Faith for Hard Seasons

The Screaming Secret

When the Man in the Pulpit Is Abusing the Woman at Home

A Teaching by Pastor Nicole Washington

If you are in danger, read this first.

Your safety comes first — before this teaching, before your marriage, before the ministry. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. You can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline any time at 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. They are free, confidential, and trained for exactly this.

Part One: The Secret That Screams

I have to preach something today that most people would rather leave alone. But I'm not most people, and I've been a pastor for close to forty years, and I've held too many crying women in the back rooms of too many churches to keep quiet about this.

There are pastors who abuse their wives.

I said it. Out loud. Because it is time somebody said it out loud.

Men who stand up on Sunday, Bible in hand, anointing on their words, church loving them, and then go home and become someone their congregation would not recognize. Men who preach love from the pulpit and practice cruelty behind their own front door. And the woman sitting on that front pew, smiling, dressed nice, saying amen, is dying inside, and nobody knows.

I call it the screaming secret. Because it is screaming. It is screaming inside that woman every single day. But it is kept a secret, locked up tight, because of who he is and what he does and what people would say.

And I want to talk to three people in this teaching. I want to talk mostly to her — the wife who is living this — because she needs to hear the truth more than anybody. But I also have a word for him, the man doing it, because somebody needs to look him in the eye. And I have a word for the church, because the church has helped keep this secret for far too long.

But her first. Always her first.

To the Woman Reading This in Secret

If that's you — if you are married to a man who leads God's people in public and tears you down in private — I want you to hear me before I say anything else.

I believe you.

I know that in your world, that might be the first time somebody has said that to you, because part of what makes this so crushing is that nobody would believe you. Everybody loves him. Everybody respects him. He's so godly in front of people. Who would ever believe that man does what he does to you?

I would. I do. Because I have seen it with my own eyes, more times than I can count. You are not crazy. You are not exaggerating. You are not making it up in your head, no matter how many times he's told you that you are. What is happening to you is real, and it is wrong, and it is not your fault, and God sees all of it.

So let's take this secret that's been screaming inside you, and let's drag it out into the light, and call it exactly what it is. Because you cannot heal from something you're not even allowed to name.

Part Two: Calling It What It Is

Abuse hides by staying nameless. He tells you it's not what it is. He tells you you're too sensitive, too dramatic, that this is just marriage, that you're the problem. So the first thing we have to do is name it plainly — all of it, every form it takes — so you can stop questioning yourself.

Physical Abuse

Let's start with the one people think of first. If he has put his hands on you in anger — grabbed you, shoved you, hit you, choked you, thrown things, blocked the door so you couldn't leave, or made you afraid he might — that is physical abuse. Period. It does not matter that he apologized. It does not matter that he cried after. It does not matter that he's a pastor. A hand raised against you in anger is violence, and no title on earth makes it holy.

And hear me clearly, because this is the most important thing I'll say. If you are in physical danger, your safety comes first — before this teaching, before your marriage, before the ministry, before anything. God is not asking you to stay in a place where your body is in danger to protect a man's reputation.

Emotional Abuse

Then there's the one that leaves no bruises anybody can see. The constant criticism. The name-calling. The way he can make you feel two inches tall with a look. The rage, and then the silent treatment for days. The way he twists everything around until somehow every problem is your fault and you're apologizing for things you didn't even do.

That's emotional abuse. And a lot of women will endure it for years precisely because there's no bruise to point to, so they think it doesn't count. It counts. Proverbs 18:21 says death and life are in the power of the tongue. Words can wound as deep as any fist, and a man who uses his words, his gift — the very thing that makes him a good preacher — to tear down his own wife, is doing violence with his mouth.

Spiritual Abuse

Now here's one that is especially wicked when it comes from a pastor, because he has a weapon most abusers don't. He has the Bible, and he knows how to use it against you.

Spiritual abuse is when he uses God, and Scripture, and your own faith, as tools to control you. When he quotes submit to your husband to justify domination. When he tells you God will punish you if you leave. When he says you're being rebellious, or you're not a godly woman, or God gave him authority over you, so you have to take whatever he does. When he stands between you and God and makes himself your judge.

When he uses the Word of God as a weapon against you, that is not God. That is him.

Let me set you free from that lie right now. God never gave any husband the right to abuse his wife. Never. Ephesians 5, the very chapter he loves to quote at you, tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. Christ gave Himself up for the church. He didn't dominate her. He died for her. So if he wants to claim Ephesians 5, then hold him to all of it. His headship was supposed to look like a man laying down his life for you, not lording his power over you.

Financial Abuse

Then there's the one that traps women where they are. Financial abuse. When he controls all the money. When you have to account for every dollar. When you have no access, no information, no freedom. When he keeps you financially helpless on purpose, so that you can't leave even if you wanted to — because where would you go and how would you eat?

That's not headship. That's a cage. And sometimes it's dressed up in spiritual language too — he handles the money because he's the head, you don't need to worry about it. But a covering is supposed to protect you, not trap you. When the provision becomes a prison, that's abuse.

Social Abuse

And here's the last one, the one that makes all the others so much worse. Social abuse. Isolation. When he slowly cuts you off from everybody who might help you. Your friends. Your family. Anyone who might see what's really going on and say something.

He decides who you can see. He doesn't like your sister, your friend, your mama, because they ask too many questions. He keeps you so busy serving the church that you have no life outside of him. He makes sure you're surrounded by his people, who see him as a hero, so you have nobody to tell and nobody who would believe you if you did.

Isolation is the abuser's favorite tool, because a woman with no witnesses and no support is a woman he can control completely. And the church makes it so easy, because the whole community is loyal to him. Ecclesiastes 4 says two are better than one, for if one falls the other lifts him up, but woe to the one who is alone when they fall. He is trying to make sure you fall alone. Do not let him have that.

Part Three: The Truth That Sets You Free

So now that we've named it, let me preach some truth over you, because the lies have had you long enough.

God Is Not on the Side of the Abuser

Whatever he's told you about God, hear the real God now. God hates what is being done to you. Psalm 11:5 says the Lord tests the righteous, but His soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. His soul hates violence. Malachi 2 says God hates it when a man deals treacherously with the wife of his covenant, and that a man who covers his wife with violence has covered himself with shame.

God is not up in heaven telling you to endure this quietly. God is grieved by it. God is angry about it. And God is not more concerned with your husband's ministry than He is with your safety and your soul. The God who sees — the God Hagar met in the wilderness and called You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees — He has seen every single thing that has happened to you behind that closed door. Nothing has been hidden from Him. And He has not looked away.

Submission Was Never Meant to Mean Suffering

Let me take the biggest weapon out of his hand for good. Submission does not mean you absorb abuse. It never did.

The same Bible that says wives submit, says husbands love your wife as Christ loved the church, and says nobody ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it. Cherish. That's the standard for him. And that same Bible says in Ephesians 5:21 to submit to one another. Mutual. It was always meant to be a covenant of two people laying their lives down for each other, not one person laying their life down under the other's foot.

Submission is not a command to be destroyed. God is not asking you to submit to sin, submit to violence, submit to your own destruction. When Peter's authorities told him to stop preaching, he said we ought to obey God rather than men. There are limits to every human authority, and the limit is always sin. No one — not a husband, not a pastor, not a man wearing both hats — has the authority to make you a partner in your own harm.

A Word to the Pastor Who Is Doing This

And now let me turn and speak to the man, because somebody has to, and I'm not afraid to.

If you are a pastor, and you are abusing your wife, in any of these ways, hear me. You are living a lie that God is going to expose, because Luke 8 says there is nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest. That double life you're living — holy in the pulpit and cruel at home — God sees all of it, and it is a stench to Him.

James 3 says not many should become teachers, because they'll be judged more strictly. You picked up a heavier judgment when you picked up that Bible. And when you use that very Bible to control and crush the wife God gave you to cherish, you are not just failing as a husband — you are taking the name of the Lord in vain with your life, and Ephesians 5 will not shield you. It will testify against you, because you took the verse about her submission and buried the verse about your dying love.

But hear this too, because I am a pastor and I believe in repentance. There is mercy for you, if you will stop hiding and get honest. Not a quick sorry to keep the secret going. Real repentance. Confessing to someone who can hold you accountable. Getting out of that pulpit and getting yourself real help before you do more damage. God can restore a man who truly repents. But there is no restoration down the road you're on now — only exposure. Turn around while mercy is still holding the door.

A Word to the Church That Keeps the Secret

And church, we have to answer for our part, because we have helped keep this secret. We have loved our gifted men so much that we protected them instead of the women they were hurting. We told her to pray harder, submit more, keep it in the house, don't bring reproach on the ministry. We made her feel like her silence was holy and her outcry was betrayal.

That has to end. Proverbs 31 says open your mouth for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. The church is supposed to be the safest place for a hurting woman, not the place that hands her back to the man hurting her because he's good in the pulpit. If we protect the gift and sacrifice the person, we have become the very thing Jesus rebuked — whitewashed tombs, beautiful outside, full of death within.

To Her, One More Time

But I promised I'd end with you, because you are who this is really for.

You are not the sin in your home. You are not the reason he rages. You are not required by God to be destroyed to keep a marriage or a ministry alive. The screaming secret does not have to stay a secret anymore, because it was never yours to carry. It was his sin, and secrets like this die the moment they're spoken into the light to the right person.

So tell somebody. Somebody safe, outside his reach, who is not loyal to him. A wise pastor from another place. A counselor who understands abuse. A domestic violence advocate who deals with this every day. Family who love you more than they love his reputation. You need a witness and you need a way, and God so often sends both through the people we're finally brave enough to tell.

And if you are in danger tonight, do not wait for this to get better on its own. Abuse does not heal by staying. Your first job is to be safe. God is not asking you to prove your faith by staying in harm's way. The bravest, most faithful thing you can do may be to get yourself to safety and let God sort out everything else from there.

You are seen by the God who sees. You are loved by a God who hates what's being done to you. And you are not alone, no matter how alone he's tried to make you. Your help comes from the Lord, and sometimes the Lord sends help with skin on it — a hand reaching out to pull you into the light. When it reaches for you, take it.

The secret has been screaming long enough. It's time to let it be heard by someone who can help you carry it out.

For Your Study & Reflection

Scripture References

Genesis 16:13 — Hagar names God "the God who sees me." He sees you too.
Psalm 11:5 — God's soul hates the one who loves violence.
Malachi 2:14-16 — God witnesses the covenant and hates treachery against the wife; the man who covers her with violence covers himself with shame.
Ephesians 5:21, 25-29 — Submit to one another; husbands, love as Christ loved and gave Himself; nourish and cherish.
Proverbs 18:21 — Death and life are in the power of the tongue.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 — Two are better than one; woe to the one who is alone when they fall.
Luke 8:17 — Nothing hidden shall not be made manifest.
Proverbs 31:8-9 — Open your mouth for those who cannot speak for themselves.

Discussion Questions

Which of the five forms — physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, social — named something you have been afraid to call by its real name?
What lies have you been told about God and submission that this teaching challenged?
Who is one safe person, outside his reach, that you could tell? What has kept you from telling them?
If a friend described your situation to you as hers, what would you tell her to do?
What would it look like to put your safety first this week, even in one small step?
(For the church) Have we ever protected a gifted man instead of the person he was hurting? What must change in us?

A Prayer

Father, You are the God who sees, and You have seen everything that has happened behind closed doors. Thank You that You do not call my suffering holy, and You do not stand on the side of the one hurting me. Break every lie that has kept me silent and afraid. Give me the courage to tell someone safe, and send me help with skin on it. Put people around me who love truth more than reputation. Make a way of escape where I cannot see one. And guard my life, my mind, and my body. Where there is a heart that will repent, bring it to real repentance. And where there is a woman in danger, Lord, get her safe. You are my refuge and my very present help in trouble. I am not alone. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Declarations

I declare: I am not the sin in my home, and the abuse is not my fault.
I declare: God sees me, God believes me, and God hates what is being done to me.
I declare: No title makes cruelty holy, and no verse commands me to be destroyed.
I declare: Submission never meant suffering, and I will not call abuse God's will.
I declare: My safety is not a betrayal of my faith. It is obedience to a God who loves me.
I declare: The secret is not mine to carry, and I am allowed to tell.
I declare: My help comes from the Lord, and I will take the hand He sends.
I declare: I am seen, I am loved, and I am not alone.

If this teaching named something you are living, please do not carry it one more day by yourself. What is happening to you is real, it is not your fault, and God is not asking you to endure it in silence. Reach out to a trusted person outside your husband's reach, or to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, any time, free and confidential. You were made in the image of God, and you were never meant to be anyone's secret to keep.

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