Just as Moses, Abraham, and Boaz were pictures of the Christ to come – so too is the Abuser a picture of the devil. Because the Abuser is a very pure form of sin and evil, he is a photograph of the face of Satan. How many survivors can remember their abuser standing before them with eyes full of hatred, violence, and yet a peculiar empty void? I can remember when I was dating my ex, I noticed that he did not share many deep thoughts, opinions, or feelings that were individual to him. I assumed that he was just a very “internal” person. That perhaps he just kept some things to himself.
By the time the honeymoon was over, I came to know how deceived I had been. This man never pondered anything,
Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. (Proverbs 4:26 [ESV])
I will ponder the way that is blameless.
Oh when will you come to me?
I will walk with integrity of heart
within my house (Psalm 101:2 [ESV])
— unless he was pondering ways to crush and accuse me.
He was void of anything pure and good. The only things that came out of him (behind closed doors) were lies, deception, hatred, accusations, oppression, threats, and porn addiction. And yet on the surface, he appeared to be a charming and nice person who sat in the church pews on Sunday. His hatred was covered with deception:
though his hatred be covered with deception, his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly. (Proverbs 26:26 [ESV])
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. (Zechariah 3:1 [ESV])
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44 [ESV])
One thing in particular that I noticed about my husband was that he loved war documentaries about Hitler. At first I believed that he was just a “history buff”, who enjoyed watching the History Channel every chance he got. After a while, however, I was fascinated and unnerved by the fact that he only seemed riveted by Hitler and WWII (and perhaps Stalin and Mao). He was not nearly as entertained by the Civil War and the end of slavery, for example. After watching my husband sitting through the same documentaries about Hitler over and over, without showing any sign of being affected by the information, I began asking him questions.
“How can you watch this over and over? It makes me so depressed and sad!” – his answer was only a shrug of his shoulders.
Sometimes I would try harder. “What are you thinking about this [footage of the Jewish massacre]?” – again, no real response other than a shrug of his shoulders.
I knew what I was living with, but nobody would have believed it. My now ex husband is still to this day a respected person with a government job and a high security clearance, and he attends a large church with his new wife. Ponder that for a moment, my friends.
But then ponder this:
Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8 [ESV])
And this:
Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. (1 John 4:4 [ESV])
Christ in you is greater than the one that dwells in your Abuser. Therefore the victory is, and will forever be, yours. Consider the fact that just as Job was hand-selected by God to meet Satan’s worst testing (Job 2:3), you are one of the brethren who was elected to meet Satan’s worst in this present age. You have met the Evil One, in all of his self-administered glory.
There must be a future purpose for that. Job was a righteous man, but after all of these tests he was even more refined: he gave his daughters an inheritance equal to his sons! Likewise you will be forged into something that more closely reflects the image of God. (James 1:2)
The story of your life has a blockbuster ending, sweet friends!
***
Posts in this series
Part 1: Is this post
Part 2: The Abuser as a Picture of Satan
A Cry For Justice 
The first time someone made the comment to me that my ex was not really a Christian, I remember poo-pooing it and for some weird reason actually defending him and saying, “oh, I don’t know about that, after all he was baptized and goes to church.” Really??? What was i thinking?
Now I see clearly that someone truly of Christ DOES NOT continue on in abusive ways or perhaps never goes there in the first place.
And this: “How many survivors can remember their abuser standing before them with eyes full of hatred, violence, and yet a peculiar empty void?”
Oh my, that brought back very vivid images of my ex and those killer looks he would give me…the saying, “if looks could kill”, I am almost certain that was stated about my ex.
He could be giving me the most hate-filled looked, yet his eyes be completely void of any soul present. So very chilling…
Mine loved Dexter and Califorication…it’s one thing to note a good show or try to understand a deranged personality, it’s another to think what they are doing is right and good and to be admired.
Oh, my goodness, Katy! This really hits what is on my heart this morning! In fact, I was on FB before I checked my emails (where I read this post) and had JUST posted a comment and a link to something written by someone else; my comment was along this vein regarding the inherent EVIL of abuse.
I’ve long had an issue with the mental illness reference, the referring to abusers as narcissists or other “personality disorders.” The very first time my ex attacked me, it culminated in him smashing my head while choking me and yelling in face, “I’m going to blow satan out my @$$&^!%.” His voice didn’t even sound like his. It was deep, throaty, other worldly. I called my mom’s co-worker, a devout Christian, who told me that she would lock herself in the bathroom at work and pray and told me to put my hands on the door to his room and pray. (He seemed to just immediately pass out after that little outburst.) As I did what she told me to do, there were rattling sounds from the pantry, adjacent to our bedroom where he lie sleeping. It continued on as long as I tried to pray over him. I KNEW I was not dealing with a merely disturbed human being!
Then, after I joined the local domestic violence support group at our county’s women’s shelter in 2011, I heard woman after frightened new woman come to group and recount how their abuser had made some reference to satan during his initial attack! One woman, a rather rough looking, former(?) drug addict, who’d certainly seen a lot of things that would scare many of us, cried hysterically as she told how her abuser ripped open his shirt, beat on his own chest, and said, “I am satan!” immediately before he attacked her.
Thank you so much for this wonderful, brave post!!!
This makes so much sense, Katy. Really really good. I had a friend in Germany whose husband was INFATUATED with Hitler. He was highly abusive. Highly. And she thought several times about turning him in because it is actually illegal to have Hitler paraphernalia in your home!
I love all the encouragement and hope you list at the end. A blockbuster ending is coming. Amen!!
I am all too familiar with those eyes and the total lack of any original thoughts. ideas or opinions. He would always just repeat whatever I said in slightly different words. He never had anything to offer- never any help with the kids needless to say. Tho all he ever wanted to watch on t.v. was mountain biking and skateboarding shows. If we watched anything with violence in it, he would be extremely tense and on the edge of his seat the entire time.
Jodi – my ex loved to watch ESPN and Hitler. He went back and forth between the two. 🙂 It’s not so much what programs they are watching but their interactions/reactions to it. You can tell someone is an empty pit when they have absolutely ZERO response to watching cruelty. He had stronger reactions to the NFL draft than he did to violent atrocities.
Katy, I had such an eerie deja vu feeling reading your post. My abusive first husband had a fascination with Hitler too. I always wondered what was up with that. He read long book about and even by Hitler, watched documentaries. He also read the Bible two hours a day, but he would seem to come up with ideas of megalomania from it instead of treating others with dignity and love.
After we separated I developed my own fascination with studying materials on psychopaths and criminals. I was desperately seeking to understand motivations for his behavior. I finally gave up on that. I didn’t need to understand. He just wasn’t the person I thought he had been (he was a pastor) and I had been duped. I didn’t even need to understand why, I just needed to recover, help my kids, and move on.
There were definitely some creepy Satanic things going on more and more with him but I don’t even like to get into that. It was a sad, sad descent and his behavior finally killed him.
I would often be in bed at night and the MIW would lay behind me, and say vulgar things, and whisper to the back of my head about how easy it would be to slit my throat. One night the MIW started muttering what sounded to be tongues? It was not something that could be rehearsed, I remember I just layed mortified, frozen in terror until it stopped…..I use to struggle with what that was? I mention this, timidly on this blog when I first came here, and Barb was pretty clear that this was demonic, could NOT be from God. That is something I will never forget, because it just sinks the truth in deeper about what Katy has written about here. I was married to the devil. That truth is what gives my family and I the power over the disease I refer to as the MIW. And yes, my hope resides in the truth of the matter, God IS greater. This MIW rages, twists, contorts, snarls because it knows exactly where it is going. (and it aint purty) lol.
They feed off of suffering and pain. My husband, in the aftermath of 9-11, looked me in the eye and said, “I wish more people had died. I’m really disappointed – there was supposed to be more death!”
He periodically had confessions, like the above. It was like a part of him was surprised by his own behavior, but not horrified enough to change.
He used to “smile” when he said such things… not a warm smile, but a crooked one – more like a smirk, a mocking smile… and it made me shiver. He was a church deacon, later a pastor-in-training, and today a house pastor and prison minister.
They feed off of our pain… whether television, news, or in person. I believe some of these abusers have lost their humanity and have become totally possessed by the demonic.
Susan! yes!
He would say evil, cruel things and there was always this odd mocking smile that went with it. And there were also a few times where he seemed surprised at his own behavior (but of course not enough to change it!)
the fact that your ex is still a pastor should give us the chills. These men are pictures of Satan and yet they pretend to preach the Word of God. Never has that scripture been more evident – the one about how we are not battling flesh and blood (somebody help me cuz I can’t remember the verse number)
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Eph. 6:12
yes thank you BIT ! 🙂
No prob.
By the way, I like your duck. 🙂
One of our readers is going to be writing us a post titled “The Smirk” — so stay tuned!
On the edge of my seat, I know that smirk!!
I believe some of these abusers have lost their humanity and have become totally possessed by the demonic.
I think that must be true. 😦
Thank You, Katy for that sweet ending and giving us HOPE! Because I think that is what we need! Things have been so ugly for many of us that sometimes you lose that Hope and sometimes you forget that God loves you so much. I think cause we really wish/want things to be different and we are in disbelief (like you said about your husbands watching Hitler movies. ) Yes, it is amazing how they can be Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde-one person behind closed doors and sweet at Church-that really gets me upset-the deceit and how people think he is so wonderful and ‘what’s your problem’? She’s ‘overemotional, right’! Thank You for sharing!
I wrote that because I often need to be reminded myself not to lose hope 😦
It goes with the territory. Remember in Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is trapped in the castle with the monster called Despair….and he gets to the point where he wants to commit suicide until he remembers – wait! I have a key that will unlock any door in Doubting Castle!
So it’s good to remind ourselves that this story is not finished yet. And God is on our side. 🙂
This Dr. J and Mr. H syndrome? I dunno? Its SO freakin rampant in the church. Everybody is running around trying to cover their own behinds like clucking lunatics. (the rampant voices that say “whats YOUR problem, or YOUR too sensitive)
The masterful art of an abusers deception..aaah!..memories!!!……walking into a local Christian Fellowship is like walking into a paint ball war, you can see the bloody splatters everywhere, and then all the people running around, so busy trying to clean up, trying to deflect from whats going on, because “Their family life is so perfect”. Its just lunacy at its peak. Abusers wouldnt even consider “Church” if it didnt serve their calling to decieve.
Hope that wasnt too brutal? “cluck, cluck”
No Memphis, it is not too brutal, it is the brutal truth and needs to be shared. So many of us have experienced what you have described and for those who have not yet experienced what Memphis has shared, beware. It is commonplace and we need to be wise and discerning if we choose to be part of any community, including a church fellowship. I am not sure if I will ever be part of a traditional church fellowship again. I wish Tillamook was closeby!
Yes the brutality found behind church walls? Who would of thought brutality and church would be synonomous? But for victims, thats what it has become, brutal. Good thing we have a little slice of Tillamook right here!!! (and Im not talking cheese!)
My ex was fascinated with World War 2 and most of all Hitler, too. It also struck me as an unwholesome fascination.
When at the end of our “marriage” he committed horrible abuse of me in front of the kids, and I told people what he’d done, these church “friends” inquired of him directly (disregarding the fact that he admitted to being a habitual liar) “I lie all the time too” was one of the church “friends'” response (!!!) and he lied about it all and cast me as crazy. He gained every single one as allies against me, ruining not only my relationships with them but each of our children’s best friendships from birth, which were with the children of these church “friends.”
I cried out to him, in private, how he could do this to us, especially the children, when he knew that we were innocent. He said matter of factly, “I am Hitler, and I just bombed Russia. What do you want me to do about it now?” I was speechless. I still am. The church friends told him to “get out” because I am “a bad example to the children of how to treat a man” and he did just that. I feel like I was erased. I am incinerated by the fact that I married, spent 17 years with, and had 3 children, with a man so evil that he was able to destroy us without any compunctions.
I continue to exist physically but I have been murdered, along with my children and I continually ponder our murder. I had the shattering experience of witnessing my family of origin’s reaction to our murder. Nobody was horrified. Learned so many things I never wanted to know.
Not so sure about the blockbuster ending; I used to think maybe that was true for me but now I think I am just experiencing the wrath of God. All I wish is that God would have killed me before I incurred this wrath upon myself, which has also burned up my poor, innocent children.
The blockbuster ending will be the Day of Judgement when God will pour out His wrath on unbelievers.
The whole ‘history buff’ thing was what was pitched to me as well. But it wasn’t all history. It was about WW2, Stalin, and so forth.
Then there was the crime fascination. The whole thrill of studying up on how to get away with things, what crimes actually are hard to prove or not high-priority to law enforcement, etc. Telling me how he couldn’t have my body found on him as he watched the shows, and as my husband, he knew he was suspect #1 by default. Ugh, and the fascination with serial killers, serial rapists, known psychopaths, etc.
At least it is nice to know it is something others have experienced as well. Nothing that came out of his mouth bore any truth. Everything was but complete baloney. But that is telling, in that no abuser, monster, predator, criminal, etc. lays out in full detail all of what his sicko plans are for you, just to ensure you are fully informed as to what victimization, predation, criminality, and depravity lies ahead…….otherwise they wouldn’t have so very many victims, wreak so much havoc, etc. Because nobody I know, maybe a couple exceptions in the world, goes and wants to be brutalized, violated, degraded, desecrated, victimized, traumatized, and debased……Nobody. And it is the perp’s perspective and worldview that is getting pitched by so very many these days, saying how the victim is to blame, the victim made her bed and now must lie in it, the victim chose this and that……or, at least that the victim shares a portion of responsibility, if not all the way at fault and entirely to blame, then the victim is 50 / 50 or something……. it doesn’t hold weight.
And again, this may not be an appropriate time or place for such commentary but I also read about prostitution and how poverty, abuse, trauma, neglect, and other societal / external conditions create for an underclass of women and girls who become the prostituted. And so many have no regard, respect, sympathy, kindness or mercy toward prostituted women and girls, but that’s wrong. No little girl dreams about being used as though she is but a toilet, not just once a day, but by masses of men, all day, every day. No woman, who has her needs met (isn’t living on the streets, starving, dying from drug or alcohol withdrawal, etc). who is respected, cherished, loved, and supported is about to go and elect to be debased, raped, killed, and harmed by the sickos of society who feel entitled to purchase another human being’s sexual organs…….making her into a toilet, a punching bag, a slave, and sometimes, a murder victim…..someone to kill at will because nobody will look into a prostituted woman’s murder very closely as such victimized women and children are wrongly considered to be society’s throwaways.
The conditioning and grooming a pimp uses on his victims, the prostituted women and girls he preys upon and enslaves, is much like that used by batterers on their wives. It is psychological warfare, sophisticated, refined, and evil. There is no free will involved. No freely given consent. No voluntary nothing. If such was something so acceptable, profitable, and wonderful for girls and women to be doing, they wouldn’t need to be ruled by fear, violence, deprivation, intimidation, threats, and so forth. But those who stand on the sidelines put all the blame on the prostituted (read: victimized) women and girls. It is wrong. So very, very wrong. So many of them spend their days hoping to die, trying to stay numb, obliterated out of their minds, via drinking, drugging, etc.
Evil. There is so much evil in this world. And the people in power control the general population’s mindset, frame the debates / conversations, and co-opt with the evil persons’ worldviews, value systems, and shame / blame / faulting of all such on those who wouldn’t have been involved in such in the first place had they not been tricked, threatened, driven by desperation, etc.
Your comment is not out of place, Anon. And I agree with everything you say.
FWIW, you might find it encouraging to know that I used to be a prostitute. Years ago, when I was twenty. I can say that in public now because my parents are both dead and they were the ones in my family who I didn’t want to know, as it would have just added to their difficulties in their own lives.
That was several years before I was born again. And I wasn’t living on the streets, I was doing it from massage parlours and home visits. But still quite dangerous. I decided to quit that lifestyle when a couple of prostitutes were strangled by some guy in a hotel room and it was on the news. I decided I didn’t want to end up strangled.
And what led me to that? — My messed-up-ness began from when I was sexually abused as a child. And that was only a one-off sexual abuse incident, but once is enough to send a child into a tailspin for decades.
Bless you, Anon. And you might find this post also helpful:
My Own Private Dexter – by Deborah
Also, I urge you to consider making an Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit. It might be hard to arrange, since you are living on the streets, but it may be possible for you to find (with God’s help) an attorney who will do it for you pro bono (without cost).
Thankfully, as of this very moment in time, I am not on the streets. But such is forever up in the air and constantly a possibility.
I have come to know and understand why people prefer the streets over homeless shelters, too, because of miserable, predatory, victimizing, violating, abusive, and / or criminal experiences.
I’ll take your kind thoughts and blessings any day, Barbara. I don’t have any much trust or regard for attorneys as my experiences have been horrific. Same goes for law enforcement. And how many others have been in positions to help, but rather have used such as the basis by which to exploit, hurt, harm, and / or further victimize and abuse me. It’s miserable when those who victimized you are really powerful individuals with a lot of money, resources, experience, contacts / networks of ‘influence’. etc. to throw around, and it is just you.
But “[Jesus said] lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”.
I did not know that about you, Barbara. But, I have done some reading and seen some things and met some people, and by and large most anyone who ends up in any of the commercialized aspects (be it strip clubs, massage parlors, escort agencies, ‘modeling’, or whatever) of exploitation has been groomed for it. Most everyone has been sexually abused as a child. And indeed, I agree, it only takes one experience to really mess with someone’s self-worth, self-respect, self-regard, and identity. To distort things. What’s really sad is that a lot of the women and girls in pornographic productions have been incestuously groomed for such a life from when they were but extremely young children. Just little girls. Being violated by their own parents, and other family members, caretakers, etc. Then, at 18, someone puts a pen in their hands and says “you see, it says here that you freely consented to be a part of this….you contracted to do this……legally binding, ‘voluntary’ and all”…..
I just feel really sad and sorry for all of my fellow women, mostly being those who are living out horrible existences, all because we live in a male-dominated society that says women are nothing, natural victims, nothing, to be used and abused, objects, nothing more. Body parts to be rented. It’s really bad. But praise Almighty God for this website, the ladies who comment as the things they share can be validating to read, and for both you, Ms. Barbara Roberts, and Pastor Crippen. God Bless you all! 🙂