July 21, 2020 Show with Bill Shishko on “What to Do When You Are Abused By Your Husband: A Biblical Perspective”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions and now here's your host

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County Pennsylvania Lake City Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Tuesday. On this 21st day of July 2020 and I'm thrilled to have back a dear old friend a friend that I have been able to by God's mercy and grace call my friend since the late 1980s and he is

Bill Shishko who is the pastor of the Haven an Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation in Deer Park Long Island New York and today we are addressing what to do when you are abused by your husband.

This is a book that was written by Pastor Robert Needham along with Debbie Pride and Bill Shishko will be serving as a spokesperson for the retired

OPC chaplain Bob Needham especially since he does have a medical issue that would likely prevent him from being able to be our guest today but it's our honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor Bill Shishko.

It's great to be with you again Chris you said old I'm not sure how you meant that. Well I know that I'm older than you you're older than me so you get to put two and two together there.

Oh I feel young. That's good you probably feel you probably feel a lot younger than I do after getting out of the hospital.

Yeah that's right Chris we've been praying for you at the Haven. I appreciate that. Well as we typically do before we go into the subject at hand tell our listeners about the

Haven. Well it is technically yes the Haven at Deer Park however the facility that we were using in Deer Park is not available to us because of the pandemic.

So we have been blessed to have what is our mother congregation the OPC in Bohemia which is at 906

Church Street in Bohemia. They're letting us use their very fine facility and so they meet at 11 in the morning and the

Haven meets at one o 'clock in the afternoon and that will continue until well until sometime in September.

Now we're looking at another couple of options but for now we'd love it if folks would join us at one o 'clock p .m.

on 906 Church Street in Bohemia for the Ministry of the Haven. Great and the website is thehavenli .com

for more details thehavenliforlongisland .com.

Well I also want to make sure that our listeners have our email address in the event that they'd like to chime in with their own questions.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter and I could readily understand a subject matter like this being a perfect time for people who wish to remain anonymous to send in questions because of the sensitive nature of what we're discussing but if you are just asking a general theological or biblical question about our subject that has nothing to do with a personal issue please give us at least your first name city and state and country of residence.

Well the aforementioned Pastor Bob Needham has called the toleration of domestic abuse the great scandal of the evangelical church.

How is that the case Pastor Bob? Chris if you don't mind let me give a little background to this.

Excuse me. There's a text for the program today it would be Exodus 7 -1 when the

Lord says to Moses I will you will be as God to Pharaoh and Aaron your brother will be your prophet.

Bob Needham is not God and I'm not a prophet but just to explain this you're right

Pastor Needham who served for over 20 years as a chaplain when he worked with a number many many abuse cases and then later from about 1992 on until he retired served as a pastor.

Chaplain Needham did a course at Westminster Seminary in Southern California on biblical counseling and part of that course dealt with domestic abuse and he had a student a very bright gal named

Debbie Pryde who also had done a lot of counseling with women who had been abused and they collaborated on this privately published book

What to Do When You're Abused by Your Husband a Biblical Perspective. I have known Pastor Needham for many years he is among the finest biblical counselors

I've ever met he is a man of principle he is very articulate he understands the human psyche the way the scriptures describe it in an amazing way.

Anyway when I was doing the program a visit to the pastor's study one of the programs was on domestic abuse and I contacted

Pastor Needham and he was the one who used that phrase that really stunned me he called it the great scandal of the evangelical church and it really opened my eyes to the fact that this is we'll get into the reasons in a moment that this really is something that must be unearthed that must be dealt with and toward the end of the program

Chris I'll give some people some other resources but for now the book that I'm representing having done an interview with Pastor Needham I am in January 2021

New Horizons which is the denominational publication for the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church is devoting a whole issue to domestic abuse and my article is or will be an interview with Pastor Needham that I did just recently so what

I'm giving on your program Chris is pretty much a transcription of Pastor Needham's insights and I'm going to wed it at points with some of my experiences too after 40 years in the pastorate but Pastor Needham was the one that called the toleration of domestic abuse the great scandal of the evangelical church and there's a number of reasons for that churches just really very often fail to acknowledge and deal biblically with both wife and child abuse they for whatever reasons and what happens is it robs the most helpless and vulnerable and needy of the ministry that Christ is to provide our

Lord is meek and lowly he wants compassion and not sacrifice he goes after the straying sheep he protects them from wolves and so often churches for whatever reason we'll get into some of it it has to do with the cost involved but we'll just kind of turn a blind eye to it and it's very important to realize that this is not confined to one denomination we're dealing with it within the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church our sister churches among them the Presbyterian Church in America the

United Reformed Churches of North America Baptist churches Pentecostal churches just across the board domestic abuse is a massive problem but this is often what happens

Chris if someone comes forward and says there has been abuse what will often happen is that the victim is the one that gets punished and the abuser in some way or another will be protected or even rewarded as Pastor Needham put it in the military the language was punish the innocent and reward the guilty well that should not happen in the church and so that's why this really is it is a problem that as I mentioned must be unearthed and I would only add in this that what happens is if churches don't deal with it among many other problems people just get turned off to the church they don't trust the church to be able to help them in a situation of genuine need well then what according to Pastor Needham are the big mistakes that church leaders make when they learn of domestic abuse within families of the congregations they serve?

yeah okay this isn't these are Pastor Needham's and mine and this list is hardly exhaustive the first one and Chris this is the big one there's a failure to immediately take seriously what a wife who comes forth with an announcement of abuse makes that the default is to believe that A.

the woman is either lying or B. minimizing what's going on or just misunderstanding it and what will happen is either the person will be told well you're imagining things or you're delusional or a pastor or elders will assume this is just another case of marriage counseling and the problem of abuse which is abuse is basically anger that comes at various levels and gets out of control the line that Lundy Bancroft uses who's a secular writer in his book why does he do this is an abuser abuses because he abuses he's an abuser he's got a heart of abuse and very often the abuser can be one of the nicest kindest men that you can imagine he may be a church leader he may be a good theologian

I may be very ingratiating to others and it's hard to believe that there's this kind of Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing so when people aren't experienced that that is typically what they will do now let me add at this point it is extremely difficult for a woman who is being abused to come forward the person should be believed when she comes forward just to by virtue of the fact she's got enough courage to do it there are many many ways by which an abused wife will rationalize what's going on will say things like well

I just deserve this or he really didn't mean to do it or this was just a slip in his personality or if I do come forward what will he do to me it will make things worse will become pariahs within the congregation all these things and more will cause a woman not to come forward even when there's been abuse so that's the first thing is the failure to really take seriously a woman who comes forward and talks about abuse on any level the second big mistake is that churches will fail to protect the wife or the children once the matter becomes known as it's been reported and there

Chris there can be a short circuit in well meaning but inexperienced pastors or elders or even deacons what do we do how do we approach this we don't want to make it worse we don't want to blow things out of proportion what's going to happen to the wife if we bring this up and then we have to leave and as I said it's a short circuit and that will often immobilize fearful pastors or elders so that's a mistake when this comes it must be dealt with based on the situation we can maybe deal that a little bit later so yes well

I just finished your thought because I was going to ask you about the cost involved that pastor

Needham speaks about yeah that's another thing we're getting into it actually is when ministers and elders or deacons and deacons realize the cost and sometimes financial cost involved they swallow hard and don't want to do it but there's got to be there has to be an investigation a careful investigation into what the situation is that can be very time consuming you have to wait you have to pray you have to be sensitive and see in the nature of the case at first it's just one person accusing another and the

Bible does talk about witnesses and having two or three witnesses I think sometimes that can be misunderstood but in the nature of the case here you may not have those kinds of witnesses at first and there's sometimes not the severe bruises or lacerations in a woman and the tendency will be to doubt her testimony so that is another reason why inexperienced people will struggle the other thing is that a minister will say especially realizing these things are complex

I'm just dealing with another marriage counseling situation this just needs some kind of fine tuning well if a woman has been threatened if a woman has been beaten if a woman has had and this may stun your listeners

Chris but it happens a man the abuser wants to control the abuser is driven for various reasons for wanting to control his wife his children his situation and that can take very extreme measures men have been known to take a gun not loaded but a gun and point it at a wife or a child and say you continue to do this and you know what

I'm going to do to you and even pull the trigger of an unloaded gun I know a woman personally a very good friend

I've known since I was 15 years old actually and her husband who was at the time a police officer he abused her really badly and in fact broke her nose while she was six months actually

I think nine months pregnant while she was lying on the couch he kicked her in the face and broke her nose and he among other things held a gun to her head yeah that happens and see immediately when you hear this you think a professed

Christian for example couldn't do this well a professed Christian can do anything if the

Lord has not put a bridle on that person's sin but an inexperienced person will be so struck by this his default as a pastor or an elder might be to say this can't be real but you always take something like that seriously that's called assault and battery and that's a crime and a crime needs to be reported to the police we will come to this a little bit later but that's also another area where ministers will err in most states interestingly

New York is not one of them but in most states there's a mandatory reporting requirement for anybody a pastor elders deacons

Sunday school teachers if you know of that kind of physical abuse in a home it must be reported and here's the reason physical abuse

I mean Jesus said this physical abuse anger that comes from anger that's that's incipient murder a person who really really loses it can strike a wife or shoot a wife or throw her out the window or whatever that's why this always needs to be taken seriously then another error and Chris this is huge you sit down with the wife you've gotten the story from the wife you sit down with the husband whether or not the wife is present and you bring these things up it's not unusual for a man to begin to cry to say he's sorry to get down on his knees if his wife is there and beg for forgiveness and a counselor will believe that everything that is okay and give some little things to do for homework and get on with it abusers are master manipulators in that regard they they sometimes they do feel genuine guilt but that's not equal to repentance which we're going to get to later but to say well that's what a person says

I'm sorry my usual remark to them is all you're saying is God's given you a conscience and that saying

I'm sorry is kind of like the red light on the dashboard that says something's wrong but that doesn't solve it and so those would be just some and Chris there's so many others

I think another thing too is that ministers are busy and elders are busy and they've got all kinds of things to deal with abuse cases especially when they're long -standing and aggravated they can take months or years to deal with those things you've got a wife who is afraid she's broken hearted she feels ashamed she feels guilty she feels fearful and all those things are at play and if a church is for whatever reason we don't have the time for this you're leaving the wife to really a wolf and one of the texts

I go back to Pastor Needham refers to it in his book is Ezekiel chapter 34 and verses 2 through 10 where the

Lord excoriates the shepherds of that day which were the priests the prophets or it could even be the kings which of course would all be woven together in Christ the great shepherd but it includes in there not going after the sheep when they're hurt not protecting them from the wolves well you protect sheep from the wolves you put your own life in danger and quite frankly if you're dealing with an angry abuser as a counselor your life might be in danger as well so those are just some of the costs that are involved in dealing with abuse situations.

Now a thought occurred to me that I think you should probably clarify I'm assuming when you said that the woman the victim should always be believed

I'm assuming you meant initially because globally people were riveted to their

TV screens for many weeks when Brett Kavanaugh the

Supreme Court justice nominee was being slandered and vilified by a woman accusing him of molestation abuse and rape and so on and there turned out to be no basis for her charges.

Correct and I appreciate the point I should have said it initially but there's a huge difference

Chris those accusations had behind them at least in my understanding a lot of political motivation and a lot of political encouragement it's interesting these are people that did not come forward with these things shortly afterwards and frankly there's no real reprisal

I mean there are some but you get a woman in a home she goes to bed with this man she gets up with this man she feeds this man she's with him and if there has been a provoking of his anger in that home there's a greater fear for her life so I think it's that the fact that we're talking about literally an in -house situation that makes different dynamics than those others.

Okay well as far as the pastors that have had little experience or no experience counseling abusers there's got to be pitfalls to be avoided what according to Pastor Needham who wrote the book we were discussing are pitfalls they should avoid?

Yeah well I've already mentioned one as he does this is common that you just assume that this is just another ordinary domestic husband wife issue and not realizing it when there's a threat especially when they say

I'm going to kill you that this really is a case of potential murder and we've got to remember that words really do mean things.

I think it's interesting that and sad that most wives who were murdered by their husbands were the objects of prior abuse of more or less long standing abuse and when this is a pitfall ministers will say

I've heard this Chris frankly ad nauseam a minister simply says to his wife we need to be more submissive it's your responsibility if you're submissive he won't do that that's a lie because while a wife is to be submissive you're not to be submissive if someone's abusing you you're not a doormat you have a right and a responsibility to protect yourself but I would say that's probably pitfall number one to avoid is to think that it's just a little marriage thing just go home and be more submissive that's one sometimes too ministers will not listen to the wife unless the husband is present now in real marriage counseling issues in most cases you do want to deal with the husband and the wife they're having difficulties in communication or there's sexual intimacy issues or they're not agreeing on things and in that sense they're arguing well in most cases you want to deal with the couple in this case it may take the woman two or three times to finally really begin to open up about what's going on when there's been abuse women will suppress that for various reasons

I've mentioned a number of them they feel like they're part of the problem what are people going to say if they learn about this will it make it worse if I come forward with this okay and but the woman must be able to feel free to open up about these things and a good counselor will help draw that out and I should add at this point this can be and this is a pitfall a sensitive minister has to be careful dealing with a woman who has been hurt in her home in any way because you're wanting to represent the great comforter the

Holy Spirit and if it's a man a compassionate man and a hurt woman that can create some very bad dynamics when there has been abuse in a home a pastor may on the first meeting with a woman figure out the situation but it's wise very wise to beyond that have a godly sensitive woman in the congregation with the pastor working with the woman in most cases

Chris I did this with my own wife who's very empathetic that's important first of all the woman realizes this is not just her time alone with a compassionate man number two you have the benefit of a woman who usually understands women better than men do who's listening and understanding and two are better than one

I mean it's always better if you can have a couple of people asking questions thinking things through and discussing them but I would say that would be another pitfall would be for a minister a male a minister should be males to try to deal with these things with a female when there's dynamics that are there that really could start a very bad fire

I'll put it like that I've also mentioned before the pitfall of thinking that if he says he's sorry the problem is solved that's that's not it and frankly for an abuser to change it really takes a work of sovereign grace now secular counselors who don't who deal with this and see this are basically very negative about an abuser ever changing and hence they will tend many of them to push the divorce option well as Christians we can't think like that we have to realize you pray you ask for the spirit to work convictions we'll talk about repentance a little bit later which is so important it's crucial in this but but you have to realize an abuser can change but a counselor must see certain very definite evidences of repentance and remember that as pastor

Needham puts it an abuser develops what he calls an under the radar persona and if the abusers seek control they'll try to control you know how much money a woman spends for postage stamps or for personal items or whatever well that control will carry over in that he will try to control the counselor and will manipulate a counselor to thinking he really isn't that bad or that his wife is crazy or delusional this kind of thing and it's the pitfall of of of believing the abuser at that point when the abuser is again trying to manipulate the board of elders or the pastor and so on well we have to go to our first break right now if anybody would like to join us with a question of your own our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com don't go away we'll be right back with pastor