Dana Hall McCain writes about faith, culture and politics for AL.com. Follow her on Twitter @dhmccain for thoughts on these topics and more.

Evangelical social media has been in turmoil in recent days over comments made in 2000 by Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention

In a recently-resurfaced interview, Patterson was asked how he would counsel women "who are undergoing genuine physical abuse from their husbands, and the husband says they should submit."

His advice? Pray harder.

Patterson can be heard on the audiotape telling the story of a woman who came to him and reported that she was being abused. Rather than advising her to leave or call the police, he simply told her to get on her knees beside her husband's bed each night and quietly pray for him.

"Get ready, because he may get a little more violent," Patterson recalls telling the woman. (I had to listen to that part twice to believe my own ears.)

She came back to church soon thereafter with two black eyes.

Bear in mind, folks, this is Patterson's own recollection of what he thinks is a pastoral counseling success story, not some other person's version of events. And the reason he views the whole thing as a success is that this particular husband did eventually change his ways, and their marriage was restored.

But they don't all do that, Pastor.

Some of them just keep punching and raping and blacking eyes and breaking bones until a woman's body gives up the fight. In 2012, 924 women in the United States were killed by their intimate partners, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Granted, about half of those were boyfriends. But the other half? Husbands. Good old, sacramental, spiritual covenant husbands. The kind to whom Patterson would have suggested the wives had an obligation to "be submissive in every way that you can, and to elevate him..."

Patterson's advice to the woman in the anecdote suggests that if a wife flees a marriage to protect herself and her children from physical violence, she will have made a sinful choice. He says in the interview that he has never counseled anybody in all his years of ministry to seek a divorce, and that such is "always wrong counsel."

In a fallen world, always is a mighty big word, Pastor.

If sexual infidelity clears a biblical path to ending the marriage covenant (and every evangelical pastor I know will agree with that premise), I feel strongly, based on 1 Corinthians 7:15 that the same covenant shatters into a thousand pieces when the first punch lands on a woman you vowed before God to protect. And no matter who files the legal action, the death of the marriage is not the fault of the person who's 50 pounds lighter with two black eyes.

Some read the Corinthians 7 verse on divorce to mean only physical abandonment. But the original Greek word (chorizo) suggests something more complex: a separation, a breakdown. This is not a new idea. Even Puritan theologians read the verse this way, and subscribed to the English law idea of "constructive desertion," or the idea that one spouse can be so poorly treated that he or she has been abandoned in all but the physical sense.

I'm pro-marriage. Some would even say that I'm pretty hardcore anti-divorce. I've spent years stressing to women who sat under my teaching that simply being unhappy or unfulfilled is not a biblically sound reason to divorce. I believe that marriage is sacred and worth hard work. God intends for it to be a lifelong commitment and bond, for our good and for his glory.

But hear me on this: God doesn't love my marriage more than he loves me. He does not love marriage more than he loves justice. He does not ask us to submit to physical abuse and degradation to preserve the facade of a spiritual union that either never existed or is already dead.

And in such a situation, I feel confident that when a divorced couple stand before the throne, it will not be the abused spouse who left who will be judged by God for destroying that which he ordained as holy.

I'm just grateful that I was raised by a man (a godly man, a Southern Baptist deacon kind of man) who told me every day of my young life that I deserved better than some loser who would dare raise a hand to me. He even intimated more than once that his learning of a boyfriend or husband hitting me would set into motion events that would end poorly for all parties involved.

He's a deacon, yes. But he's a daddy, too. Just like my Heavenly Father.

And neither one of my fathers would require me to be anybody's punching bag. Not even for a day.

Note: Patterson attempted to walk his 2000 commentary back in a recent interview with Baptist Press. It should be noted, however, that the publication had to work with him to massage the quotes in paragraph five of the resulting story into less controversial syntax.