as his own body. Do not support the vow-breaking violation of abuse by undermining the victim.

God stands for justice. He despises the rift in relationship that is divorce when men cover their garments in violence, but he most certainly can still use the legality of divorce for the good of his beloved women when their husbands have sought their harm. Churches must be willing and able to run to the rescue of their women--heirs to the promise of God's grace right alongside men--if they wish to continue to stand in God's favor.


Churches: Wake up to Abuse by Elisabeth Klein
http://www.elisabethklein.com/church-wake-up-to-abuse/

Follow the link above to reach Elisabeth's article and begin to prepare your church to be instruments of mercy and change.