A Pastor's Perspective on Domestic Abuse and Violence Part 1

            I find it rather odd that in order to hear my first sermon on domestic abuse and violence, I had to go to Youtube.  I say this because I've attended church my entire life and the only time I've ever heard anything about abuse is usually in reference to physical abuse and its usually a passing comment. My guess is this is true for many. This fact was further illuminated after reading The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by Johnson and Van Vonderen. I believe most Christians, lay and clergy alike fail to recognize and address abuse that is present among their parishioners. I can only guess as to why the church would not be a stronghold against such evil, but the fact remains, the subject is not something we Christians talk about. Thankfully Pastor Michael Kelly did a wonderful job presenting current statistics (specifically in the SDA church), psychological material to shed light on the patterns and behaviors of abusers and victims, and exegeting applicable Biblical passage to help us understand what God thinks about the subject.

He opened his sermon with Genesis 49:1-7, focusing primarily on verses 5-7, which partially depicted the story of Simeon and Levi. In the passage Jacob is describing his son’s as possessing “Weapons of violence are their swords” he goes on to say of their anger, “For in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they hocked an ox… their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel.” Couched in theses descriptions of their behavior Jacob strongly denounces and condemns their actions, saying “O my soul, come not thou into their council; unto their assembly, my glory, be not thou united... Cursed [be their anger]… I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.” From this Pastor Kelly transitions into a story of a young man and young woman attracted to each just starting to date. The young man is charming and loves the young the woman, he eventually asks the young woman to marry him. She accepts. Several months into the marriage the young man begins to demonstrate some disturbing behaviors, when angry he punches furniture, walls, pounds his fists on the desk or tenses muscles. The young woman justifies the behavior by saying to herself, “It’s okay because he’s never hit me.” Things progressively get worse, the bouts of anger eventually lead to physical intimidation. The young woman continues to justify his behavior. The inevitable finally happens, the husband hits his wife. She continues to justify the attacks. This persisted for some time until one evening when the couple is sleeping in bed, the wife pulls out a revolver, shoots and kills her husband. No one is aware that the young man is missing or killed; the wife keeps his body in their house. Regularly coming into the room where she kept his body to mock the dead body, gloating over her power and victory over her husband.

Pastor Kelly cites this as an extreme example; however, it illustrates a critical point, neither partner dealt with their anger appropriately. He used Ephesians 4:26-27 as his material to address the topic of anger. Kelly said that the Apostle Paul does not denounce anger, in fact we are commanded to be angry, although we are not to sin in our anger. A chief example of this is Christ’s anger at the tax collectors in Matthew 21:12, Kelly emphasized, “If Christ can get angry then we can get angry!” He continued, “The problem isn’t anger, the problem is we don’t get angry at the right things!” Righteous anger is the ideal, he said, being angry about our neighbor being hungry, poverty in our neighborhood, sin in the church etc… This is very different from anger that is self-serving, that rises when one’s selfish desires are not meet as in the case of the couple. He quoted a commentary, “For us to be angry and not sin, we must be angry at nothing but sin!” Anger at the wrong things for the wrong reasons allows the devil to get a foothold.

To get the rest of the sermon read Part 2