A Reason for Praise

The media is finally condemning domestic abuse.

I've never much been in favor personally of making celebrities out of athletes. It seemed like a risky move to me, just as putting any human being on a pedestal for worship and intense adoration is likely to be. But if our culture did not make celebrities out of athletes, it is very possible that our same culture would not be seeing the progress it is finally seeing now. People are beginning to pay attention to the horror and prevalence of domestic violence. Finally.

The attention and outcry are getting louder. People are realizing that just as those Boston citizens could say, "I had no idea he could do something like plant a bomb at a marathon. He seemed like such a normal guy," or those Cleveland citizens could say, "But I lived next to those guys for ten years; I ate barbeque in their backyard. I had no idea they had kidnapped women in the bedroom upstairs," or those Oklahoma City residents could say, "But Tim seemed like an average guy to me," they too can say, "I had no idea that normal looking family man was a brute and a beast and a sociopath with the wife who stuck by him for so long."

Domestic violence is a type of terrorism. It depends on the same things to flourish: secrecy, privacy, outward appearances, threats, intimidation, the element of surprise.

And God hates it. Women are just as much a part of his "treasured possession" as believing men. He uses women as the very symbol of his own Bride, the church, whom he himself died for. He loves women fiercely and jealously and he will not remain patiently silent and merciful forever toward the men who harm his daughter, or the men in authority who will not come to their aid. It is these men in authority to whom Jesus was speaking when he told them that God did indeed allow for divorce, but why? Because their hearts were hard--the leaders', the men's hearts were hard. God allows for divorce in order to protect his daughters because men will not repent, have empathy, use their power for the good of the women they are to cherish and care for as their own bodies and as Christ loved the church.

It is to these abusive men, who have forgotten the bride of their youth, to whom God says he hates--the men who did not love their wives but instead created an unthinkable rift with them, these men who clothe themselves with violence (Malachi 2:16). Yes, God hates the rift in relationship that is divorce, but he gives permission for legalizing that divorce in order to protect the woman who is being destroyed by her faithless husband.

Your maker is your husband! And he will not forsake you. He is coming. He is coming back. And he is not coming as a lamb this time. He is coming as a GROOM and as a WARRIOR.

The trumpets are being sounded. Men of the church, are you listening? John Piper, are YOU listening? Will you use your power, your authority, your influence to defend the widows, where God's heart is, or to keep them in oppression, fear, and turmoil forever?

The evidence is clear. Abuse is wrong. The dividing lines are being drawn. The martyrs crying out, "How long?" are heard, and God is moving in his church. His justice is sure. We who have cried out and had our cries fall on deaf ears are heard. That's reason for praise!

Sanctuary or Living Hell

I woke up this morning with the word "threshold" in my mind. Threshold, threshold, threshold. Why?

A quick scan down the listing in my concordance landed me on Judges 19, and I remembered the story there. Rancid stuff. Horror. But I read it again, and this time, one line I don't remember noticing before stood out to me. Verse 3: "Then her husband arose and went after her, to speak kindly to her and bring her back."

To speak kindly to her.

This is the story of the slave-wife, the concubine of a Levite, who after some circumstance that left her labelled unfaithful (we are not told what she did, nor what the conditions of her life preceding her action may have been like), fled from her master-husband to take refuge "in her father's house at Bethlehem in Judah." After four months, her master-husband comes after her, finally, and the text notes that he intend to "speak kindly to her and bring her back."

Just a few verses later, this silver-tongued bastard is handing his slave-wife into the most treacherous scene ever. In order to defend himself, he gives the woman he has taken from the safety of her father's house into the hands of men who will rape and assault her until nearly dawn. When the master opens the door the next day, he finds his concubine outside the door with her fingers on the threshold. She has crawled back from her horror to the one who sent her into it, and found the door closed to her.

This is not her father's house.

Is she already dead? Or comatose from trauma? We don't know, but the master-husband has no regard for her. When his order to her to get up and get on their way gets no response, he picks her up and lays her on his beast. In the next scene, he hacks her body into a dozen pieces and sends it out throughout all the land. The depth of evil in his heart is exposed, and nothing like it had ever before been seen or heard of.

How many of us have reached safety or almost reached it, only to lose our footing when kind words convince us to return once more, to put ourselves back into precariousness or outright danger? How many have been told it is our obligation to do so, because Christ suffered at the hands of the enemies he would make his friends at his own death? I know I have.

I have been the concubine with my fingers on the threshold, frozen, traumatized, all but dead.

Today, I am in my father's house. And I am not leaving it. I can't go back there. Kind words are not enough.

When God Says, "No," He Is Saying, "I Love You"

For years, I thought God had abandoned me. I thought he was not answering my prayers. I thought he had turned his ear away from me.

How? That wasn't consistent with the God I had known, who had wooed me to love him with his grace and full affection and delight in me. The God who said he does incline his ear to listen and who gently leads the sheep of his fold. How could that God make promises to be near to the broken hearted and not hear my daily cries, for a decade on end?

A week ago, I got a new understanding. I think it is the voice of the Lord.

You see, for at least 10 years, and maybe more, I had been asking him to change me, to give me greater endurance and strength and stability within myself so that I could continue to endure an abusive situation. I thought continuing in it was the only way to stay righteous. You see, "what God has joined together, let no man separate" was something I took seriously, even if the "no man" was this woman, to save herself. What I didn't realize then is that I wouldn't be the one doing the separating. I didn't cause the separation. The abuser did that. Yet I still would not consider even calling it what it truly was and formalizing that which was reality, because I felt so certain that it would be wrong. I simply needed to endure it.

And I couldn't. This bruised reed is so very bruised. These bones were dried out. The soul became crushed. And I thought that meant God had abandoned me. How could he let me break so completely? Why didn't he give me strength to keep going?

Why? Because he loves me. I finally heard it last week. All this time, he hasn't been turning a deaf ear. He has actually been answering me. But his answer wasn't what I expected. His answer was, "No."

"No, my precious daughter. I will not give you more strength to endure this abuse. No, I will not be the cause of you staying in it. No, I do not want this for you. Come out, my daughter. If desperation is what it takes to bring you out, crawl away, and come out into the light."

He had to say no to me for me to finally begin to break free. He had to refuse to strengthen me, so that in my weakness I would have no other choice than to leave it or die in it. And he loved me too much to watch me stay.

Freedom is coming. I am like the concubine upon the threshold, only in my own case, I pray and believe that he has called me out moments before that fatal one. He is saving me. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.