120. Freedom In the Church - Abuse with Jim Newheiser

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Seyfried and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. It has been a blessing to be back into the new year. And we have got some great interviews lined up today. And before we get to that, though, we have a couple of things coming up. Brett, we have Israel one year and a couple of months away from now. We'll be back in the Holy Lands. And man, we're really excited about being able to go back. It's looking like some things are calming down over there in the Middle East. And so hopefully, Lord willing, if the creek don't rise, like we say in the South, that we'll be back in the Holy Lands. And we'll have our group going over there. If you're interested in going, we'll be sharing the new link for you to register for that on our website. But Brett, how are things been going the last couple of weeks? We did the Let Us Pray review. Man, we've got a lot of great feedback from that over the last couple of weeks. And so how are things going in your neck of the woods down in Mississippi with all the cold snap that we've got going on? Man, things are going great. And, you know, I actually did hear some things through the grapevine that I've got it on good authority that very soon some people that we know are going back to Israel in just a few months. Yeah. So that's encouraging that, you know, people we know are going back to Israel within three or four months. It means that tourism is about to open back up. And it couldn't be couldn't come at any better time because I've got people in my church that are constantly asking me every week. What about Israel? Are we still going back to Israel? When are we going? When do I have to pay? I had somebody talk to me 10 minutes before the Sunday morning service yesterday about, you know, when do we need to make our first payment? And how does it work? So people are excited about this. And as soon as they open up tourism again, the floodgates are going to be open. If you're a listener, we want you to come to Israel with us. We will do everything in our power to make it to where you can come to Israel with us. We want you with us. But as far as what's going on in my neck of the woods, a lot of cold weather. I mean, we've had the ice and the cold and I'm about out of firewood. And, you know, I've got enough wood for maybe one more fire. So I got to save that wood for, you know, you know, a very cold night. But just trying to survive the cold weather. The older I get, the more I like summer. Yeah, I'm still a cold weather guy. I'd rather it be 20 degrees outside and I can snuggle up, watch the fire, be outside by the fire and hanging out and having a good time. It's still where I'm at. I do like my summer, spring nights, though. I mean, I'm not going to lie on that area. I just love being outside and hanging out with the family. But, yeah, hey, I can't wait to go back with you. I can't wait to be back around you. We've got a couple of other things coming up. We've got in November, we're going to start talking about it because it's great. Me and John were talking about it just a couple of days ago. Me and you were as well with the meetup and going down to Katusa. I can't wait for that. It's going to be great. The For the Sake of the Gospel Conference year three, the meetup down there. It's going to be just a fantastic time back in Georgia. And we're talking about getting a house and hanging out and having a good time. And so we are looking forward to that. We hope you'll join us. And then me and Brett, we get to get together in June. We're going to be up in Indiana. And so if you're in that neck of the woods, let us know. We'll try to get with you. We're going to be up there for the Southern Baptist Convention in Indiana this year. And I think both of our families are going to go. So we're going to hang out and have a good time. And so if you are in that area or if you're planning on being there, let us know. We'd love to get together with you as well. Well, Brett, we are in our In the Church series. And we've got an interview lined up today with Mr. Jim Neuheiser. He wrote a book called The Abuse Pendulum. And so we're going to jump right into that and have him come on at this time. We're excited to have a returning guest, Jim Neuheiser here, a good friend of me and John's. And I've gotten to know him well. I've listened to a lot of his teaching and just been a great asset for me as a new pastor. And he just recently came out with a new book, a booklet called The Abuse Pendulum. And we're in our In the Church series talking about abuse right now. And so he is the director of the Institute of Biblical Counseling and Discipleship for Christian Counseling Program. He's also the Christian Counseling Program director at RTS in Charlotte. He's written numerous counseling books and topics. And he's a board member with both the Biblical Counseling Coalition and the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. And we're excited to have Brett here. I'm going to, Brett and Jim here, I'm going to read one verse of scripture out of his booklet and then let him talk a little bit. He wrote this verse. He didn't write this, but David did in Psalms 82. It says, Grant escape to the abused and the destitute. Pluck them out of the hand of the false. And so as we talk about abuse, Jim, I want you to just come on and talk to us about why you decided to write this book, your inspiration behind it, the help you wanted to give. And we've got some statements that we're going to talk about in the book as well that we're going to discuss. Sure. Thanks. Thanks, James. Thanks, James. Thanks, James. Thanks, James. Thanks, James. out of malice, but often more out of ignorance. And part of the pendulum would be, maybe like there are two statements we all can agree to, is that some people are called by God to live in hard marriages. And some marriages, the other point, some marriages are so hard that people have the right to escape for their safety. Part of the Christmas story is they fled to Egypt to escape, you know, people trying to kill all the children and everything, Herod. And so, and I think what has happened in, I think, well-meaning churches and counselors situation is that we were so concerned, and I was trained in the late 80s, started doing a lot of formal biblical counseling in the 90s. We were so concerned about no-fault divorce and people getting divorced because they didn't find their true soulmate. And so, we're very much about defending marriage. And we didn't enough understand the rights, well, the duty we have to protect, like Psalm 82 says, those who are being oppressed. And so, if you go back many years, I think, and I can look back personally, one thing I confess in the mini-book, and I've confessed when I've taught about this, is that I've actually gone back to women I counseled, like in the 90s or early 2000s, and said, I realized I put a lot of pressure on you to stay. It wasn't, we always believed you get away from violence. That's another point I should make, is, you know, we always believed that someone was physically unsafe. We took that seriously. But I think we didn't understand the other forms of horrible mistreatment that could take place that are tormenting people and oppressing people, you know, the verbal threats, manipulation, control, that can be really heinous at a certain level. You know, just as Jesus said, there's a, you know, you can speak and hate in a way that's murderous. So, I don't think we took those things seriously enough. And so, I've gone back to women and said, I realized that I should have done more to protect you, more to hold your husband accountable. I don't think I've ever gone to somebody and said, I think you should have left. But I've gone to people and say, I think you had a biblical freedom to leave, that I couldn't stop you under those circumstances. 1 Corinthians 7 even says, Paul says in verses 10 and 11, you know, don't leave your husband. But if you do leave, either you remain unmarried or you're reconciled. And I think some of these situations fall into those verses in 1 Corinthians 7, where I'm not sure you should leave, but we're not going to discipline you if you do, and we understand why you want to. So, that was one side of the pendulum. Now, as these problems have been identified, the failure of the past, there's been a reaction against that, which has led to the other side of the pendulum, where there are multiple problems. One is just reactive, saying, well, now, you know, we can't do that anymore. And now, I think it's all about protecting people from potential harm without adequate attention sometimes to protect their marriage, or to protecting people from being falsely accused. And an example would be, and maybe we'll get into the details more, like the statement, believe all women. Well, Potiphar's wife may have been believable to some, but women are sinners and they can lie too. And so, that's not a biblical statement. They make it, I even try to express in the mini book that I understand why they say that, is that many women who have been horribly mistreated are treated with skepticism, and no, we shouldn't do that. We should take all claims seriously, but we can't hold a man guilty without a certain level of truth. The general problem, in my understanding, would really be, there are people who have turned away from scripture to, it's like, well, because Christians and churches have failed, we're going to go to these secular experts, right? Critical theory and feminism and other unbiblical, we're going to go to them to learn how to deal with these situations. And that's created a lot of the errors I try to address in the mini book. Well, a couple of statements that are in the book that we definitely wanted to talk about. One statement in the booklet is, always believe the victim. Now, can you talk about what are some of the dangers of, you know, false claims and things such as that? Right. That, you know, in the Bible, you, I was just reading in my own Bible reading, going through the Bible in a year, and I came across that you couldn't punish someone without multiple witnesses. There are also things in the Bible about false witnesses having to be, you know, people who make false accusations and the punishment under the law that would have come to them. We have the example in Genesis 39 of Potiphar's wife, who accused Joseph of attempted rape, when really she was the one, some probably would call her now a groomer and a whatever. But, and so, there are going to be situations where, you know, a woman says this thing happened to me, but she was in a situation of privacy. There are going to be situations where we will not know for sure what happened. And if we don't know for sure what happened, without a doubt, we can make the woman safe. And so, if she says she feels she's in danger, by all means, she has the right to go be safe. And it may be that what she's describing has really happened. There's certainly ways to investigation, you know, like Solomon and the baby, you know, that we may be able to come to a level of proof that we could, you know, accept her testimony, but we can't hold someone guilty without proof. And I'll give you a concrete example. You had a situation that got a lot of publicity where you have a man and a woman in a Christian school, and they're in her room. They're not supposed to be in there together alone, but they're there, and they start making out. And that leads to sex. And then, you know, a day or two later, she reports that she's been raped. If you, you know, if he says it's consensual, and again, there's a lot more detail that could be gathered there. But, you know, Deuteronomy says a woman who's being forced to have sex against her will should cry out. And if you're in a dorm of Christian institution, probably somebody will come to help you. Now, I understand also that women, when they're in that situation, and they're being forced, often they freeze up and they get quiet. So he may have forced her. It may have been consensual. I can't hold him to be guilty of rape, you know, fornication, lots of, you know, there are things that were wrong. But there are going to be times because God is omniscient and we are not, we will not know for sure what happened. There's another example in the law where it talks about if you find a dead body in the country, and sometimes you can't figure out who did it. And so the nearest city would sacrifice to God and say, we don't know who did this. And so there'd be, there'd be situations where I think people want justice, or this woman says she's been mistreated. And God will ultimately bring justice if human justice fails. But we can't say, again, women, I've been in situations where a woman actually had another woman scratch her face, and then make an accusation against another person for having done it. And so there's a lot of power right now in victimhood. There's a lot of power in throwing out the A word for abuse and making those accusations. And so we cannot hold someone guilty without clear biblical evidence and then try to use biblical language for what they actually did. Yeah, I think that's so powerful. And, you know, even in our day and age today, the world that we're in, a couple of years ago, the Me Too movement, the women's empowerment movement, you begin to get more and more women feeling like they had this power, and they could stand up and they could say things. And then you would have, you know, in the in the political world, you had people making false claims. And there was almost this, you know, do we believe everyone? I mean, how can we believe everyone when, when women are coming out and making statements? And legitimately, there were some women that, that we have talked to that I've talked to that were abused, that they felt they could not come out. But then when other people were, now they felt the power to come out, the power to be able to say what had happened to them. And I really liked how you said a better approach would be to say all claims of abuse must be taken seriously. And I think that's so important because it is a serious matter. It is something that we must take them serious and let God be the judge and let God rule out these things. And the truth is going to come out in these matters. So I really appreciate that. Um, there, you broke the book down in a couple of different areas. Um, I wanted to hit two other statements that you said and give you some time, uh, to explain them and talk about them because the last two, uh, that we're going to talk about are statements that people say often in the realm that we come from in the independent Baptist movement. Um, and the first one is this stop weaponizing scripture. What is the abuse, uh, or the pendulum swing of weaponizing scripture? And how would you sort of give some pushback and, and what would be a way that you would be able to, to, to come back at this? If someone says, well, you're just weaponizing scripture, you're just throwing a scripture out there to, to, uh, you know, to oppress someone or to hurt someone, what would be the pushback that you'd give there? Yeah. Let me give you a summary statement. Then I'll expand on it. My summary statement is that we should not respond to the misuse of scripture by not using scripture, but rather we should respond to the misuse of scripture by properly using scripture. And so it is a true statement that the Bible has been terribly misused. And you're talking for the particular purposes of your podcast and some of the concern about some, not all, independent fundamental Baptists, where not just in the area of, um, husbands and wives, but pastoral authority, where people will take a phrase, submit to your leaders, Hebrews 13, 17, or wives submit to your husbands. And they will use that in a very sinful, unbiblical way to be domineering, to lead other people into sin, to take advantage of them wickedly. And it's a true statement that, you know, there are many men who have, we'll quote Ephesians 5, 22, wives submit to your husbands and have never gotten to verse 25, where it says, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. And they, they use their authority not to serve as Jesus who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. They use their authority in an utterly selfish way, um, mistreating everybody under their authority. And so I understand that, uh, yes, the scripture, like I said, both in pastoral authority as well, where, uh, you know, men in pastoral leadership, you know, part of the coverup has been used, misusing that authority. But, and so sadly though, and even some people who claim to be biblical counselors will then say, well, because scripture had been weaponized that I need to counsel somebody for several hours before I ever opened the Bible. And my question would be, well, then what are you going to say? You know, where's that going to come from? Well, I'm afraid it's going to come from other sources, which are secular, which are contrary to scripture. And so again, my answer would be the correct response to how the scripture has been misused is with gentleness and carefulness. The Bible is a weapon, Ephesians 6. It's a sword of the spirit and the Bible gives comfort to the oppressed and the Bible gives a proper perspective of what marriage is supposed to be and what leaders are supposed to be. You know, the Bible is the only source of infallible, powerful wisdom we have, you know. And so I think we could acknowledge and sympathize with those with whom scripture has been misused, but then rather than turning them away to some other unbiblical source of wisdom, rather than to say, let's use the Bible correctly. It's definitely a case of sometimes, just like you said, that pendulum to people tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater, swing too far to the other side. Most people that abuse that scripture wives submit. They take it out of context, whereas just you talk about the husband loving the wife. Well, just a few verses before that, it says that we should all submit to one another in some way. We all submit as Christians in some way. One of my favorite statements that I read was you said there's a right way to weaponize scripture. And that is, I love that you bring that out, that scripture is indeed a weapon. It is a sword and it can be weaponized, I guess you would say in the right way, but there definitely is a wrong way to do it. Another statement that is, that we wanted to bring up was male authority structures must be overthrown. Now, the Bible does put out that, you know, they, there is male leadership in certain areas, but there's a movement out there today to discredit that, to say that that's not what the Bible says. Can you speak into that for us? Yes, this has been a huge problem. And I think a lot of it gets to what some have called critical theory, where it's happening in other aspects of society where oppression is caused by people seeking power. And the answer to oppression is to take the power away from the people who had it. And this is actually where, like in the area of abuse, there's something called the Duluth power wheel, where they identify all these different kinds of abuse or mistreatment. And I would say in a common grace way, when they talk about using money and pets and threats and kids, you know, that's a good description of how people do mistreat each other. But then their interpretation of that is it's due to, you know, men having power, and their solution is to take the power away, which is following along with the world's way of looking at it in this contrary to scripture. And just as you said, Brett, that, you know, pastors have horribly misused their authority. But this is kind of like the Bible. So the answer is to get church leaders, elders, a plurality of elders, in my view, sharing the authority, as the Bible says, subject to one another under God, properly using their authority, not being like the false shepherds of Israel in Ezekiel 34, but being faithful shepherds and for husbands to be Christlike servants. But what's happening, and it is of great concern, is there are even people who several years ago would have identified as complementarian, and they would have emphasized that men should be pastors and elders and preachers, and that women, you know, should not be behind the pulpit preaching, and that, you know, women should follow their husbands. Some of the same people who were once advocates of that have really abandoned what I think is biblical complementarianism, and they're trying to talk their way around the passages about male leadership in the home and in the church. And, you know, some of the same voices that you can find clips of some of these people several years ago saying things we would probably agree with, and now they're pushing back. And there's also kind of a subtle thing where, again, the objective is let's get women doing everything they possibly can. Some have called it like a soft complementarianism, where every single thing but preaching the sermon, and she can go give a testimony that's kind of like a sermon. And I'm concerned that, again, it's an overreaction, that men having misused their authority. By the way, I think another point that's really important to make is that every day there are certain people who tweet and write blogs about pastors and husbands who misuse their authority. Let's go on the record saying there are far more pastors and husbands who try to lovingly lead their families that even, was it, Toxic Masculinity by Nancy Piercy, addressing that, how men who go to church have a personal relationship with God, you know, are the least likely to abuse. And so I think even with pastors, there are thousands of pastors who are trying their best to faithfully shepherd the sheep and protect the sheep. And I think these people say, well, here's another bad one, here's another bad one. And I know there are a lot of bad ones in certain circles, but even in those circles, there are some who are trying as best they can to serve the Lord and shepherd the sheep. And so I think highlighting those who are, you know, again, the proper use of authority to love and to serve those under your authority without adopting an unbiblical egalitarianism, which really, I mean, it's not even egalitarianism, it actually becomes transferring power to those who were formerly oppressed. Yeah. And, you know, as you think through and I, in my mind, I guess when I, when I read this book and I heard the title, the abuse pendulum, I thought, man, what an amazing title, because so often I was taught growing up, you know, what happens is when we leave fundamentalism, the pendulum swings to the far left and everybody goes liberal and everybody goes to the left and they go crazy. But oftentimes it's, it's not necessarily the pendulum swinging so far to the left, but sometimes in my case and Brett's case and John's case specifically, the pendulum has swung more to a balanced approach and a balanced view. And I think that's what you were, the heart of your book was, is, you know, let's get to a balanced view of what we need to do. We can't just harp on one side. We, we had a summer camp this last year and the guy that was speaking, the main thing was talking on spirit and truth, worshiping the Lord in spirit and truth. He said, there's some churches that have really got the spirit down. And there's some churches that have really gotten the truth down. And they're both on opposite sides of the pendulum. We need to bring this into the middle and worship in both spirit and truth and live in the spirit and live in truth. Because if you're just on the truth and you're not with the spirit, then, then that pendulum is going back and forth. And I guess for me, that was so related. Well, when reading this booklet and, and processing all of it. Um, and as we think through these last couple of things and, and I, we don't want to be too much longer, but I want to be mindful of your time. Uh, we want to sort of give some concluding thoughts of, of why we have drifted so far away from addressing the area of abuse and even in the church and in marriages. Uh, why do you feel like that, that pastors for so long? And, and, you know, you said you grew up in the eighties and in that, in that realm of the world where we just sort of turned a blind eye to what was going on. Uh, you know, me and Brett, we're coming into this as younger pastors in the world now where everyone's talking about it, but really there's also, that's all they're doing is they're talking about it. There's not a lot of, uh, you know, practical application of how can we get past it? How can we work through this? And so what would be your, your thoughts or address to sort of help young pastors like me and Brett and, uh, others that are listening as well? Sure. Um, I want to go back to part of what I began with, which is to say there are some people of bad character who are abusing, grooming, hiding abuse, um, with unbiblical malice doing evil and their wolves among the sheep, their Ezekiel 34 false shepherds. But there are also, I think many pastors and church leaders. And if you go back to the eighties and nineties or whatever, and they're trying as best they can to follow what the Bible says and the realities of like accusations of abuse, um, you know, it's very, very complicated. So I've written some blogs that are on my website, which is jimneuheiser.com that actually speak to some of the question you're raising. There's one, uh, that is called helping churches to better handle cases of abuse. And it goes through a cycle that often happens when a woman expresses concern and the church treats it as just marriage counseling and they don't hold the husband accountable and he gets control of the counseling. And the woman then is exposed to some of the abuse advocates and she realizes she's being mistreated and she leaves the husband of the church and then she gets disciplined and the church could have just handled it a lot better, a lot more wisely by counseling her separately and, you know, holding the husband accountable and realizing how deceptive and manipulative abusers can be. There's another one called the battleship of abuse, like the game battleship you played when you were a kid. And some battleships have two holes, three holes, four holes. There's some victims, usually women of marital mistreatment that can take a lot and don't want to leave. And there's some that they're, they've had it after less. And I think we have to respect some of that, to that maybe weakness more than sin in terms of just what they can handle. I think we need to recognize, so I have like three broad categories that may be helpful on a practical level. There are some cases where there's heinous mistreatment that it may be physical. It may be punching the wall, kicking the cat, you know, not letting her talk to the people she wants to talk. I mean, it's just, it's very serious oppression where sometimes women stay too long. Actually, that's a bigger problem than most problems is women stay. When I would say, look, if you were my sister or my daughter, I would tell you, get out of there, pray that he repents. I mean, I'm not saying go find somebody else, but go be safe and get guy to take it seriously. So there are those cases that seem to be pretty clearly the marriage that's bad enough, hard enough. They have a right to escape to safety. There are some cases on the other extreme where she's kind of attracted to a guy in her running group or the gym, and he's not that great a provider and she's not happy. And so she's making excuses and will even try to use abuse. Really, they have, they're both sinners. They have normal marital conflict. And that really is still a problem. You know, not, not everybody who gets divorced is divorced legitimately. And so, and then there's the cases in the middle where it's pretty bad. And part of it is, since I'm not all knowing, it's hard for me to know how bad it is when you're not there. The first to plead his case sounds right until someone else comes along and examines it, says in Proverbs 18, 17. And so in those cases, I find myself more in a position to say, usually it's the woman, but I've had men in that position too, is that I'm not telling you to leave, but you know, you have a decision to make that I have to respect. I realize it's really hard. And that's the first Corinthians seven again, where Paul's even saying, I don't think you should leave. But if you do leave, he doesn't discipline, he doesn't kick them out. He still speaks to them as Christians. He expects to listen. And so I think those are the real tough cases. And I think a lot of pastors, and maybe this would be from fundamentalist backgrounds, particularly, we always want to be sure. And there are going to be times when, as far as I can tell, the Bible says, this person has a choice to make that I cannot dictate. That's really hard for some of us to recognize those cases, is that I recognize your freedom to escape, not to remarry, but to escape what's really hard, your freedom also to stay. And I can't tell you what you have to do. Our authority only extends, in so far as we can say, with great confidence, this is explicitly what the Bible says. And you know, there are situations where it's really difficult to be certain what they should do. Well, this is a very, we really appreciate you speaking into this, because it, it needs to be talked about. This is a very controversial, it's very complex, there's a lot of nuance to it. And what I'm getting, basically, what I would summarize is, you know, all abuse requires action. But what we don't need to do is overreact. And so we definitely need to seek the wisdom of God. And I appreciate everything that you've said on this, so much wisdom in what you're saying. And James, what are your thoughts? Well, man, Brett, I appreciate what you said, Jim, love what you said. And thank you so much for coming on. It has been a blessing to read after you and to glean from you. You're one of those guys that, for me, anytime a podcast or a booklet or blog comes out, I'm reading after you, because there's just a vast amount of wisdom there. And I appreciate your time and effort, because I know your heart. I know you want to help people. And I know you want to help the hurting and be there for those who have been hurt and victimized. And I so appreciate that in all of your writings and everything that you've done. Thank you very much. And I think, you know, we want to protect people from harm. And we want to protect people from being falsely accused. And sometimes we won't know. And so we're kind of doing both simultaneously. Yeah. Well, thank you guys for sticking in all this way. And until next time, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. Amen. I found my new name, found that good grace, found that healing, and the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance, found my best friend, found my forgiveness, found my happiness. I've been singing ever since I found my freedom. Thanks for listening to the for freedom podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the for freedom podcast.

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