February 27, 2018 Show with Marie O’Toole on “Fractured Covenants: The Hidden Problem of Marital Abuse in the Church”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 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 whom we converse with 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 hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. 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 Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 27th day of February 2017. We have a very important and tragic subject that we are going to be discussing today.

It's one of those subjects where you're not going to have a lot of fun listening or perhaps I'm not going to have a lot of fun conducting it, but it's a very necessary program in this day and age especially.

Today we are going to be discussing fractured covenants, the hidden problem of marital abuse in the church, and here for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to discuss this subject is Marie O'Toole who's an author and conference speaker and she has written a book of that very same title, Fractured Covenants, the Hidden Problem of Marital Abuse in the Church.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Marie O'Toole. Thank you very much, it's nice to talk to you. I'm going to right away, I'm going to give our email address for our listeners who may wish to join us on the air with a question of their own.

It's chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Chrisarnzen at gmail .com that's c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if the question involves a personal and private matter and I could readily understand even more so than your average program here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio or your average guest and theme, I can readily understand that there might be quite a number of you who would prefer to remain anonymous when you're sending in your questions so you can feel free that we will accept your request if your question is about a personal and private matter.

Well, as I typically do with first-time guests, Maria, I would love for you to give a little bit about your background, the kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any, and your testimony of the providential circumstances the Lord brought about in.

Your life to draw you to himself and save you. Sure. Well, when I was growing up, I was brought up Roman Catholic, probably not too hard to understand with a name like O'Toole from Massachusetts. My parents are Irish Catholics and so I was in church with my two brothers, we went to Mass every single Sunday, CCD confirmation, the whole nine yards.

Um, so I always did believe in God from childhood. I always loved Jesus. Of course, in that tradition we're taught a lot of what you might call extra-biblical things, praying the rosary, praying to Mary.

I never really questioned that until I got into middle school. I went to parochial school and in those days, in the 80s, they were distributing Bibles, unlike in my parents' generation, and being kind of a nerd, I used to read the Bible when we had indoor recess or something, and I would notice sort of inconsistencies like Jesus had brothers and sisters and, you know, things like that, and I'd sort of debate with the nuns.

So I wasn't completely on board with Roman Catholic doctrine. When I went to college, I went to Syracuse University up in New York. I got involved with a group, Campus Crusade for Christ, which I'm sure you've heard of, and that, yeah, it's a great group, really good discipleship and things, and I got to be closer with staff people, and I heard them, I remember very clearly one of them was talking with one of the other students, oh, did you know Kirk Cameron is a Christian?

He was a huge, you know, star back in the late 80s, early 90s, and I said to them, you know, I get the feeling that you're using the term Christian in a different way. I mean, doesn't that just include anyone who's Catholic or Protestant?

And she said, well, no, there's a bit more to it than that. Why don't we get together sometime and talk about it? And she did. The staff person did talk to me in some depth that wasn't your typical four-point Gospel presentation in 15 minutes, now pray a prayer and you're saved.

She really did do a good job of thoroughly explaining the person and work of Jesus Christ to me, and then I learned more about the inerrancy of Scripture, and so I did become a born-again Christian my sophomore year in college.

For me, it wasn't as big of a leap as it would be, say, for someone who was brought up outside of any form of Christian faith, or say, for an atheist or something, but I had to sort of unlearn a lot of those dogmas that we were taught, and that was really where it all started, and so I got more involved in Campus Crusade.

I went on, I graduated after my third year. I did my bachelor's degree in three years, so about a year after becoming a Christian, I went on a short-term missions trip to Bulgaria, which of course was just coming out of Communism at that point, and a lot of kids were walking over to Eastern Europe, but I also kind of had ulterior motives, because I wanted to work career-wise in Eastern Europe, so I brought my resume with me and landed a job with an International Business Association.

I had just turned 21, so I moved to Bulgaria. I wasn't there as a missionary or anything, but was going to a church. My pastor, who I'm still in touch with to this day, he's about 90 years old now, was actually in prison under the Communists during the early 80s.

Wow.

Yep, Christo Kulicev, John Piper quoted from him. He's written like a million books. Supposedly, he's retired, but you'd never really notice it, but anyway, very strong man of God, so I had good discipleship over there, and then in 1995, which was about three and a half years, almost four years after I went over, I met someone, got married, and August to November, three months after the wedding, we moved back to Massachusetts, supposedly temporarily, and we had a baby about a year after that, and so I've been back in the United States ever since.

Well, you have written a book that we have already announced, Fractured Covenants, The Hidden Problem of Marital Abuse in the Church, and obviously, you have written this book for a reason, and since your last name has changed, I don't think it's a leap of logic to come to the conclusion that you were a victim of marital abuse, and this is the reason behind the writing of this book.

Can you tell us, as much as you feel comfortable telling us, and telling us as much as you think is valuable for our listeners to know, in regard to when this abuse began, and what was the nature of the abuse?

Sure. Yeah, that obviously is a sensitive subject when you're talking about abuse for anyone, because on the one hand, you don't want to be confessing other people's sins. On the other, because of the way the Church sort of, en masse, has reacted to women who are in destructive relationships, particularly marriages, sort of sweeping it under the rug, it has become sort of important to speak up about this and say, look, this is not Christ-like, this is not complementarianism, it's sinful, and it's a distortion of the beauty of marriage, it's a in general terms.

In specific terms, my story is not particularly graphic. We won't be having any, there were no sensational details. The abuse towards me was not physical in nature. I think that's kind of important, because sometimes people will use the term domestic violence, like when they're referring to me, to my testimony, and I kind of cringe at that, because I think of violence per se as being purely physical in nature.

Right, and you could be undermining the.

Real victims of physical violence by making everything violence. Right, I wouldn't use that.

Term. However, abuse, and this is one of the points that I made very clearly in the book, is not only physical in nature. I was very much subject to psychological abuse, emotional abuse, unrelenting verbal abuse, and it actually, as much as I hate to admit it, escalated and became worse.

The second decade I was married, we were in a conservative evangelical church, and my explanation for that is, I was married to someone from a, I guess you could call it a patriarchal society, and I say that as a non-feminist.

I should probably get that out right off the bat. I am not by any means a knee-jerk feminist, or that's just not a label I would apply to myself at all.

In fact, you used the phrase complementarian just a few moments ago, and I'm assuming that's what.

You adhere to as a... Yes, and I made that point rather clearly in one of the earlier chapters of my book, that I do subscribe to complementarianism, meaning that men and women are equal in the sight of God.

We do have different roles within the church, church offices. I do believe that scripture teaches women are not supposed to be pastoring churches. There's various verses in that. That's really a conversation for another day, but some of the women that I quoted in my book have written other books who are egalitarians, who see no problem with women preaching, but they're still very, very strong advocates against this type of abuse.

And emotional abuse, I think what happens is when you have someone who maybe has a idol of power, shall we say, or has a very strong, angry, controlling personality who comes perhaps from a culture that justifies that more than in the United States, and then you meld that into a church environment where not just complementarianism, but full-blown patriarchal authoritarian teaching is going on, it actually gives that person theological justification for what everyone in the world would agree is abusive.

And I'm talking stripping you of your rights, stripping you of any say in the family, stripping you of any authority, being treated essentially as one of the children, but the children maybe are also shaking in terror.

As I said, I wasn't ever subjected to physical abuse, but I've since learned, like even from my children who are now teenagers, two of them are grown, that we all had that same semi-nauseous knot in our stomach every night when we'd hear dad's car pull into the driveway.

I lived that for 20 years. It was like, oh my goodness, what kind of a mood is he going to be in today? Is he going to freeze me out? I used the term stonewalling, you know, going for days at a time without speaking to me, and I didn't even know what I was in trouble for, and then just exploding in these raging tirades, and then going to church on Sunday acting like everything was fine.

This is why it becomes a little bit easier to hide it from the congregation, because this is very typical of abusive men. They are one person at home and a completely different face in front of the congregation on Sunday.

That's very, very common. So you're saying that not only your former.

Husband, but your father was basically the same type of abuser? No, I never mentioned my father. Oh, I'm sorry, when you were saying that you heard the car pulling up in the.

Driveway and you were... Oh no, yes, I'm talking about in my former marriage. Oh, okay, I don't know how I... Everyone was... Yeah, no, no, no, no, I referred to dad, because what I'm saying is my children had that same anxiety.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, the pit of their stomach was in knots.

Yeah, well I can imagine from what you've just already said. Now, your former husband, I'm assuming from what you just said, was also not originally from the United States?

Oh no, we met in Bulgaria in the fall of 94, and he, long story short, actually short story shorter, we got engaged after six weeks. He was practically the first guy that ever paid any attention to me, and sort of love-bombed me.

Everything seemed very nice. A little bit controlling, but I didn't see really the handwriting on the wall, and we decided to come, as I said, temporarily. They were still having energy cuts in Bulgaria at that time, and the government was a mess, and he didn't want to, you know, have us go through that, you know, the power rationing.

I was standing in line all the time for milk, as it was, and we just thought that it would be a lot easier to come back here for a while, earn some money, and besides that, I didn't want to have a baby in a Bulgarian hospital, so we figured that we would be here for at least a year, and almost as soon as we got to the United States, he started to become much more of an angry person, and the difficulties of being like a non-English speaking immigrant with a master's degree, I don't blame him for being stressed out, because he faced a lot of challenges.

You know, working a blue-collar job pretty much the first 10 years we were married, and then going to school at night, he got a second degree here. That was very difficult, you know, and the challenges of learning the language and all of that.

I'm not saying it was easy, but what did happen was it embittered him even more, and he was just very unhappy with me from day one, and I would internalize that and think, there must be something wrong with me.

I've got to be better. I've got to be better. I've got to be better. I really rededicated my life to God in about 2002, 2001. Somewhere around the time I became a parent, a little after that, I really wanted our children to grow up in a Christian home, so I got more serious about my own walk with God, and I started taking our youngest, or excuse me, our oldest, when she was in preschool, taking her to Sunday school, bringing them to church, and so on, and then about 10 years after that, we started going to a more conservative church.

And where was your husband, not only.

Spiritually, but theologically, and in relation to the church as well, where was he at at that point?

Well, he was not a Christian when I met him. He claims to be a Christian now. I'm not going to touch that, because I can't judge another person's salvation. He may in fact be saved, but I just don't understand how someone could have that much bitterness and that much hatred in himself towards me especially, but towards anyone, and really have the Holy Spirit indwelling him, but going back then, no, he didn't know anything about the gospel, because he was raised under communism, and he was never brought up in any kind of religion.

In fact, his father is a member of the party, so pretty much everyone in his family was atheists. He didn't have a problem if he wanted to go into a church or something, but he found a Bible at some point in the late 80s, I think, when he was in the army, and did believe in God, some semblance of God, didn't know him personally.

He came to church with me, I think, for the first time when our 21-year-old daughter was maybe five. It was the Congregationalist Church, UCC, theology-lite, if you will, but he was able to hear that and understand it a little bit better, and we watched the Jesus movie once, and he slowly, it wasn't like he prayed a prayer one day or can pinpoint a moment of salvation, he would explain it that way, but he slowly came to faith in Christ, according to him.

So, I won't dismiss that, and then later, when we started going to the Conservative Church a few years after that, he attended a Bible study for the first time. So, he's actually learned a lot over the years.

So, I'm also assuming, and I may be assuming incorrectly, I may have missed something, but it seems that since you said that you rededicated your life to Christ when you began having children, that you must have been at least a professing Christian when you.

Met and married an unbeliever. Yes. I had, as I said, I became a born-again Christian my sophomore year of college, so I was 19. I met my former husband and married him, I think I was.

23. And what was going through your mind when, knowing that you had at least a profession of Christian faith, that you started a dating or romantic relationship of some kind with an unbeliever, what was the mindset that you had at that time?

Did you really consciously feel as if you were rebelling against God, or what was the state of mind that you had?

I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway, because I wanted someone to love me, basically. And to add to that, as you probably know from my first book, I had an eating disorder throughout my teens and 20s, which I hid.

So, I was actually not walking with God at that point. It was for a number of years. I fell pretty far away from God.

Yes, I have met quite a number of Christian women, sadly most of them divorced because they believed that they could change their boyfriends, which later became their husbands. Exactly. They seemed to even enjoy the mission that they were on, thinking that that this man loved them so much that he would change and even come to faith in Christ because of their relationship.

And sadly, that didn't happen. In fact, I even know of one situation where a very precious Christian woman who was dating her husband before she was a believer, she became a Christian during their dating relationship and broke off with him, saying that if this goes any further and I want to be married, obviously, I cannot marry an unbeliever.

And unfortunately, this man faked a conversion, was baptized, and told her on her honeymoon, guess what? I made it all up. I'm not really a Christian. And then later, that ended tragically in divorce because the husband was an unrepentant serial adulterer.

He was a rock musician, not a famous one, but he played in clubs and so forth, and he was just a serial adulterer and had no interest in repenting of it. So that tragically.

Ended in divorce. Yeah, that's so tragic, and it happens all the time because we're emotional beings by nature, and when those emotions take over, you're not thinking with reason. You know, you don't want to hear it.

And so I looked, like I mentioned the controlling thing, sort of looked the other way. Well, maybe I am so weak and, you know, need guidance or need help. And, you know, that kind of went on for years as well, even though I felt dependent.

You know, what am I going to be without a man? Well, you could never do this. You could never do that. You're... I don't think he ever directly said that I was hopeless or helpless or useless, but I had a general feeling of incompetency, like, well, you can't really do that.

So I came even more, like during my marriage, thinking I was totally dependent on him. Silly example, but just a few months ago, I bought a nightstand at Walmart, brought it home, read the directions, pulled out my screwdriver and assembled it myself.

And I felt ridiculously proud of myself that I was able to assemble a piece of furniture, because it's like little things like that that in my marriage, it was like, well, I'll do it. You know, you don't know how to do that or this.

You know, it's not silly, but you build up a dependency. I never have those feelings.

Of pride because I never assemble anything correctly. Well, this is the first time for me.

I've had to learn a lot and it's strengthened me. I'm like, I'm not as useless as I came to.

Think I was. And forgive me if you already said this, but at least to reiterate in the event that anybody listening has tuned in late, when did you have red lights going off in your mind, because of at least signs of abuse in your relationship?

Did these occur in your dating relationship before you even were married?

Not really, no. It was really after we came to the US and the anger started and the constant criticism started coming to the surface. But I never back in the 90s would have put the term abuse on it because I felt that I deserved it.

I felt, well, he's more intelligent than me, so if he says I screwed up again, I must have screwed up. I mean, things like I used to, when we were first married, I waitressed and I did not drive at that point.

Didn't have a car, didn't drive. I was working night shifts mostly at the restaurant. He was out of town on a business trip, got back. I'm coming in from my shifts almost at midnight. I think the bartender drove me home.

I don't remember. He was furious with me because the fridge was almost empty and he told me, you didn't think of me at all. You're a selfish, selfish person. You don't care about me. And I felt horrible about that.

But when I look back on there, so many, many, many, many examples of that in my marriage that at the time I felt like the most horrible, terrible person. I'm an awful wife. I don't even deserve him. But looking back in retrospect, it was like, no, I was doing everything I could have.

I could not possibly have gotten to the grocery store unless I had, you know, taken the taxi or something outside of my working hours. So it was sort of, um, after enduring so much of that years later, long after becoming more emotionally healthy, I guess you could say, I started seeing this happening more and more.

Even after he became a professing Christian and thinking, I don't deserve this. This is not right. And then seeing it directed towards children. This is abusive, but it took me years before I was even willing to let myself put that label on it, because that's a frightening thing.

When you are a woman, college educated or not, but you're, you've got four kids at home and much, not all of our marriage, but maybe the first 10 or so years. Well, when I had small children at home, put it that way, there were years where I was only working part-time.

So I wouldn't have been able to survive on my own income. So if you even allow for the fact that you're in an abusive marriage, now you have to come face to face with the fact that you're in trouble, you're trapped.

So you kind of convince yourself, especially if you're a Christian, well, it's not really abuse. If I pray hard enough, like they tell me in Bible study, he'll change. Maybe if I just try harder, and we read all of those books that are directed at us on being good submissive wives, and we try and we try and we try, but the smashing down and the, you must submit, that sort of pressure, even when you're submitting to the point of being a doormat, just gets worse and worse.

So it was sort of a gradual coming on of the lights. I mean, things started to get out of hand by about 2013, 2014, but by that point, I knew very well I was in an abusive marriage. It just became a question of, well, what are you going to do about this?

And it's horrifically scary. I mean, it's, it's scary being in an abusive marriage. It's also scary ending it, especially when you've already done the Christian counseling, and maybe things will get a little bit better for a while, and then they.

Get a whole lot worse. Now, were the emotionally abusive and verbally abusive statements and language ever threats of violence? And we actually, we do have a listener question, and what I'll do is I will read it to you, and then when we come back from the break, you could respond to it.

BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania says, I can truly sympathize with your guests' experiences, and I do not want her to misunderstand me and think that I am being holier than thou or anything like that.

But when you are strictly abused in a verbal and emotional sense, can that not become a very subjective thing? There are scores of women out there that may think that a woman who is under the authority of her husband, who truly is just using biblical concepts in regard to the authority that he holds in the home, a woman who has been raised perhaps in a more feminist background, may wrongly think those things are emotionally abusive.

Can you please clarify some of this matter that confuses me? That's BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. We'll have you answer that when we return from the break. If anybody else would like to join us on the air, we do have some other people already in line waiting to have you answer their questions.

But if anybody else would like to join them, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. God willing, we will be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Have you been.

Blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio? We remain on the air because of our faithful sponsors and because of listeners like you. There are four ways you can help. First, do you know potential sponsors who may wish to advertise their goods or services on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio?

Second, whenever possible, purchase the products or use the services that our sponsors advertise. And then let them know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Thirdly, you can also donate to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio by going to our website at ironsharpensironradio .com and click support at the top of the page.

But most importantly, keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in your prayers. We hope that.

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. Tired of box store Christianity, of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert? Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship?

And how about the preaching? Perhaps you've begun to think that in-depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island. Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word.

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times. 631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us. That's wrbc .us.

I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in-depth study. Used by pastors, scholars, and everyday readers, the NASV is widely embraced and trusted as a literal and readable Bible translation.

The NASV offers clarity and readability while maintaining high accuracy to the original languages which the NASV is known for. The NASV is available in many editions like a topical reference Bible. Researched and prepared by biblical scholars devoted to accuracy, the new topical reference Bible includes contemporary topics relevant to today's issues.

From compact to giant print Bibles, find an NASV that fits your needs very affordably at nasbible .com. Whichever edition you choose, trust, discover, and enjoy the NASV for yourself today. Go to nasbible .com.

That's nasbible .com.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastors Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio. Www .wlie540am .com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the Pastors Study by calling in with your questions.

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastors Study because everyone needs a pastor.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God-centered, Christ-exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid-ground-books .com. That's solid-ground-books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is Marie O'Toole. She's an author and conference speaker and she's addressing her book Fractured Covenants, the Hidden Problem of Marital Abuse in the Church.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com and give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if you have a personal and private matter.

And basically, Marie, our guest or should I say our listener before the break, Bebe from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, was saying that emotional abuse can be a very subjective thing and some women might think that a godly man exercising his duty as a leader in the home might be even viewed as emotionally abusive by a woman who has more feminist tendencies and or perhaps just from that kind of a background it may be a culture shock for her.

If you could like be more, I guess Bebe wants you to just clarify a little bit more how what you are saying should not be viewed in that light that it's just a matter of opinion type of a thing. Right, I.

Understand, I think I understand her question very well. First of all, I will start out by saying that abuse, emotional abuse per se, is not subjective. I can understand her asking that and I think that part of her question perhaps comes out of some of her teaching that very much downplays the reality of emotional abuse.

And I'll get into what that really is and what it isn't in a second. Just to give you one example, and this is a direct quote from a New FedEx counselor, a very well-known New FedEx counselor I trained directly under, who said there is no such thing as emotional abuse because emotions cannot be abused.

They deny that it even exists. And in fact, emotional abuse can be even more serious than physical because of the lasting wounds that it leaves on your soul. It destroys your self-image, it destroys, it can, I won't say it destroys, but it very detrimentally affects your relationship with God because if you're being that mistreated and that contemptuous of a way, you begin to see, well, if your husband represents God, how could God possibly love me if my own husband has nothing but contempt for me and disgust?

As far as husbands being the spiritual leader of the household and fulfilling their godly responsibilities and leading and all of that, yep, I vote yes. That's exactly what they're supposed to be doing, but they're also supposed to be reflecting Christ.

Now, if we look at the Bible, the Bible talks about ragers and revilers, and I don't have the verse in front of me, but Paul, I believe it's in 1 Corinthians, is warning the church at Corinth not to have fellowship with these men.

Raging, reviling someone, and reviling encompasses a lot of unedifying speech. Putting not only the wife down, but the children down, attacking their character, falsely accusing them of things, alluding that they are someone worthless, that they have some sort of terrible character defect, and doing it in a very, not constructive criticism way, but very destructive anger, where they are losing control, sometimes even throwing things.

This is not being a spiritual head of household. This is abuse, and usually when we use the term, we're thinking of it being purely physical, but abuse is any kind of mistreatment that's attacking another person who was made in the image of God, and that is a very, very serious sin, according to Scripture, for two reasons.

One, I just mentioned, we human beings are created in the image of God, but secondly, abuse itself, or trying, having this craving for control over another person so badly that you're willing to sin against them in order to get it, that's motivated by selfishness, and it always results in damage and destruction, and for whatever reason someone is abusing another, and again, I'm talking verbally, emotionally, for the purpose of this discussion, this is what underlies all of mistreatment.

It's selfishness. It's wanting to have that control, craving for control, craving for power, and demeaning the others. This is the opposite of what Christ tells husbands to be to their wives, and it destroys them.

It destroys you emotionally, it destroys you spiritually, and it destroys you psychologically.

Yeah, well, I know that 2 Timothy 3 warns that men will be revilers and lovers of money and other things, and in 1 Corinthians 6, we have revilers being listed among the other sins that if you're guilty of them, you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, so it's obviously a very, very serious sin.

Let me give you an example. My dad, who is now with the Lord, he was not somebody who I would say was an unrepentant, ongoing, emotionally abusive person with my mom, or toward my mom, but he was, just like any sinner, he could be very annoying, and he was very restrictive of allowing her freedom to decorate the home the way she wanted to decorate it and things like that, but that was not the ongoing, dominant character that he demonstrated.

I mean, there are obviously going to be moments, and perhaps even periods, and perhaps even long periods, where a spouse is abusing that area of life with their loved one, but when does it, in your opinion, and of course, hopefully it will be a biblically guided one, what is the line that is crossed when a man, and of course, as you, I'm sure, would admit, there are women that emotionally abuse their husbands, and even physically, and even physically, physically abuse their husbands, because there are some men, in fact there are many men, who have, even if they're not Christian, they have an old-fashioned standard of chivalry, where even if a woman is slapping him and hitting him with objects, he's not going to physically retaliate.

And I've known men in that position, yeah. Right, but so where does this become something where you think draws the line where a woman can rightfully leave the home and even pursue.

Proceedings of divorce? Well, it all goes right back to the biblical principle of repentance. When you have, we're talking long-term here, we're not talking about the bride who's been married maybe six months, and they run into difficulties, and maybe they could benefit from a little couples counseling.

When you've had these patterns of behavior for so long, and that they are escalating, and the person, the abuser, is now justifying what he is doing, and saying, well, I have to do that because I am the head of household, or blaming other people for his anger.