How did we get to the point where Scripture is so easily weaponized?
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I mean, I suppose it always has been. That’s one of the things Jesus railed against the religious leaders for, and that the prophets railed against their leaders for: they took Scripture they used it to solidify their own power, and to make life more difficult for those lower down the social ladder so that they wouldn’t have a lot of opposition.
That’s really how religion is all too easily misused: People want to be good. People want to have God’s approval. People want to love God. So if religious leaders tell them, “this is what it means to be good and love God,” then even if it hurts them, many will still go down that road.
And that road leads to burdens and heartache and pain.
This is one of the reasons that I love that Jesus is the Word.
We worship Jesus, not the Bible. Jesus is the Word. When we see Jesus, we see what God is like. We interpret Scripture through the lens of Jesus.
One person who has done that so well is Dr. Steven Tracy.
I talked with him on the Bare Marriage podcast recently, and I want to elaborate on one particular part of his new book To Heal or Harm: Scripture’s Use as Poison or Medicine for Abuse.
But first, picture this: It’s a seminary campus, and two profs are teaching across the hall from each other. One is Dr. Steven Tracy. He talks about proper interpretation of Scripture; about abuse; about human sexuality (and even uses The Great Sex Rescue as a textbook!). Down the hall is Dr. Wayne Grudem, who is one of the foremost proponents of male hierarchy in evangelicalism.
For years the two were colleagues, and this matters, because Dr. Tracy knows how to talk to people like Wayne Grudem. He knows how to talk to people who have devoted their life to Scripture, even if they believe Scripture endorses hierarchy. He knows how to talk to people who won’t do anything unless the Bible says it’s okay to do. He knows how to talk to pastors who can’t believe anything that sounds left wing unless you can definitively prove it from Scripture.
I can do my part to try to move the needle to show the evangelical church that God does not condone abuse, and that He wants women to flourish too. But I’m not a Bible scholar, and my main area of expertise is not biblical interpretation. And so many of these pastors just discount me, even though we have reams of research that back us up. To Heal or Harm, though, is much harder to dismiss because it’s entirely based on how we interpret Scripture. And it shows that you simply can’t use the Bible to tell women they can’t divorce for abuse, or that adult children should stay submissive to abusive parents, or that people should follow an abusive pastor. Nope.
He spends the first third of the book talking about principles in interpreting Scripture.
Why has the Bible been able to be used for poison? Because people often don’t understand what different literary genres mean in the Bible; people don’t see that you can’t just rip a verse out of context; people have to look at the rest of the Bible too. He summarizes that section of the book like this:
We have covered a lot of ground in this and the previous chapter. We saw that two essential prerequisites to sound biblical interpretation are reliance on the Holy Spirit and a humble, receptive posture. We went on to identify six hermeneutical principles:
1. Clarify the context.
2. Let Scripture interpret Scripture.
3. Look for the plain, literal meaning.
4. Identify the most likely meaning of the author.
5. Recognize the limits and function of the Old
Testament law.
6. Interpret according to normal rules of literary genre.
After walking the reader through each of those points, he then turns to the passages that have been used for “poison”, and invites us to use these points to properly interpret them.
I want to focus on on of those passages today. We looked at a whole bunch of them in our podcast episode, and many of them have to do with marriage and parenting. But today I want to turn to something different that we haven’t fleshed out as much yet on Bare Marriage: what should our posture be towards church leaders? And for that, let’s look at this passage:
Hebrews 13:17–“Obey your leaders and submit to them.”
Here’s why I want to delve into this one: Often women especially have been told that they cannot divorce or leave an abusive husband unless the pastor and the elders agree. And if these men, who are likely friends of your husband (or the husband may even be an elder!) agree, you can’t leave and have to stay in abuse.
I want us to become a church where women don’t feel that they need the church’s permission to protect themselves or their children.
So let’s see how Dr. Tracy encourages us to look at this passage:
1. The Greek implies that leadership isn’t about power
He starts with the original Greek, and notes that the word for “leaders” has a meaning of guiding. He says:
Church leaders influence (lead, guide) their congregations through the example of their godly lives and faithful teaching of Scripture. This is very different from the power-based authority model many espouse.
So first point: leadership isn’t about power!
2. The context shows how leadership is limited
He then goes on to note that the verses around this one, including one that can seem strange–that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever–actually limit the leaders’ power. Leaders only have power in so much as they point people to Jesus, who is our ultimate guide. He is the one who remains the same, and in an age where there are false teachers, we have to keep that in mind.
He shows how the verbs in this passage are not about anyone exercising power, but about yielding to leaders when they are in Christ.
In other words, we are to allow our church leaders to persuade us from Scripture, and when they do so we are to yield to that teaching. We are to obey it. “These two imperatives should never be understood to pro- mote blind obedience. Church leaders have no biblical warrant to demand obedience simply because they are church leaders.
3. Let’s use the rest of Scripture to see how church authority is utilized
Dr. Tracy then invites us to step back from the passage itself and take a broader look at Scripture. Let’s look at the leadership that Jesus and Paul and the apostles exercised. Was it about power and control?
Never! And he contrasts this with the Pharisees and Sadduccees who were about power and control, but who were also seen as missing the mark. I love what he said about Paul:
Paul, who had apostolic authority (which was much greater than the authority of a local church pastor), rarely used his apostolic authority to compel obedience. Nor did he spiritually “lord it over” the flock (2 Cor 1:24; cf. 1 Pet 5:3). Rather, Paul repeatedly appealed to his own exemplary lifestyle and his love for them as their spiritual father to get his listeners to behave in a particular manner. He graciously sought to persuade by appealing, not demanding. Paul says he could have used his apostolic authority to compel their obedience, but that was not his method (1 Thess 2:6–7). Modern pastors should follow Paul’s example.
The bottom line: you don’t have to blindly obey church leaders!
They have to be following Jesus, and they have to be sacrificing for you and acting lovingly towards you. And they should be trying to guide you with Scripture and further into Christ, not weaponizing Scripture through power and control. That’s how a real follower of Jesus who is leading the flock would act.
Dr. Tracy handles all kinds of weaponized passages like this in the book, giving us a blueprint to follow when we’re trying to interpret hard passages. And I think this is such a useful book to help people who are trying to stand up for abuse victims, but who also are in a church context where the Bible is considered the final authority, and where you really can’t do anything unless you can find a proof text for it.
I’ve talked with so many women who are heartbroken and desperate to leave, and who often have pastors who feel deeply for them, but these same pastors will quote a bible verse that seems to imply they should stay. And then everyone seems stuck.
But there are better ways to use the Bible–to show that God wants to heal us, not harm us! And in the latter section of the book Dr. Tracy turns to showing how the Bible does indeed intend to heal us.
It’s a reassuring book for people who have grown up with the Bible as their main guide, and who have been taught faulty interpretations of these passages in a way that maintains power and control for a few while harming others.
It’s time we do better, and that’s what Steven and his wife have done, starting ministries for healing abuse victims and taking that ministry to Congo as well. That’s how the Bible should be used. And I hope that this catches on!
Watch our podcast episode together!
Have you had Scripture weaponized against you? How do we help people see they don’t need a pastor’s permission to leave? Let’s talk in the comments!
Yes to all of this!
I know it feels overwhelming when first starting, but the best thing I’ve ever done to pick up on misused verses is to read the Bible cover to cover. Even if it takes several years. It just gives such a better filter for misused verses. Because even if, like me, you’re terrible at scripture memorization, things will start to stick and an internal warning light will go off prompting you to look things up.
https://whyhavewefasted.substack.com/p/is-being-in-the-word-actually-attainable
Ive been listening to the book on Spotify and it is so good! I agree he speaks the language of Christians who want to get their answers only from the Bible on life issues. Thank you for bringing on all these amazing authors on your podcast! I love reading their books!
So glad you’re enjoying it! I really hope more people hear it because I think this book could make a HUGE difference!
Yes! I think everyone should read through at least once in their lives. Absolutely!
I cannot say enough good things about Dr Steven Tracy. He is the founder of Mending the Soul, a ministry organization I am very blessed to be a part of. They train lay people to lead healing groups for abuse survivors using their curriculum he and his wife Celestia wrote. They take teams every year to the Congo and Kenya to train community leaders to help their people heal from the atrocities they have suffered every day. It is so dangerous where they go, but Dr Tracy has said to me once, ” I would crawl on glass to help these people.” Steve and Celestial are the most caring and compassionate individuals I’ve ever met. He teaches ethics and theology at my seminary. I would recommend any of his books and resources if you are an abuse victim. Get into a Mending the Soul healing group. To learn more, go to http://www.mendingthe soul.org
I love that!
I find the name of Dr Tracy’s wife (Celestia) amusing.
I spent several years of the 2010s involved in Bronydom, i.e. My Little Pony fandom, with a special interest in its fan-done derivative works (text fiction, art, animations, music. etc). In the fourth generation/incarnation of MLP (Friendship is Magic, 2010-2019), Celestia is also the name of the ruler of the ponies’ magical land of Equestria — Princess Celestia, an immortal winged unicorn twice the size of a mortal pony, filling the niche of a benevolent, approachable, even playful god-figure.
This book is a must read and I’m going to order it today!
The book Love and Respect was all about using a few select Bible verses to lord it over wives. I’ve been told I should have never divorced because of abuse which was not literally mentioned in the Bible. It was a woman who said this to me, but several men came to my rescue and said when my ex was being abusive, he had already abandoned the marriage vows. They believed God would not want me to stay in an unsafe situation. Thankfully, the woman apologized and looking back, I understand she just wanted to follow the Bible because that’s what she had been told to do her whole life.
I am beyond grateful that my second husband loves me and treats me as an equal, yet I’m still deconstructing these harmful teachings I’ve heard over the years in church and have read in Christian books.
I know! Even I struggle with beliefs that I know are wrong, but they’re just so visceral because I was taught them for so long.
I have just finished reading Dr. Tracy’s book. It was really good. I am planning to reread it along with Rebecca Davis’ books also. Untwisting misused scriptures sometimes feels like a very long process. It has taken me a long time to realize that I was conditioned to accept their misuse as “normal.” My husband has been incredibly patient with me while I have been trying to undo the damage of the weaponized scriptures my dad has used to control everyone around him for years.
I took a look at the preview pages at Amazon, and had a hard time getting past the word “Scripture”.
(Like Tracy had a hard time getting past the thought of a strawberry shake after that flu bug he related in the Introduction.)
“Scripture” was the weaponization name used by all the Calvary Chapel radio programs that dominated local Christian AM radio during the Eighties. During my time in-country in the Seventies, the weaponization name was “The WORD of GOD”.
“I have been trying to undo the damage of the weaponized scriptures my dad has used to control everyone around him for years.”
Note: Some of the damage done will be permanent. Like Frodo Baggins after he bore the Ring to Mount Doom, there is no healing this side of the Undying Lands.
Interesting thing is that I quit listening to Christian radio Ministries about 15 or so years ago. Homeschooling took more time than I had time to listen to anyone on the radio. In retrospect, I’m so glad that I did quit listening in favor of prioritizing homeschooling my kids.
Love your Frodo quote. I often quote Lewis or Tolkien on a regular basis.
I think this is very true. I think the book was written specifically for those who need to understand, from Scripture, that abuse is wrong and that verses are being misused. I think there are others who just need to be told this isn’t of God.
I love hearing about your husband cheering you on as you break patterns. That’s beautiful.
“So first point: leadership isn’t about power!”
According to Dr Tracy, it’s about Influence by Example.
Becoming the type of leader people WANT to follow, not are FORCED to follow.
(Which disqualifies a lot of preachers right off the bat.)
It certainly does!
This posting specifically is “Stop Using the Bible as a Weapon”.
Back in the Eighties (a high point in pop music, when not only was there an MTV, but it actually played music videos!) there was this Pat Benatar song called “Stop Using Sex as a Weapon”.
The actual title is “Sex as a Weapon” and is viewable on YouTube under that title. A search on “sex as a weapon” should bring it up.
Also do a search on “sex as a weapon lyrics” sometime; they’re quite an eye-opener and very adjacent to this blog.