The notion of "abuse" (from the Latin abusus: using up, wasting; from the verb abutor: make full use of, use fully/abuse, waste) once made sense. That was when John Paul II's definition of morality held general sway among all but academics and other intellectuals; i.e., behavior according to an objective, (more or less) universally recognized and accepted standard. Then to abuse someone could mean to treat the person in such a way as to violate the moral law. Hence, it was legitimate to speak of an adult abusing a child physically and of the physically abused child as a victim. This once meant to inflict physical pain to the point of injury (beyond what is morally acceptable). Now, however, it means whatever the "victim's" advocate wishes it to mean, including ordinary parental spanking. In the same way, victim culture has widened the meaning of other kinds of abuse, so sexual abuse includes not only an adult using a child for sexual gratification (objectively sinful according to the law of God), but also asking the wrong adult too often for a date.

The new definition of abuse has shifted. It does not include an objective description of abusive behavior. Rather, it tends to describe, as the major element in the definition, the subjective reaction of the victim. In current parlance, abuse is any behavior which another person experiences as painful, regardless of the objective characteristics of that behavior.

And new semi-official categories of abuse have proliferated: emotional abuse, psychological abuse, and (for me-too-ing Christians who wish to be PC) spiritual abuse.

David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen offer this definition of spiritual abuse:

Spiritual abuse is the mistreatment of a person who is in need of help, support or greater spiritual empowerment, with the result of weakening, undermining or decreasing that person's spiritual empowerment (The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, Bethany House, p. 20).

Notable is the vacuum left by the omission of an objective description of the behavior purportedly being defined. What behavior constitutes abuse? According to this canon, anything said to another person by a spiritual leader which the recipient experiences as decreasing the recipient's spiritual empowerment constitutes abuse.

This same policy, defining bad behavior by referring to its effect on the person who claims victim status, has permeated contemporary "morality" and has initiated such a broadening of definitions as to obliterate the logically useful practice of making essential distinctions. Sexual harassment, for example, has evolved to mean any behavior that offends the "victim" and can be categorized under the broad label "sexual." Racism, according to Carol Moseley-Braun, is practically anything that offends her and reminds her of the once-abject status of her race in America. Catherine MacKinnon proclaims that "all sex is rape."

Johnson and VanVonderen give examples of behavior they consider spiritually abusive. In fact, although they never offer a substantive definition, they proliferate disparate examples. Some of the examples describe behavior which is true abuse (misuse and mistreatment according to the moral law), as, for example, a pastor seducing a parishioner. Other examples could, in certain circumstances, exemplify truthful, loving, appropriate, scripturally valid admonition. These include instances where a spiritual leader advises a woman that she is being rebellious, or suggests to a man that he has not taken on the "mantle" as spiritual head of his home, or urges a person to pray more. It seems obvious to me that these snippets of pastoral advice might be offered at the wrong time in the wrong place and to the wrong person. They might constitute an erroneous diagnosis or a misapplied prescription. But at the right moment in counseling they would not only be correct, but essential to communicate.

The classic doctrinal distinction between law and gospel requires that anyone in pastoral ministry learn and practice an art (in the Aristotelian sense). Both law and gospel are true and scriptural. But together they create paradox. To minister correctly, one must know the essential differences between them and be skilled in timing their special uses appropriately. To give the law to one in need of the gospel would be to crush a bruised reed, and this appears to me to be what the expositors on "spiritual abuse" might be trying to say without having acquired the requisite theological and philosophical substructures to understand their own message.

However, to give the gospel when the law is needed is to seal and confirm an impenitent sinner in damnation: an opposite and equally destructive failure of ministry. One of the difficulties with "spiritual abuse" as described by Johnson and VanVonderen seems to be precisely ignoring the fact that impenitent sinners need the law with its norm-setting content (don't worship idols, don't kill, don't steal, be pure, etc.) and its contingency-setting function (e.g., "the soul that sinneth it shall die"; "This do and thou shalt live"; ". . .that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth").

The secular world has abandoned objective moral judgments because it has correctly discerned that they rest on religion. In so doing, it has not dissolved the problems raised by the issue of morality. Some of the problems posed by the new "abuse-victim" moral system: 1) If morality is not based on objective factors, it must derive from subjective reactions or feelings or else it must go away. Human nature is such that morality can't be dissolved as an issue in society. Therefore, the quality of your actions must be assessed by the quality of my reaction. And that gives my reaction a transcendence it simply cannot support.

2) No person can predict the reaction others may have, so he can't make a moral judgment concerning what he is about to do.

3) Lacking the kind of information characterized by self-talk like "The deed you are contemplating is wrong," people cannot behave morally. Civil society dissolves.

4)Courts of law and government must be increasingly burdened with adjudicating issues among citizens.

5) Some people will be categorized as perpetrators and others as victims, with the initiative belonging to those who can get the jump on others by claiming victim status first. This is because there is no defense against the charge, "What you said made me feel terrible."

So the basis for Dr. Enroth's apparent comfort in the situation you have described might be this: There is no need to talk with the "perpetrators" since authentic victimhood has been established on the basis of the status of the injured, all of whom are in pain, some to the point of dysfunction. It literally makes no difference what was actually done to them or what the reasons for the events in question might be. According to the old "John Paul II" morality, this was "one-sided." Not anymore. Now, only one side is needed to establish "abuse."

If this analysis appears strange to you, read the books on abuse. Therapists hear clients' abuse tales and conclude they have all the evidence needed to establish the abuse as fact. Why interview (or even believe) anyone else? Anita Hill ought to be believed solely on the basis of the harassing behaviors described; Clarence Thomas's version of events is unnecessary and irrelevant and so is other available evidence (read David Brock's exhaustive report in the book The Real Anita Hill). Your emotional problems are a result of the "demands, expectations, and intimidations of well-meaning people," according to VanVonderen's Tired of Trying to Measure Up. Evidently, if you got zinged by one of these "well-meaning people," you might qualify for authentic victimhood, where it is not necessary to pay much attention to whether what these "well-meaning people" did was wrong. You were zinged and that's all there is to it.

What do I think of the methodology Dr. Enroth is using? I don't understand it. It sounds like something peculiar to sociologists. He is comfortable with it, evidently. As a psychologist, I would not consider it valid for reaching any publishable conclusions except perhaps as a report on attitudes found among people who have left a group. To infer anything about the group itself on such evidence would be outrageously unscientific for psychologists. Sociologists? Well, maybe their science is about as dismal as economics, huh?

There are other considerations that occur to me. Your community is certainly a church, but it isn't only a church and will never become a typical church. Therefore, interactions among members are to be judged by different standards. Your community is family, but it isn't only a family, either. It's much too big even for an extended family model to do it justice. Your community is an experiment. Few indeed are the Christian groups that have succeeded for long at community living. If you have failures, it is truly mind-blowing that a fellow Christian would collect them, list them, and run straight to his favorite publisher with them. Reminds me of the people who found hypodermic syringes in their Pepsi cans--first thing they did was call a lawyer! It grieves a body to note that Matthew 18 appears to have been ignored in so many contemporary situations. Doesn't ordinary common sense advise that if one is truly concerned about the behavior of a brother, "gaining thy brother" ought never be de-emphasized in favor of someone else claiming victimhood?

I don't know Dr. Enroth, but I do know JPUSA. What you are doing to one another when I'm not around is not known to me by observation. But that same statement could be made about [my wife] Candy. I think I have the gift of discernment, and what I have seen and heard in your midst is as incompatible with objectively abusive interpersonal behavior as it could be. Of course, you are a bunch of sinners, saved by grace, so you blow it occasionally (the new morality doesn't permit lapses, but Christianity has a strong remedy for lapses). I can't recall ever knowing people who try harder to clobber the flesh and walk in the light. I have also seen your progeny. As a clinician, I would have to tell you they show no signs of abusive parenting.

Before you all get too shook, ask how terrible it would be for JPUSA if Zondervan and Enroth published their own lapses in judgment. I think you would all survive just fine. The Rock on which you build isn't easily shaken. 

William Backus, Ph.D., S.T.M., is a consulting psychologist and director of the Center for Christian Psychological Services, St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Backus has authored numerous books; among them Telling Yourself the Truth, Telling Each Other the Truth, Telling the Truth to Troubled People, and The Paranoid Prophet? (Bethany House).

First published in Cornerstone (ISSN 0275-2743), Vol. 22, Issue 102/103 (1994), pp. 35-36 © 1994 by Cornerstone Communications, Inc.

Electronic version may contain minor changes and corrections from printed version.