Jesusluvsall's Blog

Several years ago, I tutored a young woman from another country. The arrangements were made by her then American husband. It seemed innocent enough at first. I went to their home to teach her English while he was home.

On afternoon while I was teaching her, he went upstairs and she took the bilingual dictionary to show me the word abuse and the word rape. I motioned we should be quiet. He had to go visit his mother, so he left. Then I got the whole story. He had been abusing her since the day she arrived in America on a fiance visa. After the most recent time that he abused her, he went through the, ‘I am sorry’ stage, so he agreed to get her an English tutor. But he had her convinced all he had to do was make one phone and she would be deported and also that the police wouldn’t believe her.

She told me all of this, so I responded by telling her the truth that he could not simply make one phone call and that she can call the police. Sure enough, a few nights later, I received a phone call. He had abused her, she called the police, they stayed at the house to make sure he didn’t follow her, and she called me from a store parking lot at 2am. I met her there and had her follow me to a hotel and paid for one night for her. The hotel put her down as an unregistered guest to protect her privacy. She did get away from him, got divorced, and started a new life.

The reason I share this story from long ago is because domestic violence is in the news because of an assistant football coach. I saw the response of his head coach when asked what he had to say to the woman who is the victim and was underwhelmed by his response of, “I am sorry for the situation we are in.”

It is my conviction that Christian men need to take the lead in speaking out against domestic violence, and in teaching young men about healthy ways of relating with women.

Whenever I hear of women being abused, mistreated, disrespected, or put down, m I think about how Jesus treated women when he was on earth. The classic example is the fact that he appeared to Mary Magdalene first after his resurrection and gave her the responsibility to go tell the men. In that culture at that time, women were not witnesses to report on spiritual matters. Jesus never did anything and never does anything by happenstance. He had a purpose in what he did. Jesus elevated the status of women.

As someone who has mentored women in my work and also young women, along with young men, in their preparations for college, it is very concerning to me when woman are abused.

This post is partly me needing to get something off my chest and partly, hopefully, a challenge for Christian men to step up.

Thank you for reading. God Bless.