A week ago I made the nurses at work giggle. For we had babies on the ward — the mothers were depressed, and they saw a man who looks like a cross between an orc and a gorilla tenderly holding an infant.

Going a little clucky. Most of the time that part of me is hidden: kept at home. where it is not useful when raising teenagers. I recall the shock I had when I saw my Dad with my firstborn — he was gentle and there was a joy on his face. I was too young to see that when I was a child, and it’s precious now.

SSM points out that childrearing is something that takes us out of ourselves. Men as well as women, though she is writing for women (and the haters did come visiting).

Christians who actually follow the Bible believe that most women’s primary concern will be serving their husbands and caring for their children. We understand that a woman who voluntarily chooses not to have children is generally going against her God-given nature and calling, unless she is part of that small group of women whom God chooses to fulfill other purposes. We understand that voluntary childlessness without a God-given calling to it will warp a woman’s personality, causing her to become unhealthily self-focused.

Which brings me to the third rail in this passage. My Catholic friends, and SSM, say that one should never remarry if divorced: to do so is adultery. The Divines who wrote the Westminster Confession (in the 1660s) said divorce was permissible for adultery and abandonment. And I sat over coffee with a woman who was abandoned (or abandoned) when she moved to NZ — and has lived alone for a decade. Her quiet dignity tore my heart.

I disliked divorce before I had one. I now hate it. Tearing apart which was one flesh hurts and scars one.

Mark 10:1-16

¹He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.

²Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” ³He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” ⁴They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” ⁵But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. ⁶But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ⁷’For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, ⁸and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. ⁹ Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

¹⁰Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; ¹²and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

¹³People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. ¹⁴But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. ¹⁵Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” ¹⁶And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

I’m going to be careful here. I am divorced: my kids could read this.

Firstly, we need to be careful about liberalizing the law. The [presbyterian divines argued in the Westminster confession against letting legal precedent build a greater and greater list of reasons for divorce. This is happening in Israel, where the very law Jesus said was put there because our hearts were hardened is seen as far too oppressive, and the free delivery of divorces (which liberals see as a human right) is limited.

Under the court’s interpretation of Jewish religious law, a husband’s, or wife’s, consent is necessary to end a marriage. As has been the case for centuries, a Jewish divorce is not final in Israel until men deliver handwritten divorce decrees into the cupped hands of the women, who then must hold the paper aloft. A rabbi tears the document, called a get, into pieces, which are then filed for record-keeping.

The rabbis can order a reluctant spouse, usually a man, to grant the divorce, and Israel’s parliament is considering a bill to expand the court’s power to apply pressure. But if a spouse refuses to undertake the religious rite, the court says, it doesn’t have the power to dissolve the marriage.

Rabbis have upheld the need for consent even in cases where a man has abused his wife, disappeared, lied about his sexuality or molested their children.

Exploiting what amounts to veto power over a divorce, some men demand financial payoffs from the court. Others pressure wives to pay them, give up their homes, forgo child support or waive custody rights.

Women’s rights advocates are pushing Israel’s coalition government, the first in decades that does not include ultra-Orthodox parties, to pass reforms. A report in April by the Israeli religious rights group Hiddush ranked Israel alongside Iran and Saudi Arabia in terms of marriage freedom.

If you believe Spengler (David Goldman) and he usually has his facts right, this ancient and unfree law has borne fruit. Israeli women, Jewish and Arab, have more children on average than their liberal sisters in the West, and more than some Arab countries. The law is holy and righteous. It is deeply unfashionable, and it is now deemed oppression by those who set the agenda to even acknowledge this.

Secondly, divorce is not good for children. In children, we are literally one flesh. Children need their fathers around, and children need their mothers around. The roles are different. And without that micro-structure in a family, there are far too many feral young men and women, and a civil society does not flourish. St Velvet is referring to Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman when she wrote this comment.

It’s the same position my husband takes. He was raised by wolves I mean feminists and still managed to not be a thug so he doesn’t lament the loss of the young man. He made his choices. Period. My point is in no way meant to romanticize an individual who made deadly calculations in judgement, which both men in this situation did, rightly or wrongly.
It frankly is my own selfish pout about the substantial material loss suffered at the death of a society anchored by men. I’m less safe, and my children are less safe, and my husband is less safe because he has us. It’s insane how broken that is.

Without a basic sense of safety, we do not know how to trust. Our parents. Or God. We have hindered the little ones on the way to Jesus, and we will be held accountable for this.

My final point is that I am sick of the romanticization of the tragedy that a woman who has left another cannot remarry, or ends up alone. As if it is a big tragedy. The Jewish law, with its demand for consent, acts as a brake on frivorce: the treatment of vows as an inconvenience.

If you are a bastard of a man, you treat other men and women as your playthings, you only look to your selfish pleasures, you know, deep down, you will either need to amass enough money to pay nurses to look after you in your dotage or die before that time. And if that happens, no one will mourn you.

Men know that. Men have always know that.

But the same social consequences apply to women. If you are a bitch, demeaning and castrating your man, Your children will see that. And when they can, they will run: to be raised by wolves if necessary, because that is a less bad option. Particularly if you have gone through men like you go through ballpoint pens, treating them as nothing more than romantic objects, and never keeping your word.

You. will. be. left. alone. just. like. the. men. are.

And on that road lies despair. Don’t go there. For we know as much that our society is broken by the broken elders alone as we do by the feral thugs on the street. Perhaps, as a society, we should push back at those who would make the atomization of the family a moral duty.