Panel 1: Gender Issues and Sexual Abuse

Jackie Hill Perry: If you could clap it up for Dannah and Mary. (applause)

Dannah Gresh: Wow! You are deep waters, Jackie Hill Perry.

Jackie: Amen.

Dannah: I feel the weight. Do you feel the weight of that truth on us right now? (applause) I think we need to unpack it a little more. So, could we just have a seat. I know that there are a lot of women right now who are ready to deal with the Lord. I want to just encourage you . . . run to the prayer room!

Maybe something Jackie said was the first step of your freedom. Go tend to that right now. And we do want to deal with some practical issues because, Jackie, you touched on a lot of important things that I think we need to unpack a little bit.

Mary, could we just pray over the ladies right now who might even be feeling like, “I don’t know if I should stay and hear the practical stuff I need, or go care for my heart?” But the Lord knows.

Mary Kassian: Heavenly Father, You are good. You are good, and You love us. You are the God who sees. You see, and You know everything about us. You’ve seen our hurts, our heartaches, our sin, our loneliness, our desires.

You see the way we’ve tried to satisfy the ache and the longing, the ways that we’ve tried to satisfy that in ways that You say are not legitimate. You’ve seen that. You’ve also seen the ways that we’ve been sinned against—in quiet corners, in the darkness—ugliness that we can barely look at.

You see and You know, and You are in this place, Holy Spirit, to speak life to all the women who are quivering on the ground feeling broken, feeling vulnerable, feeling shame, feeling guilt. Lift them up, heal them, and say, “I don’t condemn you, Girl. I don’t condemn you.” There’s no condemnation for those who love Jesus.

So, Father, I just pray that whatever this has stirred in women’s hearts, I pray that You would, right now, be present to bring comfort, to bring healing, to bring hope, and to show them the next step that they need to take in order to walk into freedom—because the truth sets us free! In Jesus’ name, amen.

Dannah: Jackie, I wrote down some things that you said that I thought maybe we could unpack. One of them is: Gender is God’s idea. That has more weight and authority, knowing your testimony of having struggled with that. How bad was it for you?

Jackie: When I was four, five, I just felt like I would have preferred to be a boy. And so I tried in many ways to project masculinity. When I would use the bathroom I would stand up—or try to stand up—instead of sitting down. When I would take a bath, I would wrap the towel over my waist instead of around my chest, because that’s what I saw men do.

And so, I just think I was confused in many ways. This was early 90s, so that wasn’t in the media. I didn’t have a name for it, to be able to take a hold of it and say, “Oh, this is what I should do for that.” You know? So, yes.

Dannah: What was the turning point for you?

Jackie: I think my conversion was the beginning of the turning. I don’t think my conversion changed how I saw myself, but I think discipleship changed how I saw myself. I think as I began to walk with older women who were able to affirm who I was as a woman and take me through the Scriptures . . .

When I started to recognize that my woman-ness was on purpose and that it was intentional and that it was glorifying and that God did it because He was wiser than me, that set me free from a whole lot. I recognized that, “No, this body is my own, but this body is His, and it’s meant for Him.”

I think, now having daughters, I’m grateful that God would give me a body that is not only my own, but able to house somebody else, and be able to raise up other women who would be able to believe that they are who God says that they are.

Dannah: Mary, you have really been a leader in helping women understand the theology of gender. As you hear what Jackie said and just shared, what’s your core thought for women out there who are either struggling, or they’re helping someone who’s struggling?

Mary: I just love how Jackie unpacked it for us this morning in saying we need to go back to the Word, we need to go back to the idea that gender and sexuality, ultimately, is not about us but about bringing glory to God. He created it, it was His idea, and He knows best how it functions. Then for us to trust Him in that.

Dannah: And, Jackie, another topic you brought up (you did some fly-bys that could have been entire messages!). You said there are women addicted to porn in this room and on this livestream, because they don’t know how to have intimacy.

A question for both of you: How bad do you think the porn problem is with women in the church right now?

Mary: It’s gotten a lot worse over the last ten/fifteen years. It used to be a male problem—pornography—but now there a lot a women. I find that when I speak to a room of women, I assume that at least a third to half of them are struggling with pornography or have been drawn into that in some form.

Jackie: Yes. And I think when you have movies like Fifty Shades of Grey, and you have literature that.

Mary: You’ve got Game of Thrones.

Jackie: It can make us feel like, “Oh, this isn’t pornography because I’m not watching anything. I’m reading it.” But it still is, and I think it’s more of a different mutation of that.

Mary: The erotica that stirs the imagination. I mean, that’s just proliferated.

Dannah: There is a Barna survey that said that there was not a statistical difference in the percentage of churched versus unchurched women who read Fifty Shades of Grey.

Jackie: Wow.

Dannah: Sad.

Jackie: Yeah, that says a lot.

Dannah: Jackie, you talked about it, that it’s a lack of intimacy that drives us to that.

Jackie: Yes.

Dannah: Can you unpack that intimacy thought?

Jackie: I watched porn, too. I did everything. I think there’s something about watching people be intimate that makes us feel as if we have access to this intimacy or that we are living out what we are seeing in some type of way. Because there’s a satisfaction we get from it; that’s why we’re doing it.

But I think God did not create us for that. He gave us real living, breathing bodies. We are to act out sexual intimacy with our husbands, with our spouses. That is actually the real thing. Pornography is not real, but it feels real to us.

Dannah: There’s actually some research that’s telling us that women who are looking at porn and men who are looking at porn, though they think they’re awakening their sexual desire and feeding their sexual desire, they’re actually stifling it. They’re less interested in sex.

Mary: That’s right. They’re less interested in sex, and they’re less able to enjoy it. They’re less able to enjoy a real person, a real living body, and it’s sad. It’s sad! And especially what’s going to be happening now with the virtual 3-D reality. Pornography is going to even feel like it’s more real, but become even less real.

Jackie: Yes. Can I speak to how pornography has tainted my marriage?

Dannah: Yes.

Jackie: Before I got married, before I became a Christian, I watched pornography from the age of five to nineteen. So that is years of pornography! So when I got married, I’m thinking, I could do it freely. I’m good!

But one of the ways in which I know that it has affected me is that I went into having sex with my husband assuming that he believed that I was like these women, that he wanted to objectify me like these women were objectified on the screen.

So, for so long I’ve had to detach myself from projecting onto my husband what I saw these men do to these women. I think it’s so, so harmful to our sense of self and just seeing sex rightly.

Dannah: And it’s becoming more transgressive, more violent. This brings up a topic, I think, that you bravely addressed today, Jackie. We could talk about a lot of things, but probably one of the most here-and-now topics is the issue of sexual abuse and the cultural conversation. Mary, how’s your heart feeling about that topic right now?

Mary: You know, just even watching the play, the skit, that preceded Jackie’s talk . . . wasn’t that heart-wrenching? Just heart-wrenching to see that acted out in front of us, just the disrespect and the abuse verbally and physically and sexual threats. That is such a real issue in our culture today.

A lot of the discussions that are going on have stirred up, I think, for a lot of women in their hearts, this whole issue of sexual abuse. I think we need to talk about it, because there are many women in this room that have experienced sexual abuse.

Dannah: Can we define it? Can we just break it down and define it: What is sexual abuse? Because it’s not just children who are sexually abused; it’s not always an adult woman who’s been raped. It’s broader than that. What does it include?

Mary: Sexual abuse can be verbal, it can be physical, it can be psychological. Sexual abuse can occur whenever there is a sort of a power and an abusive relationship in terms of just pressures on.

Dannah: Verbal.

Mary: Verbal as well.

Dannah: We saw that, I think, in the skit, right?

Mary: Absolutely.

Dannah: Jackie, how deep are the ramifications of abuse? You are a survivor of sexual abuse; you have broken the silence for other women. Does that still affect you today?

Jackie: Yeah, I think so. In many ways, I think there will be remnants of it maybe forever, but I do see continual healing. I’m not affected by it in the same ways that I used to be, and so for that I’m grateful.

It’s something that happens to the psyche of a person when a person in a position of power that you believe is supposed to keep you safe harms you in that way. It shapes how you see everything. It colors how you see everything, and so I think the ramifications are huge!

That’s why I’m thankful for therapy. That’s what I mentioned it earlier, because I think for too long we have just said, “Just go to church; just go to church.” It’s like, yeah, we need church and we need counselors and we need people to help us walk through these things in healthy ways.

Mary: God has gifted different people in the Body to serve us in those ways. I think that some of the biggest issues with survivors of sexual abuse or victims of sexual abuse is keeping it in the dark, not wanting to talk about it.

When it’s kept hidden and kept in the dark, it has such power over you. When you bring it out into the light, God wants to heal you of the shame of it—because some women feel so shameful. Some women feel, “It was my fault,” or “I did something that provoked this.”

Dannah: Those are lies.

Mary: Those are lies, and Satan wants to keep you in bondage through those lies, through guilt, through shame. He’s telling you to keep it in the darkness. So if that is you, what you need to do—the first step—is to bring it out into the light and tell someone.

Dannah: As I was watching my Twitter feed last night, many women right now are triggered by events happening in our country and by the women that are breaking the silence. And one of the things I saw was women saying last night, “Why aren’t men tweeting about this? Why aren’t men talking about this?”

And this week, Mary, we got an email from a man who cares deeply about this issue. I wanted to bring him into the conversation. So, Bob Lepine, would you join us?

Bob sent us an email. His heart was broken by what he was seeing. From a pastor’s heart, from a godly man’s heart, you wrote something, Bob, and I want to know why,

Bob Lepine: Well, first of all, this conversation is such an important one, and I know that all week long—and even, Jackie, as you mentioned it this morning—just the words “abuse” and “abuser,” there are some women who get a knot in their stomach when they hear the word.

Because this is a scar that is so profound on the soul of any human being, to be sexually abused. This is like no other kind of abuse. And to your point, it does stay with a woman for a long time. Last week, I woke up on Saturday, and I was going through my Twitter feed.

There was a Tweet from Beth Moore, and all it said was: “Because he lived in my house . . .” and then the hashtag, “#WhyIDidn’tReport.” It took me a minute to catch on to what she was saying, but I followed that hashtag and saw thousands of women who were explaining why they had never spoken about it.

In fact, I wrote down some of these, because this was so, so . . .

Dannah: Heartbreaking!

Bob: Yes. It was a slap in the face.

Dannah: I have a dear friend who is in this room today that wrote one of those tweets: #WhyIDidn’tReport.

Bob: So here’s somebody who said, “I thought it was my fault. I was embarrassed and ashamed of being stupid enough to trust him!” Somebody else said, “I was molested at age eight by a school janitor, frightened into silence; raped at eighteen by two boys at a party. I blamed myself, felt shame. My parents never knew. I told my daughters five years ago when I was sixty.”

Now, you think about the years of carrying that burden inside, that scar on your soul, with no one to cry out to! And then you think, Well, you can cry out to the Lord, but in the back of your mind there’s this thought, Wait, He was supposed to be there when that happened. How can I cry out to Him?

And so, women doubting God’s goodness and wondering, How could this happen? If God is my Rock and my Deliverer and my Fortress, how could this happen? How could He allow something like this to happen?

And that’s what prompted me just to sit down, and I wrote an open letter to #WhyIDidn’tReport.

Dannah: Well, it touched me. I sat in my office and cried, because the words were so tender. So would you read at least some of it, share some of it? I think it could help some of these women be set free.

Bob: Yes, and we put this on the website at FamilyLife.com for anybody who wants to read the whole thing, but I said . . . let me skip here . . . [The following excerpts that Bob shares are copied and pasted from his open letter posted on FamilyLife.com.]

I’m sure anyone who’s experienced abuse has been wondering about the reality of God’s providential care for His children. It’s natural to have questions or doubts about God’s goodness when you face this age-old question of: How can a good and loving God allow evil to happen?

And it’s one thing to deal with that on a theological level. It’s something else to deal with it personally, when you’re saying, “How could He let this happen to me?” You can give bumper-sticker answers, but those don’t solve anything.

I thought of Job, who went through profound grief, profound sadness, and he took that to God, at the end of Job, and started asking all the questions: “Why? Why? Why?” And God let him pour it out, and then God took a deep breath. I can’t imagine the tone of God’s voice, but I think it was a tender, gentle, stern: “Who is this that darkens [my] counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2 ESV]).

At the core of this issue, you have to come to grips with whether the profound abuse you experienced is more powerful, so powerful that it overrules anything you’ve ever read or experienced or believed is true about God. Is it stronger than God is? Is your pain so great that it invalidates the rest of anything you’ve ever known or believed?

And I don’t think it’s by accident that, in the placement in our Bibles, Job is here and then Psalms is next. God never answered Job and said, “Here’s why . . .” He just said, “I’m God!” And then the psalms give us language to take our despair and our grief and to verbalize it as praise to God.

Now that seems counterintuitive. But you read Psalm 13: “Oh, Lord, how long will You forget me? How long will You withhold favor from me?” That’s inspired by the Spirit of God, and God invites: “Now bring that to me . . .” and that’s where healing can be found.

As you bring your grief to God, the afflictions you have experienced will produce in you an eternal weight of glory that is beyond comparison. That’s what the Bible says.

Dannah: I want to affirm that. Last night, as I was praying for women in this room, knowing that we would be having this conversation . . . Jackie, you write in your book that it could be triggering.

Jackie: It is triggering.

Dannah: Are you feeling “triggered” today?

Jackie: No, I think because I’ve learned how to prep myself and prepare myself for this conversation. But I think anytime—especially when you don’t discuss it often—that to hear abuse or to be reminded of it does something in your heart where you want to run, you want to flee, you want to cry, you want to get mad.

Dannah: You want to go back to your hotel room.

Mary: Or get angry!

Jackie: Exactly! Dannah: Yeah. You bring up the Psalms. The Lord gave me this verse to pray over those women that are feeling triggered right now. Psalms 118:5: “Out of my great anguish [and you’re feeling that anguish, the depth of that, that shame, that distress] I called on the Lord . . . and he set me free.”

He wants to set you free. We are not having this conversation to trigger you; we are having this conversation, directed by prayer and the Lord, so that we can be a part of participating in your freedom today.

Bob: And I just want to say, on behalf of Christian men, I am so sorry for how any man did to you the evil that was done to you. That was wrong, and my heart breaks that God’s daughters had that kind of evil perpetrated on them and that your soul has that scar on it!

I’ll read how I finished my response:

I believe Jesus is deeply sorry for your pain as well. It’s true He could have stopped it, and He didn’t, and I can’t tell you why He didn’t. No one can. But I can tell you He gave His life to fix it. He died so that the wrongs of this life will be made right, so your tears will one day be dried and your darkness will be over forever!

Dannah: Thank you, Bob. That is what I felt when I read what you wrote. I hope that some of these women felt it in the core of their being. There are good men, there are godly men, there are safe places, and you can run to them and find your freedom. Thank you for helping me unpack this.

In fact, we felt led to ask a woman who has experienced abuse to come share her story a little bit today of how she found her freedom. I want to invite a friend, her name is Paulina.

She has experienced some horrific childhood abuse at the hands of her mother’s live-in boyfriend. But today she is walking in full freedom, and I think her story will encourage you! Paulina, will you come and share with us?

Paulina, as Jackie was talking about how the abuse kind of flavors your life, that was very true for you. You were abused as a child, but by the time you were fifteen, you had a lens through which you looked at men. How did you react to and respond to men as a teenager?

Paulina: Dannah, for me it was very confusing in my mind, because in a sense I was scared of older men, and I thought every single man was in love with me or wanted me in some way. Even like the youth pastor. If I would go to a church and he would just go like this . . . It would be like, “I think he wants to be with me!”

So I had that sense and the other sense: I wanted the protection of men as well.

Dannah: You just said, “I was afraid of them,” but you thought through a lens of sex toward them. That is a very common outcome of sexual abuse, whether it’s childhood or adult. Either our lies tell us, “Oh, my only value is in being sexual; I will be sexual,” or “I am terrified. I will avoid, I will stay away!” And you experienced both of those things.

Paulina: I think it’s a mask. I think it started developing a mask of, yes, I could be seductive. I could be attractive. I want their attention. But once I have their attention, then I want their love and their protection. So it was like, “Yes, I could give you what you want, but eventually I want you to love me.”

Dannah: So what was that like for fifteen-year-old Paulina Torres? Well, you were Paulina . . .

Paulina: LaFontaine.

Dannah: LaFontaine. What was it like for you when you were fifteen?

Paulina: (It’s good to have a new identity now, even my name!) I think the word for me was “confusing,” because I was very promiscuous at the time. I was all about guys, and I would kiss around and I would want their attention. I would go out with one, and then I would go out with another.

Dannah: But, wait. I thought in your testimony, I saw that you were wearing a True Love Waits ring.

Paulina: Yes, I know. I did believe somewhere there was true love! But . . .

Dannah: So I guess what you’re saying is, just because we live the life and walk the walk and talk the talk doesn’t mean it’s believed right here.

Paulina: Oh, yes. I was not a believer, but I hoped for something else that I didn’t have at the time. So when I did go to church and I found out . . . We started going to church, but it was weird. We started going to church, but nothing changed in my home. Abuse didn’t change, violence didn’t change, my mom yelling all the time didn’t change.

So, “Okay, we go to church now, but it hasn’t changed us, and it hasn’t changed anything!” So it wasn’t something I truly believed.

Dannah: At one point in your high school years you got a boyfriend that ended up sticking around for awhile.

Paulina: I believe God permitted that so I wouldn’t be with many others. I was fifteen, and I dated him when I was fifteen all the way to twenty-three. It was eight years of a relationship where I put my trust and confidence that this man was going to make me happy!

Dannah: But you knew he wasn’t good for you.

Paulina: Well, actually, it was a lie, because he was really nice to me, and he treated me really well. I decided when I was eighteen, I think you’re the man I’m going to marry, and I think you’re the man that is going to love me and protect me.” So I gave him my True Love Waits ring, and I said, “I am now yours—in every single way.”

Dannah: And what did that do to your heart?

Paulina: Sin is really subtle, because it’s like, once you do it, then you want to do it again, and then you don’t feel as bad doing it more and more. So I knew that you shouldn’t have sex before you got married, but I thought I loved this guy and I was going to marry him anyway. But eight years later we broke up, and that destroyed my heart.

Dannah: So what did you do? When you broke up, did you break off from the boy thing? Because that wasn’t working, obviously.

Paulina: That wasn’t working, but I knew, “It’s time for me to go to church. I know God has something for me!” But Satan was like, “Oh, no. You’re still mine!” I think my worst mistakes, my worst sins, were in those years of believing so many lies and just still searching for this love in men. I committed many mistakes.

Dannah: So you looked for men in the church, then?

Paulina: Well, I stopped going to church, because I went to a very legalistic church that said I was a sinner for everything I wore and did and said. So I was like, “Oh, no. I can’t be the woman this church wants me to be!” So I decided to go away from church.

Dannah: So all of this, you believe, stemmed out in part because the abuse that made you promiscuous, that made you want many men. What was the turning point? When did you start to believe truth and change?

Paulina: By God’s grace, He permitted more mistakes and more heartbreaks and more searching for this love in other people, in other men. They would break my heart, and I said, “I am toxic to myself! This is not working! Everything I decide is not working. This is not good!”

God started to put a need in my heart for Him, and my sin started to become really, really shameful and hurtful. I remember just saying, “I can’t do this anymore!” But I was so scared to trust God, because every person that I would put my trust in, they would disappoint me.” So I didn’t know if I could put my trust in Him.

Dannah: That was not just “disappointing you,” Paulina. They were abusing you.

Paulina: Exactly!

Dannah: So you did put your trust in Jesus, and you asked Him to come and be the Lord of your life. Did that fix it?

Paulina: You know, at first, like it was said earlier, you’re saved, and then it’s that process of transformation. But at that time where God was calling me, I would say, “I’m just scared to be alone! I’m just scared that I’m not going to find the husband. I’m just scared that . . . What am I gonna do when I feel alone?”

God started to do something so amazing. I would just go in the bathroom and start reading my Bible and saying, “What is this? What you’re saying?” And God just put in my heart, “Whatever you have, come to Me!” And He would say, “If you’re scared, come to me! If you feel anxious sexually, come to Me! If you feel depressed, come to Me! If you’re scared of the future, come to Me!”

So everything, all my fears and everything of my past, my present, and my future that I was scared of, God said, “Come to Me and I will satisfy, and I will fulfill all those needs.”

Dannah: And He did.

Paulina: He did, and He still is!

Dannah: Do you feel free today?

Paulina: Oh, yes, I do! My life is hidden in Christ, and that is amazing!

Dannah: The Lord brought an amazing husband into your life, a pastor.

Paulina: Yes.

Dannah: One of the things that I read in your testimony was that all through this you had this craving for men. And at one point it was not just a craving for men, but outside of marriage you were like, “I have to have a baby!” And you found out that you couldn’t.

Paulina: Yes.

Dannah: And that infertility and that pain was also something . . . Did Jesus say come to Him with that?

Paulina: It was funny, because that’s exactly how He started to put that need in my heart for Him. I remember when I was a little girl and I heard about this amazing God, that He could do miracles. I would say, “I want that faith that I once had.”

It was like, “If the doctors say it’s not going to be possible for me to have a baby, I know that God could probably do it.” Even though my trust and my faith was shaky, that’s what got me to get closer to God as well. Like, I know He could do it if He would like to.

Dannah: And did He do it?

Paulina: He did! I have a six-year-old son.

Dannah: A miracle baby!

Paulina: Yes, he’s my miracle baby!

Dannah: You know, as I’ve been praying Psalm 130 over these women, it says, “With you there is forgiveness, therefore You are feared” (v. 54). There is forgiveness for your sin. There is forgiveness for the sin of your abuser, right, Paulina?

Paulina: Yes. I think one of the hardest things for me was not so much . . . and it’s funny to say this. It wasn’t as hard to forgive my abuser; it was harder for me to forgive my mother. Because, like Mary was saying, it’s something you don’t want to share. Your abuse, you don’t want to share.

When I was seven—which was the first time I was sexually molested—I told my mom right away. And for the next eight years she did nothing about it, and that was probably the hardest thing for me. The person that should love me the most wasn’t.

So God, by God’s grace, I have forgiven my abuser, and I have forgiven my mother and I love her with all my heart.

Dannah: Ah, that sounds like freedom to me, sisters!

Paulina: It is. It is!

Dannah: Thank you for bravely sharing with us.

Paulina: My pleasure. Thank you.

Dannah: We can’t just rush past this. We have to stop and soak in it and ask the Lord what we need to do. We’re going to have some worship time so that you can respond in the way you need to.

Do you need to turn to someone next to you and break the silence? Maybe you need to turn to someone next to you and confess your own sin. Maybe you do need to go to the prayer room now.

But, as Kristyn Getty sings, would you do what you need to do to respond to God? Don’t just sit there fearful and afraid and white-knuckling and, “I’ll deal with this later.” Now is the time. This is the time! Run after your freedom; take your anguish to Him, so that He can set you free!