God Sees You When Your Church Hurts You

The excruciating pain of church hurt is often invisible to those around us. This is especially true if the hurt is unknown to others, or if others have experienced the church and its leadership differently. Despite how it feels, you are never alone in church hurt. God sees you when your church hurts you.

Sarah was told by her leadership that she was a problem, and the way they regularly treated her with annoyance and suspicion was crushing. But her best friend Amy loved the leadership, supported them, and they, in turn, utilized her in teaching women’s Bible studies. This left Sarah feeling even more alone and discouraged in her faith community. The alienation was as painful as the way her leadership actively treated her. Sarah desperately needed to see and believe that God saw her and cared for her in this context. When others didn’t see her, God always did.

Perhaps one of the earliest stories to illustrate this fact is the story of Hagar in Genesis 16. Hagar was the slave of Sarai. When Sarai could not bear her husband Abram any children, she suggested that he sleep with Hagar and conceive a child. But the text tells us that once Hagar became pregnant she was treated poorly by Sarai. In fact, Sarai treated her so poorly that Hagar ran away and in the wilderness she prepared to die. It is in the wilderness, however, that she encounters “the God who sees.” 

I love how the text describes what happens in verses 7-16. First, it says that God “found” her (v. 7). That is to say, God pursued Hagar. He cared and compassionately sought her out. When Hagar was on the run, God was following her and He found her. Second, the text says that God “herd [her] cry of affliction” (v. 11). In her sorrow, when no one else was listening to her, when no one else believed the abuse she was suffering, God heard her. Third, the text says that God saw her (v. 13). Hagar names God El Roi, which means “the God who sees.” The sense of isolation and alienation that abuse creates is real, but God always sees us in it. Fourth, and finally, God promises good for Hagar. This final point is a bit more complicated and worth fleshing out.

There is a specific and general promise involved in God’s care for Hagar. The specific promise is for her uniquely and doesn’t translate to all of us. That specific promise is embedded in God’s command for Hagar to return to her mistress (v. 9). God does not require that all His children continue to subject themselves to abuse. The emphasis of Scripture is on rescue and justice for the oppressed, even calling for others to intervene on their behalf (see Ex. 22:21-23; 2 Sam. 22:3; Ps. 82:3-4; Prov. 31:8-9). You are not required to simply sit under abusive leadership and take it. For Hagar, however, God had designs that necessitated her returning to her master. And from that household she would become mother to a great nation of people (v. 10). That is a unique promise to Hagar, but there is a general promise of God’s provision and care that we can affirm for all His children.

When you suffer abuse God sees you. God hears you. God cares about you. And while we cannot explain why He allows us to go through all that we do (see a forthcoming post), we know that He hates oppression and violence ( Ps. 11:5; Prov. 6:16-19; Isa. 10:1-3), He loves justice and kindness and wants these things for His people (Micah 6:8). He promises to work all thing for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28). God sees you when you suffer abuse at the hands of trusted leaders. He sees you when you experience a culture of mistreatment from your church. He hears you when you cry out to Him in sorrow. He sees, hears, and cares! And this God promises to work good for you out of that sorrow, to bring something to pass that will be for your blessing.

All of this is, of course, easy to say and often hard to believe in the midst of suffering. I don’t say those things lightly or simplistically. I don’t say them to suggest that you have to just get over you pain or that you don’t have a right to anger over injustice and sin (we will explore those dynamics in another post too). Rather, I say all of this in hopes that you might be open to the idea that God sees you and cares about what you are going through. When your church doesn’t care, when your pastors don’t care, when your friends don’t even seem to care, God does! He is different from them. He sees you, hears you, and loves you.