I’m divorced and I hate divorce. I know of two clear grounds for biblical divorce: adultery and abandonment. But those are the final stages. What worries me is the expanded range of reasons women have within Christian circles for divorce. Dalrock noted today:

My concern is that the definition of justified divorce has been so expanded as to make a mockery of the concept of marriage.  She is also missing a fundamental point;  putting on your big girl panties really does lead to happy marriages, at least in the majority of cases.  Moreover, if Christians were serious about holding men and women to their vows they would then have the moral authority to try to assist these couples in good faith.  While religious leaders may disagree, secular scientists have studied the issue and found that brute force willpower to stay married actually solves surprisingly difficult marital problems.  It’s almost as if God designed marriage that way.

The two parts of the definition that are added are abuse and addictions. The trouble is that abuse shades away. There is a difference between someone who is beaten — and I have had friends leave because they arrived at work bruised and battered, and other friends who have managed to work through the violence and strengthen their relationship — and emotional abuse.  In addition, addictions has moved from Heroin, methamphetamine and alcohol — which do real damage — to include soft drugs, eating, and unsavoury habits such as watching porn. In fact, the idea of “habits” and “breaking a habit” has disappeared from Christian discussion, when I can remember the idea of instilling Godly habits and removing ungodly habits was actively discussed not even a generation ago.

Part of this seems to be a sense that one must not only be holy (which none of us are) but that one must be seen to be holy. The woman moves to a position outside of scripture of being over-scrupulous. Her hyper religious ideas are intolerable to her husband (who she no longer looks for fulfilment: no man can compete with Jesus and Jesus himself cannot compete with Christian romantic (porn) novels).  She is now treating him with contempt.

And in doing that, he withdraws. He will turn to hobbies. He may turn to crutches: over eating, over drinking, the use of pornography (or television, which is basically the same thing nowadays). He is now seen by her to be ungodly, and she has a divorce card.

And as Dalrock says, the sisterhood in the church will support her.

I’m divorced, and I hate divorce. My ex is still a member of the congregation that we used to belong to. I now live in another town.It took me a long, long time to stop feeling condemned by the church or angry with God, to admit my faults, and to return to the church. It is my job at present to heal my children as much as God will allow from the issues relating to the divorce.

We live in a fallen world, where marriages strain, and sometimes break. But that breakage is too common, and the trigger is pulled too fast. Because a divorce hurts everyone as much as any actions that happened in the marriage did. It should be reserved for the most serious situations, and lead to grief not only in the family but also in the church where it happened.

Not celebrated and encouraged. That is part of feminism: it is poisonous and heretical.

Over the last two days I have had to go to two celebratory meetings for two high schools. The first was an end of year service for Otago Girls’: the combined school orchestra (with Otago Boys’) was playing and son two is in it.

Lots of chatter. Lots of dance, Lots of singing. Far too much emotion… everyone participated in the singing, and I have good relative pitch. Painful.

The second was Otago Boys’ senior prizegiving. It was somber. They had the courage to talk about the falling roll, the suicide in the school of a final year boy, and (as usual) the hall was basically silent but for applause and the haka given to the dux.

Today’s text is not about those people who got prizes. Instead, it is about the underclass: the maimed, blind, crippled, deaf.  They were bought to a mountain for healing, and there was no food.

MATTHEW 15:29-39

29After Jesus had left that place, he passed along the Sea of Galilee, and he went up the mountain, where he sat down. 30Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, 31so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.32Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.” 33The disciples said to him, “Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?” 34Jesus asked them, “How many loaves have you?” They said, “Seven, and a few small fish.” 35Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, 36he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 37And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. 38Those who had eaten were four thousand men, besides women and children. 39After sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan. via Daily Lectionary Readings — Devotions and Readings — Mission and Ministry — GAMC.

There are many things to note.

• The crowd was there for three days. You can’t blame them for running out of food. But the need was clearly great.
• The crowd correctly praised God for those who were healed.
• Jesus was worried that the people could not walk home. We can assume that there were not many people with adipose tissue there.
• Matthew points out that the crowd bought with them those who were disabled, and they were healed. Disability is not a gift. It is one of the signs of the fall. We have to work around our illnesses, but to call them good…