JUDAIZERS AND SPIRITUAL ABUSE
Except for the examples of drugs and alcohol, abuse is always associated with social and political power. In other words, abuse, injustice, slavery and oppression all occur in the context of relationships where one group, or individual, uses social, political, or physical power for selfish purposes in controlling another individual or group.

Abusive relationships are the kinds of relationships God has in mind when he reminds his people to “love your neighbor as yourselves.” In this positive command to love, God makes a command against negative behaviors (i.e. abuse, injustice, slavery, oppression). While God is opposed to abuse in any social context (e.g. work, home, government, etc.) his command is focused on abuse in religious communities. We know this because religion is the enemy whom God tells us to love and do good even though religion has persecuted us and spitefully used us.

Love is a code word for the New Covenant. We show our love for our religious enemies by laying down our lives for them in some way to help them gain freedom from religion.

STUDY TIP: See Death, Resurrection and New Life for more about laying down your life.

The command to love our neighbor could be rephrased to say: “Don’t abuse your neighbors by inviting them to be religious or by encouraging them to stay religious.” In God’s view, when we participate in religion or promote it in any way, we are accomplices in the enslavement, oppression and persecution of our neighbors. Doing this is an expression of hate — not love.

When we participate in and promote religion, we are working to advance the kingdom of the world of religion and inhibit and reduce the kingdom of God. The problem Jesus had with Jewish religious leaders was that he wanted to destroy their kingdom. This is why the Pharisees (i.e. religious leaders) had a problem with Jesus and needed to get rid of him.

The story of Jesus’ experiences with the Pharisees anticipates the problems that New Covenant disciples in every generation will have with religious leaders. The Pharisees are intent on preserving their religious kingdoms, and New Covenant disciples are intent on advancing the kingdom of God.

Kingdom conflict is also evident in stories where Judaizers tried to coerce early followers of Jesus to obey long-standing Jewish religious laws and traditions. Judaizers past and present love their religion. The spirit of the Judaizers has always been, and is still, active in religion. We see it at work in every evangelistic effort to grow Judaism and Christianity. Anyone who encourages someone to adopt religious behaviors and to listen to false prophets — not to listen to God’s voice — is a Judaizer.

Judaizers are God’s enemies because they participate in the process by which people are enslaved and oppressed by religion while being diverted from God. In God’s view, steering people to religion or pressuring them to conform to certain religious behaviors is abuse and injustice. When we encourage someone to share our religious beliefs and practices, we are effectively leading them into slavery and oppression.

Of course this interpretation will be hard for any religious person to accept because all religions embrace the idea of evangelism that seeks to attract more people to that religion. Thus, while religion sees evangelism as a virtue, God sees religious evangelism as sin because the purpose of religion is to enslave and oppress people to religious beliefs and practices.

Identification of injustice, slavery, oppression and affliction in the context of religion is hard to understand for several reasons:

Opportunities for abuse arise when individuals with charisma and effective interpersonal skills who have an apparent legitimate authority to govern — either a self-declared “calling” or appointment by others — use that authority and charisma for purely personal purposes — and not for the general benefit or welfare of others. This abuse can occur in both small (e.g. family, friends, etc.) or large (e.g. churches, denominations, ministries, workplace, neighborhood, cities, governments, nations, etc.) aggregations of people. But, when it does happen in large groups, charisma and effective interpersonal skills are key factors that enable leaders to convince others to listen to their teaching and submit to their agendas.

STUDY TIP: The damaging effect of charismatic leadership is most easily observed in the context of cults.

Charismatic leaders are identified in the Bible as Trees of Knowledge of Good and Evil whose teaching (i.e. fruit) seems good for food (i.e. teaching) but actually leads to spiritual death.

Here are several of the most common kinds of unjust abuses that exist in the world today:

Until the relatively recent disclosure of sexual abuse of children in the church, abuse and injustice were rarely associated with religion. Of course there have been many religious wars, but, because they have been historically explained as holy wars, they have not been categorized as abuse of one religious group by another. More commonly, inter-religious conflicts between different religious have been categorized as religious persecution of one religion by another religion, while intra-religious abuses tend to be categorized as spiritual abuse perpetrated by a religious leader, or leaders, against individual members of a religious community to either force them to convert to their religion or, once they become members of the religious community, control them with the tacit or explicit approval of the wider community. Thus it can be said that, because subtle and overt abuses occur within small and large religious communities, the entire religious community bears the blame for all abuse. Even if individual members of the community do not directly participate in the abuse, they are still guilty because they encourage and enable the formation and preservation of the religious environment in which the abuse occurs.

It is fair to say that all spiritual abuse can be attributed to religious beliefs and doctrines embraced by the entire religious community. It is also fair to say that justification for spiritual abuse is found in literal interpretations of scripture. That otherwise normal, well-adjusted, law-abiding people become willing  accomplices to such injustice is a scary testimony of the enticements to be religious inherent in literal interpretations of the Bible and of the toxic effects of religion.

When we consider these examples of abuse with a Biblical perspective, we see that it has much to say about all kinds of inter-religious and intra-religious conflicts and persecution. We begin to understand why religion has always been the enemy. And we begin to understand how the New Covenant is the covenant of peace that is preferred to the Old/First Covenant of death that enables and even encourages abuse, slavery and oppression.

When we look at the warnings of the prophets, we see that spiritual abuse has always existed within Jerusalem (i.e. symbolic representation of people who identify as Jews and Christians). These warnings still apply today because religions still abuse, enslave and oppress the people who join them.