Review of Lies Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth
Lies Women Believe has shaped Christian women’s Bible studies for more than two decades. It has been distributed at conferences, used in church small groups, and promoted as a trustworthy guide for spiritual growth. Because of its enormous reach, its most dangerous teachings deserve careful scrutiny.
The Teaching That Causes the Most Harm
In these passages, Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth teaches that women who want to leave deeply destructive marriages are “hard-hearted,” spiritually deceived, and ensnared by Satan. Under this framework, a wife’s desire to escape ongoing harm is not wisdom, discernment, or self-preservation—but proof that she has believed lies.
Crucially, the author offers no exceptions for physical violence, serial adultery, sexual abuse, or danger to children. The husband’s behavior fades into the background, while the wife becomes the moral problem for refusing to endure it forever. Marriage-destroying sin is minimized. A woman’s attempt to survive is pathologized. This is not biblical accountability. It is spiritual blame-shifting.
A sentence was added to the 2018 edition suggesting that an abused woman should “get to a safe place,” but it gives no plan beyond that—nor any indication that marital separation might be warranted (p. 177).
Scripture warns against “acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent” (Proverbs 17:15). Yet this teaching does exactly that—placing the weight of a husband’s repeated sin onto the wife’s shoulders and calling her desire for safety evidence of deception.
Why This Theology Is Spiritually Dangerous
This teaching has real-world consequences. Women absorb the belief that leaving danger equals betraying God. They learn to distrust their God-given instincts for survival. Many stay longer than they should—or never leave at all—because they fear spiritual condemnation more than continued harm.
Calling a battered woman “selfish” or “deceived” for wanting safety is not discipleship. It is spiritual gaslighting. It keeps victims trapped, protects abusers from accountability, and misrepresents the character of God. To borrow a phrase from a Christianity Today article, this kind of counsel can function as “a slow, sadistic death sentence.”
What makes Lies Women Believe so damaging is the way it recasts ordinary human pain as spiritual failure. By the end of the book, women have already been told that feeling God has not been good, feeling unloved, feeling worthless, feeling overwhelmed, wanting help, wanting their rights respected, struggling with disappointment, sexual pain, or unfulfilled longings are all signs of deception or wrong belief. The pattern is relentless: instead of meeting fear, loss, exhaustion, or grief with compassion, the book teaches women to suspect themselves. The question becomes not, “What happened to you?” but, “What lie are you believing?”
“But She Was Single When She Wrote It”
Some defenders argue that DeMoss Wolgemuth wrote the first edition while single and lacked firsthand marital experience. That explanation does not hold up. The book was “updated and expanded” in 2018—after she married—and the core message remains unchanged.
Although some wording was softened, the underlying theology did not change. A woman who wants to leave a destructive marriage is still portrayed as spiritually compromised rather than morally justified. See image below. Apparently, marriage did not introduce empathy for victims. It did not add meaningful exceptions for danger. It did not correct the central error.
Why This Matters to Me Personally
This teaching is not theoretical to me.
My life-saving divorce saved my life, my sanity, and my children. For years, I stayed. I prayed. I tried harder. I hoped for change. When I finally chose safety, it was not because I had a hard heart—it was because I had clarity.
Many survivors tell the same story. Leaving did not destroy their faith; it preserved it. What harmed them most was not divorce, but theology that demanded acceptance of ongoing harm and called it holiness.
Today, even many conservative Christian organizations, such as Focus on the Family, openly advise abused wives to separate from their husbands. Lies Women Believe stands increasingly out of step—with Scripture, with pastoral wisdom, and with reality.
That is why this teaching must be named plainly: it is spiritually dangerous, morally inverted, and harmful to the very people Jesus consistently protected.
🎥 Video discussion linked here for readers who want a quote-by-quote walkthrough the book: https://youtu.be/yfunQZE7U6I?si=MTADj19y_qfbyoDk
There are more than 500 1-star (very negative) reviews of Lies Women Believe on GoodReads, many of them written by conservative Christians.
See image of a portion of page 159 below in the original version of Lies Women Believe.
Caption: page 159 from the earlier edition – The author talking about abused and betrayed wives who want to get to safety and leave.
Here’s page 208 (Kindle) from the 2018 version of Lies Women Believe, which she updated after she married. It softens the wording slightly, but is still damaging. The same text is found on page 186 in the updated and expanded print edition.
2018 edition of Lies Women Believe, p. 208 (Kindle) — or see p. 186 in the printed version.
Related Reading:
- Safety-First vs. Marriage-First Counseling
- But He Never Hit Me: Divorce for Neglect, Emotional, and Financial Abuse
- 12 Ways to Help a Christian Who is Being Abused by Their Spouse
- 27 Ways Churches Gaslight Abuse and Betrayal Victims (And the Biblical Truth)
- Unconditional Love in Marriage Does Not Mean Enduring Abuse
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