I knew a woman, who divorced her husband and had to move back in with her parents, and he was a church pastor, that cheated on her.
I know of a guy who was an unbeliever who pretended to be a pastor, had eight kids with a Christian woman, and proceeded to divorce her. You might be interested in reading
Confessions of a Roadkill Christian by Faith Ann Raider.
But you're kinda talking to the wrong person on this and barking up the wrong tree. My dad was a Christian when he abused me. My brother was a Christian when he was totally confused in that situation and didn't help me. My mother was a Christian when she told all of my secrets to my dad and fed his abuse, too weak to really fight back. If anyone knows that Christian is NOT anti-abuse insurance, it's me. Christianity doesn't insure you against abuse any more than it insures you from getting punched in the face. And emotional abuse is basically a series of emotional punches to your self-worth face.
Also, if anyone endured abuse, it's Jesus Christ. It's hard to see because we're thousands of years in the future, but the Pharisees were sickos in the emotional abuse department. Really, a guy is going around healing people in your town - actually legitimately healing them - and you're asking him nasty questions to try and take him down. You value taking money from people more than helping them. Not to mention the physical abuse of the cross. We're over here crying because we're getting punched and kicked and thrown around, and meanwhile we don't even know what is like.
Avoiding abuse is a SECULAR value. Christianity is not about avoiding abuse and being "nice", it's about enduring abuse and overcoming it in God's strength and power. My abuse scars and the fact that I'm still standing after all that are God's glory, and if I have to endure more abuse for God's glory and honor, so be it. Our problem is that we don't train children to recognize that they will be facing abuse for their whole life, so they aren't prepared to take it on when it arrives and think it won't happen to them. They fail to recognize when they are being used and led astray into ineffectiveness.
Now let us be clear: a Christian abusing another Christian is WRONG. This instructions leave no room for abuse of any kind:
Ephesians 4:25-32 said:
25 Therefore, ridding yourselves of falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, because we are parts of one another. 26 Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not give the devil an opportunity. 28 The one who steals must no longer steal; but rather he must labor, producing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with the one who has need. 29 Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but if there is any good word for edification according to the need of the moment, say that, so that it will give grace to those who hear. 30 Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 All bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Meanwhile, I would also advocate for using wisdom to avoid an abusive marriage partner. As Proverbs says,
Proverbs 24:6 said:
For by wise guidance you will wage war, And in an abundance of counselors there is victory.
Proverbs 27:15-16 said:
A constant dripping on a day of steady rain
And a contentious woman are alike;
16 He who would restrain her restrains the wind,
And grasps oil with his right hand.
Proverbs 15:17 said:
Better is a portion of vegetables where there is love,
Than a fattened ox served with hatred.
As I can testify, dealing with an abuser takes time and wastes years of your life spiritually battling that person for your very sanity. You don't want to put time into that if you don't have to. If you can take 2,000 hours of what would have been spent battling an abusive marriage partner and put that into a healthy marriage instead, that's a far better bargain. Better yet, put that into missionary work, evangelism and building the Church instead. You want to use your abilities in the most effective way for God's glory and honor.
Meanwhile, if someone is an abuser, not giving them an abusive marriage is the best thing you can do for them. Failure causes humans to think, if only a little bit. If they keep failing, and the abuse stops working for them, eventually they will stop doing it. Add one failure to the stack and warn the rest of the sheep.
But the beginning of this post was an anecdote to the fear of dating Christians because they might be abusive. Because Christians are actually
more likely to be abusers than non-Christians.
It is true.
The reason is that the sin nature of mankind, in Christians, is in the process of being cured. Which behavior is more unpredictable, a drug addict with a big supply of drugs or an addict going through withdrawal? Unbelievers tend to be sedate. They get enough Netflix to feed their sin nature, they will be okay going to their jobs and being lied to for the next 8 hours. A Christian comes home from work after being lied to for 8 hours and their mind is spinning with stress about how what their boss did was wrong, wrong, wrong and they feel powerless. Then they read Ephesians 5:22 and abuse their wife to get their sense of power back.
Meanwhile, the abusive wife reads Ephesians 5:22 and her sin nature is snarling against it. She will continuously complain about everything to force her husband to go through hoops for her, because she wants to control her husband. She will do this because her sin nature hates submission and wants to escape the marriage. But in an unbeliever marriage, the sin nature would be appeased by making the husband and wife "equal" and thus she wouldn't feel the need to deal with that unsubmissive part of herself.
The sin nature of mankind does not go gently into that good night. It is violent and adulterous - after all, it is responsible for all of the murders and adulteries in the world. It is the
source of all abuse. And if you attack the violent, adulterous, and abusive part of yourself, it's going to fight back with what it has, which is adultery, abuse and violence. Now we should learn to contain this internal war inside of ourselves so that it doesn't affect others, but sometimes the reaction is so extreme that isn't possible. This thing can fracking control your emotions and your body without your conscious intervention. If I had a dime for every extreme emotion I've felt that I didn't want to feel that the sin nature inflicted on me, I would have enough money for a very nice yacht.
And I'm still not done. Because your marriage is, in the end, not about you and your pleasure or misery. It's about your witness to your children and your effectiveness for God's glory in showing the relationship between Christ and the Church. If you marry an unbeliever, your children will be receiving mixed marriages from the parents about what is true and they will have to be equipped to discern truth at an early age. Every lie the unbeliever parent tells that child that they believe is one more struggle that they will have to face as an adult that could impair their effectiveness for God's glory and honor.
Meanwhile, abusers lie to their children too, but the children are less likely to believe the lies that an abuser tells them. Why? Because abusers hurt! The more someone causes us emotional pain, the more likely we are to distrust the information source. Meanwhile, the unbeliever husband is the happier and slimier liar who is likely to win my child's affections and turn them against me. I mean, children have the sin nature of mankind - who are they going to like more, the strict Christian parent fighting their sin nature at every turn or the slimy unbeliever parent who appeals to the child's sin nature and buys it proverbial cookies? So much motherly grief praying for lost children.
For this reason alone, I would take the Christian abuser husband over unbeliever husband any day of the week. Of course, I would also take "remain single for the rest of my life" over Christian abusive husband any day of the week as well. But I'm going to date Christian men and shall not consider the unbeliever.
Romans 8:18 said:
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
Another I met on a dating site, that was married to Christian men, divorce 3 times, went through so much suffering and abuse/cheating from each one. So, rest assured, just because they are Christian, doesn't mean they'd make a good partner. Rest assured, the idea of being husband #4, was a hard pass.
The common denominator in all relationships she had was her. I suspect this poor woman never recovered from her first abusive husband. If you don't recover, you're still an abuse victim, and abuse victims attract abusers.
This is why any guy who approaches me will be heavily scrutinized. I don't want to be jerk and I have put a lot of effort into my recovery and not looking like an abuse victim (thanks @bella for the latter), but still, I would prefer to hang back, observe guys, and pick one to pursue myself rather than have someone approach me. I suspect the low-hanging fruit grows on poison-fed trees and the fish that are the closest to my shore swim in toxic waters. Previously, I've had "success" by deciding that I want a guy who is better than me and "I can never have" and improving up to his level, rather than trying to find the guy I think I deserve. I aim to continue this pattern. My future husband must be someone who will continually push me to improve in the relationship, not someone who drags me down on purpose.
