The Abusive Wife

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We are going to talk today about a topic we've talked about before, but maybe approaching it from a slightly different vantage point.

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We're going to talk about the Me Too movement and this idea today that seems to be gaining strength.

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Biblical counseling is fueling the abuse of women in churches.

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Complementarianism is doing that. Elder -led congregations are doing that. All these biblical things are the problems.

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I'm not a biblical counselor. I've taken courses in biblical counseling for my seminary training, and I'm familiar with biblical counseling, but I really appreciate those who are biblical counselors because they're in the trenches.

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They're dealing with these concrete situations on a daily basis. They're seeing what's going on out there in the world in their own congregations and beyond.

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That's why today I want to introduce everyone to Pastor David Edgington, who runs a ministry called

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Compassionate Counselors. You can find out more at CompassionateCounselors .com.

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You don't sound too mean. Compassionate Counselors sounds pretty nice. Off the top here,

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I think that'll deflate all the leftists who want to rage about your book, which is

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The Abuse of Wife. That's what the podcast is about.

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Thank you for having me. You wrote a book called The Abuse of Wife. One -word question.

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Why would you do this to yourself? At the moment when

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I wrote the book, I didn't realize how much attention it would get. It was actually published back in 2015, which is a whole different world in some ways.

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But the reason I wrote the book is very simple. There's nothing from a biblical perspective on women being abusive to men.

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It's almost without fail the other way around. I just did a search because I kept finding situations.

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I find plenty of situations with men that are abusive to wives. It's not a one -sided issue.

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But I found nothing that addressed women that were abusive to their husbands.

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I had counseled a number of men that were in that situation, a number of women as well.

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I just needed some help, so I did some research. My book has a lot of stories in it that are all true stories.

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I've changed the names to protect people, but every story that I mentioned in the book literally happened.

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I either saw it firsthand or counseled people and they verified it.

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I think it's hard for people to conceive of the idea that a woman can be abusive.

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Maybe a little bit into the podcast, we'll talk about the difference between abuse and reviling.

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Reviling is actually the better and more biblical term for it. But we live in a culture now,

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John, that largely men are ridiculed, men are mocked, men are generally portrayed as buffoons, and they deserve to be mistreated by women.

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This is kind of the talking point that goes on. So if a man claims to be mistreated by a woman, it's generally thought, well, he just deserves it.

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For instance, here's a situation. If a wife is angry at her husband, what people will often say is, but what did the husband do to make the wife so angry at him?

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But you switch it around, and now let's say the husband is angry at the wife, then they say, well, why doesn't this husband deal with his anger?

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So we bring about a double standard. It's a blatant, hypocritical double standard, but many people don't see it, and many people don't want to see it.

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They don't want to even acknowledge it. A second issue that I see is that women are often viewed as the fairer sex, that they sin less than men, they're better than men, and that Scripture says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

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So there's nothing biblical that can support that contention, that women are the fairer sex, and there's also nothing that in practice that we see that necessarily either.

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So a third issue that I see with the whole idea of abusive wives is that somehow we as a society think that it's somehow unmanly or unmasculine for men to claim that women can be wicked towards them, and many men won't say anything about this, mainly because they're afraid of being stigmatized and they're afraid of being judged as weak or wimpy or not strong enough, and then you add to that many churches believe, or actually they refuse to believe that women can abuse men, and this is across the board.

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This is not just in complementarian or patriarchal churches, this is in egalitarian and feminist churches, that women just can't possibly be that way towards men.

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But interestingly, I've counseled a number of pastors who have married women that were that way towards them, and then these men begin to see it clearly.

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Yeah, that's fascinating. I can keep going, John. There's a lot of things I could say about this. I don't want to dominate the conversation, but jump in with some questions.

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Yeah, I have a number of questions based on what you just said. The first being, you mentioned that reviling is a better term than abuse, so I've always been uncomfortable since the

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Me Too movement got going with even using the term abuse, because I know there is such thing as abuse and there's a legal definition for what constitutes abuse, but it's so general now that it gets applied to everything, and adulterous affairs are now abusive if there's a power disparity and it happens to be a man who's participating who's in a position of authority, or even maybe just because they're a man.

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I'm like, that's not abuse. You said reviling was the more biblical term. Why would you use the word revile instead of abuse as a substitute?

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Good question. Now, the first reason, I'm saying that I prefer the term revile, and yet I named my book

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The Abusive Wife. It seems like a contradiction at first, but the reason I did that is that most people don't know what the word revile means, even

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Christians. They're unfamiliar with the term, so I thought I have to use a term that people are more familiar with, and then in the first chapter of the book, first two chapters of the book,

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I explain why reviling is a more precise and accurate term, because abuse is broad.

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Abuse can be physical abuse. Abuse can be sexual abuse. Abuse can be verbal abuse.

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It can be emotional abuse. There's a variety of things, and it gets misused as well, misapplied, but the term revile,

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I believe it's loiterero in the Greek, is the verbal mistreatment of someone else, and it is very clear and explicit in Scripture that this is a very serious offense.

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It's not something light. It's not just, you know, you lose your cool once. In John chapter 9, the man that was born blind, it was said that the

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Pharisees reviled him, so they're using words as a, I like to say it as a non -contact weapon.

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It's beating someone verbally. First Corinthians 4 .12,

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Paul says, when we are reviled, we bless, so it's kind of the antithetical approach to life.

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Jesus Christ in 1 Timothy 2 .23, when he was reviled, he did not revile in return, and maybe one of the most glaring ones is

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Matthew 15 .4, where it says, whoever reviles his mother or father is to be put to death.

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So obviously, it's a very serious, serious issue, but if we just call it abuse, anybody can say this is abuse.

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Anybody can use that, and some examples of reviling behavior in Scripture, they're all over the place, and not just for men.

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There's reviling all over the Proverbs with women who revile their husbands.

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Proverbs 19 .13, a wife's quarreling is a continual dripping of rain.

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Proverbs 21 .9 and 25 .24, it's actually repeated in the

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Proverbs. It's better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.

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Proverbs 21 .19, it's better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.

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So you know, so it's all over the Word of God, Proverbs 27 .15 and 16, and Proverbs 14 .1

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probably describes it the best, where it says that the wisest of women builds her house, but folly with their own hands tears it down.

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So now to clarify, and so that you or I don't get accused of what we're not saying,

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John, is that I'm not saying that all women are revilers. It is certainly not the case.

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The vast majority are not reviling wives, but they are out there, and there's a lot more than we tend to believe.

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I see them in counseling. I see them all the time. It's a sad and tragic thing, and mostly pastors won't recognize it.

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They just kind of give a pass to the wife. But as you noticed, you noted earlier that the name of this ministry is

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Compassionate Counselors. We're not out looking to stigmatize women.

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We're out there to help people with compassionate biblical help and say the

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Word of God addresses these things. The other thing that we should say about reviling before we get off of that topic is that reviling is grounds for church discipline, and yet I cannot think of a single church

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I know of that has ever done discipline for someone for reviling. 1 Corinthians 5 verse 11, 1

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Corinthians 6 verse 11 shows that among other sins, the sin of reviling is listed there as one of those.

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Jonathan Edwards even preached a sermon on this topic called The Nature and End of Excommunication, end being in a sense of the goal of excommunication, that he said that this kind of discipline should be done when there is no reason to hope for repentance by gentler means.

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So the reviling wife does not respond to a gentle approach.

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I always give people compassionate help. I'm always gentle with them, but the reviling wife does not respond to that.

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That doesn't mean I get angry at them. I really get saddened by them, and I get saddened for the husband as well, but the reviling wife is bitter.

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She's unforgiving. She's controlling. She's harsh. She's abrasive. She's unsubmissive.

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She's cruel and malicious, and there are women like that out out there, and there are women in our churches like that, and it's a tragic thing.

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Now, you wrote your book in, I think, 2015, at least that's when it was published, right, which is,

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I think, before the Me Too movement, like right before the Me Too movement started. Correct. And now that we're on the other side of that,

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I'd say we're still in the institutionalization phase of the Me Too movement. They've had their activist stage, and now we're in the institutionalist stage where this is now being ingrained everywhere in policies and procedures.

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And what you say runs so counter to that because the narrative is that women, by definition, are the oppressed in any kinds of situations that involve abuse, reviling, etc.

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And what you're saying is that actually, you made a telling statement earlier that the problem seems to run in the other direction as far as the institutional church, and I'm assuming the

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United States is concerned because you said that the church tends to not categorize women who are revilers in that way.

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They don't police it. They don't detect it, perhaps, even. The stigma runs.

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They give it a pass. They give it a pass, and they let the man, or they are free to condemn men for their sins, but the wind is blowing in the direction against men in general, which

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I think those with common sense who have concrete examples, if they just examine their lives, they know this to be the case.

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Not that there aren't situations of abusive husbands, because there are husbands who revile.

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Right. But women aren't exempt from that. They also have a sin nature, and I can even think in my own personal life of some of the stories

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I know, and in my life in divorce situations, especially child custody battles.

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I'm not saying that I have any stats on this. Maybe you do, but it seems like more often than not, the wives are the most aggressive, or ex -wives, the most nasty, and that's in my experience.

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My experience is limited, though. If I listen to the mainstream media, or Hollywood, or even those on the woke left in Christian circles,

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I would think that I shouldn't believe my eyes. I shouldn't believe my ears. I should just realize that this is an anomaly.

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In fact, what's actually happening across the board is it's men that are exclusively abusing, reviling women.

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Why don't you just talk to that for a moment? Where do you see this evidence? I know you see it in the

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Word of God, but where else do you see that this is going on? Is this showing up in your counseling sessions?

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It definitely is, John. Last year, I did a study, just an informal study of the counseling situations that I did where there was abuse, or let's use the word reviling behavior in the marriage.

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That was what was going on in the marriage. That was the main problem in the marriage. This is going to sound strange to a lot of people, but what

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I found was 87 percent of those marriages were reviling wives, not reviling husbands.

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Now, of course, 13 percent, they were reviling husbands. I'm not saying that men don't do the same thing, but what

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I am saying is that often the wives get away with it because they pour on the tears, they pour on the charm, they're nice in front of the counselor, and it is a growing problem.

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It was a problem back in 2015 when I wrote my book. Now it is off the charts.

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I actually have an online support group, and I want to give a shout out to all my brothers in my support group.

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I know they're going to listen to this podcast. Guys all over the country that have contacted me because of the book that I wrote, and every one of them says the same thing.

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They say, you wrote this book as if you had a video recorder in my house.

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You know exactly what was going on. You wrote this book, and you describe what it feels like exactly the way that I feel.

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These are all good men. They're sweet men. They're godly men. They're gentle men.

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These are the traits of a man that is likely to find a reviling wife, gentle, kind, compassionate, soft, maybe tends more on the passive side than the aggressive side.

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He's not an angry man. He's sweet. He's loving.

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He loves his family. He loves his kids. Those are the ones that the reviling wife actually targets and finds, and she goes after them.

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These men, we're in constant contact with each other, email or Zoom meetings and things like that, just to talk about things, and all of these men have the same story.

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It's uncanny how similar the story is. Yeah. Let's talk a little.

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Do you want to talk a little about the Me Too movement, because I want to address that, too. That was not an issue when

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I wrote the book, but as you said, it's— Let me just make one point, though, because what you just said, if that carries—I mean, we don't have,

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I guess, the data that we would need to figure out exact numbers.

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Yeah, I haven't done any in -depth studies. I'm just talking about me, myself, what I've seen in counseling. I know that, but here's what

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I wanted to say. We are often given the stat that,

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I think it's like one in four girls or one in three girls is going to be raped at some point in their life.

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It's this rape culture that men are involved in.

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Of course, that's not an accurate statistic. I've made that case on the podcast here before.

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We're told to accept that, and then we're told, not just accept it, but change all your institutional policies wherever you are.

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We need to even change the laws to account for this. We need to police these men. I think we should police men for their sin, but it's on the basis of this idea that we have an epidemic, that it's systemic.

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If what you said is true, then there's another problem that's completely being ignored.

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You won't ever see a policy on it. It's not even detected, and you're not allowed to detect it.

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As soon as you do, you'll probably be called some names or something. You're a misogynist. It's fascinating to me to see the political angle of all this and how much politics influences the way that we even approach counseling situations.

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Why don't you talk about the MeToo movement? You just mentioned that it's off the charts, reviling women.

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Has the MeToo movement fueled that? I'm going to assume that the

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MeToo movement started out with good intentions. I don't think necessarily it had anything evil in its goals.

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In fact, in some ways, I think it was important because I think a lot of men got away with wicked behavior towards women, and there was no accountability for this, and nothing happened.

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This is a tragedy, and it's sin, and it's wicked that men have done this for so long.

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I think what's happened over the years that I've seen, I think what has taken place with the

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MeToo movement is it's been hijacked by the Marxist critical theorists. If we're talking about race, for instance, that there's the belief with the critical theorists that, okay, everything is structured to oppress people of a certain race, typically

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Black people, and it's systemic, and it's widespread, and we have to destroy and burn down the structures.

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I see the same exact thing with what we're talking about here with reviling women, is that here we're talking about all men are toxic, it's systemic, and we have to burn down the system.

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It pushes back against men being the heads of their homes.

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It pushes back against complementarianism, patriarchal families. It's become convenient for feminists in particular, and certainly not all women, to buy into this, because this kind of thinking permeates society, and it's creeping in in all of these different areas.

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It does seem like a political movement, but really it's more than that.

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I think Marxism is way more than just a political movement. I think it's a move of the enemy himself.

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I think that's the one thing that I would say about the

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Me Too movement. It has some important components to it. It's holding men accountable, but now it's become basically a witch hunt that any man that hurts a woman in any way emotionally is an abuser, is toxic.

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It's like our feelings are not sovereign. We can't just say, well, I feel, therefore what you did is wrong.

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That's a dangerous and deadly way for us to operate. See, we should not blindly believe all men, nor should we blindly believe all women.

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We have to investigate. We have to look into these things. We have to examine them biblically, and one of the things that I see that furthers this idea is the concept of counseling people individually rather than counseling them together, because it sets up the gossip.

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It sets up that the narrative has already been determined, and there's no way to go around it.

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In other words, if a wife comes to me and says, my husband's abusing me. What's he doing?

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Well, he's verbally saying, verbally saying, he's doing this, not talking about physical abuse, not talking about sexual, talking about just verbal, then the counselor needs to talk to both parties.

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This is the way our country is founded. You're innocent until proven guilty, but the

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Me Too movement is basically you're guilty until you can prove you're innocent, and everyone knows you can't prove you're innocent.

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Walk me through a scenario. This reviling category isn't often detected because I think sexual abuse, physical abuse, things that would more likely involve law enforcement or should involve law enforcement, obviously those should get the headlines in a way.

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Those should be dealt with in very direct and very quick ways.

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It's more subtle, I think, the reviling, but it is damaging. This is what

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I do want people to see. I've seen it in friends that I have in their lives. It is disheartening in ways that I think those who don't experience it, they find it very hard to grasp.

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Walk me through the reviled husband who comes into your office. What does he say to you?

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What does he describe as going on at home? What do you say to him in how to navigate and deal with that situation?

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Okay. Let me go through some things because I've taken some thoughts down on that because I figured you would ask that kind of a question.

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First of all, what I would say, and I alluded to it earlier, is that unless there is physical danger, sexual abuse going on,

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I request that the husband and wife come together for counseling. Even if it seems like it's one sided, even if it seems like, nope, he's evil, she's evil, it doesn't matter.

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It's like, I need to hear you both. I need to hear from both of you what's going on. Tell me what's happening.

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When we get into the reviling wife category, here's some of the things that I hear from the wife.

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She says, I want my independence from him. I don't want anyone telling me what to do.

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I don't need a man to be happy. I want to live my own life, and I don't like the traditional family.

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Being a mother is not a fulfilling role. So those are kind of warning signs for me. When I hear things like that,

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I go, okay, we've got the makings of something that has potential big problems here.

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There's already a disorder in this marriage. There's already a misunderstanding of what these roles look like.

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Some of the traits of a reviling wife, that these are actually in my book, is that she insists on control.

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She wants control of everything, and she insists on her husband thinking a certain way.

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She wants him to agree with her about everything, and if he doesn't agree with her, then he hates her, then he dislikes her, then he's a bad husband, he's a bad man.

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And nearly every, I probably would say every situation

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I've counseled, that's been one of the predominant things, that the wife insists on controlling everything in the home.

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Now again, just as a caveat, I counsel people where the men are that way. They want to control everything too, and that's not godly either, but we're talking about the reviling wife now.

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Intimidation. Now, usually the reviling wife is not bigger, is not stronger than her husband, but she resorts to verbal intimidation.

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I've counseled families where the husband is six foot five, and the wife is four foot ten, and she scares him to death.

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She just terrorizes him in a multitude of ways. And seeing most people look at that, and they say, well, what's she going to do to you?

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She's this little bitty thing. She's 90 pounds soaking wet, and you're this big hulking professional athlete.

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What can she do? You have no idea what that is like. And again, if you remember what

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I said earlier about the men, they're kind, they're gentle, they're sweet, they're loving, they're compassionate.

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They're not angry, harsh and aggressive men. So they're not going to just squash their wives.

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But the wife sees that, and she says, I can control him. I can intimidate him. I can manipulate him.

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Often the wife has a seared conscience. 1 Timothy 4 .2 and 2

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Timothy 3 .7 talks about this. She lacks empathy, doesn't have a conscience about what she's doing.

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There's no humility in her heart. There's no sorrow. There's no sadness over how she's treating her husband.

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No guilt over the cruelty that she's doing. Sex is used as a weapon in the marriage.

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And now this can work two different ways. It can be the wife denying her husband of sex, saying, you know, all you do is, all you want is sex every day, every day.

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That's all you want. And the husband says, I love my wife. I'm not demanding. I'm not, you know, insisting on this, but just simply desiring intimacy with my wife is a horrible thing.

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So the reviling wife will use it that way. She'll refuse to have any type of physical connection with him at all, even holding hands.

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But it can also be used the other way, where I've counseled families where the wife is just absolutely wicked to the husband all day long.

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And then she entices him and allures him into bed.

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Now, again, I've seen men do the same thing with their wives. They verbally thrash their wives, and then they want to be intimate with them.

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And the wife's like, what are you kidding me? The same thing happens with wives towards their husbands.

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Why would we think it's different? Why would we say that the sexes are so different on things?

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Sin is sin in a man's heart and in a woman's heart. It's the same tactics, the same things that you see men doing to women, women now feel, the fancy word now is empowered to do it.

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Now we've got freedom. Now we can treat men the way they've been treating us. And I go, wow, it's like a revenge and a bitterness in the heart of some women.

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Now, the other thing I want to say too, is that I've often found that women that were sexually molested as children, or they'd been through some deep, deep trauma as little girls, as young women, often that is what animates this reviling behavior, whether it's the sexual issues or the violence issues or the bitterness issues or things like that.

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But again, there's freedom in Christ with that. There's wonderful, amazing freedom in the

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Lord in that. So sometimes that's what animates it. So again, we're not just, I mean, believe me,

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I'm not trying to throw women under the bus. I'm just trying to help men that are suffering and nobody hears them.

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Nobody listens to them. And I think that's why people like Jordan Peterson, who obviously not a

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Christian or a biblical counselor in any stretch of the imagination is so popular. Just the acknowledgement that yes, women are capable of hurting men too.

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It's not just something that men can do. It's women. I'm thinking of examples as you were giving those illustrations of people that I've known in my own life who described, they fit perfectly into that template that you just described for us.

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You know what else is funny, John? I'm just going to interrupt you. What I have found is that other women who are not reviling women, to them, they believe it.

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They say, oh yeah, I know there's reviling wives out there. I know. I know women like that. Women say,

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I know other women like that. They readily see it more than men do. When you think about, you know...

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Yeah, that makes sense actually. When you think about people that fight, physically fight, okay, you and I fight, and we go at it.

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Then we say, okay, let's be buddies now. Let's go on. Let's move on. Typical man, yeah. We got it handled and addressed.

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I mean, I've never done that, but I know that's part of the male thing. What happens when women fight? Oh boy.

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It's ugly. It's screaming. It's hair pulling. And I'm going to hate you the rest of your life.

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Women have that tendency to be more bitter than men in that way, that they don't let go. They never forget.

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And so it's believable from that perspective that it's very common.

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But I've had women that read my book, The Abusive Wife, and those women are not abusive.

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They're not reviling. And they read it. They say, I know a bunch of women like this. And then

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I've had men that have read my book that don't have an abusive wife.

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They say, I can't picture this at all. Every man who's been in that kind of marriage, like I said, they say, this is me.

35:38

This is exactly what I've experienced by my wife or my ex -wife. Yeah.

35:44

I'm grateful. So I have a good wife, which I'm grateful for. She's not a reviling wife and makes me more grateful talking to you about that.

35:51

But sometimes she'll observe things in situations. She'll later say something about another girl or she'll notice something that, and I totally went over.

36:00

I'm like, what are you talking about? And she can see things in their relationship because she's got the, I don't know, the detection equipment for that.

36:08

Whereas I just don't, I only see what's right in front of me. And you as a male counselor, you know, you've had so many situations.

36:17

I'm assuming you can detect more easily those kinds of dynamics.

36:24

What do you say to, I mean, or actually let me, let me back up and say this, what kind of hope can you offer to people out there?

36:31

First, the husband, then the wife, the husband who's been reviled or is being reviled. And then the wife who is reviling your husband.

36:39

I mean, have you seen these situations turn around and healthy marriages form? It's, it's very slow.

36:47

It's very difficult in a lot of times. See here, let me back up a second.

36:52

Often the reviling wife or the reviling husband, they're not born again.

36:58

That's the first problem. They might act like they are. They might be religious people. They might go to church, but they're not born again.

37:06

And, and, and that's been my experience almost across the board.

37:12

There's been some exceptions, but almost across the board. So that's the first, the first difficulty with this is that they, they live this hypocritical life and they act like they're born again, but they're not.

37:26

So, you know, so until they are convicted about that and see that, boy,

37:32

I'm just, I'm living a double life, you know, they're not going to get help.

37:38

They're just going to get more and more angry. I've had, I've had husbands and wives where I counseled and I just gently, very gently approached some things with the wife to hold her accountable.

37:52

Again, compassionate counselors. And there've been a number of times

37:58

I can think of right now where the wife is so furious. She gets up, storms out of my office, slams the door and go sit in the car and, and, and waits for her husband.

38:08

And it's like, what, what happened? You know, what happened? And the husband says, that happens to me all the time.

38:15

And I go, it's so sad. She's, she's running away from someone that's going to help her because I have seen people helped, but a lot of the wives that just bought into the, the idea that no, now you're a toxic male too.

38:32

You're just like my husband. You're, and I've had wives that get mad at their husbands for not defending them in the off, in my office.

38:40

I said, why would your husband defend you? What you did is wrong. I wonder, you know, it's always a curiosity.

38:48

Right. Ask your husband for forgiveness. I mean, I do the same thing with the husband towards the wife that, you know, that was harsh, what you said there, you know, you know, address that biblically.

38:58

Right. It's always a curiosity to me when I see a relationship that fits the description you gave.

39:05

I wonder like the first question is why did you two get married? You know what, what, what happened along the way to cause?

39:11

And it must be that this takes time, as you said, to get out of it also takes time to develop, to get to this point.

39:17

I don't see it. You think the best it's, it's just like naive woman that marries a bad boy and she says, well,

39:24

I'll change him. Right, right. Yes. That's good. That's good. And so the same thing that guys say, well, she's a little rough on the edges, but, you know,

39:32

I'm kind of a sweet and gentle guy and she's a little bit more direct. Okay. Maybe she'll round things out and we'll, we'll make this better than just me.

39:40

It's like, no. And it takes years before you see it. And sometimes 10, 20, 30 years.

39:46

And then you go, oh my, what, what's wrong with me? And that's what happens with these men. They say, what is wrong with me?

39:53

Why, why does my wife treat me this way? And I go, brother, it's not what you are doing.

39:59

You're not causing this problem. This is in her heart and she has to be held accountable for her heart so that she can be free.

40:08

But she's, she's trapped in the bitterness. You know, Hebrews 12 talks about that, that the roots of bitterness that defiles many, you know, that's, that's where she's trapped.

40:20

She's so bitter over something in life. You know, it could be a variety of things could be, like I said, being sexually molested as a child.

40:28

It could be that her father was, was harsh verbally with her. It could be that, you know, she wanted to have a great career and now she's just a homemaker.

40:39

And I go, that's a, that's an incredible, incredible gift, a mother staying home with their children and, and raising them.

40:47

But some women are resentful of that. And again, they listen to the culture rather than the word of God and, and their hearts get hardened and their hearts get soft.

40:56

Yeah. So what you said earlier, though, struck such a chord with me, because that's so true that men do see more easily when, when a girl wants to marry a bad boy and you look at the guy and you can just,

41:07

I, this happened to actually funny enough just the other day with my wife and I, she was showing me it was pictures online.

41:13

So you, how much can you judge from a picture? You know, not, not a lot, but, but, but enough that I detected things in the picture, how, how a man presented himself.

41:22

And it was a few pictures, you know, down to like his hairstyle and everything else.

41:28

And I looked at it and I said, okay, that, that guy, I don't know what it is about him specifically.

41:34

I can't even quantify it quite for you, but I know that there's there, this is a good girl.

41:39

And I, and I know that she's seeing that this is a rebel. This is a rugged kind of guy.

41:44

And I can just, I can just tell looking at this, this isn't the kind of guy she should be with. And I'm like,

41:50

I don't need to see it. And my wife's like, what are you talking about? Like, how could I be judgmental? And I'm like, I just call it male intuition.

41:56

But, but what you're saying is that that does work the other way. The female intuition of seeing, okay, you know, that woman over there is going to be a reviler.

42:05

Do you think that passive men, you said were part of the issue is one of the solutions to this developing men or training, raising and equipping men to be more active, taking leadership roles to just avoid the scenario.

42:23

Would that avoid the scenario? Yeah. The scenario has to be that men need to be raised in godly homes with strong male leadership, godly leadership, not oppressive, but godly leadership.

42:40

And men need to learn what it means to, to be a man. You know,

42:47

Matt Walsh asked, what is, what is a woman? I think, okay, what is, what is a man? You know, what does it mean to be a man that we need to do more in that area?

42:57

Because that's, that's where it has to start that, that because once, once you're married, it's, it's, you know, now learning it is going to be an uphill battle.

43:07

But, you know, learning how to be a godly man, how to be a godly, you know, a leader, servant of your home, not a, not a pushover type of a servant, but a man that says, okay,

43:20

I want to love my wife, love my children. How do I do that? And I've, you know, I've worked with a lot of men like that as well, that how do

43:28

I love my wife in the right way? I've written a book on that and that aspect too.

43:34

It's called Romancing Your, Romancing Your Wife, Romancing Your Savior, or Romancing Your Spouse, Romancing Your Savior.

43:42

It's also available on Amazon. It's kind of the opposite. It's kind of the opposite side of the abusive wife.

43:47

It's like, okay, if there's abusive wives out there, here's what a wife should be. If there's abusive husbands out there, here's what the husband should be just to help to balance that out.

43:57

And I go through the Song of Songs to demonstrate that because the book, the Song of Songs is a unique book in scripture that it's a parallel relationship between the husband and wife.

44:08

And it's mirrored in the individual saints and Jesus Christ.

44:13

And so when you read those things in the Song of Songs, it applies in both areas.

44:19

This is how I love my wife. Oh, this is how I love my Savior. This is the relationship that should be cultivated and developed there too.

44:27

So you're absolutely right. I mean, we have to do a better job of raising godly men, young godly men.

44:33

I didn't have that privilege. I didn't grow up in a believing home, so I didn't have that.

44:39

But I've been given the ability by God to help many men.

44:46

I didn't even grow up as a Christian, so I'm like, why am I even a Christian? It doesn't even make sense I'm a

44:51

Christian, let alone a pastor and a biblical counselor. So I go, that's a miracle, God's amazing grace in itself.

44:59

Absolutely. Yeah, if all could be saved after being participating in stoning of Christians, then no one's beyond the pale.

45:07

All right, so you have this website, CompassionateCounselors .com. Is that a place people can go to,

45:13

I don't know, if you do Zoom sessions or get counseling? I do. I do Zoom sessions.

45:19

Yep, I counsel people all over the country, and so it's not a problem at all.

45:25

Zoom or FaceTime, whichever works best for them. And the other thing

45:31

I wanted to mention too, this is kind of interesting, you'll resonate with this probably.

45:37

When I tried to get my book published, I couldn't find a Christian publisher. Jay Adams wrote a recommendation of the book.

45:46

You probably know who Jay Adams is, father of the modern biblical counseling movement. I mean, he loved the book and he wrote this very kind review of that.

45:55

And I thought, great, this will help this get published. Yeah, slam dunk. And nobody would touch it.

46:00

The things I heard off the record were, well, this is too controversial. We can't publish this because it's too controversial.

46:07

I heard another publisher say, well, the women in our reading groups were kind of put off by it.

46:13

So I'm not sure it's a good idea. And then others would say, I don't think this is a big enough problem.

46:21

And even since then, I've had men that have gone to Christian publishers and say, you need to publish this book so that it gets a wider audience and they won't touch it.

46:31

And I go, that's okay. I'm not doing this to make money. I'm not doing this to get fame and notoriety.

46:36

I'm just doing this to help men. Well, I mean, it looks like it's, I'm on the Amazon page right now.

46:42

And it looks like you've gotten a fair amount of ratings. It looks like my ratings where it's like you either love it or hate it. Oh, yeah.

46:48

Yeah, it's a good picture to look at the ratings on Amazon, because you've got some one star ratings.

46:53

It's like this person obviously never even read the book. Right. Yeah, I'm looking at the first negative review. The author should be honest about why he wrote this.

47:00

Men are capable of being abusive. I'm like, of course you believe that men are capable. So they haven't read it.

47:05

Didn't even read the introduction, because I said that in the introduction. I said, you know, this is, you know, this is not to give license to men to abuse women.

47:12

That's not why I wrote this book. Right, right, right. But yeah, it's either great or it's terrible.

47:17

And I go, okay, you read it. Well, I mean, I appreciate your bravery. You're not one of those passive men you described because putting out a book like this means you're going to take some arrows.

47:27

And maybe after being on this podcast, you'll take some more. I don't know. Hopefully, though, a lot of people who have been either experiencing the situation you described, or could use resources in their counseling can get in touch with you and get your resources and that can help them.

47:45

That's the goal of this. But it takes bravery to put something like this out in the public domain.

47:52

So I appreciate that. I love to highlight people in the church who are brave. We have a dearth of that.

47:57

And, you know, it's funny, I don't even see it as bravery or courage.

48:02

I just look at it and say, well, why would I not want to talk about what God talks about? This is simply what the word of God teaches.

48:09

And I go, why would I shy away from that? It's a problem. It's not being addressed.

48:14

It's hurting people. We have to help them. We've got to have compassion for people. I appreciate the compliment.

48:21

I don't mean to criticize you on that, but I never really looked at it as, oh, boy, I'm taking a bold stand here.

48:27

I'm going, no, this is just something. Nothing's talking about this. No one's discussing it.

48:34

So it's funny. There's a lot of secular groups that have been talking more about this issue. Yeah, and that's me.

48:40

Oh, we don't have really time, but I'd love to. No biblical groups. I go. What an astute observation.

48:46

Yeah, that is. And it's Jordan Peterson's only one of them. I know there's this sort of dark web, conservative dark web, they call it, where a lot of these guys are having long form conversations with each other.

48:58

Even even the Joe Rogan type people, they're talking about things that have been taboo.

49:03

Joe Rogan has talked about this topic on his. Yeah, he has. I go, how about that?

49:08

Yeah, and it's funny. And even biblical counselors aren't, to be honest with you, John. Right.

49:14

The same thing. I can't get any traction with them either. I've appealed. I've sent them the books. I've had people that I've counseled and men that have read the book.

49:23

And it's like, yeah, I don't think so. I go, what? Yeah, that's so interesting.

49:29

I've seen that same disparity of bravery. And I've wondered, it should be more present in the

49:34

Christian church. And I'm wondering if this is my working theory on it, that in Christ's pure, true church, it does exist.

49:42

There is bravery. But when you get to certain levels, when you climb that platform of the institutions that we enjoy now in our successful modern state, modern situation, there's a disincentive for the men who are truly brave to gain, to reach those higher positions.

50:00

And so those representing Christians tend to not look like that. But I think there's plenty in the rank and file who will say things who are brave.

50:09

And so it's fascinating to me. And then you have podcast. Well, I mean, this is an example. Even this podcast is the equivalent of maybe those those taboo podcasts that are now existing in the secular world.

50:22

Only this is happening in a Christian kind of world. So, I mean, the word is getting out there. And how did you find my book?

50:29

I'm just curious. How did you find it? Someone sent it to me. Well, so someone on Gab, which is one of the social media platforms

50:36

I have, messaged me and just said, you need to get David Edginkan on your show because he's written this book.

50:44

And so I started looking into it and I thought, wow, this guy is saying what no one's saying. And I think it's important to show this other side, especially when

50:54

I feel like all I'm doing is playing defense, like with the Me Too stuff. It's a constant defensive accusation.

51:01

And that's no way to construct a movement. Not that that's what I'm even doing, but it's no way to win,

51:07

I guess, to win the argument is if you're always on defense. And I think one of the key parts of this, and it's not the only part, but what you presented, whether knowingly or not, serves to show that the basic biblical doctrine that all are sinful, that doctrine is what's going to be part of a solution to this

51:28

Me Too crisis, because they're assuming that men are more sinful somehow.

51:33

Even if they say that that's not what they're doing, that's exactly what they're doing. And white people in particular are more sinful than minorities and the whole intersectional framework.

51:44

And so recovering that doctrine means sometimes, I think specifically pointing out those alleged victim classes have their own sin.

51:52

And it's just we don't detect it. We're talking about it. So anyway, that's the long answer.

51:59

But hey, I appreciate you coming on talking about this. CompassionateCounselors .com for those who are interested.

52:05

Pastor David Edgington, and you can pick up his book, The Abusive Wife, there. It's also on Amazon.

52:12

God bless you with your work and forward me any of the hate mail you get. I'd love to read it too. Same your way,

52:19

John, forward anything you want to say. I'd be interested to read that. But let's just pray that God advances this kingdom through what we've done today.

52:29

We want to really advance the kingdom of God, help people that are struggling, whether it's men or women.

52:35

And you know, in this case, we're talking about men that have been years and nobody listens to them.

52:41

Nobody hears them. So we want that hearing to go out.

52:47

Just one other small thing to piggyback onto this is an issue called parental alienation.

52:54

It's another avenue that is a subset of this, where the spouse turns the children against the other spouse, and just makes this false narrative towards the other parent.

53:10

Often it's the wife doing that to the husband, and the children are cut off. The husband never sees his kids again.

53:17

That's another podcast, John, but yes, yeah, you're giving a cliffhanger ending here. So we'll have to do another one.

53:22

But yeah, I've seen that scenario play out. So anyway, thank you so much. Once again,