Control Dressed as Holiness
His face turned red as he took a deep breath. His hands clenched and his eyes went hard. She saw it too and I saw her whole body brace even as she dropped both her eyes and shoulders. It looked to be a familiar scenario — whenever he was challenged, he escaped behind a posture of spiritual hierarchy and delivered with a preacher’s tone. He gave it to me point by point: she was not the spiritual head of the family, he was. Her job was to submit to him and support him in his leadership.
I’ve seen it happen the other direction as well. She swells in outrage as she names his spiritual failures with precision. He doesn’t lead. He doesn’t pray with the kids. She names his failures as nearly heretical in their betrayal of both her and God, often in that order.
Whichever direction it flows, spiritual abuse uses scripture designed to hold the speaker accountable as a means of getting their personal needs or desires met. You can tell the difference by noting who will most benefit by obedience. It is control dressed up as holiness. It is condemnation clothed in righteousness. It’s selfishness wrapped in spirituality. Verses written to require something of the reader get redirected to require something of the spouse.
Scripture definitely isn’t gentle at times. It directly addresses thoughts and behaviors that separate us from God and harm others. However, its discipline ultimately produces righteousness. Feeling shame when facing our mistakes is normal. Healthy shame is designed to lead us to humility. Healthy shame keeps us out of judgment and condemnation of others because we are well connected to our own propensity for failure and sin.
Spiritual abuse, however, uses toxic shame to force compliance rather than invite transformation. Compliance is compelled when a true offering is not forthcoming. Dominance is preferred when vulnerability holds the potential of disappointment.
The posture of power and authority is purposefully intimidating. Their vehemence is designed to make others hesitate, their conviction to make others question themselves. But pull the curtain back on the loud, booming, authoritative voice and the picture changes. Behind is a small, frightened person at the controls. We see a person who is trying to save themselves by sacrificing the one they really want. The person who cannot bear what scripture requires of them decides to require it of someone else instead.
For therapists in the room, naming what’s happening without condemning the condemner is worth the effort. Understanding the function of the frame helps you differentiate accountability from abuse. The person being abused often doesn’t have language for what’s happening — only fatigue, confusion, and a steady erosion of self that has been spiritualized into proof of their own failure. The person abusing rarely has language either and may not perceive the truth behind their behavior. Clarity, when it is accepted, is the gift that often allows us to move out of blame and into true accountability.
For friends, pastors, family — your work is just as important. Stop confirming the louder voice as the spiritual one. Stop validating the more articulate scripture-citer as automatically the more faithful spouse. Your silence is often perceived as implicit agreement and your avoidance of conflict keeps you from offering challenge where it is most needed. Of course, it rarely works to do to a spiritual abuser what they are doing to another. Rather, we are called to be a model of what inviting another into accountability should look like.
The Wizard of Oz was never the booming voice and the smoke. He was a man hiding behind a curtain pulling levers, terrified of being seen. The spiritual abusers we are describing are not different. The loud spiritual authority is the curtain. What is behind it is the one God has been trying to reach all along.
For reflection:
When you have watched this dynamic in a couple you know, what stopped you from naming what you saw?
Where in your own marriage or close relationships do you reach for scripture to hold someone else accountable in ways you would not want it applied to you?
If the loudest spiritual voice in a marriage is most often the most frightened one, what does that change about how you listen — to others, and to yourself?
-Aron Strong, LMFT