If He Doesn't Hit You, Is It Still Abuse?

if he doesn't hit you is it still considered abuse and the answer is yes but let me start by clearing away some of the confusion that you're hearing in church when you start to say but he's he's abusive they may say well if he doesn't hit you it's not abuse and that's not true but they may also say something like this well you know what he's a sinner just like you he sins Yussef who are you to judge his sin is any worse than your sin yes it's true we're all sinners but when someone is an abusive sinner in a relationship that relationship becomes broken marriage was designed as a mutual partnership it was designed by God to be a mutually loving safe and trusting relationship safety and Trust are integral to any healthy relationship and so when there's abuse present guess what goes safety and Trust and it's not just physical abuse that harms safety and Trust it's other kinds of abuse as well hitting is a strategy of abusers but it's not about hitting abuse is about power abuse is about control the barrage of abuse isn't just a reaction to their pain it's a strategy to get you to shut up and stop arguing it's a strategy of control so if someone is trying to exert power and control over your freedom to be the person that God designed you to be your freedom to choose your freedom to think your freedom to express yourself your freedom to have a different opinion that is the signs of an abusive relationship if abuse is about the abuse of power and control over and yet conservative Christian churches say well a husband has authority over his wife and should submit well then it sort of reinforces this idea that it's not abuse if he has to use his authority to get her to submit but let me ask you a question did Jesus ever use his authority to make someone do something they didn't want to do he could have called on a million angels from the cross and used his authority to silence his abusers he did not if you want to be first in authority you need to be a servant you need to be last that's the biblical definition of headship so when you go to a church leader and they sort of excuse this dominating controlling husband as the head and authority over you and you by that as biblical you're getting confused you're being misled Jesus never said that's biblical he has a different word for that selfish oppressor abusive so let me just give you a couple categories where someone strategizes to use their power over you to control you the first is physical so a husband usually uses other means of control as well because he wants to keep you in a fearful but compliant and confused state so he will alternate mean behavior with loving behavior mean behavior with loving behavior because you're like okay he didn't really mean that he must be sorry that's not who he really is he just had a bad day he really does love me he really does want to be here right and so it gets confusing so that you're not you're like the frog in boiling water you're not realizing that you're getting cooked a lot so physical it's one way to control someone emotional verbal the Bible talks a lot about the power of words other people's words toward us are words toward other people and even our own words toward ourselves maybe you don't get cursed at but verbal abuse can go different ways it can be aggressive with contempt and anger and name-calling and cursing and threatening so that you're feeling afraid or it can be subtle like mocking and undermining and snickering and sneering and or eye rolling which makes you feel like your ideas are stupid so emotional and verbal another way someone control you can control you financial alright we see a lot of control through use of money you don't know where your husband keeps the money you don't have any access to the money you don't know what how much money he makes you don't have any of your own you feel like a little girl begging for an allowance every week to pay the bills or to feed your children that's not a healthy relationship that's not an adult adult relationship that's a parent-child master/slave relationship but there's a lot of control when it comes to money and if I can control the money I can control you because and then another area or spiritual abuse spiritual abuse is rampant and there are a lot of religious leaders including those in very well-known Christian churches that try to control what you think and what you do let's say that you're separated from your husband and you haven't seen any change but he's a great actor and he's charming everyone and he's telling everyone he's changed and he's so sorry and he wants to restore his marriage at any cost and you're just so hard-hearted and unforgiving and now you become the villain in their mind he's the penitent sinner and you're the bad guy you were the victim of abuse but now you're the bad guy because you don't have enough grace to let him back home you don't trust him you don't feel safe with him but somehow you're supposed to just suck it up and have a relationship with someone who's still your enemy it is not possible

Channel: Leslie Vernick

Views: 6,321

Rating: 4.9242425 out of 5

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Id: 9yIR-LsxYwk

Length: 6min 0sec (360 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 05 2020