Why Christians Have a Hard Time Believing it’s Actually Wrong to Abuse Someone, as Long as Another Christian Does It: Part 1

A Hyperbolic Title

I do try to avoid extreme statements about religion because they invite objectors to simply find polite ways to say wrong things in return (“I don’t think single women are worthless! They’re just missing out on what God wants for them.” Etc). But, I actually do think there is some truth to what I’m saying: that Christians struggle to believe that a horrible action is truly wrong when it’s in the context of Christians hurting other Christians.

When you drill into how people explain what they think, you can often find ways in which what they say they believe (“abuse is wrong”) doesn’t match what they act like they believe. And, when you look at other, related beliefs, the apparent disconnect starts to look more coherent.

This post has been brought on by my frustration of being in way too many churches where someone did something horrible to someone else, and no one cared. These were all churches where people generally worried a great deal about their kids, men spoke gushingly about their wives, and everyone agreed the role of the church was to protect the vulnerable. And yet, when given the opportunity to do so, no one did. Because the occasion is a Christian hurting another Christian, and often Christians don’t actually think that’s wrong.

There are a few beliefs that make Christians in particular subcultures vulnerable to believing abuse, particularly against women and children, is actually not that serious as long as it is done by another Christian. They are:

1. Hierarchy is Health. Good relationships are about knowing and occupying your assigned spot based on age and gender. Most social problems are caused by people failing to comply with their assigned rank. Relationships where rank and role are honored are healthier. Relationships where they aren’t are worse. In general, it’s more desirable to err on the side of a relationship being more hierarchical, not less, since hierarchy is itself an agent of good and order.

2. There Is No Trauma, Only Sin. Depression, mental illness, and damage are manifestations of sin and the individual’s bad habits. They need to be repented of. They have no more power than people give them. Trauma and mental illness can be set aside like any bad habit.

3. People Like That Are the Only People Here. As a result of the conversion experience and the Holy Spirit, Christians are a class of people whose behavior is rational, consciously motivated, and comprehensible to everyone. Christians make mistakes but are fundamentally trustworthy. Serious wrongdoing is usually caused by some kind of external agent, usually addiction or demonic forces. This state of being affected by the external agent is temporary and easy to resolve. Only outside the church are people likely to be recklessly and chaotically dangerous.

So how does this all add up? Belief 1, Hierarchy is Health, means that it’s very difficult for evangelicals to explain what abuse is or why it is bad. Harm and coercion are bad, but order and authority are good. This is part of why it’s very difficult for patriarchalist Christians to even name abuse, much less criticize it.

You see this wherever pastors throw out casual “abuse” exceptions without defining what it is (“of course this advice doesn’t apply to abusive marriages!”) or pastors needing a lot of adjectives to explain why abuse is different from a good marriage (“Christian marriage is when a man has power over a woman, abusive marriage is when a man has destructive power over a woman,” etc.). What you’re left with is a situation where everyone aspires to hierarchy but disavows conflict.

This is just dehumanizing women and children, but without the screaming. An abusive marriage is when a man takes his wife’s credit card and car keys so she can’t leave the house without his permission. A good Christian marriage is when the wife never asks for a credit card and knows to ask permission before she leaves the house. An abusive marriage is where a man hits his wife when she wants to visit her mom. A Christian marriage is when the wife only needs to be told she can’t see her mom the first time, because her husband must have a good reason — and if he is a Christian, he surely does.

Concerning Belief 2, No Trauma, Only Sin: No trauma means no consequences. All sin is dealt with in the same way- God forgives, so does everyone else. Without an account of trauma, the abused child is assumed to have no lasting damage from the experience of being abused. She might feel inclined to some “sins” like depression and anger, but it’s left to her to let them go. Most concrete negative outcomes (injuries, pain, lost opportunities, lost relationships) can be rounded up to a light martyrology — suffering for Christ. All emotional effects of abuse are rounded down to the sin of the victim. If you don’t want to be controlled by intense disgust towards your dad, it’s up to you to repent and change it.

Belief 3: People Like That are the Only People Here. It is easier to believe that only outside the Christian community, some people are irredeemably evil. Inside the church, everyone deserves your trust, respect, and patience. If everyone in the Christian group is fundamentally trustworthy, then behaviors like predation or violence are all temporary mistakes. They are slip-ups, not patterns. There is no possibility another Christian has fundamentally bad motives or misrepresents themselves. There is also no reason to avoid another Christian as long as they have expressed remorse for a past action. If a Christian says they’re sorry, they mean it. If they hurt someone again, they say sorry again. The process of harm/forgiveness is repeatable and has no downsides.

In the next post, we’ll look at the effects of these beliefs. I think it’s easy to see from this how this makes abuse possible. What I’m more interested in is beyond this- I actually think it makes it difficult for Christians to even reach the very basic step of thinking abuse is wrong enough to prevent, as long as it happens between Christians and along the right hierarchies.