My ex-boyfriend claimed to be a Christian - he appeared knowledgeable in the Scriptures, was quick to offer a helping hand to others, and wanted to pursue studies in seminary to one day become a full-time pastor.
As I grew in my trust with him, he took advantage of me and we became physically intimate - most times without my consent. I’m pacing as I type this out because it still bothers me that he used God’s word against me and that it still has effects on me today.
He grew up with a terrible childhood. He was molested as a child and grew up with an unhealthy display of sexual content around him, but this was no excuse for his behaviour.
He had also been physically intimate with a few women before he entered a relationship with me and struggled alone in his sexual sins, not taking any real action towards fighting the temptation to sin.
I had quite a different upbringing. Growing up, I was continuously told not to have s*x before I was married. In my pride, I stayed away from temptation and was privileged to not have struggled too much with lust during my highschool years (by God’s grace, I thank my group of friends for this). I learned to stay far away from sexual temptation and grew to have self-control and discipline in the things I watched and listened to. This was all done out of fear and self-righteousness - I was very naive with adult content.
My ex-boyfriend was aware of my naivety from the beginning (I told him how little I knew).
My ex-boyfriend justified physical intimacy with me before marriage by first gaining my trust and respect. He later coerced and harassed me about the idea of being more physically intimate. He did gain my trust at first, but it quickly felt like I was being forced to trust him. He said things like, “You need to pick someone who you will trust - like a mentor or pastor.” I knew that if I named anyone else besides him, he would get upset with me and accuse me of not trusting or loving him. I felt like I had no choice but to blindly trust him because of the pressures he put on me. I was forced to turn a blind-eye and just believe that everything he did was out of good intention.
Before all of this, I believe he picked me because of a personal testimony I shared that showed him my vulnerability (you can find this in the beginning of chapter 2 of But He Said He is a Christian). It was my apparent lack of theology paired with my strong desire to do anything and everything Jesus wanted of me that made me an easy target.
From here, he slowly but surely showed me how much more there was for me to know about God and I was eager to learn more from my then boyfriend. Once he gained my trust and respect, it wasn’t hard for him to get away with anything else that he wanted.
The first time I was touched inappropriately, he gave me the silent treatment and ended up explaining that his anger stemmed from my lack of maturity to own up to my wrongdoing. He claimed that my wrongdoing was being slow to approach him and to bring up the fact that he was touching me inappropriately. I was so confused. I was made to believe that I was in the wrong and led me to question my own reality - this is called gaslighting.
I thought this was so unfair that he turned the situation around on me about him touching me inappropriately, but at that moment, I had so much fear.
Silent treatments are horrible and when someone is giving you all these reasons as to where you went wrong, while he has a good reputation of being an awesome Christian, I felt helpless.
So I accepted the circumstances and continued to believe that he was always right.
After growing in our inappropriate physical intimacy, he would open the Bible and try explaining how we are to glorify God in all we do - this included giving each other pleasure with our bodies. I want to scream just thinking about how he said these words with the Bible open.
I remember crying telling him that I still didn’t understand his reasoning to which he looked at me with pity saying that it was because God had put a veil over my understanding (a twisting of the scripture found in 2 Cor. 3:14). He would spend hours talking to me about theology and how I don’t understand but that he does. I don’t remember what else he said for those hours. By the end of it, he gently said something like, “I know this is hard to understand for you, but I will explain it to you as many times as you need because I love you.” I think that made me feel like I should stop trying to understand this because he said he loved me, and that he loved and wanted to honour God. The times that I asked for explanations after this, I was not met with the same gentleness. He grew angry and frustrated that I didn’t just let him do whatever he wanted to me and my fear of his anger sometimes led me to just give in.
There were several excuses he would find from the Bible and another one of them was convincing me that in God’s eyes, we were married. He said that marriage in the Bible is not what it is today. He said that marriage is a covenant between two people who loved each other so as long as we did this, we were married, and since we were married in God’s eyes, being as physically intimate as we were was all okay.
However, every time we engaged in such activity and even after he said all these things, he would go back on his word and say something like, “What we’re doing is wrong. You know that, right? We need to pray and repent. We’re not married, I’m sorry. I love you, but I also want to be with Michelle (his ex-fiance). It’s okay, God still loves us.”
This obviously confused me and caused great pain.
I knew that what he said afterwards was what stands because that was after he was sexually gratified and more sober-minded. Even so, chapter 6 shows how I tried to get out of these situations but couldn’t! I used his own words to try to get out, but he kept going back and had new and stronger arguments. Over this, there was a lot of fear and guilt that did not allow me to just walk away.
God is not trying to torture us when he tells us to abstain from sexual immortality (Matt. 15:19; 1 Cor. 6:18, 7:2; 2 Cor. 12:21; Eph. 5:3; Col. 3:5; Heb. 13:4; 1 Thes. 4:3). Rather, it is for our good that he has designed s*x to take place between a wife and her husband. We can trust in this because all of what God commands is always for our good (Rom. 8:28 and basically the whole bible).
Man and woman can twist God’s word to fit their own sinful desires. They do this by lying, manipulating, coercing, pruning, and gaslighting; but it is ultimately them lacking in their fear of the Lord that allows them to do this. May we be aware of the different tactics people can use to get their way and pray that such people would repent and turn to Jesus.
If you or someone you know has been affected by a similar situation, remember that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1). There may be lingering feelings of guilt and shame, but Jesus sets us free from that as we wait for Justice when he returns. Until then, may we be found faithful to trust that the Lord heals, he cares, and he loves us deeply.
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