Question #7

Should Christians divorce their spouses? Why or why not? What does the Bible say about this?

Ideally, no person should divorce his or her spouse, Christian or not, but that'd be a lot easier to consider if people got the marrying part right in the first place.

But they don't...seemingly ever.

But there's no changing that just like there's no changing world hunger. It's not that it isn't possible; it's that we don't care enough. People don't care enough to not eat even if it means someone hungry gets to, just like they don't care enough to not get married even if it means avoiding a life essentially void of any real meaning or happiness. Yay for a life of despair.

Why do we choose what we know we shouldn't?

Because we're wicked and evil? Nahhhh. That might be part of it, but it's probably not it. Maybe evilness is a symptom, but where is it coming from? Weren't we all set free here, by God, with a destination inscripted on our hearts? Yet we wish to avoid it?

No..I don't think so. I think we're afraid. I think we're like fish out of water. So we flop ourselves into the nearest shallow puddle of muck even though God's tapping on the glass telling us to flop on, that we'll find our glorious pond. We're suffocating in this unsatisfying earthly air and we've no reason to trust each other and therefore no reason to trust anything else. The only thing we can trust is our own fins to get us from one evaporating pool to the next.

Just today, I finished a 27 Dresses/Redeeming Love-like book called Never the Bride by Cheryl McKay and Rene Gutteridge in which God literally appears as a handsome 30-something in order to convince a modern, independent woman to release control of her life and love Him, and even with Him there breathing, she couldn't believe Him, couldn't trust Him fully, without first cursing Him and turning away. He was trying to write her love story, but she wouldn't let Him. Why not? Because she was afraid.

We dive into small loves even when we know they won't be deep enough to hold us, even when we know the water will drain, eventually, because the alternative is to keep hoping for feet when we've only got fins, to believe in something our world tells us can't possibly be true.

Can we be so blamed?

And if we can't be blamed much for sucking in the wrong love too quickly, can we really be blamed for releasing ourselves back into the love-less wild? Because it seems love doesn't exist beyond the safe harbor it's tied to. But love is like air to a human the way water is to fish, and it gets a little hard to breath without it, even if what we're breathing isn't clean.

Ideally, love exists and we can find it. And if we can't find it at first, maybe we can create it. But what if we can't find it? What if it's not there? What if it is but it isn't all right? What if we're hit or abused or used or even something less extreme, like held back? Is divorce okay then? Does God care more about a union of a couple than the individuals involved?

That's the real issue. Marriage. What is it and why do it? Marriage the basic right we get wrong that causes us to clean up our wrong with more wrong, isn't it?

My sister and I have often said that our lives probably would have been better if our parents hadn't focused so hard on being together and had shared some of that attention with us. Were they so dissimilar and disconnected that making it work together meant neglecting the four children they'd made? In that case, would divorce have been okay? My parents have survived marriage and avoided divorce for over 35 years, but what have they lost in the process?

Back in the Old Testament, or at least according to Deuteronomy 22, virginity mattered more than marriage. I don't agree with that, and neither does Mark Regnerus in his article "The Case for Early Marriage" which I'll let you read on your own time (great points to consider..) Do I agree that God considers marriage to be sacred? (Well, despite my old youth pastor's assurance that the Bible mentions the sanctity of marriage a million times, BibleGateway doesn't seem to think so as it couldn't provide me with crap..) Yes, I do, but not for the reasons our pastors have shared with us.

I think the bottom line is that God loves us and wants the best for us, just like the best kind of dad. But the best kind of dad doesn't do things for us, and he doesn't condemn us when we don't do what he wants. In my most humble opinion, God doesn't either. And the best kind of dad doesn't treat every kid the exact same, because he's aware of each kid's personality and differences and therefore knows that each circumstance needs to be handled specifically and uniquely. In my opinion, God handles His kids, His creation, the same way. Divorce is permissible, but it's not what he would have wanted for us...but a bad, sad, unproductive and drowning marriage isn't what he would have wanted either, because nothing is more important than us, not even something so sacred as marriage.

He sacrificed Himself through His son......is it really so hard to believe that He'd sacrifice an idea for us, too?

(Not that we should abuse His willingness to sacrifice, but we certainly shouldn't take it for granted either..)