People often say recovery is a step-by-step process and that’s true. What that statement doesn’t tell us is that even within a “12-step” program or any other kind of recovery, there’s plenty of mini steps between the so-called big ones. It also doesn’t tell us that sometimes we have to take a step or two back to take leaps forward. It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of abuse a person encounters-be...

This is the scene that was out my front door (which I didn’t even bother to open) on March 21, the second day of spring. Some of you might be wondering why I’m writing about churches having snow days when it’s mid-May. Well, to be perfectly blunt, I spent half of April in the hospital and the other half recuperating. So, I never got to finish this blog. I’m finishing it now because the ideas are still timely. As...

When we’re sick, most of us have no problem with the idea of seeing a doctor, of taking medicine-doing whatever we need to do to heal. For many who have been abused, it’s not that easy. Any form of abuse, including spiritual abuse, creates a sense of shame, distrust and pain in the people it affects. Once a person realizes they’ve been spiritually abused and they have the courage to remove themselves from the abusive...

When we are hurt by someone, it damages our ability to trust that person, perhaps permanently. Depending on who is doing the hurting and how they hurt us, sometimes that mistrust can be far reaching, often beyond the individual who harmed us. We learn, out of our innate sense of self-preservation perhaps, to mistrust all people who, in our mind, are the type of person our abuser represents. This is often true in various forms of child...

Author Stephen Arterburn answers questions in this two-part series about his book “Toxic Faith”, which talks about spiritual abuse. Part 1: Part 2: Share on...

When I first heard the term “spiritual abuse,” I was little confused and probably deep down thought it was a new-fangled phrase used to describe something that had a more common name. What I learned, however, is that spiritual abuse is real, it’s painful and it’s much more prevalent in today’s churches than most people realize. The fear, anxiety, distrust and trouble with intimacy of all sorts that any kind of abuse breeds is just...