~ What Is Spiritual Abuse? ~

Spiritual Abuse ~

There is a very real need to expose some misconceptions about what spiritual abuse is, and how and why to leave a church.  Several excellent books are available that cover this subject in-depth, so I will be referencing them briefly throughout to keep things simple here, but I urge you to get these books and read them in their entirety to get the complete, comprehensive picture.  

Ken Blue in his book "Healing Spiritual Abuse" defines it best:

"Unlike physical abuse that often results in bruised bodies, spiritual and pastoral abuse leaves scars on the psyche and soul. It is inflicted by persons who are accorded respect and honor in our society by virtue of their role as religious leaders and models of spiritual authority. They base that authority on the Bible, the Word of God, and see themselves as shepherds with a sacred trust. But when they violate that trust, when they abuse their authority and when they misuse ecclesiastical power to control and manipulate the flock, the results can be catastrophic.3 

“… Spiritual abusers are curiously naive about the effects of their exploitation. They rarely intend to hurt their victims. They are usually so narcissistic or so focused on some great thing they are doing for God that they don't notice the wounds they are inflicting on their followers.

"Mere thoughtlessness, rudeness and arrogance among those in church leadership are not my concern in this book. If everything church leaders do wrong is called spiritual abuse, the issue is trivialized. I want to discourage the superficial labeling of too many pastors as spiritual abusers. Let's deal responsibly with the real problem and not turn our concern with spiritual abuse into the Salem witch hunt of our time. Given these cautions, we must still be discerning. Some very pleasant and socially acceptable behavior is nevertheless calculated to manipulate and so is abusive. 

"In light of the serious trauma caused by heavy-handed abusers, such subtle manipulation may seem quite minor. It is significant, however, because it is a violation of trust. When a leader pretends to be a friend and uses this illusion to dehumanize and manipulate his followers, he is acting abusively." ~Ken Blue. Healing Spiritual Abuse: How to Break Free from Bad Church Experience

    

We first began to realize we were in a spiritually abusive situation when we started seeing a pattern of lies.  At first it was subtle yet obvious exaggerations here and there over things that didn't seem to matter.  But over time they became full-blown lies.  One small example was comments from the pulpit on how many church members we had, when just a cursory glance around the auditorium during any given service would show less than half that number.  When we brought up that his credibility was weakened by such exaggerations, instead of humbly recognizing that there was even the remotest possibility that we might have a legitimate concern, he doubled down and typed out a list of all the "members."  Copies were then handed out before the services to "prove" he wasn't exaggerating with strong exhortations on being sure to pray for everyone listed.  After serving faithfully at that church for more than four years we didn't recognize about one-third of the names on that list, and several others that we did recognize hadn't attended in so long we hadn't even realized they had ever been members.  The exaggerations and absurd misrepresentations of reality affronted normal common sense continually.

    

It's so easy to excuse it away with thoughts like, well, that's just how he sees it.  He's not really lying.  But a classic symptom of sin is a warped perception of reality.  When we sin repeatedly it affects the brain in such a way that it makes our thinking all wrong.  If not confessed and forsaken, this leads to strong delusions and people actually believe their own lies to be true. God refers to this phenomenon in  2 Thes. 2:10b-12a "... because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie:  that they all might be damned who believed not the truth ..."  This scripture is specifically referring to salvation, but the principle applies.

A few weeks after we left the church the pastor made a hospital visit to a young couple who had just had their first baby.  He took the opportunity on this otherwise happy occasion to confide to members of their family that one of the reasons we left had to do with them.  He said a contributing factor to our leaving was that we thought he had not handled sin in the life of a member of their family properly.  Later that day I received a phone call asking me if this was true.  Our leaving had absolutely nothing to do with other members of the church.  We love these people, and our only concern was to love them well through such a difficult time.  How the pastor chose to handle things was between him, them, and God.  

We had no way of knowing then that this was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  It’s been over a year since we left that church and as recently as three weeks ago we were still hearing of new lies that have been told about us.  Someone was told that the reason I had to leave Sunday School early on occasion was because I needed my “coffee fix.”  The truth is that my husband has blood sugar issues.  Due to getting to the church early he often didn’t have time to eat breakfast so I would have to grab him a quick snack before the morning service.  Not once did the pastor ever ask me why I had to leave.  I would have been happy to tell him.  Oh, and for the record, I don’t even like coffee.  

Abusive pastors cover their own sins and that of their family's, but most are quick to make sure everyone else is admonished from the pulpit and coerced to go forward and repent.   Ministries are taken away from lay people who don't represent the church or pastor well, but if the pastor's family does something wrong, very rarely are ministries taken away, nor does any public form of repentance or change take place.   I've even seen ministry responsibilities increased in such cases.   Church discipline is Biblical and necessary, but abusive pastors seem to think that they and their families are above it.  

Another very common form of pastoral abuse and control is the misuse of funds.  How many of us can attest to having been in churches who use sacrificially given, designated funds for things other than that for which they were designated?  An example is funds sacrificially given to missions being used as a slush fund for the abusive pastor’s pet projects or plans.  This promotes a lack of transparency and is disrespectful to the giver, in much the same manner as the government saying they know better what's best for our children than we do.