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Spiritual Rape
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What is it? One definition says that spiritual rape is when you are held hostage to the thoughts and opinions of others.
Angela Fort, author of a book about the subject, writes, "With people I admired and respected, I allowed myself to think that I needed their approval and validation in order to be viewed as important or justified in how I perceived situations, and/or how I felt in general."
This I believe, can be an open door for us to allow abuse, but I believe it goes deeper than that approval addiction or the desire to be important.
Spiritual rape is an onslaught of toxic faith practices that rip out every shred of confidence you have in your own ability to make a correct choice. It is a type of mental and emotional abuse that destroys your understanding of a loving and gracious Father God and causes you to not be able to grasp onto the hope that He would build within you in order to take spiritual steps of faith.
Many tend to normalize what would be considered "spiritual rape". This is because they do not associate the draining of life from them to actually being something that is causing it to be happening.
Have you ever been seduced by someone? Have you ever been led to believe that you have the "right" beliefs, the "right" friends, the "right leaders" only to find that the beliefs did not support your needs, or the friends turned viciously on you, or the leadership you trusted became more of the wolfe than the Shepherd?
Anything that seduces you away from that which pours life into you is in essence depleting your life resources. This can make you feel powerless and victimized. That in turn, leads one to being frightened and no longer trusting the very judgment or discernment that you once thought you had.
One of the things that often happens in Christian circles is that we find a very charismatic leader who pulls us away from grace by demanding that we must follow "their" law. This does not always happen in overt ways that are easily recognized. It can happen through many different avenues. For instance, if a person even dares to question a leader, they may consider you "unsubmissive" and later "discipline" you because of your lack of agreement. This is especially heinous if they have invited you to share your opinion openly and then publically ostracized you for doing just that! Or they may teach you by experience with them that being on their "bad side" is not a good thing, so do not confront them on anything that you find unbiblical in their teachings or practice.
I have met leaders who will abuse a person and then tell anyone who dares to stand up to them on behalf of that person that "they were such terribly wouuuuunded individuals" thereby discounting anything of validity to your claims of abuse. As if a wounded individual will always see through eyes of their wounding and misjudge what you were saying or doing to them. While there are certainly truth to the fact that a person who is already offended may become more offended and thereby even more wounded, it is wrong to assume that a woman who has been raped before cannot judge the fact that she was raped AGAIN! A sincerely good person will not trip a person up and then complain because they happened to fall. Yes they were wounded, are wounded by your unkind behavior, but that is not a reason to state that it did not happen. It is all the more likely that it DID happen.
In many abuse cases across the nation, we find that people who were severely abused become mentally ill. Their mental illness does more to convince me that something traumatic did in fact happen, than to tell me it did not. Something had to have happened to make a person so paranoid, so utterly destroyed inside. Very few people are born with the kind of mental illness that one might see from a background of sadistic childhood abuse.
Therefore when we talk about the fact of spiritual rape in the church, we talk about the abuses that go on behind closed doors, abuses that leaders never talk about but happen all the time. Why is it so hidden?
1. We don't want to believe it exists. Many assume that anything spiritually abusive is a cult or that it cannot happen in a fundamentally/doctrinally correct church. After all "Dr. Goodfaith is a wonnnnderful person, he would NEVER EVER not live what he has been preaching! Why his preaching has changed my life!" You won't believe what you cannot acknowledge. People are all human. Even King David had the capacity to fall into sin with Bathsheba and bring the sword to every generation thereafter.
2. When we hear about it, we want to discount the victim because they have faults or because of their past failures. It is hard to completely trust anyone if you know them and you can dig up dirt on anyone if you work at it hard enough.
3. We don't want to stand up to the abusers in the church because "my head could be next on the chopping block". What would they think of me if I got kicked out of United Church of Such and Such?
4. We are afraid of wrath of God if we are wrong. "Touch not mine anointed" has been preached to intimidate and condemn all those who might have a legitamit concern about a minister's performance, credibility, or character. This becomes another way to abuse and control others rather than a warning God made not to take the literal life of the prophet of God. We have made it so that now we are afraid to disagree with anyone who is ordained! God never meant for us to give our minds away to someone else. You still have the right to have your own opinion. If it is biblical, you have the right to state it as well. You do not have the right to slander a man or woman of God but that should not be the case in the first place. Always remember that YOU are the anointed of God as well and the Lord would not have you to be "touched" by the hand of the enemy either.
Warning signs that a church/ministry may be abusive:
1. They demand of you unquestioning obedience or blind loyalty.
2. They have self-centered leaders who tend towards being adversarial rather than restoring you to God and reconsiling relationships within the Body of Believers.
3. They do not have accountability but are "spiritual lone rangers" with independent structures.
4. They have their own establishment of rules of discipline and church "courts" that is never challenged by anyone to see if it stands up to Biblical practices.
Often those who have been spiritually abused feel "crazy" and as if no one will believe them. The recovery for spiritual rape is difficult to understand and very complex, relating similarly to those who have gone through Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome as a veteran of a war. The emotional and mental pain inflicted upon those who have undergone "spiritual rape" is difficult to deal with and often requires counseling and support.
Often churches with abuse problems are labeled "Jezebel ministries" and that may not be too far off the mark. There are definately spirits that contend to bring others into manipulation and control practices. These so called "ministries" do more to harm others than bring them into peace with God. Lives are shattered and sheep are scattered from the youngest to the oldest member there is great destruction. If you have been a part of a church system where people are leaving by the droves and no one seems to know why, consider that there are spiritual influences that have not yet been dealt with.
Spiritual abuse is a trauma that has worked its way into your spiritual life and destroyed the fabric of your faith.
Often times, the confusion has become so great in the mind of the one who has been traumatized, that they no longer know who they are. They have become who someone else wanted them to be, and then they were discarded, replaced, or shunned when they did not measure up to what was expected.
The resulting depression and anger are then looked down upon by so many who have never been in such a place of victimization. These people want nothing more than to "forgive" but they cannot and often refuse to ever forget because they know they must learn from this and never go through it again!
One of the hardest parts of recovery is learning to trust your inner discernment again. Knowing that you have not missed it, or that you have good common sense, and that you do hear God's voice is all part of knowing that you are "ok". But those who have been spiritually abused second guess themselves a hundred times and continually refrain from trusting their own ability to discern good from bad. It is much like a person who cannot decide if something is hot or cold. They will not trust themselves, so they begin to ask others "what should I do?" until they find someone who will take them in and do for them what they cannot do for themselves. Then they begin to wonder if they have found yet another abuser because they have set themselves up to be controlled and told what to do.
Like those who have been physically raped, those who have undergone a spiritual rape are in need of empathy and kindness that can be tested over time. This won't heal overnight, but with God all things are possible. Getting out of a toxic faith system has to be one of the most difficult things a person can go through. Those who have known and recovered must reach out to those who have yet to heal with understanding and patience.
2 Corinthians 1: 3-4 KJV- Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
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