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Ten signs of Spiritual Abuse….
09 Feb 2009 by Rod Smith in Anger, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication / 16 Comments
Ten signs of the presence of spiritual abuse, manipulation, domination, or intimidation. Spiritual Abuse (which is always expressed in varying degrees) is occurring when a pastor, leader, or even a friend:
Take Up Your Life
1. “Hears” God for you. God apparently “goes through” him/her to speak to you. (This requires a sense of superiority – from him or her and is often framed as being “more mature,” and a sense of being “less” from you.)
2. Alienates (shuns, ignores) you if you do not adhere to his/her guidance, leadership, or authority. (This is usually VERY subtle – so it is easy to deny.)
3. Suggests that rejection of his/her “higher understanding” is done so at your spiritual or even physical peril. (You will hear things like, “Be careful. You will move yourself from the covering and protection of God.”)
4. Rewards your obedience with inclusion, and punishes your questioning or resistance with withdrawal. (Compliance gets stroked, resistance gets struck!)
5. Demands “cathartic” honesty. Unless you spew out every detail of your life you must be hiding or withholding something (and that “something” will, of course, impede your spiritual development).
6. Lavishes you with praise, acceptance, and understanding when you are “good” and “pushes” you away when you are “bad.”
7. Is apparently fixated on the use of titles like reverend, pastor, elder and cannot appear to relax in the company of “ordinary” mortals. The issue is not in the use of legitimate titles (or robes or religious garb) – it is that identity seems impossible without the titles or the trappings.
8. Leaves a trail of cut-off relationships. Usually in the trail are those who refuse to bow, to submit, to stand in awe of, to be thoroughly entranced by, the will of the pastor, the leader or the friend. Always regard with suspicion or caution leaders who are cut off or alienated from members of their family, especially their parents.
9. Lives from a “for me/or against me,” “black/white,” “all/or nothing” platform of “relationships.”
10. Genuinely sees God’s Call so zealously, so fervently that any signs of resistance are seen as the expressions of The Enemy or an enemy – thus, relationships are expedient (disposable) in the light of getting on with God’s work.The perpetrators of abuse apparently fail to see that reconciliation, and forgiveness, “space,” and room to move, and room to respectfully disagree (boundaries, morality) are all part of the glorious work of the Gospel. Freedom begins with recognition. Recognition must result in action. Stand up to those who misuse their positions of leadership. Spiritual abuse serves the welfare or neither the perpetrator nor the victim – quite apart from the disservice it does to the church.
(This post is written in honor of “J” in Honolulu – I am sorry for all you had to endure.)
About the Author: Rod Smith
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
Idiots – always adults, children were surprisingly patient, – would make me repeat sentences as if a repeat performance of the humiliating uncoordinated gesticulations, my arms and legs flying in all directions, would make for an easier delivery the second time. That I’d just spent every ounce of energy trying to cough it up was lost on them. That I was already thoroughly humiliated was something to which they were blind.“Practice, practice,” they’d say as if stutterers simply didn’t speak enough. “Think before you speak. Now – try that again,” they would declare slowly and loudly as if I was stupid and deaf. These thoughtless people were ignorant of just how much stutterers do think. Too much – which is central to the issue!
If I’d known at twelve or thirteen that the day would come when I’d make a career of public speaking I might have strolled off a high-rise building.
Now it is quite easy to hide. I am very comfortable with crowds.
It’s asking driving directions or ordering food at a drive through where it gets tricky. Sitting in a cozy circle waiting for my turn to introduce myself sends my blood-pressure through the roof. The ticket attendant on the London underground can render me dumb after I’ve just spent days addressing a room full of graduate level adults about Family Systems Theory. I know. It sounds ridiculous.
I was almost immobilized the first time I saw Thulani put himself “on duty” in the event he needed to be my mouthpiece. He did it. No one asked him or appointed him. He just did it.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
Our house is the same, but instead of painting from end to end and back again, I am the guy constantly cleaning, – and, it’s hard to tell.
Where I cleaned and swept and dusted and vacuumed and sponged and sterilized yesterday there are scooters and bicycles (boys), mail in piles (me), books (boys and me), newspapers (me), magazines (me), and socks (boys and Max, the Chihuahua).
Turn my back and the boys and Max are at it again – enjoying life as boys (and a dog) while I find being a cleaning lady quite an exhausting challenge.
There is a point of no return, I’ve noticed, or at least a point of the chaos where I feel compelled to let it all go for a while and I throw up my hands and join in the fun of trashing the place.
But when I clean I like to think I’m just like the guy painting the Bridge, which I can only imagine must be a slow and methodical task.
I do it room by room, starting at one end, the front, in the event that I soon lose interest – then, at least, the front room is somewhat in order. I push it (trash, magazines, books, socks, clothes) all back from the living room, through the piano room, then into the TV room until everything lands up in the kitchen.
Once it hits the kitchen I separate out what’s Max’s – he’s has his own set of toys with which he ruins the house – what’s Nate’s, what’s Thulani’s, and what can be recycled, dumped, restacked on bookshelves, placed in drawers, hung on a hanger, or filed in the “important documents” file I keep losing.
We moved into “122” (creatively named for its street number and which has had very few updates since it was built in 1886) when Thulani was about two – and I have been getting it in order ever since. Nate joined us in 2002. Max, in 2009. The house- attachment, at least for the boys and Max, is strong. When I talk of selling Thulani reminds me that Rhino, the husky that was on the run for nine months and returned to die within a few weeks after we reconnected, is buried in an Air France first class cabin blanket just outside of the kitchen door. Nate reminds me of where the fat goldfish is buried and Thulani ends the litany with his inability to think of living in a house without the large tree in the front yard where he has his brother (and Max) have “peed like boys” (and a dog) for the past several years.
So. I’ll go on painting and, before you send me letters about giving the boys chores and responsibilities and assigning daily tasks and getting on top of it before it gets on top of me let me advise that you are barking up the wrong tree (sorry, Max for the dog metaphor) because we do have all that in place and it does work here and there and off and on.
I know, I know. Consistency is the name of the game for parenting and let me tell you, the ONLY thing that is consistent here is the need to keep going room by room with or without the boys (and Max) to get this little bridge painted one stretch at a time so the world can see just how organized and decent our lives are here at our beloved “122.”
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
I am regularly aware that:- I was discouraged from playing soccer in the “front” yard (in view of the neighbors) with the servant’s children. While this may seem insignificant in the light of other much more severe problems rising from racism, it was huge for me as a child on several fronts. I loved the children and I loved soccer even more. They were excellent soccer players.
- I did attend a segregated school as did almost all white South Africans while there did exist some church schools that were integrated even under Apartheid. I vividly recall my school principal scolding the entire student body (over a thousand white boys) because a domestic worker (a black adult man) was seen walking in the neighborhood wearing a school blazer.
- Although, by no means wealthy, I was waited on hand and foot by a full-time servant.
- In the late 80s I was warned not to pray publicly for Prisoner “Nelson” Mandela from my church pulpit.
- A member of my family did balk at my request that I bring black children to his home-swimming pool to swim.
- Even as late as 1987 I was embarrassed that a young black boy whom I’d “helped” in his squatter camp had shown up at my door unannounced. I recall wondering what the neighbors would think seeing a child arriving at the home for a social visit and not to work in the yard.While I am aware that these are piddly problems in the light of what millions faced under the Apartheid regime, I am also aware that these factors in my immediate environment “shaped” me into believing perverse things (like in my own superiority and in “their” inferiority) about persons of other race groups. More significantly, I am frequently reminded that my children and I could not have shared life as we now do if we were still living in the era of Apartheid.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
That’s the upside.
We are a 10-hour-drive to the nearest coast – and, most of the east coast beaches are not worth the drive. The west coast, which has many wonderful beaches comparable to where I was reared, takes three full days of driving to reach.
Being landlocked is one thing but another is the weather. Indiana weather is erratic, neurotic, and downright psychotic.
Days ago I could’ve (but I didn’t) ice-skated across the street. Now, as I write, there’s a small lake in the street next to the sidewalk from last night’s rain. The weather is so brutal and extreme (it is as hot as blazes in the summers) that when we do drive anywhere (there are no grocery stores in walking distance) the streets are often full of potholes making some of America’s finest suburban streets resemble stretches of road you’d find in a rural stretch of South Africa’s Wild Coast. So, I am exaggerating but really not too much. Washington Boulevard is a challenge to drive right now, you have got to dodge potholes and loose pavement or, unless you drive a tank, you stand to severely damage your suspension.
But I do love living here. My neighbors are some of my best friends. My children are free and safe in the neighborhood and everyone knows everyone’s children. Even as I write Joseph (born a week or so before Thulani) from down the street has wondered into the house and it is quite likely he will eat with us, stay the night, and then wander down back down the street to his home sometime in the morning. His mom and I will talk sometime between now and nightfall unless he of course chooses to wonder off home and be gone just as quickly as he showed up.
Potholes and crazy weather won’t send us running, although we will drive to church in the morning – even though it is really close. I’m not sure I want to brave the elements which could be a snow-storm, an ice storm, the threat of a tornado – or a little or a lot of each. What else could you expect during March in Indiana?
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper. Of course you can go baby-stuff-shopping, get a room painted, stencil yellow ducks on the wall – if you know long enough in advance your child is coming. But painting a bedroom with ducks and rainbows and a pot of gold, and getting a truck load of stuff from your local one-stop baby emporium will only fill your home with a lot of weird and wonderful, and mostly unnecessary, equipment.
Children interrupt everything. It is the child who is really ready to teach you, whether you are or not. Once he arrives he will become the hub of all your scheduling. You will be fine with this because the child is not an interruption to your life but rather, from this point on, central to it.
The baby will make you ready and you can’t really prepare for the baby until he is breathing in the crib right next to your bed.
Life inside the Smith household
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16 Comments
Warmingtozero
This is a very good list and reveals some traits I haven’t seen in other lists of spiritual abuse. The only one I hesitate over is the one about loving titles. Some spiritual abusers can appear very humble and meek. Deception is deep sometimes. Our former pastor on the surface shunned titles, dressed down and appeared “normal.” It was all put on, however. Otherwise, very helpful, and I think I will link this post on my site.
25 Mar 2009 05:03 pm
Hillary@QuiveringDaughters
This is a fantastic resource. “Leaves a trail of cut-off relationships” is especially poignant for me.
01 Aug 2009 10:08 pm
delaney
I myself was apart of the trial, ,lost my kids and wife to it when I stood up, but God, His Word says delight yourself in Him and He will give you the desires of your heart, and Lord knows I desire my family WHole and together again. SO I press forward...
16 Apr 2012 09:04 pm (@Twitter)
Barb Orlowski
Hi Everyone,
My book: ‘Spiritual Abuse Recovery: Dynamic Research on Finding a Place of Wholeness’ has been released Dec./09.
I believe that I address many of the topics that people are concerned about. This book is based on my doctoral research on how people recovered after experiencing the devastation of spiritual abuse in their home church.
You can purchase a book from me. My email address is: info@churchexiters.com.
I welcome questions or comments on this topic.
Dr. Barb Orlowski
02 Jan 2010 08:01 pm
Angela M
Rewards your obedience with inclusion, and punishes your questioning or resistance with withdrawal. (Compliance gets stroked, resistance gets struck!)
Lavishes you with praise, acceptance, and understanding when you are “good” and “pushes” you away when you are “bad.”
I am stunned because the above sounds exactly what the church I was attending was like. I thought it was me being over sensitive. I felt pushed out and rejected at times, also there was a lot of favouritism. I have left attending church now and I will concentrate on having my own personal relationship with God. Y
You do not have to belong to a church to have a relationship with God
06 Feb 2010 06:02 pm
Sinkingship
Wow – I don’t know where you got this list but it sounds like an instruction manual for the cult I was in! I have posted the link to a recovery website I am a member of.
Thanks!
04 Aug 2010 03:08 pm
Clif
GREAT post Rod!
I read a post recently where the author stated that it wasn’t personal when a leader spiritually abuses others. Meaning that they weren’t abusing you because they were against you, they do these things to everybody. While I can agree to that on one level, it still HURTS so very much!! I know having gone through many of the same things as J, including getting kicked off of a base.
THANK YOU for exposing the traits of those who abuse others in the name of God!
THANK YOU for living your life in the way that you do! It demonstrates the love of the Father to so many of us!
05 Aug 2010 07:08 am
Anonymous
This happened to me. It nearly destroyed me. The subtleness was so gentle, and then when my true nature of compliance was stroked, oh so beautifully, I thought it was God. But then when my intuition told me otherwise and I became resistant, I was struck oh so cruelly. Honesty was demanded of me, without any sharing of the other. Fundamentalism began rearing its ugly head.. I see now I was one of many “specials” left in a trail of disposable relationships, so that she could go on to “save” the next soul for her Very Punishing God.And thereby gain credit dor herself. I am lucky and grateful cos I know that the God of My Understanding Loves me No Matter What. This coloumn has clarified it all greatly. Thanks Rod.
05 Sep 2010 03:09 am
Anonymous
These are good and very interesting. You should consider putting some Scriptures alongside these… also it might be really helpful to put down alongside this a list of traits for a rebellious person. In my experience many people, particularly in western culture, are rebellious and actually see even good, caring and godly authority as “controlling.”
When we put lists like this up it is important for us to also consider both sides of the coin, otherwise our words (even true ones- and i agree with all that you’ve written here) may be used against some very godly and loving leaders in the Body of Christ and cause them serious pain and damage when people with a rebellious heart use and manipulate points like these to tear down leadership.
Just a thought to consider. Thanks very much.
05 Sep 2010 02:09 pm
Deceived for a moment
I am so thankful for this article. I married this type of person at a vulnerable moment of my life and saw the signs prior to saying “I do,” just ignored them because I REALLY wanted a Godly man. Thought nothing that his family, especially parents are extremely distant from him. I even tried for the sake of peace and obedience to go against my moral convictions and perform my devout allegiance and loyalty to every word he commanded, just because he would say…”GOD SAID!” This was the way it was, I had NO VOICE over my own thoughts or contributions to our marriage. I’m the third wife of a seemingly Godly person, full of works! People think I am the cause of our troubles…I have moved out, but still married. I am unfortunately preparing for divorce – because he shows no signs of accountability or turning away from the behavior. I have gone to counseling, but there is sooooo much damage done on my behalf. I WISH CHURCHES WOULD TEACH THIS DURING WHOLENESS SEMINARS….it would REALLY HELP!
09 Jan 2011 12:01 pm
J
Wow wow…this is so true. Having just ended a relationship that has stopped and started over and over again for the past three years I can totally agree with this article. The numbers that apply to me are #1, #5 and #10. I was almost completely destroyed by this relationship, especially because she truly is a wonderful and Godly lady. I don’t think she even realizes she is operating in spiritual manipulation. And by the way, it began as an internet dating relationship…which I will NEVER do again. Hopefully I have learned my lesson and will allow the Lord to bring the right person to me in His time and place. I feel as if I have lost years of my life and seen much damage to my emotions because of my experience. RUN RUN far away from anyone that uses “confirmations” and scriptures they have received to try and make you do something that in your heart you just don’t have peace about! It is an indirect use of guilt through spiritual manipulation which basically leaves you with no free will.
27 Mar 2011 02:03 pm
Anonymous
Hello. This is probably the most accurate depiction that I have read that describes my experience. Don’t get me wrong….I have read some terrific articles, that I’m sure apply to a lot of other people. Although I am a victim of spiritual abuse, my experience wasn’t as “dramatic” as most articles describe. This article, however, hit the nail on the head for me. Thank you very much for your wisdom! God bless you.
14 Apr 2011 09:04 pm
Shane
This has helped me, and I will be looking to purchase this book. For just shy of two years I’ve been recovering from everything you have mentioned here. I was one that was “good”, but everything went down hill from the time I decided to use the faith and simple common sense God gave me. Autonomy and independence is a no no. In addition to the false humility which manifest as dressing down and all the others points the previous person mentioned, is the creation of jargon and a language of sorts that all “good” people and “bad people” should aim at adopting.
Christ will build his church. May God keep us from fuelling this behaviour and its side affects.
19 May 2011 11:05 pm
Ten Signs of the Presence of Spiritual Abuse « kristinnickols
[...] I wanted to put together a quick summary on some of the signs of spiritual abuse for those people who don’t like a read lot, or who don’t have time to read a long blog! If that’s you, here is a great article that is very short but highlights some of the characteristics of an abusive system. There are varying degrees of abuse that take place in the church, and some of the signs listed below may apply and others may not. There are many other signs as well, but to keep it short, here are 10 to start with. Abuse is not ok, even if it is seemingly small. If you would like to read more of what this author has written on this topic, click here: http://rodesmith.com/2009/02/09/ten-signs-of-spiritual-abuse/ [...]
Derik Girdwood
“The Church of Jezebel, Hijacking the Gospel”, is an excellent Christian suspense novel dealing with spiritual abuse. It is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and in several Christian bookstores.
11 Sep 2011 02:09 pm (@Twitter)
Stephen Crosby
Great stuff . . . this might help some too:
“You Might be in a Cult if . . . . .
http://swordofthekingdom.com/2011/12/07/you-might-be-in-a-cult-if/
12 Dec 2011 11:12 am (@Twitter)
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