Why  Christian Women Stay in Abusive Relationships.

Is God a God of abuse? Does He not say something about hating violence in Malachi 2. He is the Father of the fatherless and the Husband of the widow, single woman. Is God abusive? Really, is God abusive, degrading, condescending, controlling or manipulating in any way?

Too many, way too many, Christian women stay in abusive relationships. Few speak about it and fewer still let anyone know what is truly going on in their homes. Some even think that they can hide the true state of their marriage to their children. But is this a God thing to do?

Christian marriage as it is traditionally taught in most churches is first un-Biblical and secondly un-Godly. It gives the husband complete power and control over the wife and her duty is to submit to his every whim. Even the kids have to make his every wish their command. This sounds awful if I say it like this, but is this not what the church teaches? “Men are the king of their house.” Is it not that women are somewhat lesser than men and that a wife cannot even approach God without her husband? We have made some sort of Christian family hierarchy. Jesus first, under Him the husband, under him the wife and under her the children. Is it any wonder that parents think it their right and duty to abuse their children? I am not against discipline. Beating a four year old bloody with a wire hanger because she lost her shoe is not discipline, its abuse.  Children who are abused by thei#r parents do not hate their parents, they learn to hate themselves.

The abuse allowed and propagated by this traditional heretical view of marriage is the root of so many ills in society. If you are the king of your castle, you have ultimate and absolute authority. Anyone who opposes you is opposing God. Or so goes the thinking. And then the person who are in your employ is part of your kingdom and it does not matter how you treat him or her because you are the king, the boss, the authority.

What happens in a family where the husband is mistreating the wife and children? What is the long term residual affect and fruit of this dynamic? Someone described it as the family being on a float. The one person’s erratic behavior causing all the others running franticly to balance the float. When dad has a bad temper and abuse mom and the children, everyone try to keep the peace. ”Peace at any cost” becomes the family moto. This is seldom successful since abusers are erratic on purpose to keep their victims in a constant state of tension and fear. They mistake fear for respect. 

So, Christian mother who believes that her husband has to be served as she serves the Lord and excuses or hides, or attempts to hide, his bad behavior is teaching her children that God wants the boys to repeat their father’s behavior and girls to condone and expect such treatment.  Girls will often marry their fathers  - men like their fathers - because they blame their mother for his behavior. If only she behaved better, then he would not have done this or that. Very seldom do children from these homes learn healthy responses to personal conflict. Their normal is abnormal. If the stick with which you measure is crooked, then everything will be crooked.  

Christians are taught that divorce is the unpardonable sin. That women who leave their husbands are Jezebels, who have no morals and are breaking up the family for selfish reasons. Is this true? Is staying in an abusive marriage better for the children than living in peace but with one parent? It is obvious what I think. What does the Bible say? Is the woman better off alone, even raising her children alone, than staying in an abusive relationship? What does the Bible say?

Jesus gives adultery as a valid reason to end a marriage since adultery, itself, breaks the marriage covenant. Some say forgive and continue. I cannot see how forgiving a covenant that is broken, annulled, renew the covenant. Unless the couple renew their vows and so renew the covenant. Can we really sweep adultery under the rug of forgiveness? In the Old Testament people were stoned for this. The ten commandments says: “ Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Forgiving is one thing. Acting as if the adultery did not matter or change anything is another. Did the covenant mean anything if it can be broken and so easily be accepted or continued. Why have a marriage covenant at all then? No wonder so many people do not bother with a marriage covenant anymore.

God hates divorce. Because divorce is violence to the family. He hates violence. He hates divorce yet He divorces Israel. For their idolatry, adultery against God, He gives them a certificate of divorce. It is God’s plan and purpose for a husband and wife to be married for life. But nowhere in scripture does it condone one person controlling, manipulating and abusing another. There is also not one verse that calls divorce sin. The picture is often drawn throughout the Bible that God created marriage as a picture, an allegory, of His relationship to Israel and the Church. Jesus loved the church before it was the church and gave His all for her.

The Biblical view is this. Submit one to another as fellow heirs of the grace of God. He that leads should not lord it over people as the gentiles, heathens, do but serve as minister of God. If you want to be great in God’s kingdom, learn to be servant of all. Husbands love your wife like Christ loved the church and gave His life for her. Wife honor and respect your husband as the head, leader of the home. Nowhere is God placing a women’s relationship with God as contingent on her husband's say so. There is NO priests in the New Testament. Jesus is the last and only priest we have. He is Master of us all. Actually in Christ Jesus there is no longer male and female, Jew or Gentile, free or slave, child or adult or any other divisions humans cling to. We are all equal in our standing before God.

We each have a function, a job, a purpose to do. Like apostles, prophets, evangelists are functions, there is no hierarchy. We all stand before God with a job to do. What is it that God requires of you? Fathers bring your children up in the fear of the Lord. Train up a child when he is young in the way he/she shall go and when he/she is old he/she will not divert from it. Parents are required by God to train up their child in the plan and purpose that God has for him/her. How is this possible if all the child sees and hears is abuse, selfishness and inconsistency? How is he/she ever going to learn to trust God if he/she cannot trust their earthly father?

Mothers are we raising children up to be all that God wants them to be or are we teaching them to duck, hide or appease a man’s unbridled, selfish temper? We are leading by example. The question is just, what is your message? Do we serve God by submitting to a man’s abuse? Or is it a spirit of fear that has imprisoned us? Is God glorified in a marriage like this? What good and eternal fruit can come from a wife submitting to a cruel and abusive husband?

Ladies, too often the blazing signs are preceding you. You may think you are a great actress, pretending that he is the perfect husband and your marriage is wonderful. The truth is written on your soul. Any person with an iota of spiritual discernment sees it. How many woman of God are trapped in this prison, unable to fulfill their God -given purpose? Is it not time that we stand up straight? Is there not a cause?

Let me answer the first question asked: Is God a god of abuse? No! never! As a matter of fact, abuse, control, manipulation, demeaning, condescending, injuring, scarring actions and behavior is most definitively instigated by the devil. Read the list! Sounds just like satan. Why tolerate, excuse and endure his assault any longer? Do you not know, daughter of God, that you were bought with a price? Do not become slave to any human. Do not let sin rule over you, yours or his.
 There is power in the Name of Jesus to break every chain. There is power in the blood of Jesus to ward of every assault of the evil one. 
DO NOT LET it continue. 
Arise! 
Stand up and call the enemy out. 
No more! Not today! 
Be done with being a victim. You have not received a spirit of victimhood, cowardice and fear but of power and love and a sound mind in the Holy Spirit!