How to Rise Above Abuse (Counseling Through the Bible Series) by June Hunt

around others reflect our standards. Making choices to live by biblical standards is not legalism, even if the choices we make are more conservative or restrictive than the choices of others.
    Example: Through Joshua, God gave the Israelites the choice as to whether they would serve Him or not: “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…But as for me and my household, we will serve the L ORD ” (Joshua 24:15).
The Unfortunate Fame of Eufame MacLayne

    Unbelievable…inconceivable…absolutely unthinkable! When I first heard this story, I had to ask, “How could this possibly happen?”
    The horrific incident took place in 1591 after Scottish noblewoman Eufame MacLayne, a lady of rank and refinement, became pregnant with twins. Her concerned midwife provided an herb to ease the painful delivery of the twins. But when church leaders learned she had taken the herb, they believed she had violated the law of God, showing deliberate contempt for the truth of Scripture. Thus, Eufame was condemned to die.
    The church leaders reasoned that after Adam and Eve had sinned, God issued judgments, and specifically to the woman He pronounced, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing” (Genesis 3:16). Because Eufame had sought relief from agonizing labor pains, the church leaders deemed her act as sin and declared that what shehad done was worthy of death. (Yet nowhere in Scripture are women forbidden to take herbs or medicine during childbirth.)
    When the official crown bailiff arrived at Eufame’s home, she clung tightly to her twins…but they were pulled from her. Eufame was forcibly dragged to Castle Hill in Edinburgh, where she was to be burned at the stake. Chains were wrapped around her kneeling body, and in less than an hour ashes were “all that remained of Eufame MacLayne.” 6
    Her murder was a tragic case of woefully misguided spiritual leaders who failed to consider the whole counsel of God and therefore committed spiritual abuse. Rather than gleaning wisdom from the Bible as a whole, one isolated Scripture text became the foundation for a distorted and dangerous theology.
    Sadly, for hundreds of years and in many countries this one Scripture passage—read in isolation—was used erroneously to verbally attack, severely punish, and kill countless people, including physicians seeking only to alleviate the pain of childbirth. In my research on this matter, I came across the following fascinating account.
    As late as 1847, British physician Sir James Simpson—who discovered the anesthetic properties of chloroform—was denounced mercilessly for trying to circumvent God’s Genesis chapter 3 judgment on women who suffer pain during childbirth. Interestingly, his greatest defense for using anesthesia was found in the preceding chapter—Genesis 2. He reminded his opponents about the written “record of the first surgical operation ever performed and that text proves that the Maker of the universe, before he took the rib from Adam’s side for the creation of Eve, caused a deep sleep to fall upon him.” 7
    Fortunately, Dr. Simpson was well-grounded in both theology and logic. Theologically, he knew the Genesis account of God’s judgment extended not just to women, but to men as well—for survival, man’s labor would require “painful toil” and “the sweat of your brow” (Genesis 3:17-19). He answered his critics’ accusations of heresy with this irrefutable reasoning: Based on God’s curse in Genesis 3, if a woman sinned each time she eased her labor pains by using medicine, “then a man sinned each time he eased his labor by using an ox, a plow, or even fertilizer to enrich the soil.” 8 Thus he countered that any effort to eliminate the pain of labor for men was as much anavoidance of the Lord’s curse as was alleviating the pain of labor for women through an anesthetic.
    With this sound logical and biblical defense, Dr. Simpson finally silenced all the critics.
    Christians and the