This Sunday I will preach on a Biblical Response to Divorce at Central Pres in Downingtown. Central Pres has a special place in my life, because God led me there to recover from my divorce and all that preceded it. Going back and speaking on this topic both forced me to review the failure of my first marriage and how God's grace brought me back to my feet in that community.
So I want to bless them with something that is both biblically accurate and relevant.
What could be more relevant? It seems as if the traditional Western view of marriage is becoming passe. The divorce rate is going down only because fewer people are getting married. Significant segments of our society are practicing matriarchy due to the scarcity of viable male partners. Women are banding together to raise children without men because both men and women are unwilling to commit to a single partner for as long as it takes to raise a child, much less a lifetime.
As I reviewed the biblical passages on divorce, I found I first needed to define marriage in biblical terms. Based on the first two chapters of Genesis, the book of beginnings, I defined marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman before God, designed to last a lifetime. God is their witness that they have lifelong strategic partnership (ezer), also described as a one flesh relationship.
Though Christians traditionally believe that "one flesh" refers to the sexual union between man and wife, I see it as a figure of speech where the part represents the whole. In other words, "one flesh" goes far beyond sexual congress and refers both to the couples' recognition of their intrinsic equality before God ("bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh") and their children, the intended result of their sexual relationship. How often do we say "he has his mother's eyes" or "she has her father's nose?"
Divorce, then, is a violent ripping apart of that one flesh relationship, an amputation (Malachi 2:13-16). Both the partners and their children, the living embodiment of their one flesh relationship, will suffer if we take it lightly, as was the custom in both Malachi's and Jesus' time. When the Pharisees asked Jesus if they should "divorce for any reason," Jesus answered that divorce was only justified when the covenant, involving both a strategic partnership (primary loyalty to one another) and the one flesh relationship, had already been broken. Jesus again invokes the one flesh relationship (the part) to describe the whole covenant.
I have a friend whose cancer treatment caused him unbearable pain and suffering, mutilated and nearly killed him. Can anyone say that treatment was a good thing? Of course not! That kind of pain can only be justified if it saves his life.
I have another friend who repeatedly sought my "permission" to end her bad marriage. I counseled her to do everything in her power to save and restore it. Better she suffer the pain of trying to restore her marriage than the pain of ending it.
Of course this cannot be done unilaterally. It takes two people to make a marriage covenant, and only one to break it. But marriage is so valuable and divorce so painful to all concerned that it is worth going the extra mile to preserve and restore a failing marriage.
However, when a marriage fails because one of the partners stubbornly refuses to live within the covenant she or he made before God, Paul tells us we are not enslaved, that we are called to peace.
What do we do when our marriage fails? Can we remarry? Should we remarry? I believe the Bible asks us to apply one apparently simple prescription whenever we fail in life: repentance and faith. In this case, we take a long, hard, look at our own contribution to the failure of our marriage (repentance) and, by God's grace, correct those flaws in our lives (faith).
"But I married an axe murder!" you say. Then you have a broken "picker." Why did you choose an axe murderer as a soul mate? You also likely learned a few unhealthy habits while trying to survive in your marriage to your axe murderer.
What if you are living with someone without benefit of marriage? Repentance, in this case, means you choose to either go forward or go back. You either choose to separate, including "conjugal rights," from your partner or you choose to go forward and marry him or her. Then you trust God to give you the strength to follow through on your decision.
What if you don't have a single partner, but "hook up" whenever it suits your fancy? Stop it! (Repentance) And trust God to give you other deep friendships that meet your needs without utterly trivializing the "one flesh" relationship.
In any case, we will only find the strength to follow God when we walk with Him in the community of His people.
No comments:
Post a Comment