Is It Possible To Emotionally Abuse Someone?

So all this is just like you have a bunch of people who have governed their lives on the basis of their feelings. They don't have any category for emotional self-control. They don't have any kind of category for managing their emotions, for disciplining their emotions.

They don't have any category for that. They don't even know what to do with that, right? These are foreign thoughts. And in fact, like what they've been taught, they've been taught for many years based on like the psychology, you know, quote-unquote behind it, like they've been taught that if you try to suppress your emotions, you're doing violence to yourself.

Salvation to any hope of heaven. The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of Almighty God is hanging over our head. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Introducing the Question of Emotional Abuse

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age-old question, Is it possible to emotionally abuse someone?

Now Tim, as we get this episode started off, what Bible verse do you have to read for us that's related to this topic of emotional abuse and whether it's real or not?

Yeah, Galatians 5 .22. So Galatians 5 .22 says, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires.

So, there you go.

Okay, the problem is, Tim, there was no mention of, you know, the fruit of the Spirit that is not being an emotional abuser. What? So, did you skip that one, or what happened there? Were your pages stuck together right there, and that's why you didn't read that one?

Tim Larkin Yeah. So, the problem with this term is obviously the problem that it's not really found in the Bible anywhere. So, if you're expecting me….

Pete. Wait, you're telling me it's not mentioned along with the other fruits of the Spirit?

Tim Larkin There is no emotional abuse exception to the fruit of the Spirit, okay? So, there's none of that. But there's no emotional abuse language in Scripture at all, so that's the problem. So, what you have is you have this term that is being used in a pretty heavy-handed way.

So, you know, during my Twitter escapades recently, I was saying that emotional abuse doesn't exist. So, I was saying that, and I've had people accuse me of basically all the psychological, like bad labels, like all the words possible.

So, you know, like only an abuser would say something like that. And then if you object to it, you say, no, I don't abuse anyone. Then they say that you're gaslighting them, you know? And so, then basically, when you reject the devil's vocabulary, man, you get the devil's wrath.

But yeah, this is a word that's nowhere in the Bible, so I don't have a Bible verse that's going to mention it. But I do have Bible verses which refute the concept, for sure.

Defining Emotional Abuse and Why the Term Is Problematic

Okay, so if the Bible doesn't mention it, then explain for us a little bit why you picked the passage that you picked to read about in relation to this discussion. We're having right.

Now. Yeah, maybe it'd be helpful just to explain what this concept is because a lot of people, they're using it in somewhat of a sloppy way, basically. But then, like it is a very well-defined concept, and if you argue with people about it, see, all you have to do is just go online and say something like, emotional abuse doesn't exist, or just say it to people in person, if you really have courage, which I've done before.

But I enjoy denying the existence of this term. But then, just say that, and you'll see the kind of reactions that people have, and they'll tell you what it means. Just ask people what it means, and you'll get a good indication about what they mean.

But here's the definition from very well-mined here, so verywellmined .com. Emotional abuse involves controlling, so think about this, controlling another person by using emotions to criticize, embarrass, shame, blame, or otherwise manipulate them.

While most common in dating and married relationships, mental or emotional abuse can occur in any relationship, so this is very serious, including among family members, friends, and coworkers. So, in general, a relationship is emotionally abusive when there is a consistent pattern of abusive words and bullying behaviors that wear down a person's self-esteem and undermine their mental health, okay?

So, like, wait, wait, wait, you're cringing,.

Are you dying from cringe over there? Pete. No, I was just, I was smirking, I was smirking, that's what I was doing.

Jared. The idea of emotional abuse, this is a word that people use to basically treat adults as infants, okay? So, basically, like, if a person has a consistent pattern of being rude to you and being mean to you, like, it's going to, in this language, it's going to destroy your self-esteem, right?

So, basically, the whole premise of this word is that people can't help the way they feel, so that's the premise, people can't help the way they feel. And so, therefore, when people do bad stuff to you, when people do mean stuff to you, so if you have, like, if you're in a relationship where someone has a consistent pattern of using degrading, you know, rude words, mean words, like, the issue is that in the minds of the pagans and even, like, professing Christians at this point, what that means is that, like, eventually, it's just going to tear away your self-esteem, destroy your self-worth, you know?

You're basically just, like, they're abusing you, right? Like, this is a form of abuse, so much so to the point where, like, because you're not accountable to your emotions, like, and you don't have any responsibility for how you feel, basically, they're just going to destroy your self-worth.

I mean, some people online, they were even, I mean, they were wording it in the language of, like, damaging your psyche, right? Like, wounding you, damaging you, you know, causing you to doubt reality, causing you to, you know, be unable to control your emotions, causing you to just have no joy, like, to sap away all the joy and love in your life and everything else and basically just, like, turn you into this, like, you know, just a wretched, like, pitiable person who just is beat down and, you know, and everything else.

And so, like, they're using it, like, they're using, like, words, like, basically, like, emotional abuse is is playing off the idea of, like, physical abuse now, right? So, like, just as you can, with your fists, like, beat someone down to the point of, like, that they're just non-functional as a person, that's what this emotional abuse category is trying to communicate, but with words, like, meaning, like, this is just, like, the utter destroying of a person through means of, like, mean behavior and everything else, if that makes sense.

I definitely think we've kind of gotten to a place as a society where, you know, it used to be, like, when I, you know, when I was growing up, for sure, when you were growing up, because I know that's not an old joke, that's just, I know you've mentioned this before, you know, for sure, when you were growing up, the sentiment that was typically told to you, you know, like, if you came home from school and you were talking about, hey, some other student was doing this and this and to me, they were saying this to me or whatever, and you're upset about it as a little kid, your parents are going to tell you, you know, hey, sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you, right?

Why? Because they're words. They can't do physical harm to you in and of themselves inherently. They aren't able to do that so long as you don't let them, right? And it seems like as we've progressed and as I've gotten older, I really have noticed we've kind of, we've just gone away from all of that pretty much entirely at this point where, you know, you're totally, you're not in control of how you feel, you know, it's part of this whole follow your heart, Disney dreams stuff that has been pushed out for years now where you're basically told like what you feel is valid, you know, you need to give full vent to it and you're totally in the right for feeling however you feel and no one can take that away from you and it just, it's a far cry from where we came from and, you know, now I get that, I get that there are trying situations that you might be in as a person and that you might be forced to interact with someone in your daily life that is unpleasant to interact with, but then that's not, you know, it seems almost disrespectful to say that that's somehow even close to comparable to living with someone who is, you know, physically beating you every day, it seems borderline disrespectful to even assert that.

Yes, so, you know, related to this,.

Here's some other definitions that get at the point that you're trying to get at, okay, so like emotional abuse is the systemic destruction of a person's self-esteem and or sense of safety often occurring in relationships where there are differences in power and control, right?

CBT So some critical theory there.

JG Yeah, and, you know, so a person, you know, commented on this online, they said, hey, what would you call it when a parent has a pattern of insulting degrading, insulting degrading their kids in an unloving manner?

And I said, well, rude, hateful. CBT Unloving? JG A father who provokes his children to wrath, right? So but like, here's the thing. So like, you're talking about how things have changed. So we used to have a category for provoking someone to wrath, right?

So if you think about the idea of provoking someone to wrath, that's the way the Bible would speak about this kind of thing in the language of provocation. But like, the issue is like, there's a completely different connotation to the word provocation to wrath than emotional abuse, right?

So like, the idea of a provocation is a temptation from the outside. So certainly, we can tempt people to be angry. We can tempt people to be sad. We can tempt people to give into despair. We can tempt people to give into hopelessness.

We can tempt people in all sorts of ways. Like, there's no discussion about that in the Bible. CBT. Yeah, you can be a stumbling block and the person not stumble over you at the same time. JG Right, right.

But then that's the issue. In a biblical worldview, everything that people are describing under this language of emotional abuse, it's all just provocation, right? But the issue is, at the end of the day, it's a provocation, and you can respond in one way or another.

That's the way it works, right? So the issue is, and that's why I bring up the fruit of the Spirit. So you talk about what emotional abuse is. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

So what you're asking me to believe with this category is that this provocation that you're doing to this other person is not a provocation. I mean, you're literally mind wiping them or something like that, right?

You're literally destroying their soul. You're putting despair and hopelessness and shame and guilt on them and psychologically destabilizing them to the point where they are unable to have any of these fruit of the Spirit, right?

They're not able to be characterized by love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. They're not able to be characterized by the fruit of the Spirit because you have emotionally abused them.

And that's the way that the word means. I mean, that's what people mean when they say this. And they look at you and you say, hey, that isn't real, right? And they think you're being crazy or whatever.

It's like, you don't have the ability to take away someone's love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self-control. You don't have that ability no matter what you do.

You can provoke them, right? You can treat them poorly. But I mean, just think about the example of Jesus at that point. When he was reviled, he didn't revile in return, but he entrusted himself to the one who judges righteously.

It's like the issue is Jesus was treated worse than any human being in the history of the world has ever been treated. But then what he didn't do was accuse everyone of emotionally abusing him, and then in a corresponding way just give himself over into everything that's opposite of the fruit of the Spirit and blame it on the other person's poor treatment.

But that's what this word is doing. It's an excuse that people use to basically–what it is is it's like a blank slate for me to feel whatever I feel and blame it all on you. So it's all your fault. I have no responsibility to be filled with love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self-control, because you're being mean to me.

And they'll look at you with this sage look on their face or something like, what part of emotional abuse do you not understand? When you're emotionally abusing someone, you are destroying them. It's like, well, no, that can't happen to the Christian.

You understand that? That's not the way these things work. The Holy Spirit is more powerful than whatever you're trying to do, right? They say as they totally insult you all day long and mock you and ridicule you, and yet–.

Make assumptions about you that are–especially immediately assuming that you must be–anyone who disagrees with you must be an emotional abuser. It's like that meme where the one person is looking out at the whole crowd and saying, no, I'm right, you are all wrong.

Like, hey, oh, if you disagree with me, that's just because you're guilty of this very thing that you're disagreeing with me. That's the only reason you disagree with me. There's no other possible reason you could disagree with me.

JG. So, but part of what they're saying is that, but then the other part of what they're saying is also, like, you denying emotional abuse exists. You are re-abusing people. Like, that is an act of an abuse itself, right?

So, if you say that, like, what you're doing is you're abusing people who know it's real, right? So, like, you're actually actively abusing them at the moment. It's like, no, I just think these are dumb terms.

These are dumb terms. We should stop using them. Like, Christians should not use these psychological terms because they have baggage. But then, like, the funny thing is, I mean, the funny thing about it all is that people will get so mad about this and they will call you so many names.

Like, we had someone threatened to, like, dox both of us and try to destroy both of us in response to a simple, but it's like, I'm not even remotely upset about it. It's just like, well, whatever, you know?

But if I adopted the, like, the thing is, like, I can't, like, adopt this worldview and say, oh, yeah, you're abusing me right now emotionally, right? I'm going to go home. I'm going to cry for the rest of the day because of how mean you were to me.

And I'm going to take no responsibility for how I feel at this point because you're just utterly degrading me and dehumanizing me and treating me like garbage. It's just like, yeah, that's just not really the way life works.

I mean, like, God calls us to self-control and the fruit of the spirit is self-control. And no matter how you treat me, like, I don't, I can't just wallow in it, right? I can't just wallow in it. Right.

So, I mean, and that's where the Bible just, like, the Bible doesn't have this, like, category that in the minds of, like, many people, like, they don't have it. It's just not, this category doesn't exist.

There's not, like, you know, certain kinds of treatment which are so bad which just completely remove all personal responsibility for you and infantilize you and basically treat you as if you're, you know, a five-year-old girl or something like that who's not able to regulate your emotions at this point.

It's just like, this doesn't exist. I'm sorry, like, fruit of the spirit can help me to respond no matter what you do with it.

Biblical Examples of Enduring Mistreatment Without Wallowing

Pete. Which is so weird because, I mean, as you the Bible, there's just so many, I mean, there's so many stories about people who are in various, you know, situations in their life where they are under someone who doesn't treat them the way that they are supposed to be treated.

And then these biblical characters are, you know, I mean, generally, obviously, they're still human. Other than Jesus, you know, they're still, you know, human, not perfect, not perfect like Jesus was.

And so, they're going to falter in various ways, but then generally, they were faithful through all of that stuff and we praise them for being faithful and not for wallowing, you know, in their own emotions.

I mean, I just think about Jacob with Laban, you know, where we praise him for, he enters this agreement with Laban, he's going to marry his daughter after he works a set period of time, and then he fulfills his end of the bargain and he gets cheated out of what he was promised by Laban, right?

He marries Leah instead of Rachel. And, you know, I mean, and that's not the only time Laban cheated him out of things either. That was like a pattern that happened over and over again with Laban. And then we look at, you know, we look at Jacob's response to all that and he turns around and he does what needs to be done to get what he actually wanted to begin with, right?

And we don't look at that and say, hey, you know, Jacob should've wallowed in his pity and he had every right to just, you know, leave in the worst possible way and never come back. He had every right to feel however he wanted to feel.

We don't talk about any of that. We just talk about how, you know, there was someone that he valued enough to put even more work in than what he promised he would do to get and we praise him for that.

And I mean, there's just so many examples of that throughout the Bible where you have these guys who are treated poorly and they don't wallow in all of it and we praise them for those things. So, I guess it's weird that we just, we look at that and say that is the example that we should follow and then turn to everyone that we know and, you know, in our own personal lives and say, hey, you're entitled to the way that you feel.

And I have to wonder, too, how much of this comes from the, you know, the school of thought that essentially thinks the Bible tells us that anything that's a desire inside of you is not sin. I have to wonder how much of that is a part of this conversation because, you know, you and I, we would say that, well, your desire can be sinful depending on what you're desiring, right?

Feelings, Identity, and the Denial of Emotional Self-Control

Jared. That's what it's all about. I mean,.

Like when I made that comment that emotional abuse doesn't exist or whatever, all the female pastors came out of the woodwork, you know, all the egalitarians came out of the woodwork, you know? So, I mean, it's just like, this is the term.

The big problem in our culture and in society right now is people just, they really don't believe that they can help the way they feel. That's the problem, right? So, they can't help the way they feel and whatever they feel, that's what defines them.

That's their identity, okay? So, that's why this is a big deal. It's not really even about emotional abuse, it's about the presuppositions which undergird the project. The presuppositions that undergird the project are you can't help the way you feel, and however you feel, that's who you are, right?

So, the female pastor, she feels called to be a pastor, so she's a pastor, right? The issue is the sodomite, he feels attracted to people of the same sex, so that's who he is, that's his identity, that's how he defines him, right?

So, all this is just like, you have a bunch of people who have governed their lives on the basis of their feelings. They don't have any category for emotional self-control. They don't have any kind of category for managing their emotions, for disciplining their emotions.

They don't have any category for that. They don't even know what to do with that, right? These are foreign thoughts, and in fact, what they've been taught, they've been taught for many years based on the psychology, you know, quote unquote, behind it.

They've been taught that if you try to suppress your emotions, you're doing violence to yourself, okay? That's what they've been taught. You have this moral imperative to feel whatever you feel in an unrestricted and restrained way, and not only that, everyone has to come along and tell you that your feelings are fine, right?

Whatever you feel is right. You can't help the way you feel. That's the world that we live in. If you look at something like this, this kind of topic, that's the idol that you're stepping on, basically.

That's the issue. The issue is basically just, you have a group of people who are just narcissists. They got participation tropes their whole life. They've been told that they need to emote and express their feelings.

If anyone comes along and basically says, hey, yeah, you know what? You're accountable for that. You can't blame all your feelings on everyone else, and you can actually control that. They just scream, you know, lose their mind.

Which is so crazy, because the minute that you start thinking that way, and you start thinking, hey, maybe I actually do have control over my emotions, and maybe if over time I think that way and I treat all my interactions in life that way, where no matter what the circumstance around me, I can still choose to be joyful.

I can still choose to not be overcome with sorrow. I can still choose to put my hope in Christ and not despair like the rest of the world despairs. Then, you know, the sooner you do that, I mean, the sooner you start having victory over these things, and the sooner you start being sanctified in a way where these things don't really bother you the same way that they used to bother you, right?

Right. Yeah, I mean, I could give a bunch of examples of this, some of which are pretty mundane, you know? So, like, meaning, early on in my Christian life, I realized that I was lazy, and I hated work, right?

So, you know, me and my younger brother, we had a funny joke or whatever, but we played Starcraft back in the day. So, the greatest summer of our life, okay? You want to know what the greatest summer of our life was?

**Matt Stauffer**.

I feel like I can already guess what it was, but go ahead and tell us.

**Justin Jackson**. The greatest summer of our life, was where we spent all summer playing Starcraft from sunup to sundown. **Matt Stauffer**. Oh, my goodness. **Justin Jackson**. I mean, but that's like, it's totally worthless.

But then, at a certain point in my life, I realized that, man, like, all right, I become a Christian, and I read the Bible, and I get to the opening chapters of the Bible, and I realize that God has made man to work, right?

So, God, He put man in the garden, He made him work. And then, you know, I read in Ecclesiastes that the preacher basically sees that there's nothing better than a man rejoicing in the toil with which he toils under the sun, right?

So, and I look at that, and I say, all right, do I believe this or not? Because I'm not feeling that, you know? Like, I don't, my emotions are not saying amen, you know, or hallelujah to this truth here, right?

So, like, I reject that in my soul, you know? He's found that, you know, there's nothing better than to rejoice in the toil with which we toil under the sun like this. Like, my emotions don't feel that.

I would rather play Starcraft all day long, right? But then, you know, it's like, hey, I'm a Christian, I believe the Bible, whatever God says is right. And that led me to say, hey, I know I've been told that I can't help the way I feel my whole life, but God says that there's nothing better than I rejoice in the toil with which I toil under the sun, for this is God's gift to man.

I'm not just going to be faithful at work, I'm going to find a way to love work, because that's what the Bible tells me I need to do, right? The Bible tells me I need to love work, and it's like, that's God's gift to me, that I can learn to love work.

And it was about as simple as that in my mind, to learn how to love work. That was it. It was a decision I made to say, no, I'm going to love this, right? And any thought that comes to my mind that is a complaint, I'm going to repent of, right?

But I'm going to love this. I'm going to learn to love to work. And I would say that it's been 20 years since that conversation or something like that in my brain, and I don't struggle with enjoying work.

I like to work. I love working, right? The issue is your emotions are liars, and it's your job as a Christian to conform your emotions to the Word of God, to basically say that what God says is right, no matter what my feelings say, right?

So my feelings say that this is the path to drudgery and boredom. But what I found over the course of my life is, no, I mean, God's made you to work, and there is nothing better than a man rejoice with the toil with which he toils under the sun, right?

Those were true words, and my heart resonates with those words now in a way that it didn't before, right? But I mean, that's the way it's worked in every area of sanctification God has produced in my life.

It's worked just like that, to where you say, whatever God says is right is right. My emotions need to follow, and I'm going to make no allowance for them not following. And it's just about that, but I mean, you do have an entire generation of people at this point who just think that they just have no idea what you're talking about.

So then when someone's mean to you, it's just like, well, I mean, of course you're not going to have any self-esteem. It's just like, I don't even understand what you're communicating with. People are mean to me all the time.

I don't care, you know?

Self-Control, Sanctification, and Closing Exhortation

Petey. You know, for some reason, I think if you were to start claiming that you're a victim of emotional abuse by the hand of all of the emotionally abused, I doubt very many people would show you much sympathy probably, especially the quote-unquote emotionally abused.

But okay, I think that's a good place for us to wrap up the conversation. So Tim, thank you for walking us through that and talking about this issue in general because like I said at the beginning, it is one of those things where we've gone from one end of the spectrum all the way to the other end where at first I think we in a good place saying, hey, you know, you're the person who controls the way that you feel, right?

And you're responsible for it. You're not responsible for everything that happens, you know, outside of you, but you are responsible for everything that happens inside, right? And we've gone from that to just, you're a victim, you know, you can't control what's going on in here, you know, that's just something that you're along the ride for, which is totally unbiblical.

I mean, there's nothing in the Bible that even hints at that idea. It's the exact opposite. The Bible tells us just straight forward, the exact opposite, that we are in control of what goes on in here and without God's intervention, it's always evil, which is why you're saying, hey, you know, my emotions are lying to me, right?

That's why you're saying this because our flesh is evil and desires evil and wicked things. So with all that being said, we appreciate you guys supporting us week in and week out, listening to the podcast, interacting with us on social media.

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