1. > Re someone claiming that they had never heard of real Christians abusing their wives.

My response:

Then, my friend, you'd better enter the real world... This is one of the 'hidden' sins that wise in-touch pastors hear about all the time...

Another:

and it makes me think he has had naught to do with counselling marrieds and that he may be yet single and young himself.

Another pastor's response:

Spousal and other forms of abuse is rife. The only way that one can avoid hearing about it is if one presents the kind of front which further frightens or shames people into silence about it. And *that's* a terrible indictment on the church. It is estimated in some circles that as many as seven out of eight women will be abused at some stage (sometimes several stages) in her life, and in many ways, sexually, emotionally, physically, financially. There is also abuse of boys, and even husbands but this is less common. Children, particularly girl children and the elderly, particularly elderly women are especially vulnerable.

It happens in places where one wouldn't expect it to happen. It happens to people one would not expect it to happen to. I was bullied in seminary once by a fine, upstanding Christian leader and teacher of the college, a man I admired for a great many good reasons. I later counselled someone who was traumatised by watching this same man hit his wife. She thought I wouldn't believe her (because he was such a fine upstanding Christian) Knowing how he had treated me made me realise that it was actually quite likely that he would bully his wife and his children and that the bullying might take the form of physical violence.

I chatted to the equivalent of a bishop in a church who once found the girl child of one of his pastors hiding down a drain so as to avoid being cruelly beaten by her *natural* (biological) father for refusing his sexual advances. She was not even in high school at the time.

What makes you think our people are immune from the pressures that drive other people? We are all sinners saved by grace. If the church is to be a relevant force in the world it must start to minister to where people are really at, not where we idealise that people should be.