Christians and Divorce

Okay, so I do have a question about something I've been thinking of for a while. I was always taught that divorce was wrong - no ifs, buts or maybes. No matter what your spouse did. For a Christian to leave a marriage was always a sin. However, in keeping with 1 Corinthians 7, your spouse could leave you but even though it might not have been your desire to be separated, you could never officially divorce him or her since it was the divorce that was the sin, not necessarily the separation. But on top of that, you could never marry again until your spouse died or you were an adulterer even if your spouse remarried.

That was the interpretation of what Paul had to say about divorce. Unlike some other points, such as Paul's reference to celibacy in the same chapter, in which he says, "I speak this by permission, and not of commandment," Paul calls his ideas about divorce a commandment from the Lord.

And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: 11But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife. 12But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. 13And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. 14For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy.

What is also interesting is that his reference to divorce mentions unbelieving spouses - presumably if both spouses are Christians, divorce would be even more unthinkable, wouldn't it?

What Paul has to say about marriage is so difficult to accept - that no matter what - it is a commandment from the Lord to remain married. There's no way out in that statement.

Jesus, though, seems to take another tack altogether when he says to the Pharisees, in Matthew 19, 3The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

4And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

7They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. 9And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

10His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.
11But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.

And in Matthew 5: 27Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Jesus, in Matthew 19, seems to leave an out for adultery although Mennonites never interpreted it that way. The way they interpreted it, was that you could leave your spouse if he or she had committed adultery but you were still bound by what Paul said not to commit adultery yourself and therefore while you could leave, you could not remarry.

So even if you were sinned against, you were still stuck. But Jesus still in Matthew 19, which is supported by Matthew 5 where he says there is no difference between lusting after someone and the actual act, seems to be saying that it is the hardness of our hearts - our imperfect selves - that stand in the way, as always, between us and reconciliation, between our flesh and our spirit, our 'old man' and 'new man.'

Jesus seems, in a philosophical approach, to be making the point that we are all sinners, and all come short of the glory of God and his words there seem more to be about how impossible it is to live that way - to live without ever having looked at a member of the opposite sex with lust in your heart, and therefore all are adulterers, not just those who have committed adultery in terms of the actual act, just as he compares someone who calls his brother a fool to a murderer. Jesus is emphasizing the futility of salvation without him.

Which again is supported by his words to the woman caught in adultery: "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone."

Jesus seems to know that life isn't as simple as maybe it was for Paul. That no matter how hard some people try, you can't get blood out of a stone, or a relationship with someone who doesn't want to be in one. And particularly if you are young, what sort of burden is it to put on a young person whose spouse has left them, to be condemned to walk through life alone, without a partner, a helpmate by their side?

Jesus and Paul to me say very different things about divorce. Paul is always more of a legalist than say, Peter.

Which brings me to another thought: I know a woman who is very adamant that divorce is always a sin. No matter what. So imagine my surprise when I discovered she was married to her second husband, having divorced the first. Her rational? It was that her first marriage didn't count because "what God hath joined let no man put asunder" and since the first marriage hadn't worked out, God clearly had not joined them.

Does that seem as big a cop-out to you as it does to me?

So what do you think? All in all, I think that the only clear thing in the Bible is that it isn't the ideal solution, and it isn't what God intended for us. Of course, most people never marry intending to divorce either, so most of us, believers or not, and God are in agreement there.

As I said already, I was raised to believe divorce, no matter what, was wrong. I have always wondered just how Christians who believe that way feel about second marriages in which it is one spouse's first marriage and her or his partner's second marriage. By the definition of marriage and divorce and adultery in which I was raised, the divorced spouse is committing adultery as long as he continues in the second marriage. Where does that leave the spouse to whom it is a first marriage? Do two wrongs (divorce) make a right here then?

I think that sometimes circumstances are such that it is impossible to stay together and remain sane, whether both people are believers or not. And I think that particularly if someone is young, then to remarry is one of those human frailty, falling-short-of-the-glory-of-God things that is covered by Jesus' perfect life and sacrifice. Otherwise, as Paul also says, ever the legalist, to the young widows, that he would rather that they marry for it is better to marry than to burn.

I don't believe the official position of the church in which I grew up has changed any although in practical terms it changed when pastors and other church leaders had children who found themselves in marriages that didn't work out. Suddenly they were no longer so sure about what they had been so sure about when it came to other people's children with the pain of their own children staring them in the face.

Unless you are asexual, it is so part of how God made us, to want a mate, that I think for most people it would be impossible to live without being intimate with someone for forty, fifty, sixty years.

Layla