My recent post God loves divorce elicited less responses than I hoped. I had hoped to hear some of my fellow bloggers give a hearty “amen.” But the response was strangely muted. The few comments that were left were funny, poetic and touching. And I received two private messages from formerly abused wives who have divorced their husbands despite strong pressure from their church to stay in the relationship and pursue “reconciliation.”
I believe in reconciliation. But I also believe in “expel the immoral brother.” When a woman in your church is seeking separation and divorce while the husband is crying out for reconciliation and counseling, who is the villain? I believe that long-term emotional and verbal abuse is a sin of unfaithfulness to the marriage covenant. If headship means anything, it means that the husband should take the lead in creating a safe and nurturing environment for his wife and children where everyone can develop the gifts they have been given by God. Unfortunately, a lot of the headship and loving submission dogma I’m hearing is nothing but misogyny with a makeover. I recently listened to a woman who had been very active in directing a crisis pregnancy center who resigned because she wanted to “restore Godly submission in her home” and “find her fulfillment in building up her husband.” That is a bunch of baloney. Her husband is a couch potato. Hasn’t anyone ever told her about Priscilla and Aquila? Or Andronicus and Junias? Or Martha and Mary? Or Mother Teresa? Or Ladybird Johnson? Or Marie Curie? Or Aimee Semple McPherson? Or Corrie Ten Boom? Children of God are called to impact this world regardless of their reproductive organs. And husband and wife teams have a huge potential to fulfill God’s kingdom and that doesn’t merely mean she keeps his shirts ironed so that he can fulfill his ministry.
My main point is that if a woman in your church is seeking separation from her husband, give her the benefit of the doubt. It’s highly likely that she is being intimidated by her husband, she’s ashamed of “failing” as a wife, and she’s feeling condemnation from everyone in her church. But for her to get to the point where she has made a public move to leave her husband means that there was a huge blowup behind closed doors that you don’t know about.
- She does not need advice. She needs your support.
- She is trying to escape. Help her find a place of safety.
- She needs professional help. Make sure she is working with a Christian counselor and an attorney and someone from police protection.
Dan Wallace has published a great article: 1 Peter 3.7 and Wife Abuse.
One book that I’d like to recommend is It’s My Life Now: Starting Over After an Abusive Relationship or Domestic Violence by Meg Kennedy Dugan and Roger R. Hock. This book really helped me see that “reconciliation” is just another word for trapping a wife in the cycle of abuse. Yes, he may be repentant. He is sweet-talking and desires to make things better. But his pattern of abusive behavior will not be broken with his wife under the same roof with him. Get her out of there (or better yet get him out of there) and let him deal with the consequences of his behavior. As long as they’re still in the same house, she will never escape the bondage of a domineering husband, and he will never break the cycle of abuse.
Finally, a note about the images in this post. I searched for almost an hour for a sign showing a woman escaping. I found nothing. It appears that a woman can stand by her man but if he’s a jerk there truly is no escape.
Wow, that’s hard hitting. But I wonder how it can be squared with the Bible. I think it can if we see this as a matter of church discipline. Presumably a Christian wife who is thinking of leaving her husband considers that he has sinned against her, and has already tried to resolve the matter privately. The next step for her is to bring in witnesses, who in such a case should probably include a pastor or a professional counsellor (incidentally this is a very good reason for having a woman pastor in a team!) Then, if the matter cannot be resolved by the church, one party (or potentially both) can be treated as a pagan or a tax collector (Matthew 18:17); and, as this party who is treated as an unbeliever is not willing to live in a proper relationship with the other party, this is biblical grounds for separation and indeed for divorce and remarriage (1 Corinthians 7:15). After all, God allowed divorce in cases of hardness of heart like this.
I don’t have an easy answer to that question. I’m wondering out loud if Titus 2:4 could be a guide here: “Older women must train the younger women to love their husbands and their children.” First, there’s a mentoring going on. And second, an older woman is able to say, “No, honey, your husband isn’t treating you right.” Considering how patriarchal churches are a vulnerable woman has to have a woman with authority to turn to in times of crisis.
What you are describing is an inquisition and no woman is going to put herself through it. We have to begin from a standpoint of zero tolerance for abuse in the home whether it be against a spouse, parent or child. Then when evidence comes up we need to not treat the victim like the perpetrator. If two or three are confronting anyone it should be the abuser who is getting called on the carpet rather than some sort of “woman caught in adultery” scenario.
I didn’t mean this to sound like an inquisition. But then neither should accusations against husbands be entertained without some kind of evidence. A difficult line to tread, obviously, which is why trained pastors and/or counsellors need to be involved.
I think what happens more often is that accusations aren’t entertained because the pressure to conform and be quiet is too strong, so she never says anything or goes elsewhere for help. I think you and I both agree on the crucial role of women in ministry in a church to be aware of signs of abuse and also available for real help and protection.
David,
I applauded your first post quietly, and this one even more. Your Pumpkin post was devastatingly accurate and beautiful at the same time. This one is spot on the money. Thank you.
http://www.theraveproject.com
Appreciate your “Peter, Peter” poem very much, David.
But the “Older women must train the younger women to love their husbands and their children” argument? Isn’t that mostly a male mandate in a male-to-male text in a mostly male dominant world? Do “we” really have to try to “square the Bible” (as you Peter Kirk, a very different Peter) suggest? Isn’t codepoke spot on with you by pointing us people to theraveproject.com? And what about theraveproject pointing people to Bible study and the book, The Battered Wife, in which on her very first page author “With the Bible on their side, churches argue that God planned for men and women to choose partners for life and to share life’s journey. . . But there is a startling reality the Christian church needs to face”? But before any of us gets to this point, can’t we make sure all of the doors to the escape routes are unlocked? Would anyone else find this “watch-out-get-out-before-it-escalates” quiz helpful?
http://www.aardvarc.org/dv/abusequiz.shtml
I’ll definitely check out the links. My point in quoting the “older women” passage is simply that they are the key figures in a church to mentor/care for the other women. And that particular passage brings up a point we can ignore in this discussion: all have sinned. Or as we say around my house, “It takes two to tango.” A wife is also a sinner in need of God’s grace and his spiritual fruit in order to “love her husband.” I’m not in any way trying to shift blame for abuse to the woman but just say that every marriage is the melding of two broken people to form a less than perfect union.
Kurk, I didn’t say we should square the Bible, rather that we should use the Bible as a measuring tool to square other ideas, i.e. to assess and adjust them. That doesn’t at all mean to use the Bible as a battering ram, or as shackles to tie marriage partners together, as some do.
David, At my blog where you commented saying “Feminists can only see male bogeys,” I replied saying you are starting to sound like one. Courtney at feministing, nonetheless, starts to sound some like you, saying “Why do so many feminists resist being critical about the institution of marriage?.” I appreciate what you’re saying here about marriage and the melding of people in brokenness.
Peter, Yes I see I twisted a bit of what you said. There is misuse of the Bible for twisted purposes. In America, it was the square measure for race-based slavery for years up through the nation’s bloodiest war. And it was used, squarely, by some, to justify the euroamerican genocide of native peoples. How can (us) outsiders to the bible read it fairly? It does seem to favor men, husbands, slave owners.
> “It takes two to tango.”
It does not take two to abuse. Emphatically.
As for squaring the bible with divorce over abuse, I go here:
Mar 2:27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
Even so the bonds of matrimony.
In the grand scheme of things our churches should be proactive in encouraging communication and growth in married couples. In the real world we’re most often dealing with “history.” What’s the policy? Zero tolerance? Tough call and not something that bloggers can decide but rather ministers and congregations working in the real (messy) world.
I wrote a comment, but then I made it to the part of thinking about good policies. Suddenly I reached what I thought was the center of the decision process, so I’ll state it here and be done with it.
The line is at “fear.” Once the victim is afraid, everything changes.
Before the victim is afraid, talk of policies and counseling and boundaries and reconciliation plans makes sense. But once the woman (and it’s almost always the woman) begins growing afraid, discussion grows into victimization.
The only thing I’ll add is that even the most helpful rescuer must not do anything that takes control from the victim. The victim needs to be the decision maker in her own escape for a lot of complex reasons. Therefore, any policy has to be about enabling and empowering, but not deciding.
But yeah. It’s messy.
That’s good stuff you’re saying. And I’ve seen it first hand so it’s not just theory. Trouble is we want to rescue victims and like you said they need to take control and save themselves with a support network around them sheltering them and cheering them on.
Is there a difference between separation and divorce, though? Divorce would permit the wife to marry again, while separation would provide a safe buffer, suppored and enforced by the church.
I can see all of your points from a social standpoint, but from a Biblical standpoint, divorce is still a very taboo concept reserved for only the most dire of circumstances. Abuse, while I agree it is awful, is still MERELY a husband’s failure to be Christ-like. I say merely because it still is not a broken covenant.
If we begin to permit divorce as a restitution for one spouse’s sin, even harmful and dangerous sin, then why not permit divorce for a wife’s disrespectful behavior, sharp tongue, refusal of sex, etc. All of these are Biblical admonishons for wives, but I don’t see them as grounds for the breaking of a covenant.
Nick, you’re asking tough questions. What about children? Should we permit abusive fathers to retain custody of their children? What about sexual abuse? Is there some sort of parental covenant that hasn’t been broken in this case? I don’t buy the covenant argument. But I would agree with you that separation should be a first intervention rather than divorce. It’s all tough to call when talking in generalities.