There have been three stories in the news in recent weeks
that illustrate the power of influence to lead to abuse, and specifically, to abuse
of a sexual nature.
In the first, a psychologist used his influence over his
patients, and their trust in the therapeutic relationship, to coerce them into performing
sex acts with him. In the second, a Naval officer countered charges of sexual
assault against a subordinate by asserting the sex was consensual. Most
recently, the Houston Chronicle amassed a record of more than 700 victims of
sexual abuse—most of them minors—at the hands of ministers from the largest
Evangelical denomination in the United States. All of these stories offer a
strong reminder that where we have influence over another person, we must
engage in extreme vigilance to ensure that influence does not become a corridor
for exploitation.
As is most often the case, the predators in these tales were
men. If we’re really, truly honest with ourselves, men, we can look at many of
these stories and see shadows of the horrible acts we, in our baser natures,
are capable of. True, some of these perpetrators are hardened predators, who intentionally
and with malice seek out, groom, and exploit others for their own twisted
pleasure. But most of them are men who simply allowed pride and lust and
arrogance to selectively blind them to their obligation to care for and protect
someone under their care, exchanging that duty for a self-serving narrative in
which the vulnerability of trust placed in them was distorted into a darkened
perception of sexual acquiescence. And if you cannot see your innate potential
to follow a similar path, then you very likely are only a few short steps from
a precipitous fall.
The goal of this essay is to offer, from one man to another,
a way of thinking about how the influence we have over others intersects with
forces like intimacy and attraction, with a goal toward practical steps for
keeping ourselves from wandering into the same blind hubris which befell these
men. We owe it to the individuals who are and will be under our care to learn
this well, and to teach it to the boys and men with whom we have influence.
Failure to make this an intentional aim of your leadership, ministry, or
caregiving—especially if you are in a position of mentoring or training other
leaders, ministers, or caregivers—is to perpetuate the same vacuous system that
has allowed such abuse to flourish.
How did we get here?
A central problem in this issue (and it is also central to
nearly all of the distortions of God-given sexuality we see in society) is that
we generally lack the ability to discern between emotional intimacy and sexual
intimacy. This is so fundamental that in my experience most men, particularly in western culture,
don’t have a working definition of intimacy that is not inherently sexual.
In psychology, intimacy is defined as “a process of
interaction in which social partners, as a result of sharing personal and
private thoughts and feelings, come to feel understood, appreciated, and cared
for by each other.” The word itself is derived from a Latin word for “innermost,”
and evolved to mean making known or very familiar.
In any relationship in which one or more parties is sharing
of their inner selves, intimacy can naturally arise. Psychotherapy training
acknowledges this as a natural—if not inevitable—outgrowth of a therapeutic
relationship, and psychotherapists are exhorted to handle this phenomenon with
the greatest of care. Ministers are just as likely as psychotherapists to
experience intimacy as a natural outgrowth of a professional relationship, and
leaders in many settings may also find a closeness with those under their
charge which can breed feelings of intimacy.
We have been created by God to connect with other human
beings. We should not be surprised when this occurs. But we also must be
clear-eyed as to what this means and what it does not mean. We must choose—in advance—to
consciously interpret any feelings of intimacy that arise as the natural but
fragile outgrowth of a trust relationship, and we must consciously set aside
any interpretation of such feelings as any sort of sexual invitation.
Emotional connections between people are natural and
God-given. But many of us have been so hardened by the pervasive feeding of our
sexual lusts, either passively from the ubiquitousness of sexually stimulating
media in our culture, or actively through the pursuit of lustful stimulation,
that any sense of connection is prone to being interpreted as sexual. And
evidence of reciprocation of that connection is prone to misinterpretation as a
sexual invitation.
The most important preparation for this battle is to
consciously and perpetually put sexual desire in its God-given container:
marriage. I’ve written elsewhere of the power of a prayer of gratitude as a
pathway for fleeing lust. If you are married, this may be a prayer of
thanksgiving for your wife; if you are not married, it can be a prayer of
thanksgiving for the institution of marriage, thankfulness that God has given
you everything you need for life and godliness, and that when or if you need a
wife he will provide one. You must also consciously acknowledge that any sexual
thought for any woman you are not married to is adultery in its fullest, most
damnable form. This is why Paul urges us not only to flee such thoughts, but to
bludgeon them with full spiritual violence (Galatians 5:24). It is also worth
highlighting that while the call to “flee youthful lust” (2 Timothy 2:22) is
applicable for all followers of Christ for all time, its original context was
in a letter from an older pastor mentoring a young pastor (2 Timothy 2:1-2).
Fatal Attraction
A common defense for exploitative sexual relationships—even when
the victim of abuse is a minor—is that the sex was consensual. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the abused to profess attraction for their abuser. But the presence
of mutual attraction does not in any way lessen or excuse the fact of
exploitation.
Our brains are hard-wired to be attracted to other people.
Most often we sort that attraction into bins based on what is appropriate for
that relationship. Because of our diminished ability to discern between emotional and
sexual intimacy, if we perceive the other person to be in
any way a viable sexual partner, we will experience the attraction as sexual.
For this reason it is vital that we have the mental discipline to constrain the
range of what we allow ourselves to entertain as viable sexual partners. Again,
the biblical standard calls us to limit that to the person we are married to.
In a commonly used marriage vow we promise to “forsake all others.” Forsake
means to give up our rights to something. Men, we must consciously—and continuously—give
up our perceived “right” to any sexual partner other than the one we are in
covenant with before God.
It is also helpful to recognize the common ingredients of
attraction. Though attraction comes with a lot of feels, it is ultimately just
a chemical reaction in our brains to stimuli to which God designed us to
respond. While this obviously plays a role in the attraction that leads to a
covenant marriage, I believe the biblical record would more fundamentally
identify the purpose of our God-given capacity for attraction to be to
facilitate our obedience to the command to love our neighbors as ourselves
(Leviticus 19:18).
Social psychologists have identified a number of potent,
universal mechanisms of attraction. One of the strongest is beauty, or physical
attractiveness. Another is proximity: simply being physically close to someone
fosters a sense of attraction; repeated or prolonged proximity can intensify
this. Another strong arbiter of attraction is similarity; we feel more
connection with those we perceive as being like us in some way, such as
belonging to the same group (any kind of grouping will do, from shared ethnic
cultural heritage to liking the same sports team, and anything in between) and
sharing similar values or beliefs.
Another insidious but potent attraction-enhancer is our
affective state. When we are in a positive mood, we tend to like the people we
encounter more. Similarly, when we are in a physiologically aroused state, we
also rate people whom we otherwise find attractive as even more attractive.
Elevated heart rate and/or elevated adrenaline, such as when working out or in
a frightening situation, can increase our perceptions of attractiveness.
The bottom line is this: we are designed to connect with
other people, and commonplace circumstances can directly and indirectly
increase feelings of intimacy and attraction. Do not be surprised when such
feelings occur, and absolutely do not be so arrogant as to believe something
cosmic or mystical is drawing you into a sexual relationship. Stay grounded in
the God-given “bin” for sexuality—your marriage—and consciously put any other
feelings of attraction or intimacy at the foot of the cross, to be used solely
in keeping with kingdom-building purposes (Matthew 6:33).
A Warning for Leaders
The vulnerability that is endemic to psychotherapeutic and
pastoral care relationships is fairly plain to see. To this end, all credible
training programs for these professions explicitly teach would-be practitioners
to monitor and manage these dynamics. But the vulnerability in the
leader-follower relationship is not so obvious, and we seldom teach leaders to
guard against abusing it.
The article posted above, in which a military commander was
charged with sexual abuse after what he asserts was a consensual sexual
relationship, is a classic example. A leader will often develop a close
relationship with a follower. Followers will often admire and have feelings of
attraction for their leader. In some cases these feelings may be bundled with a
sense of fear, which can lead a follower to submit to an unwanted sexual
relationship due to even an implicit fear of reprisal; but that fear also can lead
to actual attraction due to the role that emotional and physiological arousal
can have in intensifying feelings of attraction. No matter how or why the
attraction emerges, it is the leader’s responsibility to keep sex out of the
relationship.
The potential for abuse is particularly high in
leader-follower relationships in very hierarchical organizations. Perhaps no
organization—especially not in western society—is more hierarchical than the
military. Service members are operantly conditioned to defer to those in
authority over them. True consent requires a high degree of equality in a
relationship. For a leader in a hierarchical organization to entertain thoughts
that a sexual relationship could be built consensually is patently absurd.
The most egregious example of the abuse of a hierarchical
relationship comes not from the pages of the newspaper, but of the Bible.
David, as king of Israel, raped one of his subjects. We usually talk about the
relationship as “adulterous.” But the reality is that the relationship was
inherently coercive, and coerced sex is, by definition, rape. Though there is always
a power differential between a ruler and their subjects, this differential was
extreme in David’s time and culture. The king of Israel was granted absolute
authority over his subjects (1 Samuel 8:10-18) and to disobey an order from the
king could result in immediate and legally justified execution (2 Samuel
1:14-16, 2 Samuel 4:12). It is in this context that Bathsheba was summoned to
appear before the sovereign king of Israel. The Bible makes no record of a
conversation of any kind, much less whether any consent were sought or given.
Even if David asked her for permission to have sex with her, he held all of the
advantage: he was the king, she was the subject; she was alone, he was
accompanied by his entire cohort of guards, servants, aides, and attendants;
she was in his palace, not in her own home. There is nothing about this
scenario which places Bathsheba anywhere close to equal footing with David from
which she could reasonably have been expected to negotiate whether or not to
engage in a relationship that they both knew was in violation of God’s law (and
presumably also of the civil law of the land). David’s authority was inherently
coercive, so his sex with Bathsheba was abusive.
I have heard it proposed that perhaps Bathsheba contrived
the entire affair, and that her bathing on her roof was an elaborate honeytrap
to ensnare the king into a relationship while she was ovulating, with a plan to
get pregnant and improve her station by bearing the king’s child. I don’t know
enough about ancient Jewish household arrangements to know whether bathing
outdoor on rooftops was a common or an absurd occurrence. I find this reading
preposterous, but let’s play what if: suppose the whole saga did turn out to have
been an elaborate manipulation by Bathsheba. What of David? Is this the kind of
leader one would like to follow? A leader who allows a moment of lust to
germinate into using his organization’s resources to arrange an illicit affair?
Who then goes so far as to alter his organization’s mission and intentionally
endanger his personnel to cover it up? For whom even ordering a murder is not a
bridge too far?
The military implicitly recognizes that even purportedly
consensual sexual relations between junior personnel and leaders in the chain
of command can be detrimental to mission effectiveness, and therefore such
relationships are punishable. In fact, an inappropriate relationship does not
even have to be proven to be explicitly sexual to be considered a violation of
Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Leaders are charged with
maintaining professional boundaries with those they lead, and it is the more
senior member who bears the bulk of the responsibility for violations of this
standard.
In light of the statutory prohibitions against sexual and
other inappropriate relationships, the intensely hierarchical nature of military
organizations, and the fact that service members are explicitly conditioned to
respect and defer to superior rank, it is my view that any sexual encounter
between a military leader and a subordinate should always be regarded as
coerced, even when there is explicit evidence of formal consent. Military
leaders wield significant influence in the form of severe formal and informal
power over those they lead (especially those leaders with command authority).
Service members deserve leaders who are committed to good stewardship of that
power, and to be able to trust beyond any doubt that their leaders will not use
their significant influence to manipulate or exploit their followers for
personal gain, especially with regard to sex.
Practical Application
Psychotherapists, ministers, and leaders (especially in
hierarchical organizations such as the military) are in positions of
significant trust and influence. There are certainly other roles and
relationships which lend themselves to abuse, and these recommendations may be
helpful in those settings. But for anyone who is a psychotherapist, minister,
or leader, and for anyone who is training or mentoring men for those roles, the
following are absolutely critical:
- Recognize that by virtue of your role alone, before they meet or know anything else about you, those under your care will approach you with a degree of vulnerability and trust
- Recognize that due to the nature of the relationship, those under your care will likely experience feelings of admiration, closeness, and liking; always assume that these are due to your role and the service you provide and behave accordingly
- Acknowledge that these relationships also can engender stronger feelings of affection, intimacy, and attraction; recognize that these feelings can be misinterpreted (by you and/or those under your care) as sexual attraction
- ALWAYS assume that any sexual attraction you feel for those under your care (or that you perceive from them) is out of place and contrary to the real purpose of the relationship
- Commit yourself now and continuously to the conviction that those under your care will never, under any circumstances, be appropriate outlets for your sexual desires; even when the other party explicitly pursues a sexual or romantic relationship with you, your duty is to protect the sanctity of that relationship, both for that person and for the sake of all the others who depend on you
