CHRISTIAN DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE

The Mosaic Covenant had permitted divorce:

·       Deuteronomy 24:1 (ESV)  When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house.

Understandably, there had been a lot of disagreement among the rabbis regarding the phrase “some indecency in her.” Did it mean that divorce should be sanctioned for any reason? This was exactly the question they brought to Jesus, who answered:

·       Matthew 19:4-6  He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Did Jesus’ answer mean that there were absolutely no grounds for divorce? However, afterwards, He did mention an exception:

·       Matthew 19:9 (ESV) And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Earlier, Jesus had articulated this same exception:

·       Matthew 5:32 (ESV)  But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Some commentators suggest that “sexual immorality” also pertains to sexual sins other than adultery. Paul adds an additional exception:

·       1 Corinthians 7:15 (ESV) But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

It would seem that, in these cases, the divorced party is now free to remarry. These exceptions represent the understanding that, if the marriage contract has been violated in these ways, the violated party is free from any obligations to it. Why? Because covenants are not always absolutely binding! Paul illustrated this:

·       Romans 7:2-4 (ESV) For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law [covenant] of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Does adultery (and perhaps other forms of sexual unfaithfulness) free the violated party from his/her covenantal obligations to the marriage? Death of the spouse certainly frees the surviving party from these obligations. I tend to think that if the marriage has been violated through sexual unfaithfulness or abandonment (by the unbeliever), it means that the husband has already dissolved the marriage covenant and there remains no obligation on the part of the spouse. It seems to be like any contract. If the buyer refuses to pay for the product, the provider is not under any obligation to send it. How else are we to understand the above-mentioned “exception clauses!”

WE AREN’T GOING TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING: THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS A PROACTIVE ONE

While we seek understanding, we should also have the humility to know that we will not understand everything. The Trinity is the prime example of this – that God is One but also Three. There is another prime example of this – that we make responsible for our lives and make freewill choices even though God is primarily responsible. Let me try to demonstrate this by pointing to the fact that the Christian life must be a proactive life.

Here's how Paul represented the Christian life:

·       “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27)

This is a strenuous life - nothing passive about it. Let me give you an example. I am a highly irritable and anxious person. This means that there is a lot of things that set me off. Ugh! Even my beloved wife steps on my elongated toes - my exaggerated sensitivities.

If I don't respond proactively, I will continue to brood - the worst thoughts grasping at my mind. Instead, I've learned that I have to contend strenuously against my responses and for my marriage. Here's how:

1. Pray and forgive!

2. Confess my response and also how my wife triggered it.

3. Embrace her entirely with words of love and appreciation.

4. Proactively go the extra mile and perform an act of love to turn the situation into a victory!

But aren't we supposed to wait on the Lord (Isaiah 40:31)? Not literally! Instead, waiting is our hearts' acknowledgement that deliverance comes from the Lord. Rather, we should be proactive, understanding that God often rescues us through our efforts, which are actually God's provisions, as Paul confessed:

·       “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” (1 Corinthians 15:10)

Paul confessed that even his efforts came from God. Well, how can it be both - our efforts and God's provisions to us?

I don't think that we can understand this completely, but this paradox is clearly infused throughout the biblical revelation. We are entirely responsible for our lives, but God is even more responsible (Eph. 2:10). In other words, we have to embrace the entirety of His revelation - that we have to run the race to win the crown of life that our Lord has already bequeathed us.

Make sense? Not completely! But why should we expect to completely understand everything our Heavenly Father reveals to us! So continue to seek understanding, but meanwhile, live proactively.

CELEBRATE ORGASM

While walking through a college campus, I observed a table manned by two female students with a sign reading "Celebrate Orgasm."

I understood it to mean, "celebrate uncommitted, casual sex," a message not at all uncommon on our college campuses. For me, at least, it conjured up thoughts of angry Leftist professors indoctrinating youth against traditional values. I decided I had to confront these misguided young ladies.

"Are you aware that studies show that married women report having better, more satisfying sex than the hook-up crowd?"

I was surprised to hear that they were familiar with these studies. I was even more surprised by what followed:

"Of course, a woman is going to enjoy sex more with someone she can trust, with someone she knows is totally committed to her."

I was stunned. She even said these words so matter-of-factly, as if to say, "It's just common knowledge."

"Well, if it is common knowledge," I thought, "why the heck are you celebrating indiscriminate orgasm?" However, others approached the table and I never got a chance to ask my provocative question, but I continued to think about it.

Although our youth have been substituting "until dead do us part" with something like "until we no longer are getting what we want out of this marriage," they know that they and their future offspring are made for committed relationships.

Meanwhile, they mock the Christian faith as puritanical and repressive, even though it is this very faith that safeguards what they ultimately want in a family and a relationship.

It is the teachings of the Bible, which provide the light and guidance for human thriving. Quoting Genesis 1-2, Jesus taught:

• “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

I am grateful for these teachings. Marriage can be trying, but it is because we are convinced these truths, that divorce has never presented itself as an option. Consequently, we're in it for the long-haul, and therefore, we can trust and rely upon one another. We are not surveying the grass of the other side, and so spend our time fertilizing our own lawn.

The Logic and Lessons of Cohabitation

Cohabitation – sometimes termed “trial marriage” - is the new and undisputed norm. NPR writes:

• Today, more than 65 percent of first marriages start out that way. Fifty years ago, it was closer to 10 percent.

• Cohabitation before marriage, once frowned upon, is now almost a rite of passage, especially for the millennial generation. Young adults born after 1980 are more likely to cohabit than any previous generation was at the same stage of life, according to the Pew Research Center. With more than 8 million couples currently cohabiting, it is obviously a living arrangement with appeal — but it is also one with unique challenges.

The logic for cohabitation goes like this:

• Marriage is difficult. Most end in divorce. It therefore makes sense to first live together to test for compatibility.

On the surface, this makes sense, but the findings indicate otherwise:

• The research on whether cohabitation increases the risk of divorce is still being debated, but Rhoades and her colleagues have found that couples who move in together before getting engaged or committed to marry are a little more likely to have lower-quality marriages. 

In fact, the stats are frankly forbidding:

• [Trial marriage] provides some but not all of the same emotional benefits of marriage, yet only for a short time and at a high price. Breaking up with a live-in lover carries many of the same emotional costs as divorce but happens far more frequently. People who are cohabitating are less happy generally than the married and are less satisfied with their sex lives. In America, long-term cohabiting relationships are far rarer than successful marriages. (The Case for Marriage, Linda Waite & Maggie Gallagher, 74)

• One in ten survives five or more years…The divorce rate among those who cohabit prior to marriage is nearly double (39% vs. 21%) that of couples who marry without prior co-habitation.

• “Men in cohabiting relationships are four times more likely to be unfaithful…Depression is three times more likely…The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is five-fold greater…and 90% more likely to have a low GPA…Abuse of children is 20 times higher in cohabiting biological-parent families; and 33 times higher when the mother is cohabiting with a boyfriend.”

• “Cohabitation is bad for men, worse for women, and horrible for children. It is a deadly toxin to marriage, family, and culture.” 

• Spanish statistics, which have been highlighted in recent years by Europe’s Family Policy Institute (FPI), and recently reported by the Spanish Newspaper ABC, indicate that while only 11% of Spanish couples cohabit without marriage, such unions account for 58% of the most violent crimes between couples. For every one protection order issued for a married couple, ten are issued for cohabiting couples. (LifeSiteNews.com)

How do we explain this? Why are “untried” marriages more successful than trial marriages? Perhaps it has to do with the way we regard marriage. Do we regard it pragmatically (whether or not it works for me) or principally (my commitment to my family is more important than pragmatic considerations). The pragmatic approach is me-centered, while the principled approach is other-centered.

Perhaps we need to understand that our lives are about more than ourselves and our pleasures. Perhaps instead, life paradoxically works better when we are other-centered, even God centered, and when we are not primarily focused on what I can get out of it.

This is the logic of Jesus:

• But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)

It seems to be superior to the “logic” of cohabitation.

Frank Schaeffer on Certainty and Marriage: Some Friendly Advice

A letter to Frank Schaeffer:

Dear Frank,

I’m sure that you would appreciate some corrective feedback. Perhaps you haven’t received any in a long time and realize that we all need some correction. So let me just focus on one little statement you just posted in your blog:

• With the acceptance of paradox came a new and blessed uncertainty that began to heal the mental illness called certainty, the kind of certainty that told me that my job was to be head of the home and to order around my wife and children because “the Bible says so.”

Perhaps most obviously, although you claim to bask in “blessed uncertainty,” you seem to be quite certain about what the Bible teaches about marriage. (I guess certainty is that “mental illness” from which none of us can entirely free ourselves.) Although you are correct that the Bible does teach that a wife must serve her husband, it seems that you have totally ignored the husband’s duties towards his wife. Let me just supply a few verses that you might consider:

• Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself… each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:25-33)

• Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. (1 Peter 3:7)

• Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. (Col. 3:19)

I’m sure that you are already familiar with these teachings. However, in the hustle-and-bustle of promoting our own agendas, it is so easy to forget about them.

I don’t think that it’s an accident that women of the Christian West have experienced that greatest measure of freedom and protection. The “why” becomes obvious when we compare the biblical teachings with those found in other religions. Take the Koran, for example:

• [2.223] Your wives are a tilth [cultivated land] for you, so go into your tilth when you like, and do good beforehand for yourselves…

• [2.228] And the divorced women should keep themselves in waiting for three courses; and it is not lawful for them that they should conceal what Allah has created in their wombs, if they believe in Allah and the last day; and their husbands have a better right to take them back in the meanwhile if they wish for reconciliation; and they have rights similar to those against them in a just manner, and the men are a degree above them, and Allah is Mighty, Wise.

• [2.282] …call in to witness from among your men two witnesses; but if there are not two men, then one man and two women from among those whom you choose to be witnesses…

• [4:34] Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them…

I will not even cite Koranic verses regarding the permissibility of rape, lest your righteous indignation be aroused and you literally lose your head in the process.

No need to thank me. Instead, it’s a pleasure to serve an atheist who believes.