When “Perspective” is a Pejorative Term

New Safe to Hope Podcast on This Topic Releases Today

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

I had the privilege of acting as a guest host of the Safe to Hope podcast so that I could interview Ann Maree Goudzwaard about her experience of spiritual abuse in the church context. It is a beautiful and God-honoring thing to provide a space for victims and survivors of abuse to share their stories and thereby participate in their healing.

Healing requires reversing the dynamics of abuse. Abuse removes agency. Healing restores agency. Abuse removes dignity. Healing restores dignity. Abuse removes a voice. Healing restores a voice.

In the context of spiritual abuse, it is the church or church leader who controls the narrative, who has a corner on the market of “perspective”. Giving a victim the opportunity to challenge and shape that narrative by sharing her own perspective should be a welcome and healing experience.

And yet, Ann Maree described how the word “perspective” was twisted and used as a tool for further silencing. Instead of viewing her testimony as a necessary component in a faithful pursuit of truth, it was dismissed. “Well, that’s your perspective.”

When survivors come forward with their story of harm, they are often met with rebuke from Proverbs 18:17, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”

The observing world may assume that the survivor is the one who “states his case first”. And yet, in the context of the church, the abuse victim is the cross-examiner, the one who comes with questions - and yes, perspective - to challenge the prevailing narrative of the church leadership, which seems right until “the other” comes and examines it.

In my denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, our Book of Church Order specifically upholds the idea that those closest to a situation have the most reliable and relevant perspective. When a decision of a lower court is appealed to a higher court, our church polity states that “great deference” must be given to the lower court in matters not just of fact, but also of judgment.

“A higher court should ordinarily exhibit great deference to a lower court regarding those matters of discretion and judgment which can only be addressed by a court with familiar acquaintance of the events and parties. Such matters of discretion and judgment would include, but not be limited to: the moral character of candidates for sacred office, the appropriate censure to impose after a disciplinary trial, or judgment about the comparative credibility of conflicting witnesses.”

Do the courts of the church similarly “exhibit great deference” in matters of “discretion and judgement” to those individuals who are more proximate to the events in question than the officers in a room hearing about them for the first time? Does the perspective of those with “familiar acquaintance of the events and parties,” such as “the comparative credibility of conflicting witnesses,” carry greater weight?

Whenever a victim of abuse comes forward to disclose what happened to her, she is essentially communicating, “Your perception of this person or situation is inaccurate or at least incomplete. I need you to reevaluate your perception in light of the perspective I have to offer. I need you to be willing to hold your own perspective loosely so that you can be informed and impacted by my perspective.”

She may not use those words. In fact, she likely won’t. But the fact remains: she is asking church leadership to be willing to doubt their own judgment. She needs them to be open to the possibility that they don’t know what they don’t know. If the default of church leadership is to assume that “different from my perspective” equals “irrelevant” or “wrong,” how can a victim of abuse ever disclose harm and seek help?