Faith after spiritual abuse: Why I haven’t walked away

Imagine hearing daily reports of doctors and hospitals being exposed for corruption and malpractice — not just in your area, but across the country. How would that make you feel? Safe? Confident? Or uneasy, fearful, and unsure where to turn? You realize there may come a day when you need a doctor or lifesaving surgery, but after hearing story after story, how would you trust anyone in a white coat again?

The comparison isn’t exact, but it feels familiar. This is where many of us find ourselves when we look at the state of the Church. The steady stream of local failures, national scandals, and leaders falling in serious — and sometimes abusive — ways has left many understandably shaken.

And it’s not just what we’re seeing in headlines. It’s what we’ve experienced up close with friends, families, and sometimes in our own story. My own family was forced to leave a church we loved after more than 23 years because of spiritual abuse. I know what it feels like when the place meant to bind up wounds becomes the source of them.

Christians know we need the Great Physician — but we don’t always trust the place where He’s supposed to be at work.

Part of what makes this moment so disorienting isn’t just what we’re seeing — it’s what we expected. We don’t think of church as just another organization. We call it family. And family carries weight — love, protection, loyalty, and care. So, when something breaks in that environment, it doesn’t just feel like disappointment. It feels like deep betrayal.

That helps explain what we’re seeing more and more. Research from Barna shows growing distrust in church leadership, often tied to hypocrisy and mishandling of abuse and moral failure. Many aren’t just disappointed, they’re disillusioned.

But I don’t believe the answer to that disillusionment is to permanently walk away from what’s broken. It’s to hold fast to what — and more importantly, who — isn’t.

Brokenness in the visible church isn’t new. Scripture never presents the Church as a finished product, but as a people in the sanctification process. Jesus Himself warned that wheat and weeds would grow together until the harvest (Matthew 13:24-30). Expecting perfection from the Church will always end in disappointment.

But our hope was never meant to rest in the Church.

The Church is real and important, but it’s still made up of people who fail. When our hope is anchored in Christ, who is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), the failures we see don’t destroy our faith. They clarify it.

The same is true of our love for the Church. If everything hinges on how the community treats us, the relationship won’t last. When people disappoint us — and they will — our instinct is to pull away, and sometimes we do need time to heal. But lasting love for the Church has to come from somewhere deeper than personal experience.

It has to come from Jesus Himself.

Jesus saw the sinfulness and brokenness of His people more clearly than we ever will — and still loved the Church and gave Himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25). Not because she was perfect, but because He is committed to making her whole.

As Charles Spurgeon once observed, “If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all.” The Church has never been a gathering of flawless people, but a gathering of those in desperate need of grace.

Which raises a deeper question: why do we go to church in the first place?

If our primary reason is what we get out of it, we’ve made ourselves the main character of a story that was never all about us. We gather because Jesus loves the Church — and we gather because Jesus is worthy of our focus, worship, and adoration.

God’s Word tells us He is pleased when His people gather (Hebrews 10:24-25). Not because every gathering is perfect, but because it’s His design. When we shift our focus from what we receive to what we bring — our worship, our love for one another, our witness to a watching world — the Church begins to look more like what it was meant to be.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we ignore sin or remain in unhealthy, abusive, or unbiblical churches. There are times we should leave. Sometimes the most faithful decision is finding a healthier, more biblically grounded community. But that’s different from walking away from the Church altogether.

Maybe you’ve heard people say, “I still love Jesus, but I want nothing to do with His people.” I understand that impulse. I’ve felt it, too. But when we decide we want nothing to do with the people He died to redeem, we move out of step with His example. After all, He didn’t walk away when He was betrayed. And we don’t have to either. We can face what’s broken without walking away from what’s true — grieving honestly, thinking clearly, and still choosing to engage.

We don’t stay because the Church is perfect. We stay because Jesus is — and because the Church, however flawed, still belongs to Him.

But this isn’t just something to understand, it’s a decision to make. Will we anchor our faith in imperfect people or in a perfect savior? Will we walk away when the Church disappoints us, or will we stay — with clearer expectations, deeper discernment, and a stronger foundation?

The Church isn’t yet what it will be, but Jesus is still who He has always been.

And if He hasn’t given up on His Church, we should be very careful before we do.