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anti-feminism, chaos, Christianity, culture, domestic violence, faith, insanitybytes, opinion, Pastor Wilson
Pastor Wilson has ticked me off, which is not unusual, he has ticked off a lot of people. So he writes a reasonably good post called the perils of zero sum counseling, some of which I agree with, but there is just something wrong here that won’t leave me alone, that nags at me.
He eventually says, “Any counselor who actually tries to address feminine shortcomings in a dysfunctional relationship is a brave counselor. One of the things that happens is that any such an attempted address is immediately construed as “taking the side” of the abuser.”
He does not say, “taking the side of the man” nor does he say “taking the side of the husband,” he says the “abuser.” So he recognizes there is an abusive situation right in front of him, a power imbalance with a clear abuser and a victim.
And yet he says not one word about providing safety, protection, or comfort.
To make matters worse he than proceeds to say, “We are dealing with a culture-wide insistence that women not be held responsible for what they do. This assumption has crept into the church, even into the conservative wing of the church, and has now been weaponized.”
Well call me crazy, but I ain’t walking into the office of a lawyer who has these words posted over his door, “We are dealing with a culture-wide insistence that women not be held responsible for what they do.” Nor a doctor’s office. Nor a pastor’s office. Especially not a pastor’s office. In fact, anybody who holds those words close to their heart better stand 30 feet outside my personal space bubble.
Is it any wonder that victims so seldom turn to the church in cases of domestic violence or sexual abuse or even simple marital counseling? Not to me it isn’t.
It’s a real shame too, because what is close to my heart is empowering women and empowerment means taking responsibility and being accountable for one’s flaws, sins so to speak. I cannot stand the culture of victimization we have created and yet I cannot deny that it exists for a reason, that there is clear cause and effect going on.
Do victims need to reach a place in their healing where they come to accept responsibility for what has led to their situation? Yes, eventually. I think coming to recognize yourself in the equation, forgiving yourself, and receiving Christ’s forgiveness and mercy, is incredibly valuable, it allows one to set down burdens, some one may have been lugging around that don’t even belong to you. And forgiving those who have harmed you can be very freeing, too. And marriages can be saved, reconciliation can be a real thing.
Victims, and also women in general, often need protection and safety, physical safety yes, but also emotional safety, emotional protection, ideas woven around justice, this is wrong and my grace and mercy will cover you. I will treat you fairly, I will name evil for what it is. Trust. Safety. Protection. Emotional cover. Otherwise you’ll just harden women’s hearts and possibly drive people away from faith entirely.
No man in his right mind would ever walk into a counselor’s office who promptly announced, “We are dealing with a culture-wide insistence that men not be held responsible for what they do and it’s been weaponized. My job is to right this wrong.”
No woman should ever have to face that either.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
What a blunder. What a boob. What a wedge the enemy has driven, using the church to drive it. Divide and conquer has been his strategy from the beginning, and this pastor seems to be playing right into his bony, insidious hands.
Still shaking my head over “feminine shortcomings.” I’m pretty sure shortcomings don’t have genders. He might have more success focusing on RELATIONAL shortcomings.
And he better hope I never come to him for marriage counseling…
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Yes, separate, divide, and control, that’s a nasty business and it seems to permeate everything these days.
“And he better hope I never come to him for marriage counseling…”
LOL! I know, right? People keep telling me I have no idea what the church can really be like, and this is true, I don’t, because my spirit, my temperment wouldn’t put up with that for two seconds.
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Amen sister.
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Julie,
‘Still shaking my head over “feminine shortcomings.”’
You do a great job of jumping to your own conclusion. Did you read his post? If you did, you will find that he is not even possibly suggesting that men have no shortcomings. In fact, the following quote shows him calling some men’s behavior “awful”, “abusive”, “wicked”, “blindingly stupid”, and last, but not least, “sin”.
“Taking one thing with another, over the years I have seen many instances of men doing awful things to their wives and daughters. And when I say “awful,” I mean awful. Their abusive treatment has ranged from wicked to blindingly stupid. Not only do I not excuse it or explain it away, I rejoice in the liberty that I still have in such instances to call sin sin. “
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“Not only do I not excuse it or explain it away, I rejoice in the liberty that I still have in such instances to call sin sin”
While conversely sitting on the side of the court room with the pedophiles and sex offenders because it is a priority to protect their relationship with Christ over hers.
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It may be you who jumped to a conclusion. Back when my first marriage failed, if our marriage counselor had blamed it on my husband’s masculine shortcomings, I would have corrected him. The failure of our marriage had nothing to do with
His gender. It had to do with
A lack of commitment, which is a shortcoming found in males and females alike.
Relationships don’t fail because people aren’t good at being males or females, they fail because people aren’t good at relationships.
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Julie,
“What a blunder. What a boob.”
Perhaps I jumped to a conclusion in that I presumed that it was “feminine” in “feminine shortcomings” that you disliked in Wilson’s post. It certainly fit with my understanding of Wilson’s post, IB’s post, and your comment.
I agree that both sexes have shortcomings, including relational ones. In context, I think “feminine shortcomings” was very important in clarifying his position. Perhaps you would preferred “the shortcomings of the wife” instead.
One of the reasons I agree with Wilson’s post is that, in my own experience with marriage counseling, it wasn’t until the 4th counselor (all male, by the way) that there was any suggestion that my wife’s behavior was relevant to the situation and could possibly be part of the problem. It should not be surprising that she did not like working with that counselor.
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Having grown up in an abusive violent home, I say amen to this! My mother has sadly endured the affects of abuse physically even now and as children we did emotionally. Nevertheless, God is Good to surround us with protective angels. Blessing,
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Thank you! God is good indeed and He has the most wonderful way of handing us beauty for ashes. 🙂
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He is acting like an asshole. As soon as any relationship can be described as “abusive”, the only focus must be the abuse and the abuser and their behavior. It’s like there is a sniper shooting up the house (I have MASH on TV right now – Ha!), the sink is in front of the window and your husband asks: “Why don’t you have the dishes done? You never get the dishes done early.” Jumpin’ Jehosephat – the dishes are completely irrelevant until the sniper is stopped. Any responsibility on the dysfunctioning of a relationship is irrelevant until the abuse is stopped.
And honestly IB, God gave us the ability to act and failure to do so in His name is wrong. The idiots that say: “Oh well, she’s being abused – pray for her” can go **ck themselves as far as I am concerned. Pray is a cop out unless it is matched by action as James 2:17 points out: “So too, faith by itself, if it is not complemented by action, is dead.”
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One of these days you’re going to tell us how you really feel, Paul. Sheesh, I had to fish you out of my bad word filter. 🙂
I hear you. There are 3 things that really push my buttons. When women come to men in distress and it is mistaken for sin, as in “she must be in sin or she wouldn’t be suffering like this.” Second, when people have been dealt atrocious circumstances, domestic violence, disabled children, tragedy, and the first thing that is said is, “well you must have brought this on yourself. Maybe your faith isn’t strong enough.” And lastly, “I’ll pray for you,” meaning I’ll render no assistance and it’s unlikely I’ll remember to pray for you either.
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Ha! Sorry IB. Abuse is one of my triggers – anger triggers. I think I was programmed that way by my Mum. When you see and hear about so much abuse, after a while the storm clouds gather at the slightest hint. And if you think I’m loud and obnoxious about abuse, you should meet my Mum. Whew!
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Paul,
“As soon as any relationship can be described as “abusive”, the only focus must be the abuse and the abuser and their behavior.”
There is a reasonable possibility that self-diagnosis of the relationship as abusive is not correct, but is the result of the supposed victim’s perspective. Unfortunately, the victim mentality of society today assumes that accusation proves guilt without need of proof. That is, it is abuse because I say I am being abused.
I know that abuse exists and is far too great of a problem today, but please spare me the anecdotes of your own personal experience of abuse.
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Ummm,I was never abused – I’m sorry if I somehow gave that impression. Our kitchen table was often covered with cases of people who were abused – women who were reported by the hospital, with broken bones; beaten children reported by teachers; kids in cages reported by neighbors or workers. I saw these cases long after there was any deciding IF they were abuse – it was only how to stop it.
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Paul,
I did not suppose you were abused. Actual abuse is too common and needs to be handled correctly. My point is that the victim mentality of today’s society can and does lead to people misusing the concept to their own personal advantage. Assuming abuse claims are true can give terrible results, too.
Suppose, for example, that a wife accuses her husband of abuse even though there has never been any abuse. The result is that the husband is presumed guilty, evicted from the home, sometimes jailed, and a protective order given that prevents him from contact with his children. If this happens, the husband is in a lose-lose situation. If he agrees that he abused, then he did abuse. However, if he says “the abuse didn’t happen”, then, per the Duluth model used by most state agencies today, this is considered to be evidence that the abuse accusations are true. In other words, he is considered to be guilty whether he admits abuse or denies abuse.
Abuse needs to be treated seriously and that requires that claims of abuse be initially assumed to be true. However, this needs to be tempered with the realization that people do not always tell the truth, nor are they necessarily being abused because they believe they are being abused. There needs to be a way to determine the truth of the matter much more quickly so that everyone’s rights are treated equally.
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OKR: It actually turns out that untrue accusations are rare.
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Paul,
Perhaps it is rare for abuse accusations to be untrue, but don’t those truly innocent people who are falsely accused deserve justice, too?
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Well, here I do with my rather simple view of things again. Okay. If one person is abusing another, physically, verbally, or emotionally, and no matter which direction it happens to be going…it sort of seems not much else matters until that particular issue is either resolved or walked away from. Kind of like fixing a person’s hair so they look good at the hospital when meanwhile they are bleeding to death.
Why do I say that? Well, of course we all have our shortcomings, but no shortcoming or even outright provocation from my wife would make it okay for me to abuse her. As Dr. Phil says, there is NO valid reason for a man to lay his hands on a woman in anger.
Just my two cents.
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Simple is often best. When people are bleeding out, that is not the time to mention that their hair is messed up too.
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Exactly!
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I really hate it when people talk that way. It makes it seem like they aren’t taking an objective look at both sides. Obviously there’s people in our culture that overlook men’s flaws, and others that overlook women’s flaws. And in any given siiation there is usually something both sides can do to make things better, regardless of who is truly at fault.
Honestly I’ve seen a lot of people, especially guys(based off personal experience. I don’t think it’s actually a gender specific issue, though) take control of a situation with their anger and blame the other person for most everything and tell them they exhibit a lot of some negative trait, and sometimes the angry person blames that negative trait on the person’s gender. Meanwhile, the angry person is exhibiting the very trait they criticize in the other person. The other person is dragged through the argument on and on until they have to pretend they agree or else avoid protesting all the bad things the other person is saying about them.
A situation I’ve experienced like that is where I have to hold myself back from saying what I truly think after my dad pushes an argument so hard that I am unbelievably full of fury, but I know that any angry outburst will just make the situation worse. But my emotion has to go somewhere, so I end up crying. But then he gets furious at me for getting ’emotional’. Even though he was the one yelling the entire time. He and a decent amount of the guys I’ve seen think most of their decisions are based on logic and that they are rarely emotional. Sorry to anyone who may act like that, but yelling and cussing and being unwilling to hear the other side is an unreasonable and emotional response, just like crying is.
Like I said, I don’t think that is just a guy problem, even though they may have a tendency toward it. In terms of whether the counselor sides with the guy or girl more, that is going to depend on the counselor, because many therapists will interpret the situation differently.
I can’t help but wonder what that guy’s story is with counseling. Has he just had bad luck and only met with unfair counselors? Has he been in a situation where he thinks the counselors only side with women because there was an issue where he was actually in the wrong but he didn’t think he was, and therefore he rejected the counselor’s advice?
I think we have to be careful not to let ourselves get trapped in the mindset of ‘this gender always acts in this manner’. Recently my boyfriend kind of got into the habit of jokingly saying things like ‘just like a typical woman’. Not necessarily at the things I do, but when he sees people act a certain way on tv. It bothered me a little because I worry that he might start projecting those stereotypes on me in the future if things get difficult between us, and will therefore start dismissing most of what I say instead of actually listening and at least thinking it over in an objective manner. So I asked him something along the lines of ‘have I been acting in a way that makes you see me as a ‘typical woman’?’. He said no, but apologized if making those jokes was hurtful to me. I explained to him that at the moment I wasn’t hurt by it, but know I might be in the future and explained some of the issues it could cause. I also explained how I was trying very hard not to be a ‘typical woman’. One time, for instance, we were talking about cookies, and he said that his mom stopped making red velvet cookies for his dad because his dad said he liked someone else’s red velvet cookies better. I told my boyfriend that it was ok if he liked someone else’s cookies better than mine. In fact, if he liked someone else’s cookies more I may ask that person how they make those cookies so that I can make them that way myself.
I am really hoping that things keep working out between me and my boyfriend, but I really appreciate how now he is willing to listen to me and even apologize for things he does wrong, which tends not to be the response I get from people. I think having conversations like the one my boyfriend and I had are important for couples, that way we can all gain understanding rather than just calling each other ‘typical guys’ and ‘typical girls’.
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Memi, I am back! I thought I would talk to you more, here in your house, so that we don’t attract any accidental or purposeful trolls.
You said: “Before our son got sick, I tangled with our school system and wound up being locked in a room and interrogated for hours, refusing to say there was abuse in our home. My husband wouldn’t hurt a fly, especially not us, but the system doesn’t care about such things.”
“Those were all men, doctors, cops, even hubby, and they were not nice, they would not listen to me, and they put my family at risk and my sons life in danger, but I don’t hate men, I don’t run about declaring “We are dealing with a culture-wide insistence that men not be held responsible for what they do.”
Memi, as much as some people think it is a cop out, I think we can both be right here, and I do think WIlson articulates many sides of the “gender dynamics / abuse” issue.
First Memi, when you defended your husband (and yourself, your children and your home) from “abuse” allegations, when “the system doesn’t care about such things.” you defended your husband against the very “culture-wide insistence” that Wilson speaks of. If women are not responsible for “abuse”, and can’t be “abusers”, then the problem has to be the man. Hence your innocent husband was “suspect” by “the system doesn’t care about such things”. This “system” that Wilson speaks against is what I think “put my family at risk and my sons life in danger”, as you have said. Please correct me if I am wrong on this idea.
There really is a “culture-wide insistence that women” can’t be abusers and that 1/3 of all women have been “abused”. Which has resulted in a culture wide insistence that men be held responsible for things they may not have not done.
(The 2014 UVA false rape story in the Rolling Stone is an example of this. The Campus rape “research” that gave rise to this case is also junk research. The data used for that study was culled from other studies, and was taken at a non residential commuter campus. How can one study “rape” taking data from a campus where no one lives, sleeps or parties?)
As I will show you, this insistence literally starts with junk “abuse” research, generated by a cult founding “abuse expert” Lundy Bancroft. Which has duped the Department of Justice, which has then set false legislative and police policy, which as you have heard from me, can threaten the integrity of an innocent father’s family and also deceive his wife. As can be seen, some in the church have also been deceived by cult founder Lundy Bancroft’s junk “abuse” research.
Let’s start with what Jesus says about us:
Luke 6
43 “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.44 Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. 45 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
Here is “abuse expert” Lundy Bancroft’s web site:
http://lundybancroft.com/
Here is The National Domestic Abuse Hot line, representing Lundy Bancroft as an “abuse expert”:
http://www.thehotline.org/2010/09/expecting-magic-from-abuser-programs/
Here is a brief but telling review of Bancroft’s book “Why does He do that?” (the abuse advocates “bible”):
“…Here is how he manages this: Bancroft lists nearly all possible actions a man may do and calls them things an abuser may do. Things to watch out for. Every slightly less than ideal act or comment, and most neutral and even what are normally positive actions that every man and woman does in all kinds of normal relationships. But this author tells women that ‘if your man does these things then he may be an abuser’. Genius! Now every woman can instantly label her man as a man of abusive behaviors. The author also broad brush paints as abusers any who have committed abusive acts (like interrupting or failing to hold his voice in what she calls polite tones, ).””” https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R19XHASSL2ZRI8/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0425191656
But here is the kicker Memi. Lundy Bancroft’s Cult site, “Nature’s Temple” where he is “god”: http://transitiontoanewworld.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-spiritual-community.html
“I have decided to found a new spiritual community and spiritual movement, which I am calling Nature’s Temple. I call the belief system Nature Mysticism. I have included the principles (there are quite a few) below. I hope you enjoy reading them.
The core beliefs of Nature’s Temple:
1) The human being is an animal. We are no more different from other animals than they are from each other. We are not a race apart. All the creatures of the earth are our sisters and brothers.
4) The pursuit of ecstasy is inseparable from the pursuit of love. We strive to make our hearts ever more open to the giving and receiving of love.
9) Our gatherings are devoted to the pursuit of love, justice, and ecstasy.
15) We believe in the beauty, sanctity, and purity of body-based sensory pleasure, whether it be the feeling of the wind on our skin, the smell of an aromatic meal, the pleasure of a massage, the squish of mud between toes, the ecstatic sounds of music, the songs of birds, the warmth of the sun on our backs, the pleasures of lovemaking, dipping into cold water, sitting under a waterfall, rolling down a hill…
Let’s end with what Jesus says about us:
Luke 6:43 “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.44 Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. 45 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
Memi, Lundy Bancroft’s “abuse expertise” is evil, which comes from the evil stored up in his heart. Lundy Bancroft is a 2 Timothy 3 deceiver. While there are no doubt, good people involved in the abuse advocate sub culture, it is easily seen that much of the sub culture is dominated by Lundy Bancrotf’s deceit. While you may or may not make the connections I have made here, I rather suspect that you grew up with your mother, in a cult sub culture something like Bancroft’s. Yet is sounds like God protected you even in that dark valley, where even your father could not protect you.
Finally Memi, to support your position that actual abused women do need a “safe” place to unpack and heal from damage suffered, Christ Church and Doug Wilson have and do offer the safety that you speak of, as noted here:
http://www.womenfreed.com/2015/11/sister-not-victim.html
I look forward to gaining further enlightenment on this topic from you Memi.
Thanks for writing what is on your heart.!
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Thanks, A-dad. I appreciate your good nature and your thoughtful comment. I already know about the system and how corrupt it can be. I also know about how anything can be labeled abuse, how people are charged falsely and how some people are protected no matter what they do.
But none of that changes the fact that Wilson’s bias has been clearly stated by Wilson himself, nor does it change the fact that there is some actual collateral damage in the world that once turned to him for help. He does not understand nor do I think he wants to. The worse thing you can do to an abuse victim is to hold them in condemnation when they have already internalized all the shame that doesn’t even belong to them in the first place.
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Interesting topic, IB. Since I’ve been processing through all the issues of verbal, emotional, spiritual abuse these last 9 months since my husband decamped and moved in with a replacement toy, I’ve realized that it’s too easy to either refuse to label abuse for what it is or to label it too easily and/or dismiss the idea out of hand as too inflammatory, too emotionally controlled. The thing is our emotions are and always will be too dangerous so that we will always have to be watching out for whether or not we let them be in control of us rather than keeping our objective thoughts in control. Sometimes our backing off of them is right. And sometimes it is right to move a little closer and acknowledge what they are telling us. There is the validity of “I feel this way when X happens because X should never happen. X is wrong.”
We all make mistakes and do wrong. We all hurt our spouses and owe them repentance and better effort, better understanding in future. It is good if we each avoid labeling our spouse as an abuser so long as that spouse is trying. But it’s also good if we each accept that label for ourselves and quit reacting to it as if we never hurt anyone and can’t possibly deserve to see the hurt reflected in that other person.
[Similarly look at political discussion and the never ending comparisons of every American leader and candidate to Hitler. Suddenly everyone loses their minds because we’re all willing to view Hitler as the devil incarnate, but few of us are willing to realize the rational/objective truth of the surreal seeming fact that Hitler existed and a whole nation followed him and agreed with him. BUT what if all us people who are not personally being called Hitler when our candidate is, had the presence of mind to keep a bit of objectivity and honestly explore in what ways each leader and candidate is similar to him and in what ways they are different from him and maybe even to get down to actually avoiding the tragic mess that all the people fleeing from the inflammatory can’t of answering of that oh so important but generally unanswered question. How did it happen? How did an entire nation do that? Bush 2 was compared to Hitler. He did bear the similarity if being a nationalist. Is being a nationalist the real reason? No. It was a contributing factor but that historical evil involved (and probably required) an extremism of nationalism that Bush did not ever exhibit, (and also probably some of the very specific manifestations of that extreme nationalism.) So that comparison reveals more about the agenda of those who feel that any and every display of nationalism is somehow an extremely wrong thing. We need to be able to do the same thing in things that touch us personally, in the things that we are “too close to” so to speak to see them clearly and objectively. If people can’t have the objectivity about candidates just because they identify with some of those candidates political positions what hope do those people have in their personal lives when it matters the most when it leads to whether or not they will destroy themselves and their family?]
Sadly it is more common among men/husbands to avoid addressing the emotions of others, to avoid learning to empathize with a wife. It’s not exclusive to men. We’ve all made the same mistake to some extent at some times. But it’s a thing that men seem to struggle with or fail at more commonly or more as a long term failure. The further a person goes down the road of telling a spouse that has been wronged that they’re too emotional and generally wrong about everything and that they are a bad spouse for having emotions and being hurt the further you go down the road of emotionally abusing that spouse. The correct answer to knowing you have been hurting that person is never to tell them they are just wrong and just have to get over it. You may as a couple need to sort out more of how and why the reaction to certain things is hurt. Sometimes it will be a unique and personal thing that could be moderated in future, probably both by the sensitive person being helped to learn that the person who inflicted the pain never meant anything like it seemed they had meant AND by the person who inflicted the pain learning to care why and how it happened and give a hoot about lifting up the person they hurt, helping that person along in life and avoiding hurting them in ways that can be avoided in future. Sometimes it will be by acknowledging that X is wrong, always wrong, never ever ever OK. You’re a sinner and now is the time to repent of X.
Sadly it’s common for wives trying to be godly wives, trying to continue to love and respect their husbands to be treated on an ongoing basis to being told that they are wrong when they are hurt, they are bad wives, they are not respecting their husbands and that their own needs and hurts don’t need to be addressed when they have been all the while absorbing stres and hurt after stress and hurt and learning to adapt to it and while all the while the husband just keeps on hurting her and not really ever taking responsibility for becoming a better husband except in ways that he can come up with on his own that have nothing to do with he ways he is hurting her. This is emotional and spiritual abuse. He may double down on working overtime to bring home more money. He may double down on exercising or bringing her more orgasms (or trying to) or sending flowers or telling other people good things about her, or any of a million other things which may or may not help her at all with his ongoing unkind, or even cruel behaviors that she is absorbing. But while he’s doing his manly thing trying to step up as a man who is an island and refusing to learn and grow “as one” or in other words refusing to learn and grow with his wife, learn and grow in the specific relationship he committed to, refusing to be good to the specific woman God commands him to love and lead and lift up and help towards heaven, he is still hurting her. And he is sinning.
True repentance for sins or weaknesses or mistakes involves a desire to correct. Repentance should not ever involve a demand for forgiveness. Forgiveness is the other person’s to own or fail to own. Instead the repentance side of things that must be owned by the person who did the abusing must address the need to repair the damage done. Forgiveness and apologies are both totally separate concepts from repairing damage. You have to intentionally include the repairs or you are asking the other person to absorb a little more of what you were supposed to own before God, to become a little more damaged for your sake. You are bad for that other person in that case. If she is still there, still trying to own all her own faults, still trying to forgive and figure out how to be good in the marriage but all you can see is the hurt in her eyes and all you can do is blame her for it then you most likely have some stuff to own that you haven’t properly faced yet. And every time you accuse her of being wrong for being changed by all the hurts she’s absorbed and adapted to for your sake, that you have refused to help her repair, you are making it worse. You need to get in under all the scar tissue you forced her to grow while she had to adapt and respect you while you were hurting her and love her and her scar tissue so well, so tenderly, so kindly, so fiercely, and so constantly over the long haul that you dissolve it away.
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“True repentance for sins or weaknesses or mistakes involves a desire to correct. Repentance should not ever involve a demand for forgiveness. Forgiveness is the other person’s to own or fail to own. Instead the repentance side of things that must be owned by the person who did the abusing must address the need to repair the damage done.”
Well said, Scratchmom! I sometimes say we forgive for ourselves, to set our own burdens down. It is not dependent on the other person at all. They may never repent. And if they do repent, it cannot be attached to the strings of mandated forgiveness. So in faith, one repents to Christ and He forgives us. Too often I think we try to place that same kind of redemption and forgiveness on another person instead of Christ. So in a wrong headed situation, we will have someone causing misery, while pointing fingers at the one they have harmed and claiming the whole problem is that they just have a forgiveness issue.
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Fromscratchmom,
“Repentance should not ever involve a demand for forgiveness. Forgiveness is the other person’s to own or fail to own. Instead the repentance side of things that must be owned by the person who did the abusing must address the need to repair the damage done. Forgiveness and apologies are both totally separate concepts from repairing damage. “
Repentance and forgiveness is a very complicated but important topic.
Indeed, repentance should never include a demand for forgiveness.
Conversely, although restitution was an important concept in the Mosaic Law and Jesus commended restitution, I do not think that the New Testament scriptures ever require restitution as a condition of forgiveness.
However, forgiveness is commanded if the offender repents, and there is no suggestion that victim gets to decide if the offender has truly repented. [Luke 17:3-4 NASB] 3 “Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4 “And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
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Neither does the Bible teach that people must close their eyes and turn off their ability to discern reality. It actually teaches repetitively that we must continually train our ability to discern wisely.
When someone says they are sorry but they continue to do the same things and refuse all conversation about anything remotely related except to say “you’re unforgiving”. That is a pretty clear clue that something is inherently wrong somewhere within the situation. It’s all well and good to teach forgiveness. God teaches forgiveness. But it’s not OK to refuse to teach repentance. God teaches repentance. Both ought to be taught correctly and never as some form of emotional and spiritual blackmail, coercion, or manipulation.
Here is a real life example from an elderly friend of mine’s childhood. If a pedophile says he’s sorry and repents after every time he rapes a child and his “church” demands that as a part of forgiveness everybody act as though this has not really happened and could never happen in future, then this whole scenario repeats a few times…Do you think it’s reasonable to deny teaching on what repentance really is and only teach a singular aspect of forgiveness, to teach that forgiveness means being capable of forgetting as God forgets. God does really wash our sins away as if they never happened. But he asks us to truly repent as a part of our reconciliation to him. He even commands that a man be willing to gouge out his own eye to avoid repeating a sin. What the pedophile knew in his heart in the above scenario is that he continuously struggled with the same temptation and thus was a continuous danger to others, but did nothing to protect them; he even insisted that the burden of forgiveness forced others to allow him to be around children. If it’s better for a man to cut out his own eye if it offends then it’s best for a pedophile to allow others to call the police, to encourage them to, to ask to get himself castrated, to demand that the children be kept away from him.
In real life, in the day-in and day-out, when a marriage is a struggle, real love and real emotional work and real relationship skills and real growth are needed. Demands for forgiveness while repeating cycles of hurtful behaviors and words for months or years on end while making accusations against others about the quality of their forgiveness is a very similar scenario. A repentant spouse who wants to encourage love and growth and health in the marriage and in the other spouse rather than spiritually abusing that spouse, needs to actually make great efforts in the marriage. If it’s better for him to cut off his own hand if it offends, why shouldn’t he deny his pride and his emotional weaknesses to help give a chance to the person he has hurt who is struggling? And even when one spouse struggles with forgiving, as I’m sure happens plenty just as it’s happened to me before, where is the Biblical justification for the initial offender to stop loving, caring, respecting, lifting-up, leading, encouraging, esteeming others as better, bearing the burdens of the other, and/or also forgiving on that end?
God doesn’t command forgiveness in the absence of repentance. He encourages us and heals us so that we don’t have to get repentance from others to heal our own hearts and souls. He commands that once He has forgiven someone, then who are we to withhold our forgiveness. These are worth understanding in their distinct states and circumstances. Sometimes one is dependent on the other, such as is evident when God hasn’t forgiven a person who hasn’t truly repented. The pedophile who said he was sorry and then proceeded to commit spiritual abuse to insure he’d have access to future victims was always in the wrong and never had God fooled. The spouses who always cling to their pride and their defensive walls and their anger and resentment and demands never fool God either although they very well may fool their spouse that they are mistreating many many times before they spiritually abuse them enough to really become a huge stumbling block to that person’s ability to forgive and to trust ever again.
For the record I totally understand and agree with the 70 X 7 teaching. It’s a wonderful teaching and it’s the saving grace of many marriages. It wasn’t useful in mine in the long run because mine was an example of a true emotional and spiritual abuser as he proved with great finality last year. Actually I should clarify. It was incredibly useful to me and to my spiritual growth. It just didn’t change anything on the other end. Forgiving an unrepentant person, believing in their fake repentance doesn’t really do anything to change a determined sinner. Eventually the abuser was given a strong delusion, left the church, and then abandoned his wife and children to seek an adulteress to live with because forgiveness and commitment to death wasn’t really anything to him, nor any other aspect of Truth or good vs evil. He’s just recently gone and found himself a “church” that won’t call him to repentance so that he can live in his current perpetual state of adultery and still pretend to care about having a relationship with God.
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Fromscratchmom,
First, I am glad that you seem to believe repentance is a necessary condition for forgiveness. There are many who think the Bible teaches otherwise.
I agree that repentance is an integral part of forgiveness and should be taught correctly and often. The repenting offender does not have the right to demand forgiveness.
I can’t remember the source or the exact statement, but forgiving others does not mean that you should trust them the same as you did before their sin.
I don’t think that God actually forgets sin when He forgives. If God knows everything, how could He forget it? I think it would be more accurate to say God completely ignores it in His future actions, although He is quite aware of what was done. It is extremely difficult for us to do the same.
I agree that discernment is an important spiritual gift and it should always be used. God has a great advantage over us when it comes to forgiveness. He knows whether the sinner is truly repentant, but we don’t have that supernatural discernment. Well, perhaps we have it to a degree but we don’t have the absolute certainty that He does.
Reading your comment, I noticed you are writing from the perspective of the victim of another’s sin. And, in the examples you give, there is reason to believe that the sinners were not truly repentant even though they claimed to be. I recognize that you have been greatly hurt by the sin of a “Christian”. I am very sorry for that.
I do want you to consider repentance and forgiveness from a different perspective, because I don’t think most Christians have the attitude and actions of your ex-husband.
Let’s suppose you are the sinner. You realize your error and are truly repentant. You confess and repent to God, knowing that He will forgive you. Now, what do you want to happen when you confess and repent to those you have sinned against? Ideally, you want them to forgive you and to have your relationship restored. However, it is likely that they will find it difficult to forgive you, and it will take consistent good behavior on your part to regain their full trust.
For the situations where “Christians” are sinning against you or your children and not following God, there is little you can do personally. You may be able to remove yourself from the situation, you can pray, and you can take it to the church (assuming they follow the concept of Christian discipline and restoration that is in Matthew 18:15-17).
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I appreciate your points, OKR. And in reality we all do sin and hurt other people. Please know that I understand I am no exception.
I’d like to believe most Christians don’t have my husband’s problems. And I do cling to the knowledge I have of some very good men sprinkled here and there throughout the country. Sadly, I have a lot of experience with the opposite and with how the church deals generally deals with men which is to assume the best of them, stay out of their way, give them autonomy as if only women need to be meddled with but men can’t be, not teach men and boys much about the differences between godly men and all the men who leave the faith years later (or whose wives and kids leave in hurt and bitterness,) and demand that wives always respect and remember their husbands are good men no matter what. In fact, my dad was an abuser as well, but he was THE pillar of the community in church for years because all the people admired his household and gave him credit for my mother’s strengths and the appearance of good in his kids that was actually a mixed bag of teaching well versus the unfortunate state of his children’s fears that result from his type of problems. And no one really cared too much about being wise enough to discern that the short term outcome of having little kids or even younger and middle teens under your thumb isn’t nearly as strong a statement about a man as seeing the long term results of his leadership and his love after his offspring fly from the nest. I’ve never understood why I’ve seen most in the churches I’ve known so determined to praise men above and beyond the value of their short term results and cut men off from the consequences of their long term results.
I’ve been struggling with an issue related to forgiveness ever since my husband left. There is someone at the church where I am a member who made herself a stumbling block to my husband not long before he left the church. In reality she was wrong in her behavior and also wrong on at least one significant scriptural point.
(Perhaps You may have seen the problem of some Christian moms wanting to censor God’s teaching on sexual immorality as if it’s unfitting for their precious children to learn God’s teaching, which is an integral part of how so many boys grow up with religious teaching but still weirdly clueless about applying it to real life over a preference to apply what they get uncensored from the world around them. Then some of them become molesters and others seducers, and a few grow into purity usually from being taught at home (as kids need) despite the pulpit being censored (which every person also needs true and uncensored teaching from). We were members at a church where the men sometimes take a turn preaching and that had become an issue between her and my husband.)
So since he not long after turned his back on God altogether, I’ve been unable to fix my angst about her sins against him in my heart. Before he just up and quit, I’d begged him for us to go together to speak with her and her husband and try to work it out. But after he left I was afraid to go to her to correct her and have it seem that I blamed all his sins on her. I know they are his. Yet I fear for her, for her sons, for all the girls who have the misfortune to attract the interest of her sons, for the church and the ongoing problems of kids being raised with blinders on and denied God’s word, and at the same time, I am not feeling the sisterly love of Christian fellowship with her at all and don’t want to see her or speak to her. It’s a bad situation within me as it stands. But I am afraid of making it worse. And although our little group does generally understand and respect and even try to apply the teaching from Matthew 18 that you referenced, I already know that this came up with my husband asking the regular preacher to go with him and in the process learned that regular preachers nearly always take the hits and let the congregation fuss at them (presumably sometimes to bear with the weak, sometimes to avoid controversy and division) as well as that there was one other person in the congregation who shared her view of the matter. And then gone was his knowledge of how many people had said thank-you, had appreciated his effort in a difficult area, and a short while later gone was his interest in God’s teaching on sexual immorality. So I think that all that’s left to me is prayer to work it out no matter who she attacks in future and no matter whether her kids become users and abusers or get girls pregnant or whatever other tragedy results or how many people get hurt.
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Fromscratchmom,
“(Perhaps You may have seen the problem of some Christian moms wanting to censor God’s teaching on sexual immorality as if it’s unfitting for their precious children to learn God’s teaching, which is an integral part of how so many boys grow up with religious teaching but still weirdly clueless about applying it to real life over a preference to apply what they get uncensored from the world around them. Then some of them become molesters and others seducers, and a few grow into purity usually from being taught at home (as kids need) despite the pulpit being censored (which every person also needs true and uncensored teaching from). We were members at a church where the men sometimes take a turn preaching and that had become an issue between her and my husband.)”
It is my opinion that one of the biggest failures of the church over the last 50 years is its failure to teach godly sexuality. The world has no problem with teaching or talking about sexuality, whether formally in schools, or informally such as in movies and music. But the church seems to be afraid to give God’s perspective, even though sexuality is often referenced in the Bible. I do not have a suggestion to change this, but it is needed.
It is likely true that mothers are more likely to be upset about teaching on this topic. Perhaps that is because women are more protective of their children?
I am a little disappointed, but not surprised, that you only reference boys (and men) as needing this teaching. I would think it would improve men’s sexual behavior. But I do not believe that men are the only ones who sin sexually. Many women also sin sexually. And knowing God’s teaching, rather than what they hear from other sources, might provide support to women to know how to respond when others try to sin against them, or get them to sin sexually.
As to the woman you have a forgiveness issue with, it sounds like a difficult situation. Ideally, you would go to her privately. However, if you do not have 2 or 3 others you believe would support the discipline if needed, then it is likely to fail.
Maybe the best approach would be to talk to your church leaders about the need for godly teaching on sexuality, without any reference to her and what happened. If they agree and then do the teaching, her children and others will hear it and benefit from it. If she has a problem with them teaching on the topic, let them deal with it as leaders should. I would hope that they would not direct her to you as the requestor for the teaching. If they did, then I would say to go back to them and tell them to deal with her.
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OKR, I agree that both boys and girls need the teaching. And if and when it comes through the pulpit all can receive it as is appropriate. The particular woman has sons and only sons (several different ages) who she says never had a thought or a feeling in such a direction before hearing the phrase sexual immorality from the pulpit and never noticed the mostly naked women on the local walking path before hearing them mentioned as a possible temptation to look a second time rather than deciding to divert the eyes intentionally.
Of course you know, It’s also an issue for me personally since it was years older teenage boys for my two youngest situations at 6 when I was basically clueless no matter what I’d had opportunity to hear and 12 when I did eventually get over my shock, temptation and fear to push him off. Both of which are shockingly common scenarios. I’ve been in contact and trying to help emotionally with a couple of different moms whose sons have become perps over the last couple of years. However I’m fully aware that it goes both ways and that I’m wrong when I decide to sin and the same is true for any female of any age.
I appreciate your suggestions on the matter at hand in my life. I’m going to keep trying to get myself under control and generally having a positive influence on my spiritual family.
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Praise the LORD! I’m so happy you have seen through Doug Wilson and spoken out. He might think he’s a “wordsmith,” but you’re a better one and you’ve got more love for others than he has. (Sorry if this offends, but it’s the truth!)
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Ah, you’re a wise woman indeed and I am much blessed to have your words to lean into. Wordsmithery is good, theology is awesome, or sometimes, as the bible clearly tells us, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” We can even have the faith to move mountains but without charity it is nothing. Charity, later named love, but I like the old fashioned word, as in being charitable towards others. No charity towards others and all we’ve got is the Gong show. 🙂
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You’re an answer to prayer, sister. 🙂
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