October is Respect Life Month; it is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month. For a few years, I served on the Board of Directors for Lydia’s House, a local organization that provides housing, counseling, and other resources for women and children who are healing from domestic violence. Sadly, I have also counseled and heard the confessions of abusers and survivors and my heart always breaks at their sad stories. Violence against anyone, especially women and children, is never acceptable!
Besides my two brothers, I have three older sisters. When I was a boy, all of us would fight, but I seemed to fight more with my sisters. When our fighting and hitting and yelling inevitably reached our parents, I can remember my father saying to me, “You never, ever hit a girl.” While my sisters would smile smugly at this turn of events, I would usually fume that life was so unfair: my sisters could hit me but I couldn’t hit them? I didn’t realize it at the time, but I recognized it later in life: my father wasn’t just breaking up a fight, he was teaching a life lesson. It really is never acceptable to hit a girl, to hit a woman, whether you are 8, or 28, or 48 years old.
About 30% of women will experience abuse in their lifetime. This is an epidemic! The abuse may be emotional, physical, or financial. While about 95% of abuse is directed by men toward women, I’d be remiss without acknowledging that men are sometimes victims of abuse as well, and abuse is also present among those in LGBTQ relationships. Sadly, domestic violence and abuse are commonplace and even accepted in some cultures and parts of the world.
Those who abuse do not easily abandon their violent ways. Some abusers will excuse themselves by blaming alcohol or drugs, or perhaps they claim that stress or their own abuse made them an abuser. These factors may very well aggravate their violence but they are not the cause. Some men even blame their victims, claiming that if their partners were better wives or housekeepers, better mothers or more responsible, they themselves wouldn’t get so mad. This is blaming the victim, when the real reason for abuse is to exercise power and control.
Most women victims of domestic violence struggle to liberate themselves from their abuser, but that can be difficult to accomplish. Often we don’t understand why they just don’t pick up and leave their abusers, but factors like economic dependence and fear can make leaving difficult if not impossible, and we must not judge their lives or their reasoning.
Unfortunately, our Church has in some ways been complicit in this epidemic of domestic violence. We have not spoken out against it. We have preached plenty about the permanency of marriage but hardly ever that no one deserves to be abused and that no one should stay in an abusive relationship.
It is time to set the record straight! The Church rejects all forms of domestic violence and urges women to protect themselves and their children, even if that means a separation and divorce from their abusers. Our church must help to protect them and assist them in freeing themselves from the violence. As a community of faith, let us be mindful of every victim of domestic violence. We encourage you to come out of the shadows and seek help! We want to support you in your struggle for peace! We want you to be safe and free, filled with love, joy, and hope for the future!
Many of you know someone who is experiencing domestic violence. Please tell them they do not deserve such abuse. Tell them you are concerned about their safety and their children’s and they have a right to be safe. Listen to them and respect their decisions, but assure them that you will support them whenever they decide to leave their abuser.
Let us entrust all these needs to our loving Lord, and pray that God will protect all women and children who are suffering domestic violence and that every person, especially those who are most vulnerable, will have the gifts of peace and safety.