Would Jesus Allow Divorce Today?
Bible Study
Hope For Tomorrow
What Jesus Would Say Today
Object:
The experience of falling in love probably must have as one of its characteristics the illusion that the experience will last forever.
-- Dr. Scott Peck
* * *
The life of many families is stifled because they have gradually become petrified in stereotyped and extraordinarily powerful habits. The same old discussion crops up regularly on the same old subject, and the same old arguments are trotted out.
-- Dr. Paul Tournier, Christian psychotherapist
* * *
Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising, and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting.
-- Dr. Scott Peck
Would Jesus Allow Divorce Today?
"If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you."
-- Matthew 6:14
Years ago, I knew a young woman who was recently divorced. Her husband had left her, along with a young daughter. She was a member of a religious denomination which does not allow divorce. For centuries her church has quoted Jesus: "I tell you: if a man divorces a woman for any cause other than her unfaithfulness, then he is guilty of making her commit adultery if she marries again, and the man who marries her commits adultery too" (Matthew 5:31; Luke 16:18). This woman decided to obey her church's injunction, despite the fact that she was the innocent victim of a philandering husband. Years passed. Attractive as she was, she rarely dated, fearing that she would one day fall in love, only to suffer a broken heart once more, believing that to remarry would make both her and her lover adulterers. She lived a lonely existence for several prime years of her life, suffering who-knows-what emotional pain because of her religious conviction.
Can we really think Jesus would wish such misery on a young woman with so much to live for, so much love to give? Surely, if he could have spoken to that woman, Jesus would have set her free of his injunction, explaining that a message from a God of love was being wrongly applied.
* * *
My experience is that most younger couples enter the marriage contract with serious intent, but their problem is that, quite frankly, the old cliche is true: they don't realize what they're getting into.
* * *
Let's consider some facts. Average life expectancy of an American in 1900 was 37. Today it is mid-seventies. In other words, in one century life expectancy has doubled in America. If we go back nearly 2,000 years, in the absence of anything like medicine as we know it, and with little knowledge of health maintenance and hygiene, perhaps thirty was a good "old age." The odds of both members of a couple living past say 28 or 30 must have been small. People generally married in their mid-teens then, so we're probably stretching things to guess that an average marriage might last ten to twelve years. Today a couple marrying at 23 or 24 have a good chance of living as many as fifty years or more. Clearly, the duration of relationships, on average, is significantly longer than in past centuries. Given the ways in which we all change with the passage of the years, this is important.
There were also cultural factors at that time which have changed dramatically. The role of women was inflexibly determined 2,000 years ago. Their job was to bear and raise children, maintain the home, and do drudgery-stricken farm work. There's not a lot of information available on the subject, but one can guess there was very little time for the kind of quality family life which we so value today. The woman's role at that time was very much that of servant.
Consider this: in Jesus' time, according to prevailing laws, a man could get a divorce, but a woman could not. For the man it was a simple process and grounds could be as petty as failure to produce male children. At times, custom even permitted a man to take a mistress for that purpose, whereas a woman having an affair with another man could be put to death. This must have left women with the conviction that their main value lay only in having boy babies, and there was no force for "consciousness raising" in that society. Women rarely questioned the way of things. They must have suffered embarrassing ostracism if they failed in their duties.
Women in the time of Jesus were treated as little more than chattel property. A man could give his daughter in marriage to someone she didn't know, much less love, and the daughter had little say in the matter. Furthermore, the father expected a dowry, often a lavish payoff with farm animals and other valuables. Put bluntly, men could sell their daughters for a good price and women could do nothing about this shameful practice. The idea of marriage as a contract between two people who first fell in love and made an independent commitment was virtually unknown 2,000 years ago.
One has to assume -- and hope -- that there was more love in family life than all of this makes it appear. But the fact remains that a wife in the time of Jesus had very little power or value beyond producing children and doing hard work. Her expectations from a romantic relationship must have been very limited compared to those of most women today. She must have lived with constant anxiety about her future, and guilt about any failure. Very few men wanted to marry a woman who had failed some other man. Better to die than to divorce. And a man could get rid of his wife with no difficulty and she had little defense. Jesus, who had high regard for women, was determined to do everything he could to end this horrid practice. Surely, given Jesus' love for all people, we'd be surprised if he had not spoken out against the practice of divorce as it occurred at that time.
Today? It's all different. Women have long since insisted on, and in regard to divorce, fairly well achieved equality at law. Nearly all states allow the woman to retain custody of minor children along with child support (if they can collect it), and community property is usually divided equally. In most states, the woman has prior rights to a family home. Most courts tend to favor the mother in regard to child custody. There are some continuing inequities, but although there are differing opinions about the issue, women have far more power than in Jesus' time.
* * *
"I would change the marriage ceremony to 'love, honor, and forgive.' "
-- Elderly attorney
* * *
Why do people get divorced today? We're told that 43 percent of all new marriages will end in divorce. There are forces at work in American society which make sustained intimate relationships difficult for earnest people sincerely trying to make a marriage work. The media is one. Television soaps, movies, magazine articles on ideal marriage, advertising photos in those magazines depicting models who have spent months in the gym and hours in makeup, then to be photographed by high-tech cameras which make a subject look taller and slimmer than the reality -- little wonder that so many husbands and wives, dragging home after nine or ten hours on the job, maybe facing housework, and meal preparation, and child care, feel little hope of measuring up to all those idealized images. Dissatisfaction easily creeps in to all but the strongest relationships.
Our current preoccupation with sexual and physical attractiveness leaves little wonder so many people have the idea that they or their marriage falls short. The basic attitudes and expectations which lead people to marry are quite different today from those which prevailed in Bible times. My experience is that most younger couples enter the marriage contract with serious intent, but their problem is that, quite frankly, the old cliché is true: they don't realize what they're getting into. I certainly don't suggest that such innocence justifies breaking the marriage vow in and of itself. Unfortunately, though, powerful social forces are at work which undermine relationships. Although one may wish that things were different, the fact is that very often what seemed a good match proves otherwise with the passage of time. Scott Peck observed that "sex is a trick played on you by your genes to trap you into marriage." That's more realistic than cynical. Whereas marriages were arranged in ancient times, most of us in America choose a marriage partner to whom we are physically attracted. Unfortunately, when the role of sex settles into its place as only part of the relationship, compatibility becomes the essential element in a workable marriage, and all too often people haven't really discovered how compatible they really are at the time of marriage. Peck wrote, "We fall in love only when we are consciously or unconsciously sexually motivated." He continued, "No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love."
Peck's point was not that a love relationship must eventually fail, but that the sexual content of a relationship is not sufficient to hold a couple together for long. Eventually, shared values and at least a high degree of compatibility is essential. "Love" as Jesus used the word is not sexual love, it is to will the best for another person, to be willing to sacrifice in the best interests of the other. A truly good marriage is one in which each partner is willing to work to bring about the welfare and happiness of the other. But you have to like each other too. Many young people marry for the wrong reasons. Sadly, children from dysfunctional homes often marry to escape a miserable home life, frequently when they're much too young. Also, psychologists tell us it's common to see someone marry a partner very much like a parent in a subconscious effort to work through a destructive parent-child relationship. When later emotional maturity occurs, such marriages usually prove destructive for both parties. One woman recently told me she has been in three unhappy marriages; all her husbands were alcoholic -- and so was her father.
During and following the '60s, a large number of young people lived together without the formal commitment of marriage. Setting aside one's own moral convictions about that for the moment, there are some persuasive arguments for this. I used to hear young people say, "This way we can learn whether we're right for each other before we make the final commitment." But although I don't have statistics at hand, I have observed after years of marriage counseling (and numerous counselors have told me they share this opinion) that the divorce rate is the same for people who start that way as for the rest of us. When two people live together "out-of-wedlock," they each know they can walk at any time. The emotional dynamics can never be the same as in marriage where a legal as well as a moral commitment has been made. All too often, those who do this want what they see to be the benefits of a marriage without making the commitment which is essential to a happy marriage. Despite its attraction, this is not the best answer to the problem.
Another important change in today's world is women's role in society. The old idea that a woman must either stay home and raise children or be a nurse or a teacher or work in a store (still all worthy vocations -- my wife is a teacher) has long since been put to rest. With women in the police force, the armed forces, working on road crews, becoming bank officers and corporate CEOs, the worldview of both sexes has changed dramatically. When I was in seminary, women were not even ordained in the Methodist Church. Today nearly half of all seminary students are women. In 1996 women comprised 54 percent of the entering class of Yale Medical School. Many law schools report similar trends. Two women authors, Diana Furchgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, recently published findings that when wages are discounted for age, seniority, union status, education level, public or private sector employment, and the fact that many women mix child-raising with vocation, women's wages in America "are 98 percent of men's wages." Clearly, it's a rapidly changing world for all of us; women are achieving marketplace equality with men, and this inevitably impacts marriage relationships. Although a large number of women still choose to devote themselves to child-rearing, even they must now struggle with that choice.
Longevity comes into play in the fact that all of us are quite different people at age forty or fifty than we were at 25. Gail Sheehy, in her widely read Passages, reported that many women at about age thirty change their focus on life. Those who opted for a career have begun to want a family, while those who settled into family life have begun to have second thoughts and are looking at a career. Boys and girls who were drawn together by mainly physical attraction may have discovered, as the years go by, widely different interests and dreams for the future and sometimes these differences are irreconcilable. This observation is not to excuse those who too easily turn away from their commitments. It is, however, to observe that after many years of marriage counseling, I've found that often, real happiness is just not going to be possible in some marriages. In that case, the role of the church is not to stand in judgment but, rather, to help in every possible way to minister with love, by counseling, by trying to understand, and by continuing to welcome all parties as part of the fellowship.
Nowadays, there are marriages which are unfulfilling and destructive to both parties. Obviously, these include abusive relationships, and marriages characterized by repeated infidelity on the part of one or both parties. These situations often leave little hope except in divorce. But for the rest, given the inexperience of the young at the time of marriage, the diverging life paths of the couple as the years go by, given differing rates of growth and self-discovery, and changing goals which come with maturity, it is sadly true that many people find themselves in empty and unfulfilling relationships in which neither party sees any hope of happiness. Though neither may be guilty of any specific wrongdoing and despite the fact that both may be good persons, when each has come to dread the other's arrival home, when each must constantly bite his or her tongue to avoid painful arguments, when children reside in an emotional desert, especially if sincere counseling has failed and a potential of many such years lies ahead, there can come a point at which divorce offers the only hope.
One young college sophomore of my acquaintance recently went in tears to her roommates, sobbing that she dreaded going home for a holiday. Her parents weren't abusive to her. She said it was just that "they never speak a kind word to each other, they never touch each other, it's like living in an emotional refrigerator." She went on to say that her home had been like that for eight years. I happen to know something about those parents. They're not bad people. They're just unhappily married but are trying to hang in there, probably "for the sake of the children." Sheer humanity argues that it's wrong to consign two basically decent people to such a life when divorce offers a solution. Anyone who has experienced divorce, or been privy to it through a friend or loved one, knows it is terribly painful. But like surgery, it sometimes offers hope of happiness yet to be.
I want to be clear on this point. In my opinion, all too many people run from a marriage for reasons which are selfish. It's a social tragedy that 43 percent of all first marriages fail. There's hard work in making a happy marriage. Many failing marriages could be saved by that hard work. But having said that, I believe it is also true that there are many marriages in which hard work simply won't be enough. If, despite everything, joy and happiness are not there along with the hard work, then it seems to me that only slavish biblical literalism could lead one to oppose divorce.
I served a large suburban church for 26 years. I performed about a thousand marriages, including the counseling which preceded each ceremony. I was privy to literally hundreds of divorces or second marriages. I have seen numerous happy second-marriage homes where the above unhappy circumstances had prevailed for one or both of those partners in earlier marriages. I am persuaded these people have Jesus' blessing.
In light of the above, I must argue that divorce is wrong if done for selfish reasons. When either party leaves a marriage because it has become inconvenient to honor the commitment or to do the sometimes difficult work of nurturing a relationship, they are wrong. If a person betrays a marriage because of attraction to another sexual partner, he breaks God's law, in which case it's not the deserted party who commits adultery, but the deserter. When either party refuses to accept counseling in a sincere effort to change the unhappy situation, or is unkind and knowingly destructive in the relationship, he or she is guilty of a sin.
If one party to a marriage is abusive and all avenues of correction have failed, divorce is permissible and perhaps desirable. As for others, if husband and wife are miserable, if both have sincerely tried over a lengthy period of time to restore joy into a marriage and have failed, if each is willing to be fair and kind to the other in the process of dissolution, and if both agree that happiness is not possible, then they may divorce.
When divorce takes place, equality of treatment of both parties is essential. If one has more power or more resources than the other, it is incumbent on that person to be generous in seeing to the welfare and best interests of the other. Where young children are involved, their welfare must take precedence over that of either parent. When a divorce takes place it is a sin for either parent to say hurtful things about the other parent in the hearing of the children. As years pass, the non-custodial parent must be generous in caring for any children, and must, at the cost of personal sacrifice if necessary, meet all legal and moral obligations to the child and to the former spouse promptly. Likewise, the custodial parent is duty bound to foster a loving and healthy relationship with the absent parent.
I am convinced that Jesus would say "Yes!" to this. Jesus always put love above law. Love calls for a humane understanding of this painful, widespread dilemma. I'm convinced Jesus would permit divorce under these conditions, that this is a Christian attitude toward divorce. I'm convinced that if all his strictures have been met, Jesus would bless a following marriage.
Questions For Discussion
1. Do you agree?
2. Do you think counseling helps?
3. What could help young people get off to a better start in marriage?
4. Do you agree that compatibility is more important than sexual attraction?
5. If a couple is unhappy together, has sincerely tried to work through their problems, has received counseling, but believe divorce is wrong, what can they do if still unhappy?
-- Dr. Scott Peck
* * *
The life of many families is stifled because they have gradually become petrified in stereotyped and extraordinarily powerful habits. The same old discussion crops up regularly on the same old subject, and the same old arguments are trotted out.
-- Dr. Paul Tournier, Christian psychotherapist
* * *
Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising, and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting.
-- Dr. Scott Peck
Would Jesus Allow Divorce Today?
"If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you."
-- Matthew 6:14
Years ago, I knew a young woman who was recently divorced. Her husband had left her, along with a young daughter. She was a member of a religious denomination which does not allow divorce. For centuries her church has quoted Jesus: "I tell you: if a man divorces a woman for any cause other than her unfaithfulness, then he is guilty of making her commit adultery if she marries again, and the man who marries her commits adultery too" (Matthew 5:31; Luke 16:18). This woman decided to obey her church's injunction, despite the fact that she was the innocent victim of a philandering husband. Years passed. Attractive as she was, she rarely dated, fearing that she would one day fall in love, only to suffer a broken heart once more, believing that to remarry would make both her and her lover adulterers. She lived a lonely existence for several prime years of her life, suffering who-knows-what emotional pain because of her religious conviction.
Can we really think Jesus would wish such misery on a young woman with so much to live for, so much love to give? Surely, if he could have spoken to that woman, Jesus would have set her free of his injunction, explaining that a message from a God of love was being wrongly applied.
* * *
My experience is that most younger couples enter the marriage contract with serious intent, but their problem is that, quite frankly, the old cliche is true: they don't realize what they're getting into.
* * *
Let's consider some facts. Average life expectancy of an American in 1900 was 37. Today it is mid-seventies. In other words, in one century life expectancy has doubled in America. If we go back nearly 2,000 years, in the absence of anything like medicine as we know it, and with little knowledge of health maintenance and hygiene, perhaps thirty was a good "old age." The odds of both members of a couple living past say 28 or 30 must have been small. People generally married in their mid-teens then, so we're probably stretching things to guess that an average marriage might last ten to twelve years. Today a couple marrying at 23 or 24 have a good chance of living as many as fifty years or more. Clearly, the duration of relationships, on average, is significantly longer than in past centuries. Given the ways in which we all change with the passage of the years, this is important.
There were also cultural factors at that time which have changed dramatically. The role of women was inflexibly determined 2,000 years ago. Their job was to bear and raise children, maintain the home, and do drudgery-stricken farm work. There's not a lot of information available on the subject, but one can guess there was very little time for the kind of quality family life which we so value today. The woman's role at that time was very much that of servant.
Consider this: in Jesus' time, according to prevailing laws, a man could get a divorce, but a woman could not. For the man it was a simple process and grounds could be as petty as failure to produce male children. At times, custom even permitted a man to take a mistress for that purpose, whereas a woman having an affair with another man could be put to death. This must have left women with the conviction that their main value lay only in having boy babies, and there was no force for "consciousness raising" in that society. Women rarely questioned the way of things. They must have suffered embarrassing ostracism if they failed in their duties.
Women in the time of Jesus were treated as little more than chattel property. A man could give his daughter in marriage to someone she didn't know, much less love, and the daughter had little say in the matter. Furthermore, the father expected a dowry, often a lavish payoff with farm animals and other valuables. Put bluntly, men could sell their daughters for a good price and women could do nothing about this shameful practice. The idea of marriage as a contract between two people who first fell in love and made an independent commitment was virtually unknown 2,000 years ago.
One has to assume -- and hope -- that there was more love in family life than all of this makes it appear. But the fact remains that a wife in the time of Jesus had very little power or value beyond producing children and doing hard work. Her expectations from a romantic relationship must have been very limited compared to those of most women today. She must have lived with constant anxiety about her future, and guilt about any failure. Very few men wanted to marry a woman who had failed some other man. Better to die than to divorce. And a man could get rid of his wife with no difficulty and she had little defense. Jesus, who had high regard for women, was determined to do everything he could to end this horrid practice. Surely, given Jesus' love for all people, we'd be surprised if he had not spoken out against the practice of divorce as it occurred at that time.
Today? It's all different. Women have long since insisted on, and in regard to divorce, fairly well achieved equality at law. Nearly all states allow the woman to retain custody of minor children along with child support (if they can collect it), and community property is usually divided equally. In most states, the woman has prior rights to a family home. Most courts tend to favor the mother in regard to child custody. There are some continuing inequities, but although there are differing opinions about the issue, women have far more power than in Jesus' time.
* * *
"I would change the marriage ceremony to 'love, honor, and forgive.' "
-- Elderly attorney
* * *
Why do people get divorced today? We're told that 43 percent of all new marriages will end in divorce. There are forces at work in American society which make sustained intimate relationships difficult for earnest people sincerely trying to make a marriage work. The media is one. Television soaps, movies, magazine articles on ideal marriage, advertising photos in those magazines depicting models who have spent months in the gym and hours in makeup, then to be photographed by high-tech cameras which make a subject look taller and slimmer than the reality -- little wonder that so many husbands and wives, dragging home after nine or ten hours on the job, maybe facing housework, and meal preparation, and child care, feel little hope of measuring up to all those idealized images. Dissatisfaction easily creeps in to all but the strongest relationships.
Our current preoccupation with sexual and physical attractiveness leaves little wonder so many people have the idea that they or their marriage falls short. The basic attitudes and expectations which lead people to marry are quite different today from those which prevailed in Bible times. My experience is that most younger couples enter the marriage contract with serious intent, but their problem is that, quite frankly, the old cliché is true: they don't realize what they're getting into. I certainly don't suggest that such innocence justifies breaking the marriage vow in and of itself. Unfortunately, though, powerful social forces are at work which undermine relationships. Although one may wish that things were different, the fact is that very often what seemed a good match proves otherwise with the passage of time. Scott Peck observed that "sex is a trick played on you by your genes to trap you into marriage." That's more realistic than cynical. Whereas marriages were arranged in ancient times, most of us in America choose a marriage partner to whom we are physically attracted. Unfortunately, when the role of sex settles into its place as only part of the relationship, compatibility becomes the essential element in a workable marriage, and all too often people haven't really discovered how compatible they really are at the time of marriage. Peck wrote, "We fall in love only when we are consciously or unconsciously sexually motivated." He continued, "No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love."
Peck's point was not that a love relationship must eventually fail, but that the sexual content of a relationship is not sufficient to hold a couple together for long. Eventually, shared values and at least a high degree of compatibility is essential. "Love" as Jesus used the word is not sexual love, it is to will the best for another person, to be willing to sacrifice in the best interests of the other. A truly good marriage is one in which each partner is willing to work to bring about the welfare and happiness of the other. But you have to like each other too. Many young people marry for the wrong reasons. Sadly, children from dysfunctional homes often marry to escape a miserable home life, frequently when they're much too young. Also, psychologists tell us it's common to see someone marry a partner very much like a parent in a subconscious effort to work through a destructive parent-child relationship. When later emotional maturity occurs, such marriages usually prove destructive for both parties. One woman recently told me she has been in three unhappy marriages; all her husbands were alcoholic -- and so was her father.
During and following the '60s, a large number of young people lived together without the formal commitment of marriage. Setting aside one's own moral convictions about that for the moment, there are some persuasive arguments for this. I used to hear young people say, "This way we can learn whether we're right for each other before we make the final commitment." But although I don't have statistics at hand, I have observed after years of marriage counseling (and numerous counselors have told me they share this opinion) that the divorce rate is the same for people who start that way as for the rest of us. When two people live together "out-of-wedlock," they each know they can walk at any time. The emotional dynamics can never be the same as in marriage where a legal as well as a moral commitment has been made. All too often, those who do this want what they see to be the benefits of a marriage without making the commitment which is essential to a happy marriage. Despite its attraction, this is not the best answer to the problem.
Another important change in today's world is women's role in society. The old idea that a woman must either stay home and raise children or be a nurse or a teacher or work in a store (still all worthy vocations -- my wife is a teacher) has long since been put to rest. With women in the police force, the armed forces, working on road crews, becoming bank officers and corporate CEOs, the worldview of both sexes has changed dramatically. When I was in seminary, women were not even ordained in the Methodist Church. Today nearly half of all seminary students are women. In 1996 women comprised 54 percent of the entering class of Yale Medical School. Many law schools report similar trends. Two women authors, Diana Furchgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, recently published findings that when wages are discounted for age, seniority, union status, education level, public or private sector employment, and the fact that many women mix child-raising with vocation, women's wages in America "are 98 percent of men's wages." Clearly, it's a rapidly changing world for all of us; women are achieving marketplace equality with men, and this inevitably impacts marriage relationships. Although a large number of women still choose to devote themselves to child-rearing, even they must now struggle with that choice.
Longevity comes into play in the fact that all of us are quite different people at age forty or fifty than we were at 25. Gail Sheehy, in her widely read Passages, reported that many women at about age thirty change their focus on life. Those who opted for a career have begun to want a family, while those who settled into family life have begun to have second thoughts and are looking at a career. Boys and girls who were drawn together by mainly physical attraction may have discovered, as the years go by, widely different interests and dreams for the future and sometimes these differences are irreconcilable. This observation is not to excuse those who too easily turn away from their commitments. It is, however, to observe that after many years of marriage counseling, I've found that often, real happiness is just not going to be possible in some marriages. In that case, the role of the church is not to stand in judgment but, rather, to help in every possible way to minister with love, by counseling, by trying to understand, and by continuing to welcome all parties as part of the fellowship.
Nowadays, there are marriages which are unfulfilling and destructive to both parties. Obviously, these include abusive relationships, and marriages characterized by repeated infidelity on the part of one or both parties. These situations often leave little hope except in divorce. But for the rest, given the inexperience of the young at the time of marriage, the diverging life paths of the couple as the years go by, given differing rates of growth and self-discovery, and changing goals which come with maturity, it is sadly true that many people find themselves in empty and unfulfilling relationships in which neither party sees any hope of happiness. Though neither may be guilty of any specific wrongdoing and despite the fact that both may be good persons, when each has come to dread the other's arrival home, when each must constantly bite his or her tongue to avoid painful arguments, when children reside in an emotional desert, especially if sincere counseling has failed and a potential of many such years lies ahead, there can come a point at which divorce offers the only hope.
One young college sophomore of my acquaintance recently went in tears to her roommates, sobbing that she dreaded going home for a holiday. Her parents weren't abusive to her. She said it was just that "they never speak a kind word to each other, they never touch each other, it's like living in an emotional refrigerator." She went on to say that her home had been like that for eight years. I happen to know something about those parents. They're not bad people. They're just unhappily married but are trying to hang in there, probably "for the sake of the children." Sheer humanity argues that it's wrong to consign two basically decent people to such a life when divorce offers a solution. Anyone who has experienced divorce, or been privy to it through a friend or loved one, knows it is terribly painful. But like surgery, it sometimes offers hope of happiness yet to be.
I want to be clear on this point. In my opinion, all too many people run from a marriage for reasons which are selfish. It's a social tragedy that 43 percent of all first marriages fail. There's hard work in making a happy marriage. Many failing marriages could be saved by that hard work. But having said that, I believe it is also true that there are many marriages in which hard work simply won't be enough. If, despite everything, joy and happiness are not there along with the hard work, then it seems to me that only slavish biblical literalism could lead one to oppose divorce.
I served a large suburban church for 26 years. I performed about a thousand marriages, including the counseling which preceded each ceremony. I was privy to literally hundreds of divorces or second marriages. I have seen numerous happy second-marriage homes where the above unhappy circumstances had prevailed for one or both of those partners in earlier marriages. I am persuaded these people have Jesus' blessing.
In light of the above, I must argue that divorce is wrong if done for selfish reasons. When either party leaves a marriage because it has become inconvenient to honor the commitment or to do the sometimes difficult work of nurturing a relationship, they are wrong. If a person betrays a marriage because of attraction to another sexual partner, he breaks God's law, in which case it's not the deserted party who commits adultery, but the deserter. When either party refuses to accept counseling in a sincere effort to change the unhappy situation, or is unkind and knowingly destructive in the relationship, he or she is guilty of a sin.
If one party to a marriage is abusive and all avenues of correction have failed, divorce is permissible and perhaps desirable. As for others, if husband and wife are miserable, if both have sincerely tried over a lengthy period of time to restore joy into a marriage and have failed, if each is willing to be fair and kind to the other in the process of dissolution, and if both agree that happiness is not possible, then they may divorce.
When divorce takes place, equality of treatment of both parties is essential. If one has more power or more resources than the other, it is incumbent on that person to be generous in seeing to the welfare and best interests of the other. Where young children are involved, their welfare must take precedence over that of either parent. When a divorce takes place it is a sin for either parent to say hurtful things about the other parent in the hearing of the children. As years pass, the non-custodial parent must be generous in caring for any children, and must, at the cost of personal sacrifice if necessary, meet all legal and moral obligations to the child and to the former spouse promptly. Likewise, the custodial parent is duty bound to foster a loving and healthy relationship with the absent parent.
I am convinced that Jesus would say "Yes!" to this. Jesus always put love above law. Love calls for a humane understanding of this painful, widespread dilemma. I'm convinced Jesus would permit divorce under these conditions, that this is a Christian attitude toward divorce. I'm convinced that if all his strictures have been met, Jesus would bless a following marriage.
Questions For Discussion
1. Do you agree?
2. Do you think counseling helps?
3. What could help young people get off to a better start in marriage?
4. Do you agree that compatibility is more important than sexual attraction?
5. If a couple is unhappy together, has sincerely tried to work through their problems, has received counseling, but believe divorce is wrong, what can they do if still unhappy?
