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.
It was appalling to see, both at the original post where Dalrock made his comments, and his follow-up posts, how quick some were to jump in to defend Ms. Gregoire, who had said there was nothing unBiblical about a wife’s decision to engage in divorce over a husband’s use of pornography.
But, 7man’s Team Woman is very much alive, even amongst ostensibly traditionalist-minded Christians…
Thanks for linking to the article at Dalrock’s. I don’t get over there often and this was a sobering article. I so, so disagree with the emotional abuse thing as grounds for divorce. I lived with that for years as well as porn and other things. I never saw those at grounds for divorce but only as thorns I should endure, trusting that Christ would be my sufficiency where my husband failed. If there had not been repeated adultery with no repentance, I would still be married. I also agree that there are many times that just enduring will resolve things. The time for divorce should not come until one partner’s heart is hard and unrepentant in either adultery or desertion over a long period of time, during which the church has attempted repeatedly to counsel and advice and call to repentance.
I have not seen that movie Dalrock mentions but I am appalled at the idea of the wife already finding husband #2. That is wrong in so many ways. She is committing “adultery in the heart” as much if not more so than the husband with the porn addiction. Unbelievable! No wonder marriages are in so much trouble if that is the Christian idea for grounds.
No one seems to make much mention of how it is with a personality disordered spouse. These situations do not improve through endurance and often only get worse. Furthermore, a PD person may not have had the capacity to enter into a marriage contract/covenant with full awareness of what it was and thus, invalidating the marriage. For a sane person, the best thing to do is to get out, unless he too wants to become disordered.
I find the lack of empathy for these situations reprehensible as well as the concurrent sympathy for a withholding wife whose husband has turned to porn. So on the one hand, we are supposed to endure someone who is never going to improve, but we can call it quits over some porn? This makes absolutely zero sense.
Magistra: I spent considerable time searching the scriptures and reading the theology of divorce. I am taking a classic reformed position. I accept remarriage, but this position is seen by some as soft…. many would not allow remarrying at all. We can all justify. And we are all at fault when this happens. I like what grerp said about just working through the problems. If your spouse leaves, or runs off with his boyfriend, then one can divorce. We are called to live in peace.
CL:
I understand about personality disorders, cl. You end up living in a distorted part of reality where you are completely wrong and the spouse is completely right. And they will not change.
The church sees evil male lust (the evil penis meme). It does not see behind the churchianity, and most PD women appear extremely righteous at church. The only comment to this is children notice the sane spouse will be the one with the long term relationship with the kids.
“No one seems to make much mention of how it is with a personality disordered spouse. These situations do not improve through endurance and often only get worse.”
I agree. Even if the person wants, at times, to change, they do not seem capable of that change. It is like being under terrorist attack. You never know when the rules are going to change yet again.
A “holier than thou” attitude in the “innocent” party should be shot down as quickly as the “sin” in the “guilty” party. Both are sinners. Both need to take responsibility for their own sin and seek to resolve the situation. A situation where one party cannot or will not seek the resolution should be handled by wise counselors and/or the elders in a church, not on one’s own. But the counselors ought to be truly godly with an orthodox stance on divorce, not people who have bought into the modern “oh you poor woman” mentality.
The trouble is that when one includes things like “emotional abuse”, which can be construed in so many diverse and sundry ways, and then further characterize any unwanted or unsavory activity as an “addiction”, one basically broadens the categories of socially acceptable divorce grounds (even in Christian circles) so as to be so wide as to be able to drive a brigade through them.
“Addiction” in particular is terribly overused in our culture. Alcoholics, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers — yep, past a certain point definitely addicts. A guy who looks at porn a few times a week isn’t a “porn addict” any more than a woman who watches Project Runway a few times a week is a “Project Runway Addict”. Sure, a guy who is constantly looking at porn, several times a day, cannot sexually function outside of porn and the like *may* have something like an addiction, and at least has a problematic relationship with the activity. But (while not defending porn use … I don’t think it’s very healthy for men even leaving aside moral issues to view porn on a regular basis), the guy who watches porn a few times a week for masturbation is not a “porn addict”. However, by classing him as a “porn addict” we are able to place him in the “addict bin”, together with the alcoholics and meth addicts and compulsive gamblers, and thereby expand the category of “acceptable grounds for divorce” (“biblical” or not …. my personal experience with a lot of Christians is that if a divorce is generally within the socially acceptable character, support will be offered, even if it isn’t strictly on “biblical grounds”).
The same holds true for emotional abuse – this has been expanded to include poor communication skills, losing one’s temper on occasion, and even getting into fights about spending money. While it’s true that there *are* emotionally abusive men (and probably even more emotionally abusive women), just as there really *are* real addicts, when we recklessly broaden the scope to include garden variety stuff that is in no way traditional emotional abuse, we simply expand the box of what is “socially acceptable”.
It all runs in one direction, too, really: reasons women come up with for wanting to get divorced (based on husband’s behaviors that they don’t like) are recharacterized as socially acceptable “addictions” or “abuses”, while men who leave are pretty much uniformly considered to be irresponsible philanderers, regardless of the circumstances, or, at the very least, responsible for whatever shortcomings their wives may have. It’s a one way street, because family law is still very much in “protect women and children” mode — when that’s the main modus operandi, of course the institution is going to operate the way it does.
Even if the person wants, at times, to change, they do not seem capable of that change.
What also happens is that they’ll appear to change, but it’s all feigned. At least with NPD, they imitate and it’s not real, and eventually (sometimes rather quickly) they’ll go back to the same old projection of a false self. So it gives you some hope that change is possible, but once into adulthood, it generally only gets worse over time.
Yes. Beware of the woman or man who looks perfect, because they are faking
Yes. Beware of the woman or man who looks perfect, because they are faking.
I agree completely Chris.
I’d like to add a thought to my above thought, about online interactions.
Often people are condemned as “holier than thou” or “fake” simply because they measure what they share about themselves and their lives. Not out a sense of fakery, but out a respect for the people in their lives.
For example, I go to great pains not to reveal what it has been like having to deal with my husband’s ex-girlfriend with whom he had a child. There were times I behaved terribly in thought and word, if not deed.
But there are more people involved than just me. That, and I believe I owe it to my husband and family not to divulge every difficult thing we’ve ever been through.
I always assume that the people whose blogs I read are much more complicated and multi-faceted than what I see online, whether they reveal everything or not.
“I always assume that the people whose blogs I read are much more complicated and multi-faceted than what I see online, whether they reveal everything or not.”
I do, too, E. Also, at the end of the day, it comes down to showing grace. If the Lord has been overabundantly gracious toward me, how can I not also be gracious to those around me. We are all sinners, all in need of salvation and grace, and all works in progress.
BTW, Brendan, spot on.
Your voice of sanity and clear, rational thought, is much appreciated; if you ever wished to contribute at our group blog, you’d be more than welcome to join, or contribute a one-off.
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