I highly recommend both.
Main ideas:
- Emotional abuse is a person's quest to dominate their partner using insults, emotional manipulation, intimidation, control of finances and time, threats of violence, etc.
- The problem in these relationships is not that one partner needs to "submit" to the other. The problem is that the abuser's heart is far from Christ, and their abuse is an unChristlike cycle which must be broken (not endured).
- The church does far too little to protect men and women from emotional abuse; too often, it is ignored, or the problem is exacerbated when they are simply advised to "submit" (see above).
- Worse, sometimes those who escape from abusive relationships endure the scorn of the church for destroying the "sanctity" of marriage.
My heart aches for these women who find themselves victims of the people they once loved enough to marry, and even the church is not a place to find refuge.
When I think about marriage, this is my greatest fear - what if the person I love turns against me?
For those who tend to be emotionally manipulative (and I suppose we all are, at some level), please, please, be honest with yourself and deal with these issues before you commit to anybody. And be warned:
You, LORD, hear the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that mere earthly mortals
will never again strike terror.
Psalm 10:16-18God defends the oppressed, and he breaks the teeth of the oppressor. (That is to say, in all seriousness, get ready for a cosmic punch in the face)
How can I protect myself against this? How can I choose a partner who I can be reasonably sure will not turn against me in the future?
1 comentarios:
I read that story on the her.menutics blog. It's an all-too-common, painful story, but the most haunting part of it was when she said, "Maybe God just wanted me to suffer a bit, to make me more holy." There is a time and a place for suffering, but her situation was not it.
On the outside looking in, it's clear. But I know I've been in hard places, asking me the same thing, and to me, I can't tell the difference between nessecary suffering (often referred to as "exile" in my experience) and unnessecary. Our church needs to evaluate our theology of suffering. An improper theology of suffering leads to stories like hers...
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