Power, Relativism, and The Good Samaritan

There is a saying that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and this idea has tempted many to conclude that power must be the problem. It is not. Recent scholarship actually indicates that the question of power being an inevitable corrupting influence is much more complex and nuanced than the above saying suggests, and...

You Cannot Redeem the Beast

In a previous post we looked at the abuser who uses manipulations to quickly sweep the romantic victim off their feet, only to betray them later. Disney's "Frozen" provided us our first red-flag example, and thankfully, in that case our storytellers avoided making the mistake of romanticizing the abuser into an impossibly tidy happy ending....

Subversive, Harmless, and Wise

For the Christian, confronting abuse is spiritual battle. The bottom line is that you are bringing the light of the gospel to bear on a very dark situation. You are speaking the truth into a world that depends on deception. You are genuinely confronting a dangerous situation, and you need to be prepared. Jesus was...

An Ineffective Question

When a victim describes their abuse to a pastor (or other person), it is not uncommon for them to hear the question, "Have they hit you?" The implication is that if it isn't physical then it isn't "that" bad. It is also an ineffective question that will not likely yield any better understanding of the...

Recognizing True Love

At its core, abuse is a profound lack of love. A victim needs to learn to distinguish between an abuser’s control and love. It is important to know that love does not co-exist with fear and torment (1 John 4:18). Love is not discernible in words - don’t look for it in what they say....

Untangling the Abusive Relational System

Abuse is much harder to recognize and define than we first tend to think. The term commonly evokes images of a bruised victim of physical violence, but this image is far too simplistic to be broadly useful. The reason is because physical abuse can stop short of leaving visible marks, or the fear of a...