Spiritual Wounding – and how to find healing - Part 1
Part 1 of a 4 part series.
It’s hard to avoid being wounded by people in life as they say and do things that leave us feeling emotionally injured and hurting. They can disappoint us, leave us feeling wounded, and can even leave us disillusioned. Sometimes the hurtful behaviour can happen in a one-time incident, or it can happen over a period of time.
Jesus told us very clearly, “In this world you will have troubles” (John 16:33). Sometimes those troubles are relationship centred. Upon looking at them, many times these wounds are sourced in misunderstanding, but they still impact us strongly and can, at times, even leave us with questions about God and Christianity. When those wounds come from a Christian, and have an added spiritually abusive element to them, they can have powerful natural, and spiritual, consequences.
One of the greatest gifts God has given mankind is a thing called autonomy – that is the right and privilege of freedom of choice, self-government, the right to choose how we think, act, and who we submit to.
God does not seek to control us. Our submission to Him as God is never demanded from us; it can only be given freely at our choosing.
It also has huge implications when it comes to people’s behaviour. God could stop people doing bad things, that’s true, but He will not violate mankind’s freedom and autonomy. He will warn them about the consequences of their behaviour, point out the error of their ways, seek to get through to them, and ask them to change their behaviour willingly, but He will not control them. That means that people are free to make choices, and unfortunately not all of the choices that they make are wise, and therefore people can hurt others by their choices and behaviour.
Autonomy has huge implications in regard to Christianity. It gives us the right to freedom from religious control – because it gives us the power to choose who we submit to.
What is spiritual wounding?
Spiritually abusive wounding occurs when anyone — pastor, church leader, a congregational member, parent or spouse — uses Scripture, the name of God, or what they say are His character and values, or the person’s position and authority, to wound or abusively use you, other congregation members or even to try to hurt or control church leadership. They misrepresent the Trinity, and instead of revealing Jesus, who came to bring us into freedom, joy and abundant life, they use a false image of God, or the Bible, and weaponise them, using them to harass, bludgeon, humiliate, harm, limit, silence and exclude. This hurts, even more, when it’s someone you value or look up to, or respect.
Sometimes this is unintentional – the person doing it thinks that they are being helpful, doing something in love, seeking to bring understanding and maturing to a person’s life, but instead of their words giving life, they wound and damage. Other times it’s done knowingly, from self-righteousness and spiritual arrogance. Either way, sadly the abusive person usually thinks they are representing God in that moment, when in fact they are hugely misrepresenting Him.
It can leave the victim terrified, traumatized, and unable to speak up about what is happening to them for fear of reprisal, being ostracised, or even threatened with eternal damnation.
When someone misrepresents God by using His name, nature and character, or Scripture to try to bully, coerce or deliver truth in a hurtful manner, then that is wrong! God never intended that His words, nature or character be used to silence, shame, exclude, belittle or disrespect others.
How Jesus dealt with people
So how did Jesus deal with people? It’s important for us to know, because Jesus shows us the true heart of God toward people. We sometimes have this idea that Jesus spoke harshly, was confrontationally angry, and even forceful in the way that He dealt with people. While that may have happened on a few occasions, the only people He was ever like that to were people who were ripping others off, or bringing people into bondage – financially, through wrongful authority, or spiritually. It was not, and is not, His core nature. We need to remember that in the black and white words printed on the pages of our Bible, we only get a partial picture of what those moments were like. We don’t hear the way that Jesus’s heart for people was expressed in His tone of voice, and in the way He said things. We don’t see the look in His eyes, or see His body language.
Matt 12:18-20 tells us of an Old Testament passage, one that prophesied how the Messiah would deal with people. It tells us, “He will not argue. He will not shout. He will not break a bruised reed or put out a smouldering wick.” While Jesus brought truth, He never violated His core nature of love, mercy, forgiveness, and kindness, nor any of the Messianic prophesies about Him, this one included. While He spoke truth, He always brought that truth in a way that never set out to hurt, or add hurt, to the ordinary person, the oppressed, broken-hearted, or those wounded by a religiously oppressive regime. He ministered, and spoke, with love and care, choosing His words wisely in order to set people free, build them up, restore their dignity and bring healing.
Jesus knows what it is like to suffer hurt, rejection, betrayal, and emotional wounding at both the hands of friends, and from the religious, as we’ll see later. In part, it is because of His suffering, the rejections and betrayals that He went through, that He can relate to you, and is safe for you to turn to for healing.
The impact of spiritual wounding
When someone uses spiritual relationship or authority to wound us, or seek to control us, it causes huge hurt in many areas of our life. We suffer incredible inner turmoil. It can tap back into our unhealed childhood wounds, bringing old hurts and insecurities to the surface. We feel the shame that the person put on us, but we also can feel self-imposed shame because we trusted someone who later proved to be untrustworthy. Spiritually abusive wounding can cause us to be full of self-recrimination, and we can beat ourself up mentally. It can make us fearful of trusting others again, cause us to question our worth and value to God and others, and lead to depressive episodes, anxiety, and more.
This type of wound is so awful because it carries not only emotional pain and power, but spiritual power too. You are being hurt, and possibly even made to feel shame, by someone who claims to be a representative of, and carry the authority of, the most powerful being in the universe.
Spiritual wounding can also damage our relationship with God, and hugely disrupt our normal spiritual practices. Our relationship with God, and the Bible, may become something we turn to less and less. We can mistakenly begin to think that God is against us, and the Bible is our condemner. We can even stop trusting God and blame Him, or get offended at Him, calling His nature and character into question. All the time, the real root of the problem is not God, or the Bible, but emotional pain – wounding caused by people using the Bible as a weapon against us.
We often then add to our reaction things like leaving church, blaming Christianity or church leadership, seeing all Christians through the same lens as hypocrites, or sometimes saying that they are influenced by demons in their behaviour.
I get it! The reality is, churches can be unsafe places at times, as everyone is in different stages of their growth journey in God, and churches can sometimes contain people in them who are toxic, abusive, or controlling. Wounds by a non-Christian are sometimes easier to bear because, if we’re honest, we often don’t expect as high a standard of behaviour from them as we do from a Christian.
Illusions and assumptions
One of the big reasons that spiritual wounding can affect us so badly, apart from people’s bad behaviour, is because of unrealistic expectations on our part – because we idealise other Christians. We assume that they all have upstanding ethics, little-to-no emotional dysfunction, and have well-informed biblical understanding (preferably that matches our own). We assume that they are a good Christian, a great father or mother, husband or wife, and church or community leader. Then we become shocked and feel let down when they turn out to be very human, with the same struggles and propensity for a cruddy attitude, and to say or do something wrong and hurtful, that we ourself have.
We forget that people are all at different places in learning to walk in the New Creation nature and character that God has given them in Christ. We forget that their childhood wounds are in the process of being addressed and healed, and that they are learning how the Kingdom of God operates, so when they wound us with words or actions we often get more hurt than we would if a non-Christian did the same thing to us.
Separate wounds from truth and reality
When you are wounded by another Christian it can be very hard to separate the spiritual messages you receive in that interaction from truth and reality.
Questions abound, and you can be left thinking things like, “I’m God’s child. Why would He allow this to happen to me?” “How could another Christian do this to me?” “Am I actually somehow to blame, was I wrong, bad, etc?” “Am I the problem?” Toxic shame goes to work, eating away at your heart and mind, causing you to question yourself and others, and offence knocks on the door of your heart, asking to be let in.
Rationally you might know that what they’ve said is wrong, that God is good and cares for you, but the trust in Him and yourself may have been shaken. And suddenly you find that your mental sense of wellness is disrupted big-time.
When you’ve been spiritually wounded over a period of time, you may be left with…
Intense feelings of anger, confusion, and bitterness toward the person, and possibly even God.
·Toxic shame, self-blame, or possibly even self-hatred.
·Suspicion of other people’s motives (not just the person who hurt you.)
An ungodly fear of God – especially of His anger, judgement, or punishment.
Anxiety or disassociation when it comes to spiritual practices and church life.
Ongoing trust issues.
Mental and physical health issues.
In order to find peace, and a feeling of inner safety again, these things do need to be faced, forgiven, and the effects of the wounding dealt with and healed. That’s not always an easy, or a short, process, but for your ongoing health – mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually – it is necessary.
God hates injustice
God hates injustice! It violates what love is, hurting those He loves, and in the case of spiritually abusive behaviour, it misrepresents His nature and character.
“The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love” Psa 33:5.
“There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who stirs up conflict in the community” Prov 6:16-19.
“Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!” Isa 30:18.
So we see that God is for those who have been victimised, abused and who have suffered injustices. He longs to heal them, restore them, and make them strong again.
Dealing with the hurt you’ve received does not free the other person from being accountable to God. You may not physically see this process happen, and it may not even happen while you or they are alive, but God will hold them accountable.
“In due season God will judge everyone, both good and bad, for all their deeds” Eccles 3:17.
God "will repay each one according to his deeds" Rom 2:6.
In the next article we’ll look at how you can receive healing, and how you can learn to feel safe again, or, if spiritually abusive wounding has happened to someone else you know, how you can help them to find healing.
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