I was quite messed up spiritually in my younger years. False doctrine and spiritual abuse, detrimental ideology, wrong conditioning, ignorance, and the hypocrisy that plagues society has significantly and uniquely affected many women. In fact, I am one of those women.

One reason spiritual abuse is so damaging is that it tends to completely distort someone’s understanding of who they are, and who God really is.

This can cause someone to feel inferior and alienated from God. I believe there is a lack of proactive action, restorative action, and too much silence when it comes to the pain and plight of women; in particular as it pertains to our relationships with men, but in other areas as well.

I believe foundational problems with identity often begin when women are girls. Some of us are not properly taught self-worth, and do not understand our purpose.

In my own experience, some foundational issues for me were that I previously did not have truth about who God is or who I am. Once upon a time, I didn’t know what basic, but profound truths were, and consequently didn’t recognize the lies.

Yes, I was taught from the Bible. I knew about the commandments and that I must obey. However, I had received a false portrayal of who God is, due to other misinformation I was receiving.

I was taught an abusive, false explanation of why women were created, and who we are.

I did not know who I am as a creation of God. I didn’t really know my purpose, because I was exposed to this false doctrine. The Bible was twisted and mishandled to tickle the fancy of others.

It was distorted to appeal to the pride of others. This served as a pacifier and booster for fragile egos. I actually began to believe my existence, as well as every other woman’s existence was coincidental.

Boys and men seemed so much better off, for no real reason, other than women and girls seemed to have a reproach that men did not have. There was a general hostile attitude toward women, and lots of accusations against women, with women being held to higher standards than men as well.

I was also taught that the man was in the “original” creation, and the woman was not. The Bible was misused in a way that trained me to believe it was a coincidence that women exist.

It was portrayed to me as if God did not plan to create a woman. However, he realized his wonderful son Adam needed a woman, so then he created her, only to meet Adam’s need.

I experienced gender bias and false teachings, beginning at a young age. At first, I did not know it was false doctrine I was hearing. I received it as truth, and it was devastating to my self-esteem.

I kept it to myself mostly, but I was heavy with sadness that God seemed to prefer men and hold them in higher esteem than women. My thoughts were, what had I done wrong, simply by being female? If I was so wrong for being who I was, then why did God even create me? It wasn’t my fault.

I received a false answer to the question of why I had been created when I heard teachings that implied that women are created mainly to be a man’s maid; for him to procreate with, getting his sexual desires met, and to keep house for him and meet all of his needs. Ouch!

What does the Bible say?

“And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness: and let THEM have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Genesis 1: 26

In God’s statement here, I don’t see Him implying any inferiority or one-sided service of one person to another. I don’t see any mention here of mankind being superior over mankind; whether it be man superior to woman, or woman superior to man. Mankind was in fact in dominion over everything upon the earth. The woman is not excluded from this!

The problem here is that I had not studied the scriptures closely, and I relied mainly on certain men’s abusive teachings, so I believed the damaging lies. Biblical illiteracy is used by satan to keep people ignorant about God, and to lead them astray into deception. Biblical illiteracy makes people vulnerable to spiritual abuse, which often deters people from God.

In the next post, God’s Holy Word Healed Me, I share more about the particular lies that were harmful to my self-esteem and relationship with God, and will also present the truth of God’s word. I used God’s word to cancel out Satan’s lies, and replaced them with God’s liberating, healing truth. Then the healing began.