Domestic violence within our plain culture?

[jahertz]

The topic of mental illness is fraught and well worth discussing, but in my view it is mostly irrelevant to the topic of domestic abuse within Anabaptist churches for a simple reason: the overwhelming majority of Plain abusers, like the overwhelming majority of abusers in general, do not abuse because of mental illness and thus do not come across as "strange" or exhibit any kind of obvious tell to the greater community that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of abusers will never be diagnosed with mental illness of any kind, although their victims, after years of trauma, often will be.

While I defer to the OP, I would move to keep the focus of this thread on domestic abuse in Anabaptist circles, rather than getting sidetracked into the tangentially-related issue of mental illness and stigma, which if it isn't already being discussed in an existing thread, would be an excellent and worthy subject for a new one.

[Neto]

The topic of mental illness is fraught and well worth discussing, but in my view it is mostly irrelevant to the topic of domestic abuse within Anabaptist churches for a simple reason: the overwhelming majority of Plain abusers, like the overwhelming majority of abusers in general, do not abuse because of mental illness and thus do not come across as "strange" or exhibit any kind of obvious tell to the greater community that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of abusers will never be diagnosed with mental illness of any kind, although their victims, after years of trauma, often will be.

While I defer to the OP, I would move to keep the focus of this thread on domestic abuse in Anabaptist circles, rather than getting sidetracked into the tangentially-related issue of mental illness and stigma, which if it isn't already being discussed in an existing thread, would be an excellent and worthy subject for a new one.

Understood. I guess I'm the guilty one who got off topic, or something like that. I was thinking along the general lines of learning to accept counselling, whether for mental illness, or for anger issues that lead to physical (& psychological) abuse of family members. Going to a counselor is, or at least has been, a thing that often causes shame. I think that if this were more easily accepted, if people would realize that (as one counselor put it) "Everyone is broken in one way or another." Some abusers would never accept the idea that they are to fault, or that they have any problems. But others DO admit this, at least to themselves, in private. Maybe that group is the minority; maybe the common abuser is a narcissist. But I read a (secular) study some years ago where one of the researchers realized that by all of the common characteristics (according to other secular studies) he himself fit the description. But he also realized that his home environment had helped him to learn to empathize with other people, and that this prevented him from engaging in abusive behavior. I'm not explaining this very well, I don't think. He admitted that he doesn't 'feel" empathetic toward others' pain, but he had LEARNED to recognize pain in others, and to express love and care for them. So my point is that for the person who did not learn that as a child, a good deal of counseling will be necessary, and not only is it essential that pastors learn how to do this, but the shame associated with accepting counseling needs to be removed as well.

Or, would anyone here claim not to be "broken" in at least some way or another?

[Ken]

The topic of mental illness is fraught and well worth discussing, but in my view it is mostly irrelevant to the topic of domestic abuse within Anabaptist churches for a simple reason: the overwhelming majority of Plain abusers, like the overwhelming majority of abusers in general, do not abuse because of mental illness and thus do not come across as "strange" or exhibit any kind of obvious tell to the greater community that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of abusers will never be diagnosed with mental illness of any kind, although their victims, after years of trauma, often will be.

While I defer to the OP, I would move to keep the focus of this thread on domestic abuse in Anabaptist circles, rather than getting sidetracked into the tangentially-related issue of mental illness and stigma, which if it isn't already being discussed in an existing thread, would be an excellent and worthy subject for a new one.

In addition, mental illness is also not associated with violence. Or to put it another way, people with diagnosed mental illnesses are not on average more violent than anyone else. There are indeed some types of mental disorders that do lead to violence but they are rare. Most mental illness tends to be issues like chronic depression or bipolar disorders that aren't associated with violence.

[barnhart]

I think this bears repeating. I suspect fear of feminism can, in some cases, how often I don't know, can push groups to abandon clear New Testament gospel teaching as JAH outlines below.

The result of this blithe, watered-down 1950s-housewife-advice-column approach to marriage teaching is that a wife subject to chronic abuse is never introduced to the recourse the Gospel offers the downtrodden in the context of a mutually accountable redeemed society, the church. She believes God expects her to bear and accept silently every kind of cruelty from the man who vowed at the altar to cherish and support her. It never occurs to her that the process of confrontation and appeal described in Matthew 18 could be for her―that the husband at her side is also her brother in the church, whose callousness toward her destroys the symbolism of Christ and the church, defies God's clearly revealed will for his spiritual growth, and jeopardizes his eternal salvation.

[jahertz]

Understood. I guess I'm the guilty one who got off topic, or something like that. I was thinking along the general lines of learning to accept counselling, whether for mental illness, or for anger issues that lead to physical (& psychological) abuse of family members. Going to a counselor is, or at least has been, a thing that often causes shame. I think that if this were more easily accepted, if people would realize that (as one counselor put it) "Everyone is broken in one way or another." Some abusers would never accept the idea that they are to fault, or that they have any problems. But others DO admit this, at least to themselves, in private. Maybe that group is the minority; maybe the common abuser is a narcissist. But I read a (secular) study some years ago where one of the researchers realized that by all of the common characteristics (according to other secular studies) he himself fit the description. But he also realized that his home environment had helped him to learn to empathize with other people, and that this prevented him from engaging in abusive behavior. I'm not explaining this very well, I don't think. He admitted that he doesn't 'feel" empathetic toward others' pain, but he had LEARNED to recognize pain in others, and to express love and care for them. So my point is that for the person who did not learn that as a child, a good deal of counseling will be necessary, and not only is it essential that pastors learn how to do this, but the shame associated with accepting counseling needs to be removed as well.

Or, would anyone here claim not to be "broken" in at least some way or another?

No problem and no harm done. I understand why the topic comes up in such a conversation, as it seems intuitive to people without extensive personal exposure to domestic abuse in Christian settings that if it happens among Christians, there must be some proximate cause such as mental illness, addiction, or anger management issues. Abusers themselves, if they are exposed and confronted, will often encourage this impression, and may willingly participate in counseling, anger management, substance abuse intervention, or whatever they have convinced others is the cause of their cruelty to their family members. The result of such interventions is generally to produce a better educated abuser, more polished, polite, and covert, just as cruel and manipulative as ever but armed with more sophisticated language and more convincing justifications for his harmful behaviors.

There IS a proximate cause of abuse, and it is exactly what Jesus told us it is: a wicked, corrupt, unredeemed heart, that makes the abuser willing to trample and crush the souls of those with less power in order to satisfy his lusts for ease or gourmet food or sex on demand or whatever he deems necessary for his personal happiness. The key difference between an abusive and a supportive husband is not his relationship or anger management skills: it's his deeply held beliefs and motivations regarding the rights and responsibilities of a man in a married relationship to a woman, or a father in relationship to children.

This is why the researcher in your example, Neto, found that while he carried many of the innate traits of a narcissist, he was responsible and not destructive in his relationships. (I hope he verified this with a second opinion ) It isn't something about an abuser's intrinsic chemistry or personality traits that makes him abusive: it's his deepest motivations and beliefs, often shaped, as in your example, by his family of origin, but also influenced by his peers and the values of the culture he most identifies with.

In short, the answer is the Gospel and the sacrificial example of Jesus. Church-going abusers generally know perfectly well that what they are doing is considered wrong by their faith community. But in general it doesn't seem to be shame that stops them from getting help. What stops them from getting help is that their abuse is working perfectly to get them what they want: the silence of their companion when they don't feel like listening to her troubles: supper on time, every time, and the child's overdue homework be d****d: a good night's sleep, whether the wife ever gets one or not. If he thinks about it at all, he likely has a bad feeling that he shouldn't really treat his family this way, but changing his abusive patterns would mean giving up his "rights" and comforts as king of his castle: would mean wading into the messy and uncomfortable work of learning to empathize and share the burden with his wife, would mean spending real quality time with his children, to the detriment of his time fishing or hunting or tinkering or reading theology or whatever it is he likes doing more.

THAT's the abuser's root addiction, and and it's so comfortable for him that until he is firmly confronted, he generally has no real intention of getting clean. Only the conviction of the Spirit, delivered in the context of a skilled, discerning brotherhood that stands with the victim, enforces painful consequences, and refuses to let up the pressure, will lead to genuine change and transformation in the life of such a person.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions (James 4:1-3).

[mike]

"HOW DARE YOU go gossiping around to all the ladies about me, you b****! I work myself to the bone to get you a nice house, I put up with your whining day and night, I eat your burned dinners, and THIS is what I get???" He hurls his lunch box into the sink, turns on his heel, and heads to the bathroom for a shower, slamming the bathroom door on the way in.

Later that night, he slaps her for the first time.

If things are at this point, I can't imagine church leaders who are aware of the situation not doing anything about it.

I know my wife well enough to say that if I was cursing at her, criticizing her, and physically hitting her, she would be talking to somebody about exactly what is happening, stat. It would likely be her sisters or her friends, and for that level of severity it would almost certainly escalate to church leaders. I don't know my church well enough to know precisely what would be done, but I suspect there would be immediate repercussions including involvement of law enforcement if a crime was committed.

I believe that the commission of a crime by someone in the church should call for the involvement of law enforcement completely separate and independent of any church investigation, discipline, or effort at reconciliation. Neither should necessarily be affected by the other.

[jahertz]

In addition, mental illness is also not associated with violence. Or to put it another way, people with diagnosed mental illnesses are not on average more violent than anyone else. There are indeed some types of mental disorders that do lead to violence but they are rare. Most mental illness tends to be issues like chronic depression or bipolar disorders that aren't associated with violence.

To piggy-back on this, when someone does have a mental illness acute enough to cause violence, that violence will generally NOT be perfectly contained behind closed doors, directed exclusively toward a wife or children the perpetrator knows will not rat him out. The violence will crop up in places where it causes disruption for the violent person's life goals, job success, social status, etc. I would go so far as to say that a person in the grip of an acute mental illness cannot be an effective abuser because abuse implies a pattern of control and domination, and random uncontrollable violence tends toward stripping the sufferer of control over his or her affairs rather than increasing it.

The same goes for abusers who claim to have "anger problems" and toddle off obediently to anger management classes. In one case I heard recounted by a pastor with years of experience counseling batterers, the man alleged that when angry at his wife's behavior he would "just lose it" and throw things, often destroying them. Upon questioning, it emerged that in such apparent blind rages he had thrown and destroyed four or five cell phones over a period of a few months. It took considerable probing to get him to admit that in every case the destroyed phone had belonged to his wife, never to him. The pattern of his behavior showed clearly that his rage wasn't blind at all, and he didn't "lose it"—he was using anger as a skillfully targeted tool to instill fear in his wife to gain the compliance he considered his due.

In other cases, abusers have admitted to getting drunk when they felt like being mean to their wife, to lower their inhibitions. The drunkenness, like the anger in the above example, was not the cause of the abuse but a tool wielded with a skill born of long practice to get the outcome the wicked heart had already fixated on.

[jahertz]

"HOW DARE YOU go gossiping around to all the ladies about me, you b****! I work myself to the bone to get you a nice house, I put up with your whining day and night, I eat your burned dinners, and THIS is what I get???" He hurls his lunch box into the sink, turns on his heel, and heads to the bathroom for a shower, slamming the bathroom door on the way in.

Later that night, he slaps her for the first time.

If things are at this point, I can't imagine church leaders who are aware of the situation not doing anything about it.

I know my wife well enough to say that if I was cursing at her, criticizing her, and physically hitting her, she would be talking to somebody about exactly what is happening, stat. It would likely be her sisters or her friends, and for that level of severity it would almost certainly escalate to church leaders. I don't know my church well enough to know precisely what would be done, but I suspect there would be immediate repercussions including involvement of law enforcement if a crime was committed.

I believe that the commission of a crime by someone in the church should call for the involvement of law enforcement completely separate and independent of any church investigation, discipline, or effort at reconciliation. Neither should necessarily be affected by the other.

I suspect you are quite correct, and that this is how your wife would respond, should you begin to treat her this way out of the blue. I am quite certain mine would.

But a Plain woman doesn't wake up one morning and suddenly find herself married to a monster. Typically, her husband seemed like a pretty good catch when they were dating, and it was easy to overlook a few red flags in the flush of romance, especially if the young woman's own father was fairly demanding and entitled. She knows men are like that, and she can't wait to make their home a little paradise of womanly welcome and coziness. In the first months of marriage, he is generally pleasant enough. The glow of the honeymoon makes getting along relatively easy, and the new wife is eager and able to cater to his every wish. His entitlement and demands escalate bit by bit as the pressures of work and family press in, and because she loves him and focuses on his best traits, she assumes that when he responds in painful ways, it is because she has failed him in some way, and she resolves to do better by the grace of God.

These patterns cycle endlessly, deeper and deeper, often for decades, and by the time the situation becomes intolerable, her personality is so broken down, her self-image so degraded, the shame of admitting the truth about the man she still loves is so overwhelming, that even a desperate wife will only divulge the smallest hint of the hell she lives in every day, making it easy for the husband, if the leaders do confront him, to minimize his wrongdoing, mutualize it as her fault as much as his, and gradually turn everything back on her until the well-meaning but naive church leaders are fully convinced that while he certainly has room to grow, she has really been the problem all along.

I have personally spoken to these women on many occasions. Often, everything they say is tentative, as if they don't expect to be believed. They lower their voices in shame at the words coming off their own tongues as they describe a characteristic incident that happened just the day or week before, and as I and whoever is with me winces at the cruelty of what they have so matter-of-factly described, they almost apologize, afraid they are making too big a deal out of a small thing. Often, their local ministry has been involved in the situation for months or years, trying to give marriage counseling, with the result that the situation at home has escalated from intolerable to objectively life-threatening.

These heartbreaking situations are next door, wearing head coverings, cape dresses, and button-down shirts. A man from such a family has likely preached in a pulpit of a church you attended recently, or at least given a glowing and inspiring testimony after the message. I wouldn't have believed it either. To accept it is to commit violence against very deep self-conceptions of ourselves as Plain People, and to drink the gall of weeping. But so help me God, if I have anything to do about it people are going to hear these women's and children's voices, and we will find out who cares enough to step up, pay the price, and be the change and cleansing the Spirit demands of his bride.

Part of that change, the first I myself experienced years ago, is to sit with the pain and discomfort of conversations like this one, and I honor everyone who is doing that in good faith.

[RZehr]

Not a topic here that I think often about. But JAH, you’re making me worry for my young daughters getting married someday.

Welcome back btw.

[steve-in-kville]

I push back at "men's meetings" that are intended for making decisions rather than mutual encouragement or accountability. Authoritarian structures can accomplish a lot, nice buildings, stable conferences ect... but at what cost?

Good for you. I was part of such a group that was all about Brother's Meetings and I felt it was taken too far. Like the time the Elder told us men to use caution in what we share with our wives, "we don't want to upset the women."