When I meet with clients there is a usual sequence to how we begin with one another.

When people come for counselling, they?ve been carrying a burden. It?s a disturbing difficulty. When an individual walks through my door, they?re not really one person but a whole situation. That situation includes others and spans contexts in which the individual happens to be located. When we first meet, I give them a chance to unload that burden, but after that we get to know one another, and I ask questions to help comprehend the story that is their personal history.

One of the questions I ask is if they have experienced ?spiritual abuse,? and almost always they look at me as if to say, ?What?s that? (Unfortunately, some do not, because they already know.)

Abuse takes place when someone who was entrusted with the care of another, whether that be a child or an elderly person, makes use of the one they were supposed to guard and nurture, utilising them for their own gratification, brutalising them or mistreating them in the process. It?s rather easy to understand in cases of sexual abuse when an uncle, a grandfather, or a babysitter is given a child to feed but instead feeds his own sexual hunger by using his position of authority and power to take advantage of the child.

Spiritual abuse takes place when those entrusted with the authority of God in religious organisations rule over people and oppress them in order to create their own version of the perfect church, synagogue, mosque, or spiritual community.

They appropriate increasing power and solidify their rule, squashing diverse perspectives and creating signposts of religious superiority.

They usually create an ?us? vs. ?them? atmosphere and warn of apostasy or religious decline, which they say is visible by any number of deviations from a standard of dress, speech, participation, or values.

An abusive spiritual leader is a far cry from what Jesus had in mind. After Jesus clarified the nature of Peter?s love for the Lord, Jesus told him: ?Feed my sheep.? Jesus already knew Peter?s limits, so He didn?t expect perfection, but He did expect Peter to follow the example Jesus had set and to adhere to the teachings Jesus had provided.

Later, when Peter wrote to the leaders of the church in various places, he told them to shepherd the flock of God among them, not for their personal gain, nor as lording it over those who had been entrusted to their charge, but by proving to be examples of what it means to know and to follow Jesus. That is both pretty simple and horribly difficult.

Unfortunately even the most well-meaning individual, when placed in a position of ultimate authority, will begin to create heaven on earth ? but in his own image.

That is, he or she will create a system according to his or her own sense of what is right and wrong, and that?s not heaven. It?s hell.

This is essentially what the Pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus? day had done.

Jesus criticised them for burdening the people with their religious rules, adding layers of expectations and obligations that God had not intended, while never actually stopping to help carry the burden themselves.

There is much more I could say about this subject.

If someone suspects that they have been negatively influenced through spiritual abuse, they might benefit from reading ?Healing Spiritual Abuse: How to Break Free from Bad Church Experiences? (Blue, K., 1993), ?Exposing Spiritual Abuse: How to Rediscover God?s Love When the Church Has Let You Down? (Fehlauer, M., 2001), or ?The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse? (Johnson, D., VanVonderen, J., 1991). There was a reason I started asking the question about spiritual abuse with those who came burdened by a difficult situation. It was because I had met many who were living bent over from the weight of their adverse religious experience, and it was no insignificant influence in their ongoing lives.

I?d rather be someone helping to lift the burdens than someone ignoring the impossible heaviness they mean.