Emotional Abuse and Your Faith on BTR and Additional Resources Concerning Domestic Violence

This past Friday afternoon, Jocelyn and I invited Hannah Thomas, the host of Emotional Abuse and Your Faith, to blogtalkradio. Please visit the archives and listen to the show in the player below (or look for Jocelyn Andersen on iTunes podcasts)! It was my very first opportunity to talk with Hannah, and as usual, we didn't have nearly enough time to talk about all of the topics that we wanted and plowed through several. I'm also very grateful to Hannah for listening to our shows and for being so supportive of us in this effort. I love to see her pop in our show's chat room, and it always gives us an extra measure of loving moral support.

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Variations on theTheme of Domestic Abuse

Interesting and Insightful series of posts on "The Hope Blog":
From Part I:

Today I want to address something, however, that is a topic rarely, if ever, addressed by Christians... ...How do women get into these relationships? Often there are warning signs in dating relationships that are there to see if the woman is willing to look. Too often, they are not. Many women actually do see the signs but ignore them because they don’t want to have to break off the relationship. Men who are controlling, easily made jealous, moody and unpredictable aren’t always abusive, but all men who are abusive are these things...

From Part II:

Abusive husbands do not always use their fists. Some use both physical violence and intimidation and their mouths. Some just use their mouths. Bruises externally heal with time, but the harm done with their words can last a long, long time. “Christian” men who use their mouths to hurt and control their wives make a farce of Christianity. The book of James in the Bible tells us that those who call themselves Christians and who don’t control their tongues have worthless religion. Worthless is exactly the right word...

He that troubles his own house shall inherit the wind… Proverbs 11:29

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Losing Sight of Our Purpose (Part IV): The Subtle Implications of Legal and Moral Code

A recent, previous post discussed CBMW and the “Rationales” of the Danvers Statement, a document that seeks to elucidate what the Bible teaches concerning gender. Just as the laws of a society codify the beliefs of that society and thus reflect its morality, so I believe that CBMW hopes to set a standard for the church concerning the issues of gender. Though this body does not establish formal laws, it presumes to seek to clarify Biblical standards. They define specific moral standards through their teachings as a guide for conduct, much like civil laws do within society.

Individuals within a society indirectly understand the relationship between law and morals and often confuse it, believing that the law, at least to some degree, defines what is moral. Civil laws, though they are based upon a moral code, cannot be assumed to be moral within a pluralistic society. The abortion laws present an excellent example of how the law has a subtly misleading and detrimental effect on beliefs over time. People infer that because the act is declared legal (not punishable under civil law), the act gains a level of legitimacy as a result, making previously clear moral distinctions ambiguous.

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Losing Sight of Our Purpose (Part III): Domestic Discipline as Love for One's Wife?

A few months ago, I was contacted via email by a man who was not a professing Christian but was interested in the topic of spiritual abuse and church discipline. (I'd interacted with him on a public blog for many months, so I did have some sense of who he was and what he believed.) He was also interested in what I believe to be a perverse practice named "Domestic Discipline" that essentially amounts to spanking one's wife as one would spank a child. This individual explained to me that he wanted to help those who were engaging in this activity (presumably as a part of their practice of patriocentricity) -- as a part of their "Christian marriage," and he invited me to participate in a discussion on his own blog. (I believed him to be in earnest and did not have cause to suspect otherwise.) I posted a notice here regarding this practice, referring others to his site for this discussion, but I soon realized that our purposes were quite different.

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Losing Sight of Our Purpose (Part II): Subtly Veering Off Course

In the previous post, I discussed how we can have a worthy goal in mind, yet loose sight of that goal when we loose sight of charity and God’s Spirit of Love. We teach our children and aspect of this in the Apostle John’s simple yet profoundly true statement that “God is love.” Paul teaches that without it, our most profound wisdom becomes nothing but noise, and our valiant works of self-sacrifice lack meaning. Yet we can have knowledge and wisdom apart from God’s Spirit, something that quickly becomes a discipline all of its own, a tradition of men. How ironic it is that one can proclaim truth, even the Truth of the Word of God, yet be divorced from the indwelling power of it when tradition weighs more heavily than the Spirit of God Who is love. We must have both components, both sound doctrine and God’s love, working in concert in order to realize the presence and power of God in our efforts.

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Discussing Christian Domestic Discipline......(? !)

[Very Late Edit and Blog Host Note:  I didn't persevere to participate in this discussion.  It quickly became rather rude and odd.]

From An Open Discussion on Domestic Discipline and Patriarchy:

This is meant to be a placeholder post on the issue of domestic discipline and patriarchy. There is no article but the comments section could be quite long. This topic comes up inevitably on various patriarchy discussion, and the idea is to create a place for people to discuss this topic without any rules. 

Click here to continue reading....

Yes, there are actually patriarchalists that practice physical discipline on their wives. If you go to this discussion, you'll find links to some strange sites including Loving Christian Discipline and Christian Domestic Discipline, etc. Because some of those within the Christian patriarchy movement believe that women are to follow a pattern of "submitted sonship" under the Doctrine of Subordination within the Trinity, it gives to reason that this might be practiced in some of the homes and families that follow patriarchy. I've read discussions where Christians have argued this point.

Visit at your own risk and keep in mind that this is not really a warm, fuzzy discussion. I take no responsibility for what might be discussed there, but I did participate in such a discussion a few months ago. The discussion there was tame and very thought provoking, but it was equally disturbing. My concerns about this involve neurophysiology and the fact that men (but not women) process sex and violence in the same regions in the brain. They are in close proximetry to one another, and for those who have been abused, these two areas can "fuse" in the brain. So I believe that what takes place for a man who would engage in this behavior is very different from that

Be advised that this is not a Christian site and is not administered by a Christian but an attorney who has served by helping Christian clients. I think that it is a practice that we Christians should be informed about, anyway.

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