There is No Neutrality in Abuse
When we refuse to choose a side, we immediately take the side of abuse.
When a relationship crumbles, friends and family fear to take sides. Often, they have come to love both people in the relationship, and they fear hurting either person more than they already are hurting. They strive to hold both people equal—spending the same amount of time with each person and offering support however they can to both. When people take sides, it creates more hurt than necessary as further relationships are severed and coldness permeates every relational tie. While it may be tricky, neutrality amid a relationship breakup is the best position to hold.
But when faced with abuse, neutral ground ceases to exist.
When a woman comes before us bearing her crushed spirit from verbal, physical, mental, or sexual abuse, our claims of “remaining neutral” communicate the complete opposite: We have taken the side of the abuser.
This isn’t the woman’s fault—it’s not that she’s allowed her broken heart to skew the intentions of others. Rather, our plea to remain neutral communicates the same as it did in the non-abusive breakup: I do not want to lose my relationship with the other person. When we choose to play “neutral” once faced with an abusive relationship, we reveal that we’d rather avoid the horrific violence done against the victim and pretend it did not happen than confront the abuser with their heinous sins. We would rather sustain a relationship with someone who willingly causes another grave harm than stand up for the victim who we supposedly call our friend and family. When we choose “neutral” ground, we stand in agreement with the abuser that the abuse isn’t all that bad.
K. J. Ramsey, a clinical Christian therapist, goes as far as to say that neutrality amid abuse repeats abuse. “Neutrality about abuse is a repetition of abuse. Not taking a side is taking a side. It shows the victim their health is worth less to you than avoiding awkwardness or not having to make relational changes. Your neutrality tears open the wound of trust all over again.”1 I can attest to this; the paranoia, the constant looking-over-one’s-shoulder wondering who truly believes you and who claims neutrality but still supports your abuser as if they were innocent.
Whenever people claimed to take neutral ground in my abuse, it came as a punch. “I love you and support you,” they would say, “but it’s not my place to take sides. I want to remain neutral and seek everyone’s healing.” Fear filled me. Did they not just hear what he did to me? Doubt gripped me—perhaps those acts weren’t as bad as I thought. Perhaps my tears, nightmares, and panic attacks were an overreaction to his slight anger problem? We all struggle with sin, right? No one is perfect. Maybe it was even partly my fault.
Our lack of belief in abuse victims can further traumatize them, as Ramsey hinted. Justin and Lindsey Holcomb write, “Believe the women; don’t blame them. Blaming victims for post-traumatic symptoms is not only erroneous but also contributes to the vicious cycle of traumatization, because victims who experience negative social reactions have poorer adjustments. Research has proven that being believed and being listened to by others are crucial to victims’ healing.”2 Our neutrality in abuse causes more damage to victims.
In the movie Avatar, directed and written by James Cameron, Jake Sully seeks the help of Ewya, the goddess worshipped on the planet Pandora. Humans are coming to devastate the lives of those who live on Pandora all for the sake of a resource found on their land, and he wants Ewya to take action against the humans. But when one of the natives hears his prayers, she tells him that Ewya doesn’t take sides.
As a Christian teenager, this line stuck with me as I thought about my own faith. Does God take sides? Or, because he is all-loving, does he simply love everyone and play neutral too? I found that Scripture tells a different story.
“You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless” (Exod. 22:22–24).
“Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow” (Deut. 27:19).
“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts” (Mal. 3:5).
“O God, you take no pleasure in wickedness; you cannot tolerate the sins of the wicked. Therefore, the proud may not stand in your presence, for you hate all who do evil. You will destroy those who tell lies. The Lord detests murderers and deceivers. Because of your unfailing love, I can enter your house; I will worship at your Temple with deepest awe. Lead me in the right path, O Lord, or my enemies will conquer me. Make your way plain for me to follow” (Ps. 5:4–6).
“The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence” (Ps. 11:5).
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Matt. 23:23–24).
Love, mercy, and justice cannot stand in the presence of evil and remain neutral. To be our righteous judge and adoring Father, he brings his wrath against those who do violence to his beloved. Consider the plagues and judgment God brought upon Egypt when Israel cried out in their abuse and slavery. God raged against the nations that tore down Israel.
But his wrath also came upon his people when they did likewise. His anger spilled over on Israel’s leaders when they ignored the cries of the needy and poor. He demanded justice for the widow and orphan. He called Israel to treat the Gentile sojourners with the same compassion he had shown them while they were outside the Promised Land.
God also has no patience for those who try to remain impartial when they know of abuse. He said through Habbakuk, “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” (Hab. 1:13). It is not enough to say to the victim of abuse, “I am there for you and support you,” while you remain silent and friendly toward the wicked man who swallows her whole.
Yes, Jesus ate and broke bread with sinners, but he did so with repentant sinners—not those who remained arrogant in their sin. Jesus ate a meal with Zaccheus, preached the gospel to the woman at the well, and let the prostitute wash his feet because they chose to turn from their sins. The religious leaders, however, he further condemned because they closed their eyes and ears to their own wrongdoing. “People are made in God’s image, and being brutal to them desecrates that image (see Gen. 9:6)—and so God does not hide his disdain for violence.”3
Dante saw this reality in Scripture too. He wrote in The Inferno,
This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise. They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart. The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them – even the wicked cannot glory in them.
The one guiding Dante through Hell tells him to not even look upon these people any longer—just as Heaven and Hell wish to not give them a second glance, so they shouldn’t either. These are the people who refused to choose a side, whether good or evil. They held neutral ground when faced with injustice and cruelty. They did not steal, kill, and destroy, but they did not stop it or help the victims either.
So what should friends and family do when a victim comes forward with a story of abuse? Believe her. “Coming forward with abuse is a considerable act of courage,” abuse counselor Darby Strickland writes. “Victims are more likely to cover up or downplay abuse than to make it up or exaggerate it.”4 Take her claims seriously, and don’t make excuses for her abuser or try to see his side of it—abuse is always inexcusable and within the abuser’s control (that’s why you’ve likely never witnessed it). Instead, affirm the horrors and violence she has endured and take a stand to protect her and seek justice for her.
Rachael Denhollander, an American lawyer and former gymnast, was the first woman to publicly accuse Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor, of sexual assault. When interviewed about how to help those amid abuse, she writes,
We all have to start reckoning with the depth and the damage of abuse and how ungodly and wicked it is. Because the reality is this: we don’t treat abuse like it actually matters. We can say “Sexual abuse is terrible, spiritual abuse is terrible, when we weaponise the gospel that’s terrible.” But when push comes to shove, we don’t think it’s terrible enough to actually do something. You want the emotional satisfaction of thinking it’s terrible, you don’t want the practical reality of acting like it is terrible.5
This is often the case for many of us. While we discuss over coffee the horrible, abusive parenting happening next door, we don’t pick up the phone to call Child Protective Services. We nod our heads in affirmation that men should not beat their wives, but when a woman tells us how her husband hits her, we sit in silence and hope it goes away. We applaud the courage of #MeToo and #ChurchToo but tell the wife raped by her husband that we don’t want to take sides.
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8). This is our calling as believers; as Christ has rescued us from the violence of sin and death, so we show mercy to the abused. We put the gospel on display when we show mercy and advocacy for the women beaten down and manipulated by their husbands. We uphold the image of God when we refuse to remain neutral in acts of violence.
So, where will you stand?
K. J. Ramsey, “Neutrality about abuse is a repetition of abuse. Not taking a side is taking a side. It shows the victim their health is worth less to you than avoiding awkwardness or not having to make relational changes. Your neutrality tears open the wound of trust all over again.,” X, December 6, 2021, accessed June 2, 2024, https://x.com/kjramseywrites/status/1467983011568230400.
Justin Holcomb and Lindsey Holcomb, Is It My Fault?: Hope and Healing for Those Suffering Domestic Violence (Chicago, IL, United States of America: Moody Publishers, 2014), 202.
Darby A. Strickland, Is It Abuse? A Biblical Guide to Identifying Domestic Abuse and Helping Victims (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2020), 41.
Strickland, 112.
Rachael Denhollander, “Rachael Denhollander: I am a sexual abuse survivor. Here’s how we can help others,” Premier Unbelievable, October 20, 2022, accessed June 2, 2024, https://www.premierunbelievable.com/articles/rachael-denhollander-i-am-a-sexual-abuse-survivor-heres-how-we-can-help-others/14064.article
Yes. All of this. I’m so sorry that you have experienced the deep wounds of “neutrality”. It makes you feel crazy on top of everything else. In my own story I have taken such comfort in the stories of God in the OT. They used to scare me, but realizing that God was holy and had no tolerance for sin, and especially no tolerance for abuse, made such a difference. No matter how people handled things or didn’t, they could not take away the fact that God sees and knows and cares. The inability of churches and Christians to look this scourge in the eye and call abusers to accountability is (I think) one of the biggest reasons that people leave faith altogether. It is a deep, gaping wound that needs to be tended.
I experienced this in church too. I haven’t gone back. My child’s father still goes and is actively involved. It made me wonder- how often has the church chosen a brother in Christ over a sister for everything in the essay? Once would be too many.