Christians who are enduring physical or sexual abuse from their spouses are able to rely on the support of certain online communities dedicated to helping people who are trapped in abusive marriages.
According to the Christian Post (CP), these online groups are teaching and strengthening emotionally battered spouses within the Christian community about their choices for escaping toxic marriages.
CP noted that the health of spouses who are trapped in abusive relationships improves if they are free to exit the relationship. Sadly, CP reports that far too many churches that profess to have a lofty view of marriage have failed to comprehend the disastrous consequences of physical and sexual abuse.
It is also worth noting that those that victims consider untrustworthy include clergy members and other religious leaders. According to these victims, it's because church leaders fail to understand the psychological dynamics that ensnare people.
The victims feel that because of these leaders' theological assumptions, the churches may be completely closed off to them when they ask for a divorce, regardless of what kind of abuse they're experiencing. Those who have been victims of domestic violence are frequently counseled to stay married regardless of how their spouses are treating them.
Clarifying the Bible's position on abuse
Gretchen Baskerville, who authored The Life-Saving Divorce: Hope for People Leaving Destructive Relationships, notes that many Christians, in her opinion, are mistaken about the Bible's stance on divorce.
She believes that for the four "A's-adultery, abuse, abandonment, and addiction-" divorce may be scripturally justified.
So, to assist people who are suffering in silence, she created an online support group for battered spouses last year. It reportedly has more than 2,000 members who went through a thorough background check.
She told CP that for the most part, the women who oversee these online communities and groups are people of strong faith who see marriage as a sacred institution. The author, however, argued that God, who created marriage, intended it to be "loving, undefiled, and lifelong."
"So what happens when it's the opposite? What happens when it's not just unloving but it's destructive or even dangerous? Abuse does defile; it's not loving or respectful," she told CP.
Baskerville cites a "reductionist formula" for marital success, based on husband, wife, and God, but said that this is not true for everyone. For victims of abuse, the idea that God can and does perform miracles only complicates things further.
"They'll say, just try harder, or pray more, or fast more, or be more agreeable or sexually enthusiastic. And as to why your husband isn't changing or your wife isn't changing ... many pastors just can't deal with that reality, so they end up blaming the victim," she said.
She observes that this is the troubling pattern when women have the guts to tell church authorities about how they are being abused in their marriages.
The scripture most often cited in abusive marriages is Malachi 2:16. The emphasis of Malachi's discourse, however, is not divorce. Contextually speaking, the subject was about deceptive and untrustworthy individuals that harm the welfare of vulnerable people like widows, orphans, and even their wives.
Contrary to how it's used as an "anti-abuse verse" today, Baskerville stated that Malachi 2:16 was consistently interpreted as an anti-abuse or anti-treachery passage from the very beginning of the Bible's main translations.
"God hates divorce" was the prevalent version for most Bible translations from 1611 to 1996.
The New International Version revised it in 2011 to read, "The man who hates and divorces his wife does violence to the one he should protect."
The 1984 NIV translation and other versions, on the other hand, still records it as God stating, "I hate divorce."
Even John Calvin, a well-known theologian among those who support conservative-complementarian views on marriage, would have read the passage differently.
"John Calvin actually believed that to abuse a wife was worse than armed robbery and murder because it was done under a cloak, in secret, behind the closed doors of her own home. Calvin said, 'God is not deceived,'" Baskerville explained.
Thus, Calvin would have taken this passage to mean, "If you hate her, divorce her," she noted.
Baskerville also contends that the modern church has not properly studied Exodus 21:10-11, which shows how God laid out a basic standard for even the lowest-ranking women, "including slaves' wives and wives of prisoners of war in ancient Israel."
Also in Deuteronomy 21:10-14, it is crucial that a woman is to be released if her husband is a POW. The husband cannot treat the wife in any demeaning manner if he does not like her anymore. She will have to be freed from the marital bond.
While the Exodus and Deuteronomy chapters are deemed as obsolete Old Testament scriptures for New Testament Christians, Malachi 2:16 appears to still apply and sadly, is often used punitively to dissuade abuse victims from divorcing.
Helping victims restore their faith in God's Word
Author of the book "Why Is He So Mean to Me?" Cindy Burrell told CP she was completely unaware of the number of women who had experienced violence in "Christian marriages."
In 2009, Burrell, who was a former abuse victim, launched HurtByLove.com, an online ministry to help other victims of interpersonal and marital abuse. Within months, many women started contacting her and detailed their own stories based on the information she provided on her website. She found that her experiences were almost identical to those of the ladies who had contacted her.
Another important benefit of her support group is providing people with assurance that they are not going mad and encouraging them to base their self-worth on what is written in the Bible about their identity in Christ and what God desires for marriage.
Burrell believes that the greatest service she can do for the victims of marital violence is to bring them back to the awareness of God's perfect love for them.
She would often instruct them to "peel away the layers and take everything else out of the picture and let this be between you and God first. Go to Him, pray for wisdom, wait for peace and let Him validate and lead you in this dark time and let His light shine in."
She also emphasized that churches should be aware that abuse may manifest in various ways, and to stop referring to abuse just as instances of sexual immorality and physical violence. To ignore this is to fail to acknowledge the whole biblical testimony.
In order to illustrate how powerful words can be, Burrell noted that in Matthew 5, Jesus describes the devastating effect that words may have.
"And I don't think people understand that keeping people in toxic, ungodly marriages doesn't make them any less toxic or ungodly," she said.
"When it comes down to it, God is not a legalist. He is a relational-ist," she added. "Everything with Him always comes back to relationship - first with Him and then with others."
To wrap, she noted that abusers don't attempt to fix problems or reconcile differing viewpoints unlike those in healthy relationships. Often, their dysfunctional personalities make them unpredictable and chaotic that even the tiniest mistakes may be very difficult to deal with.
Other online resources cited by CP were "A Cry for Justice" and "Confusion to Clarity."
