Influences of Spiritual Abuse

This past weekend I spent six hours in a conference on spiritual abuse. As I listened to the teaching, my mind started thinking through recent events and how Spiritual Abuse is potentially affecting a significant area of my community. Abuse has become a more common topic of discussion in recent years, a fact I am deeply thankful for. When a person experiences abuse in their life they are deeply changed.  When abuse is not named and recognized in an individual’s life they will have difficulty in understanding why they respond as they do in certain situations. Conversely when abuse is identified, the abused and their care givers are given the power to understand and can become equipped to deal with the effects it in their lives. This is what has motivated me to sit down and write this post about spiritual abuse.

Let’s consider the definition of spiritual abuse. I describe spiritual abuse as a person or persons in a position of influence or power who use ideas about God or scripture to remove the free choice of another individual’s opinions or decisions. This is a very broad definition and often raises many additional questions concerning church structure, parenting matters, ect.  I don’t intend to address these in this article since my focus is on understanding spiritual abuse and identifying it’s affects on us. 

Spiritual Abuse causes significant damage in individuals lives since it distorts the image of God and His expectations of them. One who has experienced spiritual abuse will often struggle to identify with God, as he portrays himself in the scriptures. When the spiritually abused read God’s description of his love for them in scriptures, they will often presuppose a subjective view of God upon those scriptures. When this is done God becomes someone who he has not proclaimed Himself to be. This subjective view of God causes individuals to see God through a “if then” view. Scripture paints a picture of a God who draws near to the broken heart, compassionately heals the bruised reed, and is careful not to snuff out the smoldering flax. We can see this demonstrated in Jesus with the woman at the well and the women caught in the act of adultery.  Jesus words were, come unto me, you who are tired and burdened down by life and I stand at the door knocking; if you choose to open the door, I will come in. The spiritually abused can tend to see Jesus holding the door shut until they perform to a particular level or opening the door and forcing himself inside with the desire to force them to change.

The human heart was created by God to live in the safety and security of the Garden of Eden. This environment also included a deep relationship with the created and their creator. The story line of the Scripture is very clearly pointing to the work of a creator whose goal is to restore the relationship that was lost in the “Fall of Man”. Jesus Christ was sent to restore our relationship with God. False views of God resulting from spiritual abuse keep our hearts from moving towards Jesus Christ because they project additional criteria onto an individual before they can be considered qualified to interact with Jesus Christ. The heart of man is not an organism that can be reasoned with using logic. Instead the heart is comprised of its life experiences and its pursuits to find that one relationship that it was created to be in.  Scripture tells us that we will be given a new heart and that the heart of man does not seek God, on its own, but is drawn to Him through the work of the Holy Spirit.  If experiences have demonstrated to the heart that authority figures cannot be trusted, or that it can never meet the expectations of those in positions of religious authority, it will see God through those same lenses. These lenses have a significant negative effect on the abused heart’s ability to connect with God. I have worked with many who could pray intellectually from their minds but their hearts were not able to connect with God out of the belief that they had not reached a certain level of repentance, penance, or religious righteousness.

 Another aspect of spiritual abuse is that those who have experienced it will lose trust with earthly shepherds or religious authority figures. This loss of trust will inhibit the individual from giving healthy leaders in their lives the benefit of the doubt when they do something that they do not understand.  Rather than being able to attribute a positive motive to the action, the spiritually abused victim will sub-consciously attribute a negative motive to the action. If a leader at any point disturbs their security or triggers their fears, they will react in the same way they reacted against the one who abused them.  This often leaves leaders confused and struggling to understand the reactions.  Because evil intent is attributed to the leader, the spiritually abused victim will see a leader as untrustworthy and as someone who is willing to use pressure in the same way as the one who abused them. 

 It is important for church leaders to understand these reactions and to be careful to seek to understand the perspective of the one who is reacting against them.  It is also the responsibility of the abuse victim to recognize what is happening in their interior and respond appropriately to it. The first step in recovering from abuse is to be able to recognize the abuse.  The second is to seek out a healing path and to recognize their propensity towards reacting negatively towards God and other authority in their lives; returning to a position of love that tries to believe the best of a healthy leader that they do not understand. Making a choice to do the hard work of seeking that person out to understand them instead of reacting and projecting assumed negative motives to the situation.

 Recovery is not a one and done two-step process but instead it is a multifaceted journey of slow recovery. When the original wound is understood and empathized with, by God or another human being, the heart can begin to feel understood and cared for in a situation that it felt unheard and violated in.  Wounds of the heart carry residual debts, that need to be paid for because of the crime committed against them. While it can be healing for the perpetrator abuser to have a heart change and to admit their wrong, this admission and change of life is not sufficient to totally satisfy the debt of the crime against the heart.  Jesus specifically calls His followers to take up their cross and follow after Him.  Jesus took up his cross as an example to us.  His cross was an unjust debt payment for our failures.  In the same way He calls us to crawl onto our cross and die an equally unjust death to the payment that is owed us. His call is not a demand but an invitation into life with Him.  It’s a choice each individual must make on their own without pressure or “if then” statements.  I find that revelation from the Holy Spirit is the most effective way to move a heart to the place where it is willing to engage with their cross. This forgiveness journey in no way calls us to have a relationship with an unrepentant abuser.  It does call us however to a heart position of mercy and compassion towards them for their broken state.  Jesus’s death on the cross was a once and done final act of forgiveness.  Rarely is the human heart able to forgive in that way.  Rather it becomes, a daily dying on the cross.  As the journey through forgiveness progresses, the victim will find themselves able to stay in that position of mercy and compassion for longer periods of time.  Many times, our hearts will respond with, this is unjust or I did not deserve this.  This position of the heart, while true, is a justice position.  When we engage with in-justice we lose focus of our own failures and the mercy and compassion that Jesus Christ extended to us in them.  As long as we hold this justice position, we will not find our hearts ready to accept an unjust cross.  Contemplation of my own sins against others and the resulting response of Jesus forgiveness will begin to motivate my heart to respond in the same way to those who have sinned against me. 

I hope to write more some day on the journey through forgiveness.  I hope this post will be helpful to you in identifying spiritual abuse in your life.  Are you on the journey through forgiveness?  How is that journey going for you?  What specific things have aided you on this journey?  Maybe you find yourself stuck in that journey. Leave me a comment. 

Garrett Martin