Ann Maree
Chris, welcome back for episode four, season five of the Safe to Hope podcast, as we hear from our expert contributor, Chris Moles. Chris is a dear friend, one who was used by God in the process I went through to have my eyes open to abuse and to recognize the patterns and people. Chris’s excellent training literally changed my world, and here we are today, and I’m advocating for women in crisis. 

Anyway, for those in our audience who are unfamiliar, Chris Moles is a pastor and biblical counselor who helps churches and families confront the evil of domestic violence and promote healthy God honoring relationships. PeaceWorks, the education arm of his website, is primarily focused on educating the church and domestic abuse prevention and intervention through PeaceWorks University and EQUIP, which is in cooperation with Leslie Vernick, and they provide periodic coaching and or educational resources to abusive men through the Men of Peace program. 

So welcome Chris, and if there’s anything else that you’d like to add to that introduction or tell us about yourself that would be great,

Chris
Awesome. Well, thank you for having me. It’s great to be here and really thankful for the good work that you’re doing and the story that we’ve been hearing from Charles and Renee.

Ann Maree
Yeah, it is an encouragement, isn’t it, for a change?

So Chris is here today to speak to his experience in working with men like this who abuse and then offering hope to both the victims, survivors and those who provide care. In Episode One, we heard from Renee and listened to her experience. In Part Two, we heard from Rene’s husband Charles. Well, we often hear that abusers tend to have their own abuse in their past and or they have not dealt with it, and it’s their own source of pain and frustration. And we did hear Charles speak of some of those dynamics in his family, and you can hear some of the very shame-producing attitudes and comments. Again, those are never excuses for abusive behavior. For sure. Jess Hill, if you’re familiar, I know you are, but she writes, there are four responses to this kind of shame. It’s to defend yourself, withdrawal, attack self or attack others. And of course, abuse is the attacking others, the most dangerous response to shame. Chris, how do you help a man who is attacking from some of this unaddressed shame?

Chris
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. You know, as I was listening to Charles talk about his past. It’s an all too familiar dialog for the years that I worked, primarily the years that I worked in criminal corrections. So I did this work in a government agency first. One of the things that we found was a majority of our clients, and then it actually is seen nationwide. There’s been a couple studies on this. Had what’s called a high ACEs score, and all that meant was, if you were charged with abuse, you so you were criminally abusive as a man, you just tended to have, at that point a high, higher adverse childhood experience, meaning you had experienced some pretty powerful and powerfully traumatic things in your past. And so certainly there’s a contributor when it comes to past trauma, past harm, past hurt, but what we like to say is it’s contributive, not causative. So back to your point a second ago. There are plenty of men who’ve had traumatic experience in childhood that do not attack others, that do not harm others, but we do want to make sure that we run these parallel tracks of response, where, if an individual has traumatic hurt, traumatic pain, some of the men that I’ve worked with, for instance, are also victims of childhood sexual assault. We want to make sure that they get the care that they need for that experience, but then also have a real talk and understand the corresponding nature of the abuse, but that it’s not causative. In other words, there’s cruelty that you experienced, but there’s also cruelty that you have engaged in and that you have perpetrated. We want full ownership of that the abuse that you have caused, and then we want you to really recognize the abuse that was done to you. So I think that’s a huge track of conversation that we have, because the temptation in all of us, when we address our own sin is to minimize, to deny or to shift the blame. And abuse is certainly a big part of that. And so rather than working with a man to make his abuse story or his trauma story or his adverse experience story primary, when it comes to intervention, we make it a part of the discussion, but the primary need in front of him is ownership of his sin and then repentance, or what my friend Greg Wilson might say, is seeing, then owning, then hating, then turning, really having a progression of change on the things that you have caused. And so we really make it a priority to talk about things that are contributive, not causative.

Ann Maree
I was just going to ask you to repeat that, contributive, not causative. And just in case, we’ve done this before, can you just give us a cliff notes version of the ACEs study?

Chris
Oh, sure. So ACEs just stands for adverse childhood experiences. It’s 10 simple questions. It’s not anything earth shattering, and it’s certainly not anything determinative, really. The goal is to understand just some of the ways that you may have experienced some common adverse situations in your childhood, such as the death of a parent, divorce, mental health problems of a parent, abuse that you had seen or abuse that was directed towards you as a target. And what we see is that folks with a higher ACEs score tend to have a little bit more problems in these type of areas. Here’s what I would say, the well lit path is the one that you’re going to walk. And so if something is normalized for you, and you have seen it firsthand, experienced it, the temptations are far greater, or perhaps easier to step into that I have a very low ACEs score. All that says is that I had a pretty good experience as a kid, and that my parents did a wonderful job, and they loved each other, so it was a little easier for me in some ways. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t susceptible to temptation to abuse or harm. That’s why we say it’s contributive, not causative. It just tells us some information that might be helpful in the process. Certainly doesn’t determine who you are as a person. 

Ann Maree
Yeah, and I think both of us, even in our counseling hat, if we were our counseling hat, we see that so often, not just in abuse, in you know, this might be simplistic, but in in most cases, you see an adult kind of responding one way or the other to their experience as a child, like, I’m never going to be like my mother, right? Or is that, you know, inevitable if I say it, or I want to be just like my mother, or the unconscious, like you’re saying, just kind of conditioned patterns of normalizing abusive behavior. That’s helpful. Yeah, good. Thank you for helping with the ACEs. I love to hear everybody’s yours has been the most succinct so far definition. But anyway, back to these patterns. We talk a lot about them, and you and I as advocates, are looking for them and recognize, or trying to recognize, whether it is abuse because of the patterns. Are there similar, antithetical patterns for a man who is turning from his abusive behavior genuinely

Chris
Sure, I think that’s actually an outstanding way to word it, because obviously we would say that in most cases, now there’s some exceptions, right? Especially when you’re thinking criminally or from a judiciary perspective, you can certainly violate the law when it comes to domestic violence with one single incident, right? But for domestic abuse, we’re generally looking for patterns like the constellation in the sky. It’s one thing to see the North Star, it’s another thing to see the Big Dipper, right? It is an identifying strategy for us to see abuse holistically and historically in patterns. It really helps us in our work. I think, to your point, the same is true when it comes to change and repentance. We’re also looking for patterns. One of the ways that I might put it when I’m working with clients is, okay, you have a history, now we’re looking to establish a new history. That’s really one of the goals of repentance, right? Is we’re turning from sin and to Christ, and now we’re walking that out through steps of repentance. And so we’re going to compare and contrast. And this is where abuse work, and particularly with perpetrators, is unique and distinctive, because each case of abuse has its own distinct pattern. There’s a lot of similarities, like a pointillism painting, right, where you get these different points on the canvas, everyone’s using that system of abuse, abuse abuse abuse abuse abuse, abuse, building a picture. However, every picture is a little bit different. We’re drawing different things, and so we’re looking for new patterns that contrast, and so I appreciate the idea of antithetical, contrast the old way. So if I’m primarily known by my violence, I’m looking now for primarily being known for my gentleness. I’m primarily known for my control. I’m being asked to be known primarily by my support and empowerment, and this is, I think, the most biblical strategy we can use, as you think about Ephesians chapter four, that you know, when’s a liar no longer a liar, it’s when he’s a truth or when’s a thief no longer a thief. It’s when he’s a generous person, when’s an abusive person no longer abusive. Well, let’s talk through the patterns of behavior that once marked you, and let’s look for alternatives, and real quick on the genuine piece, it would be really easy to compare only behavior to behavior, and I think that would be dangerous. Then we just become people promoting behavior modification. Well, I no longer restrain my wife, right, but now I simply demean my life. That’s not a positive change, that’s a lateral change, right? So what was behind the restraint? What did you want when you restrained your partner? What was the impact when you restrained your partner? I’m asking you to put off all of that behavior, motivation and the impact and embrace a new attitude, perspective. And so I go back to Jeremy Pierre, who I really appreciate in he and Greg Wilson’s book When Home Hurts, when they articulate not just corrupt behavior at work, but corrupt perceptions. And so the genuine heart change is going to produce a new world view. And I think that’s a huge marker for us in the work. You can have a willful participant who does all the right things out of stubbornness to to get his life back as it were, or his wife back, if that’s the case, versus a willing heart that actually embraces the change that only the gospel can bring, and that’s going to affect him holistically, not just his behavior, but also his perceptions and view of the world, how he views himself, how he views God and how he views others.

Ann Maree
Excellent. Yes, that’s very good. I’m I’m thinking to myself, when the years that I’ve known, you were starting to hear and you have, of course, especially coming from you, more information that gets us the knowledge that we are we’ve been looking for that women are looking for in their marriages. You know, they’ll ask me so many times. What am I needing to look at? What am I needing to pay attention to? And Renee said something just so helpful, and in her episode where she said it was different, because we did hear that change in Charles, it was different. It wasn’t better, but it was better because it was different. And so, yeah, I think if we unwrap that, I think is what you just said, is that’s how to unwrap that. That worldview piece, that that is huge, and so I heard that in Charles’ story, decades of research reveal that men are more prone to abuse when they ascribe to rigid gender roles and believe that they have a special authority. This is a worldview. These are two dynamics we see in our circles, yours and mine, particularly in male led denominations, although that does not mean abuse is not happening in egalitarian denominations. But Charles mentioned this dynamic when he and his family began attending a different church. So I’m going to pay I’m just going to play what he said, and then I’ll have a question for you,

Charles Recording
An undercurrent was present at those breakfasts with which I was at the same time, uneasy and also excited by and that being that the man in the house is not just the head of the house, but of his wife also, and that his wife is to honor and obey him. Period, there were many tidbits such as this that I’d picked up, not just at this present church, but also from past experiences. In retrospect, I was becoming much harder in my heart, both as a husband and as a father, little by little. At this church, feelings were not just to be discounted, but to be brought under submission to the will. Being led by the Spirit meant being led by the doctrines of the church. I found it very dogmatic. So needless to say, the arguments between my wife and I got elevated by my new knowledge. As time went by, I was adding a huge dose of control to the mix, and thought I was doing the correct thing. This went on for over 11 years.

Ann Maree
Wow, yeah, wow. It feels, it feels like this is an entire cultural shift that needs to happen before the violence would stop. So you said some now, can you tell us more? What does reform look like in these more dogmatic type denominations?

Chris
Sure, I want to be I want to be gracious here, and I want your listeners to maybe hear this. I’ll just be blunt. I work with a broad spectrum of evangelical believers, primarily evangelicals. I do work outside that realm, I should say so. I work with a broad swath of believers when it comes to practice and doctrine and doctrinal positions, and I’m happy to do that. And I think one of my main roles is not to alter your doctrine, right? I do want us to, you know, believe in the sufficiency of Scripture and progressive sanctification. Those are kind of the two pillars I rest on a lot, and I can do that with Anabaptist and with Reformed folks and many Pentecostals and others. So there’s a lot of room in both complementarian and egalitarian denominations for growth near abuse. With that being said, I think what we’re seeing with Charles is maybe a reinforcement of a previously held worldview that’s expanded upon by a doctrinal position that inflates, or perhaps conflates on our existing worldview. And if this will add to the clarity I see this quite a bit in this notion of headship. I would consider myself a complementarian. I think I try to read the Scripture plainly and literally. I don’t make that a salvific issue or a primary issue for me or my clients that I work with. But I will say headship in my mind, is not determined by the kingdom of the world or the pattern of the world. I’m very Romans 12 in then I think we gotta put that off. I think the world tells us that headship and authority mean power over. And I think Jesus paints a very clear picture of power unde, in Matthew 20, Mark 10, John 13, Philippians 2, Romans 12 and 13 together. 1 Peter 3, 1 Peter 5. I think there’s all kinds of evidence that power when an individual has position leverage, whatever that is, they’re to use that to serve. And that’s even where I get in trouble with my secular peers who are really dogmatic about power. With they’re always like, well, powers to be shared, to be decentralized. And I’m like, no to whom much is given. Much is required. Power is a responsibility. That’s the hierarchy. Who will be held responsible, not necessarily, who will be at the right hand or the left hand. That’s actually something we’re to abandon. So I know that’s kind of a big diatribe to explain where I’m coming from, but when Charles comes into this breakfast, and I remember hearing this as well, the word period you’re supposed to honor and obey, period like there’s no fleshing this out. There’s no room for discussion. There’s no even asking the question, How did Jesus lead, and how does his leadership affect and mark my life, as opposed to how Caesar, right? I mean, that’s the big pattern. Jesus versus Caesar is kind of the New Testament. And I think a lot of us as husbands, we really lead like Caesar a lot more than we lead like Jesus. And let’s face it, Caesar-like leadership will lead to oppression, and Jesus-like leadership will lead to flourishing. So that’s an interesting piece. And I think the other that’s really important, and I want to hear your feedback, is I hear this in different words. I think Charles articulated better than any man I’ve worked with, so I really appreciate his words here that being led by the Spirit meant being led by the doctrines of the church. And I am a big, big proponent of being filled with the Spirit of God, being led by the Spirit. And I think we have kind of, maybe supplemented the Trinity in many of our churches, from God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Scriptures. And look, I’m a sufficiency guy, but there’s a point at which I am the little c counselor. I’m the little little h helper. He is the big H helper. He is the big C counselor, I can’t do anything. I can’t go to Walmart effectively without the power of the Spirit of God in my life. And these men that we work with have no hope of change without the Spirit of God. They can become a little bit safer, but they’ll never experience the glory of sanctification without the Spirit of God regenerating their hearts and giving them real hope that is far surpassing a doctrinal position, and this might get me in trouble. Ann Maree, so I apologize if you get hate mail. I am far more concerned with a person pursuing the heart of Christ in the fullness of the spirit than getting all the doctrines of the church Correct. I would much rather disagree with a guy doctrinally who is safe in pursuing Christ than agree with a guy doctrinally who’s harming his family.

Ann Maree
Oh, wow, yeah. Bring on the mail. I don’t care. No good words, reinforcing a pre existing condition is what came to my mind. Yes, yeah. It’s kind of like when we hear the question, well, when, when does it change in the marriage from like normal marital conflict to abuse? And I don’t know if you’d say the same thing, but it’s like the abuser is an abuser, you know, whether he’s expressing it or not, right? So there’s really not this kind of line, and neither is there a line in okay, I entered a dogmatic church, and now I’m an abuser. It’s reinforcing. It’s feeding that pre existing condition.

Chris
Well, even the question, and I do get this question a lot, Ann Maree, even the question of distinguishing or comparing abuse to normal marital conflict is problematic, because those are apples and oranges. Abuse is not conflict, right? That’s one of the key markers is there’s a lack of freedom, a lack of agency, a lack of reciprocity, a lack of mutuality. And sometimes, to Charles’ point, some forms of complementarian theology can be twisted in such a way that a lack of reciprocity, a lack of mutuality, is healthy. And I would say that is not how Jesus leads, and is not the expectation laid forth with husbands. And I actually think it violates the very heart and will of God when we do that. When we demand obedience and honor without reciprocity, that is foolish leadership.

Ann Maree
These are some of my favorite topics to listen to you speak about. I remember from years ago, you talking about the power under, power over when we were filming the video. And also, I quote you often on the Holy Spirit. I remember you saying to me like we were having a discussion about, I don’t know, some disagreements people might be having with you, and you’re like, don’t I have the Holy Spirit? And I just sit with that? I’m like, Yes, I mean, and we have the Holy Spirit will agree. You know, you’re he’s not going to say something different to you that he says for me. Anyway, those are some of my favorite topics. However, there’s one more, and I would ask you to, just to maybe give me some more information about, because it’s so misunderstood or unaccepted, and that’s gaslighting. Can you demystify that for us?

Chris
Yeah, so gaslighting as a term, it probably has a little heat because it is kind of a what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s a flashy term, because it comes from Hollywood. It’s a Hollywood term. Great movie. The British version’s okay, the black and white American version is great. East quick easter egg. Look for Angela Lansbury. It’s Angela Lansbury’s first Hollywood picture. She plays the maid in the Gaslight film. So to just break it down, gaslighting is really the tactic of control in which I use my position of authority to undermine your sense of sanity. So what I’m trying to do is invite you to question yourself by my own subtle questioning and manipulation. It’s, it’s a real, dastardly form of manipulation, because it it uses your own doubts and your own fears against you. And so it, in practicality, looks like things, as if making decisions and then later questioning those decisions like, well, we never said that. I never said that, or relocating things in the home, and then when questioned going, I didn’t do that. The notion of, what can I do to get you to question yourself, and inadvertently, what that does is it builds a level of false or pseudo trust in me as the authority. So one of the things about abuse in that all the tactics that we usually talk about is there’s a substitutionary nature of something that’s good for something that will settle for. For instance, I’m the. Authority. I want respect. I can’t. I can’t make that happen from you. You either respect me or you don’t. I have no control over Ann Maree whether or not she respects me or not, but as an authority figure, I might try to manipulate, coerce and control you to fear me. So I want respect. I’ll settle for fear. I want trust, but I can’t get you to trust me, and rather than doing the hard work of patience and kindness and building this relationship, I settle for this pseudo type of trust or suspicion. I’d get you to doubt yourself so that you rely on me. So I move from trust to coerce reliance, and it’s really fool’s gold at the end of the day for both the abuser and the victim. And I actually think it does, gaslighting does a lot of damage, obviously, to the victim, but it warps the worldview and mentality of an abusive individual who settles for things that are far less good for him. It’s like, I think it was Calvin, perhaps, or maybe it was Luther that said we pursue lovers less wild. It’s like we’re really settling for something so much less than what Jesus has for us when we become sovereign in our relationships, rather than letting God be sovereign.

Ann Maree
Mm, wow. Yeah, that’s powerful, that there’s a lot that could be asked off of that, even taking in a different direction, but just even thinking about the impact on a person’s brain, emotions, spirituality, spirituality, over time of that constant pecking away at their sanity, that’s really what it is. 

Chris
It’s an attack on your sanity. 

Yeah, that was very helpful definition. Thank you. I knew I’d get that out of you. All right, on that coercive control note, which Charles also describes in his story. It’s said to be one of the most dangerous forms of domestic abuse. I don’t know if you’d agree with that or not. You can disagree but, but it’s also the least likely understood by the church. You know the question well, Is he hitting her? Can you paint a picture of what it looks like to live in a home where the perpetrator is using coercive control, and how it’s so dangerous?

Chris
Sure. So I might actually, this is good. I might actually disagree a little, but I think it’ll help the listeners to kind of hear me flesh it out a little bit. I think coercive control, it’s a term, by the way, that was coined by, I think, Evan Stark. He recently passed away, I believe. But in my mind, coercive control is really the hallmark of abuse, whether it’s sexual or physical or emotional/psychological. So it is kind of an underpinning to a lot of what we talk about, because it is control paired with force or threat of force, and so coercive can everyone controls. Let’s just all face it, all of us are controlling, and we have our things, and we’ve all got to work on and if you’ve been married more than 10 minutes, you’ve had to address your own sense of entitlement and control. The idea of coercive control is that I’m willing. It’s an old biblical counseling principle in my mind, I’m willing to sin to get what I want. I’m willing to use threat or force or intimidation or power to really peg you into doing what I want. And that can happen obviously, physically or sexually, but it can also happen through isolation, intimidation, forms of manipulation, gaslighting, as you said earlier, and to live in a situation like this, I think about two illustrations. One is one that my friend Leslie uses, which is, you know, one bee sting hurts, but 1000 bee stings will kill you, like there is a there is a weight and a pressure that time brings about in these patterns of coercive control that can cripple an individual who’s living under them. The illustration that I most often use is, you know, imagine, and this will be, I’ll try to reframe it for listeners of a podcast. Imagine you have a favorite chair in your house like it’s a real comforting place for you. You’ve got a place that we need to take a breath when you need to sigh and reflect on the day. This is the chair that you set in. You know, it’s your favorite spot in your house. Maybe it’s on the back porch. Maybe it’s, you know, on the ground outside. Maybe it’s in your living room. Now, imagine that I hoisted and configured a grand piano above that place, that comforting, safe place for you, I have established a very dangerous, potentially lethal response that always weighs over you. I have control on whether it remains stable or whether it falls on top of you that creates a lot of pressure on. You as an individual, in a place that you should find comfort and safety. So rather than being in a place that’s normally safe for you, there’s always a looming threat of danger, and you can’t control it. It’s at my hand, whether or not you’re crushed beneath the weight of my control, and I think that’s what it’s like to live in an abusive relationship. Over time, the weight gets heavier, the pressure gets more burdensome. And the places in your life, your home, sexual intimacy, your friendships, your church, they become dangerous places, rather than safe and secure places. And I think that’s the dastardly nature of coercive control. It’s not just an overbearing person, right? It is a person who takes what was once safe and makes it into dangerous, a dangerous place full of threat.

Ann Maree
My heart hurts when I hear that, because I think who, who would do that? Yeah. You know, if you think of it, even in your illustration, who would hoist a grand piano over a loved one’s favorite peace spot. So I think you even answered my next question, which is, what does it do to the victims that so devastating? Do you have anything else to that?

Chris
I would say all the years that, you know, I’m closing in on 20 years of real intense work in this world, you know, working with 1000s of men over the years, I’ve also worked with a lot of victims, not to the extent that our advocates have or people who have made this a full time job, but the number of times I have heard victims and survivors say to me, I wish he would just hit me, right? I wish he would just get it over with. And the number of conversations I’ve had with men who have used physical force in the past and then relied on that incident of force to maintain control for years, sometimes decades, really speaks to the power of coercive control. And here’s what I mean by that, just in case a listener is not picking up, it is not uncommon for a man to use a threat, a weapon, restraint, strangulation, slapping, hitting, physical force, sexual coercion, once or a handful of times in the past and never have to revert to them again. I’ve had men, many men, say to me in the criminal justice system, “well, I don’t want to get physical, because the physical stuff will get you in trouble.” And that’s the mind of really a criminal abuser. That’s like, I want to be a respectable abuser, or what we say, a polite abuser who commits respectable sins, and that’s really the sinister nature of coercive control is that you can maintain a facade of safety for even decades with a victim or survivor who’s living under constant threat because the potentiality of domestic homicide or severe injury that was in, you know, instigated in the past, can always be present at the snap of a finger. So it is interesting when victims will say to me, “I just wish he would hit me.” It feels like there would be at least a release of this anger and this threat, rather than the constant pressure that I’m under, like I’m being squeezed or I’m falling deeper into the ocean, and the pressure is getting more and more and more.

Ann Maree
Yeah. And then they’ll say, too, it’s easier to heal, because bruises heal. Yeah. I think this actually is one of the hardest things I’ve had in talking with churches to help them understand, and I’ve heard it multiple times, and that is that that incident that you speak of happened on their honeymoon, sure, and it never happened again, right? And so when they’re asked their story, and in a way that requires them, the burden of proof is on them to prove that the husband’s abusive. They go, “Well, when we were first married on the or the first week we were married, or when we got home from nothing”, any of those. And you can see the eye roll, because it’s like, what does that have to do with what’s happening right now? And that needs to be understood. 

Chris
Yeah, I think to me, it’s the brightest star, right? So I’m, I’m looking for a constellation, and that’s the brightest star. So what does it look like counseling, care and pastorally, to adjust my eyes, to settle into my chair and to engage in the night sky so that I actually can see past the brightest star and understand that the same heart that led to, let’s just use strangulation, which is such a severe form of abuse, in my mind, the same heart that led an individual to strangle his wife on their honeymoon is the same heart that is compelling him to use threats now or to persuade her through name calling now or to control her through isolation now it’s the same heart, the same corrupt perception, is leading me to these, quote, more respectable sins. And I think the devastating abuse of the past can actually distract some of us as helpers, because we can minimize and say, “well, it’s really not that bad, at least it’s not that” and again, I go back to the men that I’ve worked with, if they can, if they can get the same result for something that isn’t illegal or criminal, that’s the choice that they’ll make. And I completely get that. It’s a very logical, rational decision.

Ann Maree
And I’m glad you brought up that point right there about us listening. We never arrive. We never get to a point where we can say definitively, “oh, I know what’s going on here.” It’s always a hunt. It’s always an investigation. And I appreciate your humility and admitting that, being that you’re probably the leading expert, if you will, on domestic abuse in the church. Here’s a question. There seems to be a difference in what women would define as abusive versus what a man would. What have you heard in your work from both genders in their definitions of abuse? 

Chris
Yeah, the gender specific piece might be a little difficult. Maybe I’ll start with folks that have committed acts of abuse and maybe folks who have resisted or been abused. Primarily, there seems to be some differences there. Now, obviously in my work, that’s going to be gendered primarily, although I used to lead groups for women charged with criminal abuse as well. I think one of the things that we need to keep in mind is perspective and this, might help the listeners as well. Perspective you can, you can have two different people encounter the same incident, and it doesn’t mean that their accounts are conflicting just because they give different accounts, right? So if I’m standing on one side of the street, Ann Maree’s on the other side of the street, and a yellow school bus drives by, and someone says, “Hey, what was that?” And Ann Maree says, “well, it was a yellow school bus that came that’s driving, you know, from right to left.” And I go, “Well, there’s a bus and it but it came from left to right.” See, we’re both giving our perspective being on different sides of the street. She’s more descriptive. And it being a yellow school bus, I’m just saying that it’s a bus it doesn’t mean that one of us is wrong. It just means that we’re coming from different perspectives. And so I bring that up to say, most of the time, abusive individuals only see a glimpse of what is actually happening. They know what they’re doing, but their motivation is different, right? Most of the time, abusive men will talk to me about how they felt in the moment, they felt hurt or they felt disrespected, whereas victims will often articulate much more, not just their feelings, but what they experienced holistically. So the abuse descriptions are far different, and therefore the definitions are far different. So for a husband, for instance, who’s abusing his wife using name calling, he might admit to name calling. He might not even remember the specific names. It might take some cajoling to get it. A victim, though, is going to recall the name calling, but then also what the name calling meant, like there’s purpose behind it. She’s also going to talk about how she was affected by it, and she’s going to relate it back to something that happened in the past, if you can really get that type of layer upon layer. So I think perspective is part of it, and then, of course, ownership is part of it. I mean, victims are far more likely to second guess themselves and to take ownership. And so abuse gets muddled there too. It’s like, well, I know he hit me, but you know, just so, you know, I also have things. I’m also a sinner, whereas an abusive person, abusive man in particular, will say to me, I never would have hit her if she hadn’t A B, right? So there’s a minimization, a denial, a justification, a rationalization. So I’m not sure Ann Maree if they’re defining abuse differently as much as they’re perceiving the accounts differently, and I often find it’s better, better to articulate what is happening to them and what they’re perpetrating than it is to define the terms. I mean, we do that a lot, but this is something I get some pushback from our peers about, is I need a definition. How do you define it? Define it, define it. And I’m like, yeah, we can define it, but I’d much rather us talk to the people engaged and get some acknowledgement and some healing. So with an abusive man, for instance, what did you do? Right? Oh. Yeah, well, when you say you called her a name, what names? Oh, when you called her that name, I won’t say it on the podcast, whatever name it may be, right? What did you want when you did that? Well, what? How did that affect her? How did that affect your conversation? At that point, I’m really digging into those personal histories, and I think what I’m dealing with mostly is perceptions, rather than defining principles, because I don’t even care if we call it abuse. Sometimes it’s really hard for guys. It’s like, well, you’re calling me an abuser. I’m like, Well, what would you like to do? Like, let’s pick a term that you’re good with. Is cruel. Would you rather be known as someone who’s cruel, or someone who’s manipulated, or someone who’s destructive? Like, none of this is good dude. Like, none of this is good. And the number of men that I’ve had that over a course of time will will really hold on to not being labeled, and then look you right in the eye after, you know, months of work, and go, I was really abusive, wasn’t I? Yeah, that’s probably the word I would use. So in my mind, I’m I maybe I’m naive about this. I’m less inclined to define and much more inclined to learn. What do you think is happening? What how would you describe your response? How would you articulate your behavior? What is it that you did? What did you want? What happened when you when you did it? How did it benefit you? I want to learn their worldview and their behavior.

Ann Maree
I can hear a lot of women out there sighing and saying, “oh, we need more Chris Moles out there,” and just shameless plug I recently wrote on my sub stack. It’s helper dot sub stack about perspective. It’s coming from a different perspective, because the accusation from the church. Well, that’s your perspective called Proverbs 18, Perspective and the NFL. And I really do think, yes, we need a better handle on what we’re talking about when we’re talking about perspective. So thanks for twisting that and not agreeing with me and not not pulling out the gender card. That was helpful. I’m going to just play this last cue from Charles, and then I have a question for you. So let’s listen again.

Charles Recording
Jim called me up wanting to have breakfast and talk. Renee had been in contact with him, and he knew quite a few things about our difficulties. Simultaneously, there were some things in the book that pricked my conscious conscience, and I ended up confessing to my wife that I’ve been doing pornography for a number of years. I could no longer live with having any secrets in my life. At the breakfast with Jim, he said that he knew that things were not right and that I was messing up, and I believe those were his exact words. He wanted me to attend a three day retreat, and he would sponsor both myself and my wife. The men’s weekend is held the weekend before the women’s weekend. My wife wasn’t able to attend that fall, but did attend that the following spring. I attended that fall, and at that breakfast in the restaurant, I broke down into tears and confessed to my friend about my habit of being pornography and that I was afraid that I was going to lose my wife as a result of that, and my other behavior that I was beginning to see was bad. I was starting to get the idea that I was to blame for the problems in our marriage.

Ann Maree
Okay, so we have talked a bit about this already, taking ownership of the abuse, and you talk about specificity, and then also Charles is mentioning it here. And I’m just wondering if you can add to that, talk to us a little bit more about taking that ownership. And then, conversely, again, what does it look like when it’s not being recognized?

Chris
Yeah. Well, first of all, thank God for Jim. I know as Charles is mentioning, and also Charles is having transformative moments at breakfast, so it is the most important meal of the day, obviously, but thank God for Jim his willingness to intervene. I do say that domestic abuse rarely sees changes without intervention. You really need individuals to help. Kind of open up your mind and open up your heart. I also appreciate Charles’s use of pricking his conscience. I think we’re starting to see the Holy Spirit creep in, which really speaks to the redemptive nature of the gospel, but then also the sanctifying nature of our relationship with God. And that the Holy Spirit is beginning to prick his heart, to draw his mind and his heart into conformity, and he begins confessing. And that’s a great first step. I think sometimes we in the church, we settle for confession when we really should see that as a first step in measuring and understanding repentance. So what a great scenario, what a great clip to play you. As Charles ends his you know, this clip with, “I was to blame.” And I think that’s a huge, a huge marker for ownership, to have that kind of Nathan and King David moment, you know, you are the man. And for him to embrace that and say, “Yes, I am the man.” I’m responsible for the problems in our marriage. Now, a lot of people will hear that, and they’ll be like but, but wives do this and, yes, no one is denying that women in particular sin. Everybody knows women’s sin, and all the women listening go, “Amen. We’re well aware of our own sin,” right? Abuse is a very unique low hanging fruit for men. Men are just much more likely to succumb to its power, I think, because of the just the nature of authority, power, position, strength and force that often accompany abuse. And so it is important that we recognize that. And secondly, if we’re going to hold to a theological position similar to what Charles was embracing, we need to recognize that it’s a hierarchy of responsibility, that if I’m going to have power, this is kind of the SpiderMan theology. With great power comes great responsibility. I’m going to have to take responsibility, and that’s really the heartbeat of ownership, honestly, is to really take the time to acknowledge the ways in which I’ve sinned against my partner, to fully own that is to recognize the choices that I made right, the impact that it created, the effects that it caused right, and the the motivations of my heart to do that so, the choices, the motives, the thoughts, that centrality of the heart to say, “You know, this is what I think about the world. When I thought about my wife, this is what I wanted to see happen. It was contrary to what God wanted me to do. And here’s the choice that I made, the behavior that I participated in, and understanding that that contradicted what God had for me and my family, and then saying, that’s on me. I want to take responsibility for that and the impact that it cost.” And then really part of our work in counseling and care, then is okay. How do you make restitution for that? How do you actually go beyond saying I was wrong, which is usually how it comes out, I was wrong, I sinned against you, and now I want to make it right, and that’s going to be the practice of putting off and putting on and understanding that, you know, I use violence in the past, I want to find a way and to practice the fruits of the Spirit. If I used coercion in the past, I want to find a way to allow the Spirit to cultivate that fruit in my life moving forward. And so ownership is really this willing engagement with the work of repentance, and when it doesn’t take root, it comes off as defensive. We’re looking for, and I just lay it out here, if you’re struggling as a helper, or maybe you’re a man who’s struggling with your own anger, coercion and control towards your family, and you’re throwing your hands in the air, going, but what about their sin? What about their part? Put off the mutuality here. Right? The mutuality is what you’re sharing with your family, not what you’re taking from them. Like, don’t diminish your family by minimizing your own behavior. Start with ownership and really recognize the way in which you’re harming others. So when we start negotiating, compromising, justifying, rationalizing, then I don’t think we’ve owned our sin, and if we don’t own it, we’re never going to see it the way God sees it. That’s really the next step, right? It’s like, okay, I’m the man, and now I need to recognize who I’ve sinned against, right? So going back to Nathan and David. David’s response to his recognition of his horrible sin was to say, “I sinned against you, and you only” like God, this offended you. I really hate it, and that’s the next step. And once we hate it, then we can really walk in righteousness. Does that answer the question? I think ownership is really key, and the opposite of that is this negotiation and compromise that’s like, Well, let’s find a middle ground here. Now, I get it. Your wife is sinful. There’s no doubt, if you’re listening today and you’re being accused of abuse, your wife has sin. So does your neighbor, right? It’s just how it works. But when it comes to your use of coercive control. Take 100% I say this to guys, they’d say, Well, I think I’m about 10% responsible for what’s happening. I’m like, then why not take 100% responsibility for that? Like, why try to why do you continue to blame everybody but yourself? Like, wrestle it to the ground, man. Like, really own it and see what the Lord will do.

Ann Maree
And coming from our ministry perspective to this whole mutualizing, the and then not articulating exactly what’s happening, owning it what you’re saying the victim won’t get cared for. She is going to receive the type of care that misses the mark. I guess it misses. It misses exactly what she needs. And so that progression is so important, and I want to start with saying or say it again, I guess is you said confession is the first step. It’s great. And I’ve had wives whose husbands come back and confess immediately after they they’ve left and they see that as repentance. And I’ll say, No, you gotta, you gotta look at it from the long term perspective. But even more than that, what you’re saying is so key, confession is just one step of many, and it’s the first one, which is a good one, but there’s more. 

Chris
Sure. And I think one of the first questions I would want to ask in in being in meeting a confession. And some folks will say, you know, Whoa, you’re, you know, you’re not taking this person seriously. I actually love confession. I if you’re in any of my meetings, I praise confession like, that’s fantastic. Now, what are you going to do with it? Right? Because theology, is it really theological? If it’s not practical, how’s it going to lay out in our life? How’s it practically going to work out in your life? Let’s do an action plan that used to be one of my favorite things to do in live groups. Was like, Oh, you’ve acknowledged it. What are you going to do about it? Don’t tell me. Show me step one. Step two, what are we doing? And building out that action plan on those giant notepads we used to have was one of my favorite pieces, and we’re like, Hey, I’m gonna take a picture of this. I’m gonna rip off this big paper, and you’re gonna take it with you. You know, like the excitement of putting our words to action. For a facilitator is like gold. For an abusive individual, it’s hope, and for a victim, it’s safety.

Ann Maree
Perfect, yeah. And just with you too, I’m just so grateful that we have one of these stories that we could share, that the Holy Spirit moved in this way, in Charles, in and in Renee as well, in the ways that she needed her strength held up, if you will. I so appreciate talking to you. Every time I talk with you, I learn something, and I’m like, wow. And just hear your relationship with the Lord and walking close with him, which is also so very important for us that work in this climate.

Chris
It’s mutual, buddy in all the ways, not in the bad mutual ways, and all the good, yeah,

Ann Maree
There’s a good mutual, yeah. So I thank you. I thank you again, and I know Charles and Renee were very excited that you were going to speak into their situation, and they’ve been impacted very much by your resources and time with the Lord. So thanks for joining us, Chris.

Chris
Thank you for having me and you know, God bless Charles and Renee. We appreciate you guys praying for your continued growth and just excited to see what the Lord has done and what he’s going to continue to do. It’s his work, and he’s faithful to complete it. 

Ann Maree  Amen.

That’s all for today. Join us next time on the Safe to Hope podcast, when we talk with both Charles and Renee and hear from them how they each experienced God or not in their situation. 

For anyone concerned about domestic abuse in their own home or in that of a loved one, and you’re looking for more information, we recommend you go to the Called to Peace website link or ChrisMoles.org link found in our show notes. We’ll also be sure to include any of the resources mentioned today in those show notes.

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Safe to Hope is a production of HelpHer. Our Executive Producer is Ann Maree Goudzwaard. Safe to Hope is written and mixed by Ann Maree and edited by Ann Maree and Helen Weigt. Music is Waterfall and is licensed by Pixabay. We hope you enjoyed this episode in the Safe To Hope podcast series. 

Safe To Hope is one of the resources offered through the ministry of HelpHer, a 501C3 that provides training and resources for those ministering in one-another care and advocacy for women in crisis in Christian institutions. Your donations make it possible for HelpHer to serve as they navigate these crises. All donations are tax deductible. If you’d be interested in partnering financially with the ministry, go to help her dot help and click the give link in the menu. If you’d like more information or would like to speak to someone about ministry goals or advocacy needs, go to HelpHer.help. That’s help her dot H E L P.

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We value and respect conversations with all our guests. Opinions, viewpoints, and convictions may differ so we encourage our listeners to practice discernment. As well. guests do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HelpHer. It is our hope that this podcast is a platform for hearing and learning rather than causing division or strife.

Please note, abuse situations have common patterns of behavior, responses, and environments. Any familiarity construed by the listener is of their own opinion and interpretation. Our podcast does not accuse individuals or organizations.

The podcast is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis, or treatment.

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