Good people never pretend to be evil, but evil people pretend to be good. Sheep don’t wear wolves’ clothing.

In the beginning, when abuse still had me in the fog and I was a new pastor (the fog can last for years!) I used to think that the many abusers I had met in the church, people who profess to be Christians and were even highly thought of by the rest of the church, were Christians with problems. A hard childhood, shame issues, and so on. As long as I dealt with them that way, in my relationship with them as their pastor, I got nowhere. In fact, what I did do was enable them in their abuse, supporting them in their excuse-making. Have to hold the church together, you know.

Then, after almost 30 years of being emotionally and spiritually slapped around by these kind, the Lord opened my eyes to the real nature of abuse – its mentality and its tactics. He gave me an extra-hard wakeup “whack” upside the head as they say down South. The result was that I began to see what was happening to me, and to their other victims, and I also began to read the Bible like never before, with new understanding about what it says about the psychology of sin. Nothing illustrates the nature of sin better than abuse, in my opinion. I realized that when the Bible says things such as it does in the following verses, it means exactly what it says. I say that again – it means exactly what it says! I had been taught for years, like many of you in the evangelical church that these black and white words are actually quite gray. Wrong!

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, (1 John 2:4)
Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. (1 John 2:9)
Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3:15 )

Christ truly changes us when He saves us. I mean, He really changes us so that though we are not perfect by any means, the fundamental nature of our being becomes one that loves God and loves others. Have you been taught otherwise? I was taught “otherwise” at a conservative Bible college for Pete’s sake!

When I faced up to this, I realized that a person who is an abuser simply cannot be a Christian. It can’t be. He may look like it in many ways and at many times, but he is a fraud. I learned that good people never pretend to be evil, but evil people love to pretend to be good. Sheep don’t wear wolves’ clothing. What is perhaps even more sobering is that this also means that many people in our churches who may not be classic abusers, nevertheless are not genuine Christians. Abuse victims in a church can really suffer at their hands too.