The Emotionally Destructive Church

ALTAVOCES
LESLIE VERNICK, JULIE ROYS

Note: This is a rough transcript and may contain some misspellings.

Leslie Vernick: Suffering and sacrifice are such noble Christian virtues that sometimes we lack discernment on when we’re doing a noble sacrifice. Like I’m willing to, jump into a pond to save a child who’s drowning, even if it costs me my life, i’m willing to do that because greater love than no one has that if you give your life up for a friend or even for a stranger, I think that’s a noble sacrifice, but to sacrifice your wellbeing, your health, your welfare, your finances, your spiritual growth in order to enable someone else to continue to sin against you.

Is not a noble sacrifice, it’s a foolish sacrifice. And yet the church doesn’t discern that, whether it’s in relationships of family members and toxic marriages, or whether it’s a toxic leader.

Julio Roys: Joining me today is popular author and speaker Leslie Vernick, who for 30 years worked as a clinical social worker. She now runs Leslie Vernick and Company, a team of relationship coaches trained to provide Christ-centered support for women in unhealthy and destructive marriages. And over the past year, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Leslie and spending some time in her home with her husband Howard.

And it’s just been a real joy. And to have you speak at the Restore conference was really an honor. Leslie, welcome and I’m just so glad. To spend this time with you.

Leslie: Me too. I can hardly believe it. I’ve been listening to you for years. I can hardly believe I’m actually gonna be on the show for years.

I’m, I,

julio: honestly, I’m touched. Thank you. You have written two books on emotionally destructive one’s, more general, just emotionally destructive relationships, and then one that’s more specific on emotionally destructive marriages. But as I read these books, it struck me that a lot of the same principles and ideas that are in these books can be applied to emotionally destructive churches.

And I wish we didn’t have to talk about emotionally destructive churches. I wish they didn’t exist. The church should be a place of healing. But unfortunately it’s not always a place of healing. And so we have people in positions of authority. Whether a pastor or a spiritual leader who sometimes can be very emotionally destructive, sometimes with their own knowledge, but often without their own knowledge.

And so I wanna dive into that with you today because I know a lot of our listeners, this is where they either are or they have been. And so I think this is gonna be super helpful discussion. But before we do that, for people who don’t know you that well, this is a topic that you lived with in your life.

From your early childhood days, if you could talk a little bit about your experience of having a mother who was very emotionally destructive and what that taught you about this whole topic.

Leslie: Yeah, Julie, thanks for asking. I grew up in a home. Back when single parents were rare. So my mother divorced my dad when I was eight years old.

I was the oldest of three children, so the younger brother and sister and I. She left my dad in a U-Haul truck. Didn’t tell us where we were going. I didn’t know it at the time, but my mom had some problems with mental health issues and alcoholism. Of course, as an 8-year-old, you wouldn’t recognize that.

I just knew that she would lose her temper and she would become very angry at times. But anyway, she took us in this U-Haul truck and we went to live with a friend for a while. And then we moved to a tiny bedroom apartment in Chicago. And my mom worked a lot. She worked during the day as a wait as a secretary somewhere.

I don’t even know where she worked. And then she worked a weekends at the Playboy Club as a waitress. And she drank a lot. She wasn’t home a lot. And so at 9, 10, 11, 12 years old it was really, I don’t know if it was my responsibility, but my brother, sister, and I were left alone a lot. And the person who got most of her anger and angst was me probably.

Because I reminded her the most of my dad. And also because I had the biggest mouth, I was always

julio: ing. I suffered from that myself,

Leslie: challenging questioning arguing. And and her disability, she didn’t handle that well. And so there were physical, there was physical abuse, emotional abuse. And finally when I was 14, my mother lost custody of us.

So all this time my dad had become a Christian. He had remarried, he had been going to court to get custody of us because he could see what was happening, but he didn’t have any power to stop it back then over 50 years ago, dads rarely got custody of their kids. And so it was an act of God that my father got custody of us three children and.

When I was in high school. So I was in high school and I wasn’t really happy about it because by that time I had figured out how to get around my mother’s bad moods and if I could clean the house during the day. So of course I didn’t go to school. If I could clean the house during the day and then she could come home to a clean house, I could get out at night, I could do what I wanted.

And in the city of Chicago, I had total freedom. I knew how to run the subway system and the bus and your bicycle and you could just go wherever you wanted to go. And so I was a wild child. And so now I had to go to the suburbs where there was no public transportation everywhere. You had to either be driven or walk.

And I had to go to church and I hadn’t been in church for years and years.

But it was in that season where, I came to Christ and I was mentored by my youth pastor, went to a small little Bible church and they were lovely. And so one of the feelings that I got at the beginning of my Christian life was the church.

It was a place that I was healing from abuse of my childhood. That the church was the family of God, that I had a pioneer girl leader that I had to go to pioneer girls. I didn’t want to, but I had to. And this woman was an older woman and she just took me under her wing. And we talked about dating and we talked about life and with all of the girls, but she was just a wonderful example of a good woman.

And I hadn’t had that in my mother. And so the church for me was an anchor of restoration and healing. My youth pastor, I was his babysitter. He didn’t sexually abuse me. He was a great youth pastor. I was his practice client when he was going through seminary, so he did a little counseling on me. And so it was just really an, a really powerful experience.

But my mother was still abusive and she didn’t have a lot of contact with us anymore, but she was still abusive and very manipulative and destructive toward me. But now that I have become a Christian. I wasn’t sure how to deal with this. Do I just let her back into my life? Do I trust her? I don’t trust her.

And so it was a terrible dilemma for me because nothing was written on it. Even the boundaries book wasn’t written at the time. So after I finished college and graduate school, I wanted to be a counselor. I wanted to help kids like me. And my mother was in and out of our life. I didn’t invite her to my wedding because I knew she would ruin it.

My sister and brother didn’t either ’cause she would ruin it. And when we began to have children, we began to ask ourselves, okay, so do we have to let our mother babysit our children? Does she get an invite for Mother’s Day? How do we handle this when she’s still toxic and destructive? And so it was just really a personal journey for me to understand what the Bible had to say and what God had to say about healthy relationships, unhealthy relationships and toxic relationships.

And what do we do as believers? With people who treat us horribly, yet they’re in our family or they’re in our church, do we just forgive and forget and forbear and long suffer and sacrifice in order to have this relationship with them that harms us? Or do we have any ability or right biblically to say, no, I’m not going to do that.

And so before I ever became a Christian counselor, I had to wrestle that with that personally, but it really equipped me to understand what God had to say. And God has lots to say about relationships and the way the family’s supposed to operate and the way the family of God is supposed to operate. And so this whole topic of emotionally destructive families, emotionally destructive marriages, and emotionally destructive churches is really near and dear to my heart.

julio: Yeah. And I think sometimes when you wrestle with it in your life, like my husband is a math teacher and everybody assumes math was really easy for him. And he’s no, actually I struggled in math. And that’s why I love teaching it because I think he has empathy for those who similarly struggle.

And I think having that background, even though no one would want that it’s amazing to me. I’ve gotten to know your brother rich as well. And he’s an incredibly gifted person. And it’s from the background, you guys come from really astounding that you came from a background that should have handicapped you for life and it hasn’t.

It really hasn’t. And I think that’s really just a testimony to the power of God to transform lives.

Leslie: It is, it’s the grace of God, the power of God, and the power of a good man who did come to Christ. And my dad wasn’t the perfect father. And when I gave him, we had this 95th party for him a couple weeks ago.

Yeah. He turned 95 years old. And so we had this party at his church. We thought a party would be better than a funeral. So you know, the party, everybody gave tributes to him. And one of the things I loved most about my dad, he was very conservative. He was very legalistic. And he would say, so now even. But he always allowed me to disagree with him.

And so one of the marks of an unhealthy or toxic system, whether it’s in a family or in a church, is that you aren’t allowed to think for yourself. That you have to always absorb what the leader says is true or right. And so my dad would have his principles, whether they were about church or this is a very funny story, but he made this rule up that we weren’t allowed to take a bath on the Sabbath.

Now

julio: cleanliness is next to godliness. Come on. This is a

Leslie: practical, now that we’ve unpacked all of this is a practical rule. We had six teenagers in one bathroom and he figured we’d never get to church on time if we were all in the bathroom trying to get ready. So he just made this legalistic rule that nobody could take a shower on the SA so that the bathroom could be cleaned out pretty fast.

So we could get to church on time. But he was pretty legalistic. But I would argue with him about whether we could dance or whether we could go to movies or whether we could, capital punishment or date people of a different race. They’re all different kinds of topics. I would be the contentious arguer of these points and the fact that he would let me do that with him without shaming me or he would disagree with me and we would go back and forth.

But I think that’s one of the very positive characteristics of a healthy family is that you nurture the less mature to learn to think for themselves and to learn to stand on their own two feet. You don’t oppress the less mature to be just like you.

julio: Our home was like that too. I used to joke that our family dinner table arguments and debating that was like a family sport for us.

And nobody took it personally. Yeah. And that’s, and even today I actually was texting with a friend that my, my kids they give me a hard time ’cause they say, oh mom, you’re so naive. And here I am a journalist and I deal with all these awful things, but I think I tend to be.

Somewhat naive just because I grew up in this home where it was so healthy in so many ways and people said what they thought, they didn’t take things personally or take, offense easily. And we would just, we would go at it sometimes and then we’d be like, okay, that’s good. We resolved it.

And now I realize that’s very unusual. And in the church it’s very unusual. And yet this was a godly Christian home and my parents wanted us to think critically about things. And they always welcome questions and I think that’s why I have a deep faith today that’s been able to weather an awful lot is because of that kind of background.

But again I’m still shocked at some of the behavior I see among Christians just because I, that’s just not how Christians behaved in at least my home and my church. And maybe I was insulated from some of the more. Bad behavior that was going on, but I just didn’t see it as a kid. So people often ask me, do you hate the church?

And I’m like, absolutely not. I love the church. And I think you fall in love with the church when you see the real, not the counterfeit. And it makes you aware of the counterfeit when you see the real. Let’s dive in. Some of these things you’ve mentioned one of the main characteristics of a healthy home and a dysfunctional environment would be one where you can’t ask questions.

What are some other sort of telltale signs? Because I’m guessing there’s probably people that are listening right now who are in a church and they’re like okay, this happens, or That happens, but I’m not sure how serious it is. So help that person see how serious it is or not.

Leslie: Yeah. So one of the things I do when I’m talking to a woman who’s not sure whether her marriage is unhealthy or destructive is that I talk about we’re all sinners. And so one of the things that happens when you start talking about someone else’s sin is this sin leveling. It’s called, we’re all sinners, and so we’re all sinners. Of course, we’re all sinners. Whether we’re all sinners in a family or we’re all sinners in the family of God.

Yep. The whole church is made up of sinners and Yep. Everybody in the family is made up of sinners. But I like to make a distinction between a healthy sinner and an unhealthy sinner, and so a healthy sinner when they recognize they’ve sinned. So for example, I’ll just share a personal story. So when I gave birth to my child, one of the things I was most afraid of is being like my mother.

I didn’t have, a lot of nurturing from my stepmother because I was already too old to accept that I was already 14. I wasn’t gonna accept any nurturing from her, so I didn’t. Know how I would be as a mom. And I remember when my son was two years old he was throwing a fit in the dressing room ’cause I was trying on clothes and of course little boys hate waiting for their mothers trying on clothes when they’re two years old.

So he decided to throw a fit in the dressing room and embarrassed me and it was so loud his fit that I yanked him up by his arm and I said to him, stop right now. And he screamed at the top of his lungs and held his little arm out and said, mom, you broke my arm. Of course, everybody in the store could hear, ’cause it was like a little boutique.

And I did, his little elbow was dangling out of his arm. Oh. And so I grabbed him, I put him in his car seat, I drove him to the hospital. I told the doctors what I did. I didn’t lie about it. I didn’t say he fell. I said, I yanked him up by his arm and I broke his arm. And the doctor said you didn’t break his arm, but you did dislocate his elbow.

And I’m gonna show you how to put it back in because he’s got Nursemaids elbow. And it was a weakness there. So I didn’t yank him as hard as I thought I did, but it scared the tar out of me. So I sinned against my son. I used my power as a mother inappropriately. It wasn’t because he was a bad kid, it was because I was dysregulated and not knowing how to handle his fit in that moment.

And I did something that harmed him. So I’m a sinner I in that moment. It was an abusive incident. But here’s the difference. We’re all capable of that. Even in a marriage, somebody can say something awful. Somebody can do something awful. Cheat, lie. Do something like that. A healthy sinner doesn’t lie about it, doesn’t make excuses, doesn’t gaslight doesn’t deflect.

A healthy sinner says, I’m the one I did that I’m wrong. I’m sorry. I feel horrible. And they understand there are consequences for what you did, and they’re not trying to get out of that. Whereas an unhealthy sinner, I. Will gaslight, we’ll deflect, we’ll blame, we’ll excuse, make we’ll deny whatever they have to do to get away with it, unless they’re caught completely red-handed.

And when they’re caught completely red-handed and unhealthy sin doesn’t expect to have to pay the consequences. They will say grace covers a multitude of sins and you have to forgive me. And all of the different kinds of things that we hear from destructive people. And so that’s one of the huge red flags, whether you are in a church or in a.

In a home, if you’re in a relationship with someone, of course they’re gonna do something that upsets you. Of course they may sin against you. That’s part of living with human beings. So when it happens, how is it handled? Is really the red flag of destructive relationships.

julio: That’s so interesting when you say that, because I’ve been reporting on really toxic churches, toxic leaders for such a long time, and it just reminds me of Wade Mullen’s book.

Something’s Not where his dissertation, it’s basically his dissertation was on 50 churches that he looked at who were evangelical churches in crisis, and he found that every single one. Had the same playbook, and unfortunately, the playbook should be exactly what you said it should be. We’re Christians, we shouldn’t be shocked that we sin.

So when we sin, we should be able to say, I sinned and I’m sorry. And please forgive me. And take the consequences, which sometimes when it’s very severe sin we should expect you’re disqualified and you’re not gonna be able to leave again. That’s just a reality.

And nobody wants to say that anymore. I, it’s like the the grace has gone to, I think a ridiculous level where we’ve forgotten that there’s qualifications for pastors

Leslie: and there’s consequences for sin. I think that, we’ve I have a friend, she’s a public person, so I won’t mention her name, but when she was in high school, she was driving to school and she was doing something that high schoolers and even. Maybe we do this now as a woman, she was putting her lipstick on as she was driving in the mirror and she was looking in the mirror and putting her lipstick on and she hit a woman on a bicycle and killed her.

julio: Oh, you’re kidding.

Leslie: Wow. And she was horrified of course.

julio: Si,

Leslie: because she was being careless and she did something that any one of us could do. Texting, putting our lipstick on whatever, driving carelessly. And this woman is sorry, and as repentant as my friend was still dead. Like sometimes the consequences of our sin is permanent and somehow in the church we think that we get a get outta jail free card.

We get a pass from consequences that in life, when you commit a crime, you can be really repented and sometimes you still go to jail. And sometimes the marriage is really dead or sometimes the child is really dead and there is no miracle that restores that just because you’re sorry. And I think we have just forgot some common sense and common biblical truth in the idea that grace covers a multitude of sin.

Grace can cover sin, but it doesn’t necessarily erase the consequences. This family even forgave my friend for killing their mother, and they’re actually friends today, but the mother is still dead.

julio: That’s quite a story of redemption. To be able to be friends with someone who did something that’s so tragic, had so many negative consequences for you.

And that and that is I think a beautiful illustration of there can be restoration, there can be forgiveness, and yet. Yeah, there are consequences. The same thing here. You can always be restored to the church no matter what you’ve done. Restored to leadership. Yeah.

But restored to leadership, right?

No, not necessarily. So important things to keep in mind. So let’s say, I mean there’s some tells tale. You actually have a checklist in your book, which I found incredibly helpful, but also incredibly ooh wow, do I do that? But some of the things like use verbal weapons like shaming or constant criticism to get somebody to do something.

Does the person humiliate you in public when they’re unhappy with you? Made me think of James McDonald. If you came late to one of his act like men conferences, they actually had pink shirts that they would put on you and march you up front and make you wear it.

And talk about shaming behavior.

I can’t believe that some of these things are done in the open and they’re not seen as toxic. Are you afraid to disagree with them? When you share your thoughts or feelings about something important to you, does the person ignore you or make fun of you or dismiss you? Does the person make most of your decisions for you?

I can’t tell you how many churches where I have talked to people where their pastor is making decisions, and we’re talking about decisions that, that cross over into personal boundaries, like who you date, who you marry, things like that. These sorts of things are happening. And so somebody might say okay, that’s just who they are or what they’re like and I’ve called them on it, but they don’t see any problem with it.

How big of a deal? I. Is this, like for the person who’s saying, and I talked to somebody just this week, and they’re like, so and so that I just reported on is really a wonderful person. You shouldn’t be doing this. And said, I, I don’t think he lied. And then I just went through the litany of things.

I’m like I don’t know if he lied, but let me just give you the facts you decide for yourself, and there’s so many of them, but I could tell there was this incredible resistance to wanting to say, this person that I want to believe in so badly is not the person that, that I thought or hoped that he.

Or she was.

Leslie: I think it’s really hard. It’s huge. In our ministry where we work with women who are married, they’re married sometimes for 30 to 40 years, and they don’t wanna see

Leslie (2): los

Leslie: truth of what’s really going on in their marriage. Because sometimes to see the truth. It creates more pain.

If you find a lump in your breast, sometimes you’re afraid to go to the doctor because if you find out you do have cancer, now it gets even scarier. And so sometimes people don’t want to know the truth, but I think Jesus is right when he says the truth sets us free. And if we live in delusion or fairytale land, or lies in deceit, we can’t be healthy as people.

We can’t be healthy as a church or as a family. And so I think it’s really important that we understand that people will naturally, I. Lie. That’s what the Bible tells us that we do. But there’s really interesting story about two leaders in the Old Testament that I use to help other church leaders discern whether someone’s truly repentant or not.

And we have the example of David who he took his power as the king and he misused it in inappropriate ways and took Bathsheba and then instead of dealing with that when she was pregnant, they wanna make it into this love affair. Like they had this affair, adulterous affair. They didn’t have an affair.

When she’s pregnant, she doesn’t call him up and say, oh, David, what do we do? She has to send him a note because he discarded her and never talked to her again. Yeah. So she sends him this note, I’m pregnant. And he doesn’t even call her and say, okay, what did we do? He just says, oh my gosh, I better have her husband come back.

And take the wrap for this pregnancy. And when that didn’t work, of course he misused his power again. So misuse of power and your authority as a leader is one of the red flags. And so David was misusing his power and authority. But when Nathan, the prophet, confronted David on his sin, he used a very strategic story to help David relate to what happened.

And David was outraged. He said, oh my gosh, that’s terrible. That man deserves to die. And he said, David, you are that man. And David owned that. He owned it. And so that’s a sinner whose sinned in grievous ways, who God can still use, who’s a man after God’s own heart. Because he was willing to look at what his prophet told him.

And look at what he did. He didn’t. Nathan didn’t. Tell Bathsheba she committed adultery. That wasn’t the issue at all. It was an abuse of power. But another story, David’s predecessor, king Saul also offered the sacrifice that he shouldn’t have offered when he was the king, instead of letting the priest offer it.

And Samuel confronted him on it. And Saul Gast Samuel lied, blamed the Israelites. The people made me do it. I really didn’t wanna do it, but they made me do it. He was just twisting, deflecting, denying. Doing and then when he finally got caught red hand, he goes, but please don’t make me suffer.

The consequences. Yes. And so we see these two different pictures in the scripture of how God shows us. These are men who were leaders who fell into abuse of power, misused their power and authority in inappropriate ways, and one could be restored and the other could not.

julio: Yeah, I’ve often thought of the difference between David and Saul.

In some ways Saul’s sin seems so minor, that he didn’t kill all the livestock and all the, he took some things for himself that he wasn’t supposed to take, for example. And, yeah. But he did, he had the completely different response than David had. And David, by the way, for all the people that say, ’cause I, how many times when a pastor sins, they’ll be like king David, look what he did.

By the way, Bathsheba’s firstborn child died. Yeah, there were grievous consequences. Yeah. And then David’s own family. So much dysfunction. And so much pain came into his life because of some of the sin that he allowed in his life. And so I, I think when people make those arguments, which of course we’re dealing with an Old Testament king, and now we’re dealing with a New Testament pastor, very different role.

But even people forget that David had incredible consequences. So he shouldn’t just look at him and say, he did bad things. So our pastors can do whatever they want and they should be replatformed. It’s a crazy thing.

Leslie: It is. And so I think one of the red flags that we wanna look at is, having power and authority isn’t a bad thing.

All of us have that. Whether you have power and authority as a parent, or whether you have power and authority as a pastor or as a president. We have power and authority. How we use that though matters. And the Bible is really clear that when we use our power, we’re to use it with someone to collaborate, to be mutual, to help, to teamwork work together, or we’re to use our power under someone to serve them, to mentor them, to lift them up.

That Jesus talked about leadership as servant leadership. That you were to use your power and authority, not as the Gentiles do that, lorded over them, but you were to use your power as a leader in the church or as a parent or as a pastor, to shepherd under to serve those who need your help and not to power over them.

And so when we see pastors or church leaders, or husbands or parents who are micromanaging, controlling authoritative, misusing that power that God gave them. For their own glory, for their own purposes, for their own agenda. That’s a huge red flag that this is a destructive system, family, individual, and group.

julio: You talk about idolatry in the midst of this, and I thought that was really interesting, where you ask people who do you worship? And I think most people, especially when we’re talking about churches, they’re like I worship God. I come to church, I worship God. But I’ve noticed that in many cases with this celebrity culture that we have now around our pastors and our speakers and our authors, and that the worship gets distorted and sometimes these pastors or leaders take the place of God and talk about what happens when idolatry enters the picture.

As far as, maybe we’re not the destructive one. We’re in the destructive relationship, but we’re also because we have misplaced. Worship, we’re not able to maybe see things properly or be able to take the steps that we need to get out of it.

Leslie: Yeah. So I’ll talk about this in the metaphors that I’m most familiar with, and that is in marriage.

A lot of times we talk about women and we tell our women who are in destructive marriages that they’ve become a marriage centered woman. In other words, if my marriage doesn’t make it, I will die. Or if my man doesn’t love me, I will die. They’re a husband centered woman, and actually the church actually teaches women to be that.

Yeah. And that’s idolatry. So when the curse of the fall in Genesis where it says, you shall long for his hu your husband and he shall rule over you, it’s talking about the consequences of sin, not the order of God. And so we have made man our source, whether it’s the king. Which is what God said.

I didn’t want Israel to be having a king because I don’t want the king to be your source or the husband to be our source. I must have him love me or I will die. And we don’t actually say those words, but we put up with a lot of sinful behavior and actually able sinful behavior as wives, because we’re too afraid to speak the truth in love.

Because what if he leaves me? What if he doesn’t like it? What if he’s, mad at me? And so we’re living in fear. And the same thing happens in churches where you have a leader who’s larger than life and you feel like he is the source of your spiritual growth, or he is the source of the goodness of what God is doing at your church.

And there is no source other than God. But when we put a person as our source for whatever wellbeing we need, then that becomes our idol and it’s destructive to ourselves as well as the organization.

julio: And I think the church too. Yeah. People can make an idol out of community. And I’ve seen it where there’s a church and maybe it has a school as well, and maybe the person’s on staff.

And so their whole entire world, their whole entire friendship group, and it has been maybe for decades, is the church. And so the thought of leaving that, the thought of separating for from that I think is every bit as profound as it can be in, in disrupting a marriage that’s destructive. Or leaving a husband that’s destructive.

But again I have actually a family member who’s in a pretty toxic kind of church situation. And I’ve heard about it for decades. For decades. And there’s a part of me that’s honey, if you’re, do something about it. If you’re unhappy, if in, in a. Yeah, and I think for good reason, but I think you need to do something about it.

So you, the first part of your book is identifying it. There’s a lot of people that have gotten to the point where they’ve identified it, but the second part is actually stopping it, doing something.

Leslie: And I think this is what we would call and I’m gonna take the feminine perspective.

And I’m not saying that the church may be the feminine and God is the masculine when we think about the church, but the feminine perspective is that we are to be willing to nobly sacrifice. So suffering and sacrifice are such noble Christian virtues. That sometimes we lack discernment on when we’re doing a noble sacrifice.

I’m willing to, jump into a pond to save a child who’s drowning, even if it costs me my life, i’m willing to do that because greater love than no one has it. If you give your life up for a friend or even for a stranger, I think that’s a noble sacrifice. But to sacrifice your wellbeing, your health, your welfare, your finances, your spiritual growth in order to enable.

Someone else to continue to sin against you. Is not a noble sacrifice. It’s a foolish sacrifice. And yet the church doesn’t discern that, whether it’s in relationships of family members and toxic marriages, or whether it’s a toxic leader that somehow worked to just forebear and forgive again and again.

But I don’t see where the scriptures talk about that. In fact, the Bible’s pretty clear that there are gonna be toxic leaders in the church. There was toxic leaders. Paul talks about them that she, wolves and sheep’s clothing, Jesus talked about, and that we’re not to tolerate them. We’re not to enable them.

And yet we’ve come into a culture where somehow love means we put up with anything. And I think love means that we’re willing to speak the truth in love, not that we forebear and put up with all kinds of sinful mistreatment and sinful behavior.

julio: And when they’ve done it to you, they’re doing it to others.

There’s just never a one time abuser. So if it’s a pattern with you, it’s a pattern with others. And if you don’t speak the truth in love, who is? And yet I, this is something that I’ve heard in my reporting and I used to hear it and go, okay, yeah, God’s given me a platform and a way to research things and then to publicize them.

And obviously that brings change and that’s important, but I’ve really come to object to when somebody says to me, Julie, speak for me. ’cause we I feel like I have no voice. And what I’ve learned with advocates and with journalists, our job isn’t to speak for you. Our job is to elevate your voice so that people can hear it.

But you have to speak and speaking up in these environments where it’s not safe to speak up, where you know. You are going to be vilified for doing so, which is often what happens is really scary. But it’s a necessary kind of step. So someone right now who’s I, you almost feel like the burning inside of you.

Like you have to say something, but if you say it, if you don’t say it perfectly, it’s all gonna become about how you didn’t say it perfectly. That becomes the focus and you try so hard to say it perfectly and you plan it out and then it doesn’t come out that way. I’ve seen this happen and play out so many times.

And honestly, if somebody’s not receptive to what you say, there’s no way that you can make it. A way that’s gonna be palatable to them, but talk about the importance of speaking up and how we can do it. And what we need to do if we’re thinking of taking that step,

Leslie: part of your maturity.

One of the things that is God’s will for all of us is to mature that God wants us to move out of the childlike dependent. Everybody tells us what to do position. To thinking for ourselves growing up and becoming more mature. That is his will for all of us. And so there are times that we are going to have to speak up for ourselves, whether it’s in a restaurant because the waiter didn’t bring the right meal, or whether it’s to the airlines who canceled your ticket and you have to get a different ticket or whatever it is.

We have to learn some of these skills in order to be a functional, healthy human being in relationships. And so God allows us to sometimes be in situations where we have to learn that, and that’s a good thing. But sometimes we are afraid of other people’s opinions. The fear of man is a snare and we’re afraid to speak up because they’re not gonna like it, and we know they’re not gonna like it.

So I spoke up to my mother not lots of times. She never liked it. It was never received well, whether I said it well or I didn’t say it well, she didn’t receive it because she wasn’t. Open to the truth. The Bible tells us in Hebrews three 13, let us encourage one another day after day, lett any one of us become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Let a righteous man strike me. It is a kindness. And so there are times that people tell me the truth or tell me things about myself or tell I have to say something about, to my kids or to my husband or to, I’ve written letters to my pastor saying, Hey, when you talk about David and Bathsheba today, I don’t agree with you.

This was, and and they have been gracious. They have heard me and I’ve spoken up and they’ve heard me. But not everybody gets that opportunity. And there’s times I’ve spoken up and I just get criticized. And so I think part of our listeners who are listening to this have to understand that yes, there’s reconciliation and healing and growth for both of you.

If you can talk and someone listens, but there are times that you may have to speak up and they’re still not gonna listen. Jesus did. Jesus spoke up. Jesus talked to the Pharisees, Jesus talked to Judas, Jesus talked to others and they didn’t listen. And it doesn’t mean that we’re not to speak up just because we don’t think they’re gonna hear us.

It might be that we need to do it for our own growth and for our own clarity that this is wrong and I’m not willing to participate in this anymore. And whether they listen or they don’t listen. I remember when God called me to speak on these issues. It was Ezekiel chapter, I think two where he called Ezekiel and he said, I’m calling you to speak to our rebellious people, whether they listen or they don’t listen.

And so there’s no. Promise that you’re gonna get a great outcome. It means that this is part of your growth and maturity to learn to speak up for yourself. And I think you’re absolutely right, Julie, for us to come in and rescue everybody like we know best, how to speak their voice, we don’t, and it’s their opportunity and their privilege to learn to speak up for themselves.

And how we can help them do that is by supporting them and encouraging them, but not doing it for them. Just like a mommy wouldn’t help their child by doing their homework for them.

julio: Exactly. And there’s gonna be consequences. And I think that’s what’s so difficult. And when we’re talking about an unhealthy church, often the people, I found, the people that are most impacted by emotionally destructive leaders are the people that are the closest to them.

Which means the more you’re in the inner circle, the more often you’re on staff and you’re in a leadership position, the more this is going to impact you. But it also means, and so many people have said to me Julie, I go on the record, but I’ll lose my job.

Leslie (2): Si.

julio: This is my livelihood. And I have to think back when I blew the whistle and I knew it meant losing my job.

I, I did have the comfort of knowing my husband was employed and if we lose my, lost my job, we lost my job. But I think it’s very difficult for people, especially if you’re the breadwinner in the family to say, if I speak up, this may happen. But the same way, I mean for a wife as she’s speaking up in a toxic marriage, she could lose her means of support.

And so talk about taking responsibility for speaking up and being willing to bear these consequences, which can be quite severe at times.

Leslie: Yeah. It costs you. It costs you and it costs you to live in integrity. It just does. In this world, it costs you sometimes a job or your reputation or it costs you relationships.

And I think if we can do that with humility of not like I’m the righteous one and you’re the unrighteous one, or I’m always right and you’re always wrong, I think there’s this snarkiness that’s going on in our culture right now. If I believe this, I’m right and you’re wrong and you’re bad and I’m good.

So we, we don’t have to be divisive because love is the highest value that God has. But if you’re in a position where you’re married to someone who is hurting you or you’re working for someone or in an organization that’s harming you, yes, to speak up will cost you, but to not speak up costs you too.

Leslie (2): It

Leslie: always costs you. And so you get to decide which price you wanna pay.

And so it might be that if you’re working in a church that you see the leaders lacking integrity. You see the leadership dismissing people’s voices. So you know, it’s not gonna go do any good to speak up. You already know that it might not be the right time for you to speak up, but it might be the right time for you to start looking for another job.

Because it is gonna cost you. And sometimes we have elevated in the Christian world, loyalty over integrity.

julio: Si.

Leslie: And loyalty over honesty. And at the end of the day. You don’t have to live with them, but you do have to live with yourself. And so I just encourage people to understand what do you stand for and what are your values?

And if you’re in an organization that those values are being compromised or violated or abused it’s gonna cost you either way. So you get to decide which price you wanna pay, because so many women who I work with in destructive marriages have stayed married because God hates divorce, and they’ve been taught that, it’s a noble sacrifice and all that.

But after 40 years of marriage, guess what? Their health is so compromised. Yeah. Because of all the stressful, toxic chemicals that are going on in their body by having to swallow the bile all the time, that they’re feeling that they couldn’t work if they had to because they’re so weak and they’re so frail physically as well as emotionally from the trauma that they’ve absorbed all those years.

julio: So how many of us want to live in adventure of faith? Who want to step out in faith? Who want. I know as a kid when I used to hear the stories of the great figures of faith in scripture, and I’d be, I want a life like that. I want a life like that. And it comes with risk. It comes with risk.

But when you step out and when you risk, I look back at the ways that my life is completely radically different from how it would’ve been had I not say blown the whistle. In 2018 when I was at Moody totally different trajectory I never had planned. And, but it’s an adventure of faith and.

I didn’t have it planned, but God gave it to me. And I think sometimes we settle for super ordinary lives because we never take the risk that God put before us. And it’s to our, like we, we think that we’re taking the safe route. We think that we’re taking the route that’s best for us, and yet it’s the worst for us because God has so much better.

And you talk about, and I love this in your book, that when you stand up to someone who’s being destructive, you are not just doing it for you. You have an opportunity to be a champion. And to me I see women do this all the time. Who say, the reason I’m exposing this abuser is because I don’t want them to do it to another person.

And you literally can save people’s lives. And yet, right now we have a story going on where Robert Morris people knew. Christian leaders knew for 18 years at least, that he had sexually molested. Get your head around this, a 12 to an 18-year-old. And then we have Jimmy Evans coming out and saying, oh, I thought I was 16, not 12.

And I’m just like, what? And you continued, even if you thought it was 16, which I don’t believe, because there’s enough other evidence pointing the other way. But you said nothing. You said nothing. And how many top level Christian leaders said nothing for so long? This Michael Tate story that we recently did, how he’s abusing young men, and it was called the best known secret in Christian contemporary music.

Everybody knew it was an open secret. And yet nobody said something till these three brave men came forward.

Leslie: Yeah. I think of the Esther story and she could have kept quiet.

julio: Si,

Leslie: she could have just said, you know what? He doesn’t know I’m a Jew. I’m not speaking up. I’ve got a good cushy position here.

I might lose my job. I won’t be the queen anymore. Look what happened to Vashti, yeah and I can understand that. She would be like, whoa, this is scary. And she didn’t know what would happen. So this is, we want certainty in our life. We want to know that if I do this, it’ll turn out good.

If I do this, the church is gonna respond positively. If I do this, God’s gonna, restore everything in my life. Like I, it never happened. And it often doesn’t turn out that way. And so Esther didn’t know even the very first time she went into the king, ’cause he didn’t summon her. And so she took a risk by going to his chambers.

And whether his scepter was gonna be up or down, she didn’t know, but she knew it could cost her. And so I think you’re right. God calls us to an adventure of faith and. If we clinging to our security and want to make everything safe and cushy we’re gonna miss out on God’s best for us because God is saying, I have come that you might have life and you might have it abundantly.

And sometimes God calls to an adventure in his story that

We wouldn’t have picked Esther I’m sure wouldn’t have picked it, but she lived it. And she not only changed her story in that story of Esther, but she changed the Jews story. And so these brave women that are coming forward and these brave men who are finally coming forward, we don’t know the larger impact that this is gonna have on the church, but kudos for them to speak out.

And hopefully at this point in our culture, there’s enough others that are supportive of them that they do have some support in doing that. But it also costs you, it costs you to speak up and you don’t know exactly the price you’re gonna have to pay. And so that’s the scary thing to do.

julio: And I think too of Jen Lyle, who was.

The face in some ways of abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. Yeah. And how she was abused as an adult. So few people understand adult clergy sexual abuse and how that works. And yet she took a stand and she paid dearly for it. So I don’t wanna make this sound like this is, some triumphal list.

If you do this, it’s gonna work out great because it really may not. And yet I was thinking about this today. Jen’s face now has become the face of courage.

In her death. And in a way, she’s a martyr for the survivor community because she lived, according to her convictions, she spoke up, she was gaslit, she was lied about, she lost her job, she lost so, so much, and eventually lost her health.

And we don’t know, to what extent she was impacted by what happened, but. She has become the face of courage now in her death.

Leslie: And even the bigger story of her, and I don’t know all of the details, but the grooming that took place that makes it look like a mutually consensual adult relationship.

I think that, again, especially for more immature, naive Christians who believe that their leader is benevolent and they mean and oh, I must really be helping him and God’s using me to help him and serve him and he’s telling me things and it gets very confusing, and I’m not asking other people’s opinion, and my loyalty to him is most important, and I’m not allowed to talk about this.

And so I can’t get anybody else’s opinion. I can’t get any fresh air. And brainwashing isn’t that hard if you don’t get any fresh air. So if you’re living in a cult and they’re telling you everything, or I have a friend who’s. Into conspiracy theories. And all she reads is all conspiracy theories. We

julio: all do.

We all do now. And I’m like,

Leslie: girlfriend, this isn’t, you need some fresh air. Yes. And but she’s caught in that. And so I think, and but there, but the grace of God go, why? And so I think it’s really important for us to have some understanding of how powerful

The confusion can be for someone who doesn’t get other people’s perspective.

And so when you’re living in a toxic family with a strong leader, or you’re in a toxic church that may dot all their i’s and cross all their T’s theologically sound, but it’s an unhealthy environment, it’s very easy to get confused about what’s really true, good and right.

julio: And I’m glad you brought that up because I think we can have orthodox churches that even have outstanding teachers.

Yeah. But their actions don’t match what they’re preaching. Yes. And it’s really orthopraxy right? Behavior. I’ve gotten to the point right now where I honestly don’t, I care, obviously doctrine’s important, but I would almost rather have a doctrine that’s a little wishy-washy with someone who’s actually loving than someone who’s so and cl and so firm that he’s and they’re just harming people left and right.

Leslie: Yeah. The Bible says that if you speak with the tongues of men of angels, yeah. So you’re so right and you have no love. You are so wrong, but yet they don’t see it. And so this is so important for you to get the word out for people who might be listening to you that it gets confusing when the theology sounds so true, but the practical application of that theology is it’s off. It’s it’s off. Even, going back to the idea of forgiveness, yes, we should forgive and we should, not keep a record of wrongs, but does that mean that there’s no consequences for sin or that I have to continue being in a relationship with someone who is been abusive to me?

And so that’s where the theology breaks down with the practical application because it means that yes, you just need to shut up and put up and let this happen again and again. And that’s not true.

julio: And we forget God’s a God of justice. The reason God died, the reason Jesus had to die on the cross was to satisfy God’s justice.

And he can’t wink it. Sin. And I think we’ve forgotten that. I really do. We’ve gotten very lopsided in our understanding. We have, we’ve lent learned so hard towards grace that we forget the holiness of God and that he does expect us. What did Jesus say? Be perfect as my holy father in heaven is perfect.

And so there is an expectation that our words and our actions should match. And that’s hard to do. It’s hard for me to do. And I pray by God’s grace that I’ll do a better job of it, tomorrow and today than I did yesterday. But that’s sanctification. We don’t talk about sanctification in the church anymore, but we need to.

I think we really it’s critical and I think it’s part of the reason that we are encountering the sorts of things that we’re encountering. But I do want to take some time now and talk about actually surviving. What we’ve gone through because and this is what’s hard too, is you have people often that have come through situations like this, sometimes very courageously have left or have spoken up, but the injustice and the harm has marked them so much that it’s hard for them to truly thrive again.

And I don’t think, I, Lorianne Thompson, who is one of Ravi’s Zacharia’s victims I, she’s a model for me on this because she’s gone through so much so much, and yet one of the most gracious, forgiving, loving yet takes no crap kind of people, but she said, I haven’t, I didn’t work this hard to get out of this and to get out of the abuse, to not really live.

And yet I think there’s a lot of survivors who just aren’t really living there, aren’t really thriving. So speak to that. How can we really thrive after, the effects of someone robbing often decades of your life and the joy that you should have had and being able to get over that happened because that’s really a loss.

Leslie: Yeah, I think it’s really tempting when we’ve been harmed. I think this is where Paul’s words in Romans takes such poignant clarity for me when he tells us, do not allow yourself to be overcome by evil. Because evil is going to hit us, whether it’s in little dings throughout our life, or whether it just clobbers us over the head and robs us of our childhood, or robs us of our, purity or robs us of our, young adulthood or however it robs us.

Evil is seeking to destroy us. And so this, and we don’t understand like, why did God let this happen? And I don’t know that I can answer that why question, but I think the question becomes not why did God allow this to happen? Because I think you’ll have to answer. I think you’ll have to ask him when you get to heaven because even if he told you he told us why he let Job suffer, we don’t like the answer.

So it’s not, we’re not capable of understanding the why, but I think the next question is, what am I gonna do with what happened to me? And I think this is what I’m very concerned with that victims, whether you’re a victim of a predator, a parent an abuser in the church it’s very easy to let yourself be overcome by your legitimate.

Anger over what happened to you. And that legitimate anger can also be toxic if you don’t know what to do with it. And it just gets churning in your body and the resentment and the hurt, and this happened to me, so this ruined my life. It doesn’t have to ruin your life. We see stories of Joseph being harmed by his brothers and harmed by Potiphar and Potiphar’s wife.

We see Esther being sold into slavery. We see Abigail living with a treacherous man, Naval. We see all kinds of stories in scripture where people had choices to make when they were harmed, and you do too. And so really empowering people to recognize. One of the first lessons of healing from an abusive incident when you’ve been traumatized and you’ve had no choices is to reclaim your power to choose, and you can choose.

To overcome evil with good. You can’t overcome the evil in the other person. But you can become, you can begin to apply the antidote of how do I get rid of the evil that’s festering inside of me? The evil of resentment, the evil of hatred, the evil of discouragement, the evil of defeat. Like my life is ruined.

I can’t do anything else. He took everything from me. None of that is true, but as long as we believe it, that’s gonna be our story.

julio: And I think it helps to recognize that all of this is a part of entering into Christ’s sufferings. I was reminded of this morning. I talked about Lorianne probably ’cause we were texting this morning about something that I felt had been done to me so unfairly.

And it, she reminded me of that and I realized I feel so wronged because I know I’m meant to do. And that was my heart in it. And I realized, but I probably sin to my heart. Jesus never even sinned in his heart. And look at the way he’s maligned, looked at the way he was abused. And even today, the way he still misunderstood by so many.

And then whatever you’re going through, not to say it’s insignificant ’cause Jesus never says that any of our pain is insignificant, but it does put it in a certain perspective where you realize, yeah I have suffered, but Jesus has suffered much more. It’s hard to find a suffering that’s greater than his.

Leslie: And because of our suffering. So because of my suffering as a child, for example, I was very active in child abuse reformation. I think I told you the story when I was, in first married, I. We were at a church, and the pastor from the pulpit asked for volunteers to sleep in the boys’ tent for a boys’ camping trip.

And I’m like, oh, dear Lord. Yeah. This was before any laws were passed and all of that kind of stuff, but I’m like, what? And I go to the pastor and I’m like, you can. He goes, we’re of all Christians here. But

julio: oh dear,

Leslie: he didn’t see it, but I saw it because of what I had experienced as a child.

And so sometimes the experiences that God allows us to have, he, Rick Warren said, the worst thing that happens to us often becomes the mess, becomes the message that God uses to comfort others to stand up for others. And just like Lorianne Thompson or the woman who just died, their message is empowering other people to stand up and begin to make changes in the leadership structure of churches and begin to give other women and men the courage to speak the truth as well.

And so sometimes your suffering is awful and. It’s part of the story of how God is gonna make significant changes in the way things are in our culture and in our world and in our church.

julio: Amen. And look at the way that he’s used and redeemed what you experienced as a child now to help so many people.

And I’ve met an awful lot of survivors where God has redeemed that and has made them agents of healing for someone else. And so that’s part of the story. And I do believe that God rewrites our story. That gives us an opportunity. He always seems to have that plan B, when things happen that weren’t part of his will.

I don’t think abuse is ever part of his will. But I think too, an internal perspective helps an awful lot too. ’cause it says that we should be blessed when people persecute you. But then it also talks about heaven and the rewards of heaven. And I think sometimes we forget that this isn’t all there is.

And. Keeping that in mind helps me as well, but I so appreciate your ministry, Leslie. I appreciate, and I should say this to folks, if you have not heard Leslie’s the talk that you did at Restore, which I thought was so good more on this theme of really becoming the hero of your story.

In other words, making the changes that you need to make. I wanna give you one last opportunity. Is there anything that, to that person who right now is still feeling stuck, that you might want to say to encourage them to take the next step?

Leslie: You matter. You matter. Your story matters.

What happened to you matters. And that God isn’t asking you to forget about that or to put that on the back burner. That is part of your story, but how you. Begin to heal from that. And how you begin to grow from that and how you begin to use that in the next chapter of your story is really up to you.

And it’s not something that you have to do alone. There are others who want to help you and come alongside and walk with you. And if you’ve been in a church where it is toxic and you aren’t given a voice or a choice and you’re feeling just smothered, it’s time for you to say, maybe this isn’t the right place for me.

Instead of waiting for someone to pull you out of there for you to say, Hey, maybe I just need some fresh air for a little bit, and listen to some other people or read some other books, or go some other places and see what it’s like in other places. Because sometimes there’s a an environment where we grow in and flourish, and there’s environments where we get suffocated and squashed.

And so God wants you to grow. That’s his will for you. And so make sure you put yourself in an environment where there is nourishment and nurturing and support so that you can heal and grow.

julio: And for a lot of people, I know that is the Restore Conference. And I just wanna mention Leslie’s gonna be joining us at our next Restore, so be listening for that.

We haven’t announced it yet, but I can say it’s going to be in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which we’re very excited about because I know there’s a lot of people who have suffered a lot there and a lot of for lack of a better word, church refugees. And that environment of being with others who get it.

You don’t have to explain very much of your story, and they immediately get it. They understand. It has been so healing for so many. The last one I think was the most powerful e every one. I’m like, that was so powerful. The next one matched that. And then God almost exceeds our expectations every time.

It’s just it’s unbelievable. But that’s our God when we come to him broken and wanting a touch from him. He doesn’t disappoint us. And I think his heart is especially inclined to the broken. Appreciate you, Leslie. Can’t wait to see you at the next restore.

And I’m hoping maybe if I can get out to Arizona and up into the cooler areas where I know you are maybe we can get a hike in this summer. That’d be pretty fun.

Leslie: Absolutamente.

julio: Alright, thanks so much. Really appreciate you.

Leslie: Gracias por invitarme.

julio: Thanks so much for listening to the Roys report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and I just wanna let you know that we’re giving away copies of Leslie’s book, the Emotionally Destructive Relationship, to anyone who gives a gift of $50 or more this month to the Roy’s report.

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