Do you remember record commercials on TV growing up? I remember one for country music legends in which Tammy Wynette singing "Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E became final today." Her hair was piled high and bleached blonde and hair sprayed to hold a sculpt popular in the 1970's. It cracked me and my sister up and we would sing the sound byte laughing as we poked fun at the country star.
There's nothing funny about divorce. It is painful and takes years of work to overcome the pain and shame, anger and sadness and the fear of facing a new chapter in life. Sometimes divorce happens because two individuals never thought to ask God if this marriage was His will. They go into the life long covenant without considering whether God has drawn them together and will keep them through all that life brings.
Divorce happens when two individuals are not able to grow as a couple. They remain solitary individuals with individual agendas, with conflicting goals about what they want out of life. Financial stress, raising children, job stress...and many other forces apply pressure to individuals in marriage. If they haven't learned the give and take of partnership, selfishness and sore feelings drive married couples into fighting, bickering, and unhappiness.
Divorce occurs when one or both in the marriage are unfaithful and have sexual or emotional affairs with another person. Divorce happens when a child dies and the grief drives parents apart rather to closer to one another. Divorce happens after 25-30 years living as married singles, two people who once long ago were romantically involved, but after jobs, child rearing and following individual interests apart from one another they find they have lost any reason to stay together after the children leave home.
And the list goes on and on.
To appropriately discuss divorce we ought first to discuss marriage. What does God think of marriage? Is it important? What is the social and religious purpose of the marriage covenant?
Some want to discuss marriage in terms of property rights. Women are property of the men. Who will have sexual access to "this woman" and her alone in a monogamous society? Marriage is a way to answer this question before the whole community with a public declaration and the blessing of the community.
For the Hebrews marriage was not monogamous at first. Men had more than one wife. They also had concubines, and slaves they with whom they had sex. Abraham's first son Ishmael came through his wife's slave Hagar. Sarai was barren and unable to have children so she encouraged Abram to take her handmaiden to bear a son through her for them.
Over time monogamy became the norm for Jews and Christians. The merit of a monogamous lifestyle can be argued elsewhere. For the purposes of this dialogue about failed monogamous marriage is to look at the moral questions behind of divorce and remarriage. Suffice it to say that we are part of a monogamous society to which Christianity and Judaism has helped to shaped.
"Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral." - Hebrews 13:4 (NIV)
To argue against monogamy is to argue against the Christian Tradition which has classically upheld a lifelong commitment of one man to one woman as the very definition of marriage.
Jesus taught about the nature of marriage by referring to the scripture in Genesis 1:24.
“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 (Mat. 19:4-6).”
When I counsel couples on the nature of marriage we always focus on the question of God's action in their relationship. Has God brought them together or is it just simply erotic attraction and companionship that seems like a good reason to get hitched? Marriage is a covenant, an agreed to arrangement about the rights and responsibilities of it's participants.
God called Israel as His own people and He their God. Laws were given to describe the arrangement. The people were to worship and serve God alone and follow His laws and ordinances. God would bless them with fertile fields, flocks and descendants. God would rive out their enemies, protect them and give peace to their blessed land. Unfaithfulness to God by transgressing against His law brings the opposite...curse. Instead of fertility, there will be barrenness and poverty. Instead of protection, God would turn against them and send warring nations against them. Covenant relationship have rights and responsibilities for all participating.
My favorite passage describing marriage is in Ephesians 5:21-33. I use the symbol of the coat hanger to teach the nature of the Christian covenant of marriage.
Read this devotional http://irevdotcom.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
The coat hanger illustrates that God is at the center of Christian marriage in its ideal. I am not naive enough to believe that every marriage that lasts begins ideally. There are many who learn over time how to make a marriage work for the lifelong commitment. Some do so out of sheer determination. Some out of the comfort of being together. Even though the marriage is not fulfilling, they tell themselves it's too hard to change and too much trouble to find somebody else. How sad is that attitude toward your spouse?
A vital marriage has a love for God and an undying hope in God's promises driving it ever deeper into divine unity. With God they two grow deeper in trust, affection and reliance upon each other. They learn that God is making them truly one flesh. They delight in growing up and growing older. They trust God in all things and lean on God when life throws them curve balls. They learn to be less selfish, more giving and find happiness in the givenness of being together under God's blessing. This is the ideal.
But as we all know 50% or more marriages end in divorce. That is the reality here in the USA. Divorce rates have climbed significantly since the 1950's when divorce rates were at 1% in any given census. http://divorce.lovetoknow.com/Historical_Divorce_Rate_Statistics
With "no fault" divorce laws in effect in the 1970's divorce rates climbed to 4-6%. Rates now are 9-12% according to the 2000 US census. These rates show the number of persons living in a divorced status during the census. This does not reflect what happens to marriages in general. If 10,000 out of 100,000 men were recorded as divorced in 2000. This does not reflect those men who remarried or those women who will dissolve their marriage in the next 10 years. Projections are more along the lines that half of all marriages will end in divorce at the current track record. http://www.divorcereform.org/results.html
Premarital counseling, the support of a community who blesses the couple and the couple's combined spiritual and emotional health make for stronger marriages, but even with strong Christian faith and commitment sometimes marriages fail. It is the reality we live with.
Jesus taught that marriages end because of hardness of heart (Mat. 19:8). This is where we find irreconcilable differences that lead to the dissolution of marriage. Apart from sexual immorality (a sexual affair), divorce should not happen to persons covenanted through Christ (Mat. 19:9). But it does happen. So what is the moral thing to do? How should the church respond?
Here's an excerpt from the United Methodist Book of Discipline 2004 from the UMC.org website.
God's plan is for lifelong, faithful marriage. The church must be on the forefront of premarital and postmarital counseling in order to create and preserve strong marriages. However, when a married couple is estranged beyond reconciliation, even after thoughtful consideration and counsel, divorce is a regrettable alternative in the midst of brokenness. We grieve over the devastating emotional, spiritual, and economic consequences of divorce for all involved and are concerned about high divorce rates.
It is recommended that methods of mediation be used to minimize the adversarial nature and fault-finding that are often part of our current judicial processes. Although divorce publicly declares that a marriage no longer exists, other covenantal relationships resulting from the marriage remain, such as the nurture and support of children and extended family ties. We urge respectful negotiations in deciding the custody of minor children and support the consideration of either or both parents for this responsibility in that custody not be reduced to financial support, control, or manipulation and retaliation. The welfare of each child is the most important consideration. Divorce does not preclude a new marriage. We encourage an intentional commitment of the Church and society to minister compassionately to those in the process of divorce, as well as members of divorced and remarried families, in a community of faith where God’s grace is shared by all.
From The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church - 2004. Copyright 2004 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission.
Read more at this site. http://www.umc.org/site/c.lwL4KnN1LtH/b.2450319/k.973C/Divorce_Overview.htm
Divorce recovery ministries have sprouted up all over the country. Some would argue that to offer divorce recovery is to validate divorce. Instead, they would argue, the church should denounce divorce and let the people suffer the consequences of their failure. They should receive rebuke, not compassion.
The United Methodist Church does not condone this kind of treatment of any person, especially when life is hard enough by something as major as divorce. Persons need a community to love them through their failures, not add to their stress by treat them with contempt. Jesus treated the woman caught in adultery with compassion and mercy. He did not condone her sin, but He did not condemn the sinner either. After saving her from execution He sent her away with the counsel to "sin no more (Jn. 8:11)."
The focus of divorce recovery classes has been to enable individuals to regain a sense of wholeness and health in the midst of and following divorce. Included is usually an understanding of the grief process, skills for moving successfully into life without a partner, group support, and opportunities to grow in faith. This we do as a faith filled response to persons in need. It doesn't mean we condone divorce.
One of the hardest things as a minister is to hear of a spouse in an abusive relationship where emotional abuse, verbal abuse and sometimes physical and sexual abuse is occurring within the home. The spouse weeping in my wife wants to know what to do, wants to know if divorce is something God would forgive them for. They feel torn. They want to get away from the abuse and protect themselves and their children, but they also want to honor their promise to God and their spouse.
In the situation of abuse it is clearly a breaking of marriage vows. Abuse is marital unfaithfulness. It is not sexual immorality in an act of adultery, but it is failing to love and cherish. There are plenty of rules about behavior in the church that apply across all relationships. If I am to love my neighbor as myself and do to them as I would have them do to me, how much more am I obligated to treat my own spouse with Christ-like love?
1 Tim. 5:8 says, "Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." Doesn't abuse of your spouse put you outside our covenant with Christ? Abuse is not how a disciple of Christ behaves. Abuse is the action of the old flesh still enclaved to the power of sin.
Jesus taught that cursing someone under your breath is the same as murdering them in your heart. It's the place where murderous actions begin. To look at another with lust in your heart is sexually immoral. It is an adulterous act of the heart. Is there a place for reading Jesus' teachings here into a discussion of the morality of divorce in abusive marriages?
I always counsel separation first, counseling to get the combatant to take responsibility for his/her abusive behavior, and divorce if the two cannot work toward healthy relations. Quite often the abusive person will not submit to counsel either from clergy or psychotherapists. The hostility and arrogant pride just will not allow the work it takes. Hardness of heart, indeed!
In the end Jesus accepts that some can not accept that divorce is not the answer. But those who can accept this teaching will reflect God's holiness in their sanctified lives (Mat. 19:11-12). And the world will be a better place because they leaned on divine love to keep their vows to one another. They learned to work through their difficulties. They loved a Christ loved by putting the needs of the other before their own. Their children grew up secure. The blessings of their marriage multiply and fill the earth.
Other important passages that contribute to this topic include:
1 Cor. 7:1-40
Eph. 5:21-33
Col. 3:1-4:6
1 Thes. 4:1-12
1 Tim 5:8 (In a discussion of caring for widows, Paul makes clear the importance of caring for one's own)
1 Pet. 3:1-9
Heb. 13:4
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