I just had some musings tonight and have been thinking for the last two months or more of the importance of strong, biblical teaching in regards to spiritual abuse. Maybe it's because my new husband is such a excavator of the word of God, digging it apart, and looking for the truths revealed by the Holy Spirit and is so grounded in sound doctrine.
My husband and I recently came across some examples of spiritual abuse and as we watched the drama unfold we pondered and speculated and both of us came to the same conclusion....sound doctrine is the key to a healthy church.
If you have false teaching, you now have a key ingredient in the recipe for spiritual abuse. In all the books that I've read on the subject, there wasn't one that I know of that really focused on the false teachings. It was because of my husband, and my own biblical grounding, that lead us both to see the very real spiritual abuse that was being perpetrated in front of us and all of it led back to wrong, false teaching.
Many books focus on the types of leaders. One book I recently read, not only described the narcissistic leader but the insecure one as well. The insecure abusive leader is obviously less dangerous than the narcissist, and is less noticeable, but both use control and manipulation of people to fulfill their personal, professional and spiritual needs.
But again, the common denominator is not the people but the teaching. False teachers, falsely teach! So, if you can identify the false teaching, you can identify the false teacher and avoid abuse.
I look at the false teacher, as to like the flour in a bread recipe, and the teachings like the yeast. Or maybe it's the other way around...who knows...there's no perfect analogy. But my point is, if you pay attention to the teaching, you can identify the teacher.
There's a lot in the new testament regarding false teaching and false teachers. The main issue is a teaching of self gratification. That can be hard to spot sometimes. I'm thinking of a particular instance where the false teaching I heard was on gossip, but the text was 2 Tim 2, which didn't have anything to do with gossip, but everything to do with false teaching! The minister, preaching, clearly was having an issue with supposed gossip in his church and hammered his agenda message home, imposing on the text what he wanted it to say....BUT....the text didn't say anything about gossip.
Taking a step back and evaluating the message as a whole it was clearly a subtle way of enforcing the "don't talk" rule with a false teaching on gossip, gratifying the needs of the minister or ministry as a whole. Clearly, it was a message to create a cover up of some sort! The teaching wasn't to educate or build up, or even to bring correction, but to clearly bring condemnation, shame and guilt to anyone in the congregation who may have "gossiped". The message itself was so clearly stretched to have a false definition of gossip as well, even going so far as to say that any mention of good news, that wasn't yours and yours alone was gossip! Wow...by that definition, we wouldn't have the spread of the gospel! Look at how fast "gossip" spread among the people in Jesus' day, how quickly the crowds formed to hear him teach, or to just touch him! All, it was, was a message designed to gratify the needs of the leadership in the church, and protect their positions of power and authority.
I just want to point out in the bible, in the Greek, every mention of gossip, or slander, has to be malicious and false! I'm not saying go spread truth everywhere if it's bad news to just anyone who will listen. But, telling the truth isn't gossip if someone shares good news or even bad news.
To take such an extreme view as everything you share with others, whether good or bad, that isn't directly related to you as gossip and thus sin...wow, that's some legalism there. I don't want to be under that kind of mindset or leadership! I cannot imagine being under condemnation for excitedly telling someone my son got a job, or even sorrowfully sharing some bad experience that happened to me or my family and being labeled as a gossip.
Shutting down truth sharing, or the "don't talk" rule, is classic symptoms of spiritual abuse. It's about bringing shame and condemnation to the individual that the leader is trying to control.
So in our spiritual abuse Bread recipe, we've got our false teacher and our false teaching. They kinda go hand in hand, but there are more ingredients to add into the mix....
