Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 10:3 (Summer 1996)
Article: “Rightly Dividing The Word Of Truth” About Domestic Violence
Author: James V. Potter

PP 10:3 (Summer 1996) p. 12

“Rightly Dividing The Word Of Truth”
About Domestic Violence

James V. Potter

James V. Potter, Ph.D., is Administrative Assistant for Shascade Community Services, Inc. (Redding, CA) and Program Director for the area of Family Life Skills.

“If wives were submissive like God intended them to be, there wouldn’t be any domestic violence” is a statement that I have heard over and over again during my years as a counselor. These comments have not all come from the lips of battering husbands, but from many Christian workers and members of the clergy as well. Is domestic violence a modern phenomena associated with the feminist movement? Is it the result of non-submissive wives? Is it a phenomena associated with the inner cities, slums or urban blight? Or, is domestic violence just a sign of the times that we live in?

Consider these statistics. Between two and four million American women are beaten each year by their husbands or boyfriends; domestic violence is the second leading cause of injury to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four! Domestic violence threatens the stability and survival of the family and negatively impacts every member of the family—especially the children, who learn that violence is an acceptable way to deal with stress or conflict. Boys who grow up in abusive homes are more likely to become batterers, and girls who grow up in these circumstances are more likely to become abused wives.

This transgenerational pattern of violence is a clear example of the warning contained in Numbers 14:18-19. “The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet, he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

The secular world has developed an answer for this problem: Break up the family and you break up the cycle. In these and other words, the world declares that the only way to bring violence within a family to an end is to end the marital relationship. This concept does not sit well with Christians, however, who have been instilled with the words from Malachi 2:16, “I hate divorce says the Lord God of Israel,” and the sacred marriage vow we took “to love, honor and cherish until death do us part.” But how can a mother adhere to biblical teaching and still protect herself and her children from the effects of domestic violence? Is divorce the only way to insure protection from her abuser? Does divorce “work”? Will God forgive?

PP 10:3 (Summer 1996) p. 13

These are questions every Christian wife who has been battered has asked. Each ...