Frank

I have not responded to this posting until now, because, in many ways, it is painful to me. First of all, though I don’t wish to say too much, I have experienced both within my own family, and among dear friends, enough of domestic violence and abuse that I recognize it to be a great scourge in our churches as well as in society at large. And by God’s grace, I am at that place in my life where I wish to join in a “Blessed Alliance” with my sisters in Christ and drive this scourge out from among God’s people. For I know that men, especially Christian men who have the Spirit and truly yield to him, are not inherently or irreversibly violent, relationally incompetent, emotionally constipated, nor sexually complusive.

Yet all too many Christian men exhibit these negative behaviors. Why? Because “dominant masculinity,” as Stephen Boyd designates patriarchy, or hierarchical-complementarianism, is a unbiblical philosophy that distorts and misdirects the male’s identity as the image bearer of God and as an equal partner with women, who are also made in God’s image. “To the extent that we manifest these characteristics, we do so not because we are male, but because we have experienced violent socialization and conditioning processes that have required or produced this kind of behavior and we have chosen to accept, or adopt, these ways of being, thinking, and acting. This dominative form of masculinity can be theologically construed to be a punishment or, better put, a manifestation of human sin. That is, it exhibits an alienation from our truest selves, from God, and from others. It is a captivity from which we need release” (THE MEN WE LONG TO BE: Beyond Domination to a New Christian Understanding of Manhood, p. 14).

Unfortunately, John Piper and others do not see this “dominant masculinity” as a philosophical construct that institutionalizes a negative consequence of the Fall, male dominance, with its attendant distortions and abuses of the relationship between men and women in the home and church, which is not understood as one mutuality but one of competition. “One of the ways in which we are mystified by what I call ‘dominative masculinity’ is by clinging to the mistaken belief that our well-being is somehow in competition with that others. We are convinced that the progress of another somehow diminishes us. Not only is this not true, it is one of the aspects of this form of masculinity that itself contributes to the very attitudes and behaviors that diminish us and others” (Cf. Stephen Boyd, THE MEN WE LONG TO BE, p.14). And when we are competing with someone, the more we feel threatened by them, the more extreme we become in overcoming our competition and maintaining our superior position, even to the point that it involves violence, when other forms of persuasion fail to maintain the status quo.

Now, I am not trying to excuse men for their abuse of women. But we need to understand the spiritual and psychological aspects of this scourge, which the Enemy seeks to exploit to the harm of the Church. For if we are to truly end spousal abuse and domestic violence in our congregations, and so experience real healing and reconciliation, we must understand the causes and dynamics of this pathology before adequate therapy can be developed and implemented. And so I would recommend churches developing anti-abuse and restoration seminars, utilizing such materials as Steven Tracy’s MENDING THE SOUL: Understanding and Healing Abuse; anti-abuse videos and literature provided by the Radio Bible Class and by CBE, to begin with.