Husband / Wife (Partner) / Child Physical / Verbal Abuse in Marriage.

We hear a lot about this subject. It is a serious problem that takes place to some degree in almost every family home throughout the world. Many times it is subtle. Yet other times it is obvious in one gender and very subtle in the other.

In my first area of a mission (being an industrial area) I found physical violence took place in around 33% of homes. This was plain to hear as we would walk down the street at night time and hear the arguments with crashes and thuds. Not that it was all taking place at once, but continually walking down the same streets to get to where we were working we would eventually hear it.

My second area was very different in that it was a tourist resort; and the people were more involved in making money and their own personal lives. This meant the average couple were barely seeing each other and had no children - it was like there was no family.

In spite of this latter statement there are still subtle signs of one ruling the other. They will profess that there are no arguments and that they get on well. But continued observation demonstrates that is false. Watch an older couple as the wife tells the husband not to do something. He obeys. She may even slap his hand if he doesn't, while still professing they have no violence.

"I may miss the mark, but I don’t think by far, when I say that those who verbally or physically abuse their wives or husbands or those who degrade or demean or exercise unrighteous dominion in a marriage are not keeping the covenant." F. Howard Burton 173 Annual Conference.

I certainly agree with Bro. Burton's statement concerning temple covenants and the wives and husbands. This is not God's way.

Verbal violence usually comes in subtle ways, while physical violence is often more obvious to observe. Some may quote the old saying, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." This is said to suggest that verbal violence and nagging aren't that bad. But these can have long reaching effects.

For example a woman constantly nagging her husband can drive him to avoid coming home after work. He can get into the habit of going to the hotel for drinks with his work mates. Before long he can have become an alcoholic; and spending the family money on it. Then the wife is nagging even more because of the money situation. This drives him even further away from the family. With this comes low self-esteem and feelings of guilt.

Equally we can have a husband that constantly puts his wife down. She withdraws, and can even turn to legal drugs.

These types of effects are destined to create problems with the children unless the children learn positive things they should be doing from seeing the negative effects of their parents behavior. But the latter is asking a lot of the children.

My observations on a mission and since have shown the sad tale that women subtly or violently rule the home or the husband bashes the wife. Why is this so? It is because people have refused to learn from God's original statement that the man is actually to rule in the home in love. We can water it down to make it different to what the Scriptures say, to appease Women's Libbers. But it won't change reality. The truth still stands.

In looking at this I know that there is a general conception that men are the ones responsible for violence within the home. However claims are made that this is a false perception. The following are some statistics that have been presented to me _

"The federal government itself sponsored a study of "fatal child abuse", something many feminazis don't even comprehend, but which in the real world is nothing short of murder (or, actually, when killing innocent, defenseless children, it's the most cowardly and heinous form of murder imaginable)  http://christianparty.net/nis3.htm

It illustrates that, compared to children in families, children in single-mother households are:
20 times more likely to be fatally abused.
22 times more likely to be seriously abused.
20 times more likely to be moderately abused.
27 times more likely to be emotionally neglected.
50 times more likely to be physically neglected.
55 times more likely to be educationally neglected."

In a report from Canada we find the following _

"Only in the Domestic Violence area did the number of women killed (109) exceed the number of men killed (77). However the feminists ignore the high rate of women killing men in domestic violence cases and act as if only women are the victims. Clearly they are the perpetrators in family killings at a rate not far behind men.
Women who kill can count on getting off completely or getting substantially lower sentences than men in similar situations."
http://www.canlaw.com/rights/whokills.htm

"Violence against family members is something women do at least as often as men! There are dozens of solid scientific studies that reveal a startlingly different picture of family violence than what we usually see in the media. For instance:
Women are three times more likely than men to use weapons in spousal violence.
Women initiate most incidents of spousal violence.
Women commit most child abuse and most elder abuse.
Women hit their male children more frequently and more severely than they hit their female children.
Women commit most child murders and 64% of their victims are male children.
When women murder adults the majority of their victims are men.
Women commit 52% of spousal killings and are convicted of 41% of spousal murders.
Eighty two percent of the general population had their first experience of violence at the hands of women."
Complete scientific citations are included in this report. Leading researchers have validated the statistics used here, "Murray Straus (a sociologist and co-director for the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire) verified the statistics from his report . . .and Richard Gelles of the University of Rhode Island and author of Intimate Violence and other studies, also validated the statistics used by matching it to previous research." Alice Lovejoy, Brown University. "Counter Punch")"

My own limited research has found that women admit to having been the original perpetrators of using objects in every case.

Yet should a man be domineering in running the home? Obviously not. And God doesn't suggest such a thing. God speaks of the woman being part of the man's flesh. God has man loving his wives, not abusing them. But God does have the man as the final decision maker as surely as the bishop must make a final decision when getting counsel from his counselors. A stake president must make a final decision when receiving counsel from the high counselors and his counselors. This is God's way. He knows that you can't have 2 presidents in the church or the home.

It is nothing short of airy-fairy nonsense to talk of 2 people being able to come to the same decision every time, unless both are subservient to Christ in all things and are led by the Spirit in all things.
What do the Scriptures tell us concerning this? _

1 Pet 3:1 "Likewise, you wives, be in subjection to your own husbands..."
1 Pet 3:6 "Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord..."
1 Tim 2:12-13 "But I suffer a woman not to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve."
Eph 5:24 "Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be subject to their own husbands in every thing."
Moses 4:22 "To the woman, I, the Lord God, said: I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In sorrow you shall bring forth children, and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you." (See also Gen 3:16)

This is what God has directed to be said. There isn't some other way that God forgot about at the time. It is true that marriage partners are equal in that they have the same value before God. They are equal in that their opinion is important to be heard. But in the end it is the man who is required to seek counsel of the Lord and make the final decision.

When families are run the way that God has directed then these problems of abuse will cease. In the meantime if you are one of those not supporting God's way it is senseless pointing the finger at those with noticeable problems in these areas.