And Hagar Went Back: Responding to Abuse
By Catherine Clark Kroeger, Brewster, MA
What a disappointment it is when we try so very hard to help a woman who has decided to leave an abusive situation! We scurry around to locate food, clothing, toiletries, toys for the children, furniture and bedding, a place to stay. We approach the deacons for emergency funding. We befriend her and pray for her. We watch the children, drive the survivor to get food stamps and a restraining order—and then suddenly she returns to her abuser! All of our work has been for nothing, or so it seems. We can end up feeling downright foolish about the whole effort. How can we demonstrate a gracious attitude if the victim approaches us again for help?
In point of fact, this experience is a very common one. Most women who decide to leave their abusers return approximately seven times before they make the final break. There are many reasons why women go back to the situations from which we have tried to rescue them. The victim may feel that she has no other option for surviving financially; she may fear that her abuser will kill her unless she returns. The offender may have told the woman that she is totally inadequate to cope without him—and she has bought into his lie. She may fear the rejection of her family or her friends at church. She may cling to her marriage vows and refuse to break the binding promise that she made at the altar. Her pastor may demand that she return. She may have been told that the Bible requires her to remain in the marriage even when her life is at stake—or even that she may win the abuser to Christ if she continues to submit to his abuse. There are some forty other reasons that women return, among them being quite simply that she still loves the perpetrator.
But how can we ever get anybody at our church to help any other women if it turns out to be simply wasted effort? Again, the scriptures can help us. We read of Hagar, the Egyptian slave who escaped from the abuse that she was suffering at the hands of Sarah, wife of Abraham. How tragic that he, the father of our faith, had allowed his wife to mistreat the slave girl whom he himself had impregnated! It may be helpful to remember that even some very pious people have condoned appalling abuse of family members – and Abraham is no exception.
As Hagar fled into the desert, she sank down at a well, homeless and friendless. It was at that point she discovered that she was not after all alone. There God began to speak to her; and in that moment of fleeing from abuse, she came to know the Friend who would always be with her in love and support. There she received a name for her unborn child (Ishmael, meaning “God shall hear”), and there she gave the Lord a Name “the God who Sees.” Actually, she is the only person in all of Bible history who gives God a name, though others experienced the revelation of a divine name. She had discovered that God both hears and sees abused women.
Hagar was given a mighty promise—that she should be the mother of a mighty nation, whose people should be as many as the sands of the desert. And she was promised that her unborn son should be a “wild ass of a man.” This seems a dubious title for an unborn child. Nevertheless both in biblical times and in present day Israel, the wild ass cannot be harnessed or subjected to human domination. Job declared “the wild ass can no man tame.”(Job 39:9-12) Thus Hagar was promised a son who would be freer than free, unshackled by slavery or oppression.
And then God SENT HER BACK to the home where she had been abused! In the end, she would go forth from that home with her young son, freed from her concubinage, slavery and oppression, but there were at that crucial moment some pressing necessities. There was a need for shelter and food and care during her impending delivery. We can only hope that Abraham was deeply concerned for the mother of his soon-to-be-born child and that she was received back by Sarah with a more gracious attitude. Return does not seem a good option, but in the harsh realities of desert existence, it was the least undesirable option.
It was in that first departure from abuse that she found God for herself in a personal relationship. She did not return as the same person who had fled. She knew not only the God who had listened to her plight, but she knew herself as heir of a divine promise. She returned with a new understanding, a different person with a different perspective.
The escape, the encounter, and the returns were all part of her spiritual progress. How important it is to understand that God deals with people in circumstances that do not always meet with our personal convenience or preconceived notions. We cannot tell what may have happened within the soul of the person whom we consider to have behaved with such ingratitude when we tried so hard to help.
Although we may be disappointed when a survivor returns to an environment that does not seem safe, she can return with a new awareness of Christian concern, of God’s care for her, of love and prayer support. She can know what the scriptures teach about God’s condemnation of physical, emotional, sexual, and mental abuse. She can go back with the awareness that she did not cause the abuse, cannot control it and cannot cure it. She can go back with prayer support in place.
A woman can learn that she can call upon us again, that we respect her right to make her own choice—even though it is one that fills us with concern. She can understand the importance of making a safety plan in case she needs to leave again in a hurry. She can learn how to contact a local shelter, how to keep important documents where she can retrieve them quickly (drivers license, green card, prescriptions, birth certificates for the children). She can figure out through what door or window she might escape, how she can obtain transportation, and to whom she can turn for safety. She can contact PASCH to request prayer support (webmaster@peaceandsafety.com) for “God shall hear.”
Hagar’s experience did not end with her return to the home of Sarah and Abraham. At the insistence of his wife, Abraham sends out his former concubine, now a freed woman, along with her young son. And so she is evicted into the wilderness, this time with the care of a child who rapidly succumbs to the heat of the sun and the lack of water. Nothing is left to her but the wailing of her grief—and it is just then that God hears again and intervenes.
Hagar is about to take another major step in personal and spiritual growth. At first reading, God’s command does not seem particularly sympathetic: “Stand up and take your child by the hand.” If Hagar had previously been sent back to receive care that she needed, she must now learn to care for herself and her child. Feeling helpless or sorry for herself is no longer a viable option.
The first lesson will be survival in the desert. The Bible tells us that “God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water that she had not seen before.”(Gen 21:19) She hurries
to bring water to revive her child, and together they embark upon a life of freedom and fulfillment. She has come to a place of independence, already filling the role of decision maker as she sends to Egypt for a bride for her son.
And what does this story from scripture suggest to us who seek to minister to women that later return to their abusive situation? That the time during which we render them service may afford them an opportunity to meet God in a new way. That window of respite from abuse may constitute an important spiritual milestone. A person who again seeks help should not be condemned for changing her mind but challenged to grow both in her understanding of her situation and of God’s continuing love and care. The church can demonstrate its concern with all the material assistance that is necessary, but the greatest gift is made to the victim’s soul. We may find that the community shelter is far more effective than we in providing for some of her needs, but the people of God excel in prayer support, loving fellowship, and spiritual guidance. As the scripture exhorts us, “Share the sorrow of those being mistreated, as though you feel their pain in your own bodies” (Heb 13:3) and “Never get tired of doing good” (2 Thess 3:13).
Note: Catherine Clark Kroeger is the founder of Peace and Safety in the Christian Home (PASCH) www.peaceandsafety.com 1095 Stony Brook Road, Bewster, MA 02631, a Christian network addressing varied aspects of domestic abuse, which also publishes a monthly newsletter Pasch, from which this article came (Feb. 2008). Dr. Kroeger is more widely known as the founder and long-time director of Christians for Biblical Equality, and co-author (with her husband Richard) of the classic text, I Suffer Not a Woman (Baker, 1992).
