Navigating out of Spiritual Bypassing, Control and Manipulation
There is a particular kind of ache that comes when the name of Jesus is twisted into a weapon. It doesn’t feel like ordinary pain. It cuts deeper because it touches the place where trust was meant to live.
When someone cloaked in spiritual language—whether a street preacher with a Bible in hand or a leader with a title and a following—uses faith to control, manipulate, or silence, the soul recoils. You don’t just feel betrayed by a person. You begin to wonder if God Himself has betrayed you.
It’s disorienting. What once felt like the safety of God’s presence can start to feel like the voice of condemnation. The very verses that once brought peace now echo with accusation.
The Comfort and the Struggle of Matthew 7
Jesus anticipated this. He warned us that there would be people who prophesy in His name, who perform mighty works, who seem to be the very embodiment of spiritual power—and yet, He says, “I never knew you.”
There is a strange comfort in this. To hear Jesus name what you’ve lived: not everyone who claims My name is truly Mine. It tells the wounded heart, “You weren’t crazy. What they did in My name was not from Me.”
And yet, the comfort doesn’t erase the struggle. If Jesus knew this would happen, why does it still wound so deeply? Why does it take years to disentangle His true voice from the counterfeit one that rang in your ears?
This is the fleshly struggle of survivors: to live in the tension of comfort and confusion, to find God again after His name was used to harm.
The Work of Stepping Out of Silence
Paul’s words still echo: “Expose the unfruitful works of darkness.” Yet exposure, in the way of Christ, is less about calling someone out and more about stepping out of silence. Because silence—however safe it seems—eventually eats away at the soul. What is unspoken, festers. What is hidden weighs heavier with time.
Healing begins in the gentle act of telling the truth. Sometimes that means writing the story in a journal. Talking to someone you trust. Sometimes one feels called to share their personal experience to help others who have gone through similar experiences. Writing your story in the third person creates just enough distance to see clearly without being crushed by the memory.
In these small ways, light enters. Grace breaks through. What once felt like a private wound becomes the beginning of testimony: this is what happened, this is how it shaped me, and this is where God is meeting me now. Jesus doesn’t ask you to carry secrets in the dark. He invites you to lay them bare in the safety of His mercy.
A Deeper Stir of Grace
Even amid betrayal and spiritual bypassing, God remains sovereign—able to weave even those misused moments into His redemptive story. This is not to excuse wrongdoing, but to acknowledge a mystery: evil, when unleashed, does not have the final word.
Joseph once told his brothers: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20). Paul reminded the Romans that “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him” (Romans 8:28). And again, he dared to say, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3–5).
Psychologists describe something similar as post-traumatic growth—an unexpected transformation where enduring the wound opens the soul to new depths of meaning, compassion, and clarity. Spiritually, this can feel like one’s faith being refined. Not shattered, but reshaped. Instead of pulling away from God, some discover themselves drawn closer—adversity revealing a tenderness in His character they had never known before.
In that reorientation, the victim is not defined by the abuser. Instead, they become an embodiment of resilience and God’s redeeming light. It’s a sacred inversion: the very forces meant to wound can become the soil of deeper communion with God.
Writing Your Story as Healing
One of the gentlest tools for healing is writing your story in the third person. It creates a sacred kind of distance. Instead of “I was hurt,” it becomes, “She was hurt. She struggled. She survived.”
Psychologists call this self-distancing, and research confirms its power. By narrating a painful event from a more removed perspective, survivors gain clarity without drowning in the emotion of the memory. It’s like sitting across from your best friend, sharing the story out loud, but with enough space to breathe.
In trauma recovery, this kind of writing does more than tell a story—it loosens trauma’s grip. It helps the brain process the memory without re-experiencing it. It lets survivors reclaim their own narrative, moving from victimhood to authorship.
Spiritually, it echoes the Psalms: David often wrote of himself in the third person—“the man,” “the righteous one”—as if creating room between his pain and God’s promise. That distance makes space for compassion, for perspective, for hope.
Beginning Again
Healing begins where we dare to believe that God is not like the one who misused His name. Jesus never manipulated. He never controlled. He never shamed the vulnerable into silence. He never said, “Do more, believe harder, submit further” in order to prove devotion.
Instead, He bent low. He lifted heads. He healed on the Sabbath when the leaders said it was forbidden. He spoke gently to those who doubted. He restored the ones cast aside.
The long work of healing is to relearn His voice: to discover that the Shepherd sounds nothing like the thief.
A Final Word
Sharing your story can be an act of exposure, but even more, it can be an act of redemption. It is saying, This is where I was harmed. This is how God is mending me.
Would Jesus approve? I think He already has. Because every time a survivor steps into the light, the darkness loses power. Every time truth is spoken with gentleness, lies are brought to the light.
And every time you dare to believe His love is real—more real than the false version that wounded you—you embody the Beatitudes again: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
T.O.M F.A.W – Trusting Our Maker Finding a Way
- On Third-Person Writing and Healing
- Psychology Today: Writing About Trauma in the Third Person – Explains how third-person writing creates distance and clarity.
- Greater Good Science Center – How Writing Heals – Research-backed look at expressive writing for trauma recovery.
- Story Sharing for Healing
- The Mend Project – A safe space where people share stories of covert emotional and spiritual abuse to find healing and hope.