I have had many failures in my life. Many. And the consequences stay with me. So two snippets from yesterday. A colleague is leaving Dunedin to start a new life, with a new partner, after his marriage was destroyed last year. Me and the boss looked and winced. We were thinking He has to go through a divorce. That smarts.
Later, on the way back from music, Son is talking about my GF, and how he has girls txting him. He then drops that he never wants a relationship, because of the complete mess relationships have made of my life.
The risks in this life are huge, and the consequence of that risk is that people are not marrying. The trend line, even in the USA, is decreasing. The logical think is to ignore the other gender, and live singly. As Paul said, and my boys confirm, it decreases the amount of trouble in one’s life.
The world wants to atomize us. But I am not sure if that is what we are taught by Christ, or what God wants. I know that he does not want us assuaging our lusts by using the sex trade (and as Porn becomes more realistic, this is increasing): I know God does not want us seducing multiple women for the notches and Lulz. For those who do burn, there should be marriage.
But I’m divorced. I have made my life rubble.
I hate it because it reminds me to check my hind minded notions at the door. Some of us can never get comfortably smug in our perceived righteousness. We don’t and will never fit into that chair.
But there is a flip side to spectacular failure. It’s good to have my pride checked at the door, and it makes the success sweeter. To shatter statistical and conventional worldly wisdom as a direct result of faith that believing what God’s word said is true is a gratifying and praise worthy thing. To be respected based on what you built from the rubble rather constantly hammered over the fact that you caused much of the rubble in the first place is something that we are eternally grateful for.
Now to scripture. This is the text that justifies the Roman position: that there should never be divorce, and we always have to take the words of Christ carefully. So, to the married, the command is clear: remain in marriage. Do not listen to that social worker, and never to the family court lawyer. Trust those of us who have been divorced: there is no grass on the other side of the fence, only astroturf.
And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
(Mark 10:1-12 ESV)
But what to do when there is an epidemic of frivorce? When women are told that they can move on because their husband is not leading them, when women are taught, within the church and without, pretty lies that absolve them of all responsibility two things happen: there are no consequences of vow breaking, and the spirit of unfaithfulness and unrepentence leads to deep unhappiness. The more I think about this passage, the more the truth that we have frivolous divorce (Frivorce) is because our hearts are hardened.
Within the compromised church, divorce is never your fault. You never have to self examine.
Rather, she’s doing all of these things because she needs you to take the blame for her sin. If you google “christian wife cheated” or something similar, you will find multiple stories where the guy is going to therapy with his wife and then finds out she was cheating. Or you’ll find stories about how she was complaining about the marriage, and then he found out she was unfaithful.
In fact, this is exactly what happened to me with my ex-wife. For a month and a half before I found out the truth, I was repeatedly instructed that I had to change for the sake of the marriage. This kind of thing isn’t a coincidence. She needs you to buy into her own personal fantasy that her actions were somehow justified.
Don’t do it. She has to admit that the current crisis in the marriage was caused by her own lack of self-control, not by you being a bad husband. She must admit this, both for her own spiritual health, and because your marriage cannot survive unless she does. Repentance results in healing. Unrepentance results in self-destruction.
What to do? Well, pray: Pray particularly for me and the photographer, for we both have been through the wringer. Most single people my age have.
For Godly marriage is now a profoundly subversive thing. To desire one’s wife alone, to lead her, and look at no other: to present her without flaw as the first fruit of your life to our Lord and God: that is the consequence we want. This is what I prayed for when I took vows with the mother of my boys some 27 years ago.
But that is now called abuse, and instead we have this heresy.
But the spirit of this world is against marriage, and the destruction of marriage among Christians, in particular, is desired. For it puts the children of such at risk, and within that atomization of support the enemy can take prisoners of those who should have been raised in the knowledge of the gospel.
I do not have a solution to this beyond the personal: you have to look at how you erred — and I learned, from following the errors I was taught, that there is no thing as a Christian Egalitarian Marriage, and no thing such as a Christian feminist. Those are sighs that our hearts are indeed hardened, and that we will not pay attention to scripture.
Pray for me. The ex is now living in the rubble, and the bitterness she exudes I have to deal with. The photog and I need to obey God, even while we burn. For when one lives in the rubble, one sees not the light, and all is gray. I would rather remain in the light.
Back when I was fast-tracking towards an academic career, a “wife” was something I was going to look to acquire in Grad School. I didn’t quite make it to Grad School, but I lived a much less messy existence than those around me that wanted relationships.
It really comes down to commitment, in the end. If both parties aren’t “in it to be in it forever”, all it really results in is stress & drama. Seeking that out isn’t Godly, and creating it intentionally is rarely Wise. It’s avoiding the porn that’s the problem our Young Men face, considering it’s pretty much everywhere.
What a blessing that Mrs. Bubba has hardly a hint of feminism in her. I had to tell her what NOW (National Association of Gals) was when we married.
I take it that you feel you ought not marry your photographer friend because you’ve been divorced? I wrestle with that one, though thankfully not totally needfully–and wonder if a lot of divorced people are freed as their exes go on to other people.
A lot hangs on that interesting phrase “except for sexual immorality,” and I can respect those who (a) decide that even if their spouse had committed adultery (before or after filing for divorce), they’re not going to remarry, or who (b) see the spouse’s adultery as a concession that they are “dead” to the former spouse, and they are free to remarry. (the latter is Doug Wilson’s position, if I’m stating it correctly)
Best to you!
@Looking Glass: the p0rn is universal, and is now being shared on cellphones in primary school (year 5 or 6: grade 6 or 7) and is a concern for the educators.
@Bike
I am reformed, and I consider that licit divorce (which is another discussion) leaves the remaining party free to remarry. The question then is what is licit divorce. Calvin was very reluctant to allow any divorce because he could see that this would open a floodgate for people to “move on” — which the Reformed have kept a lid on … barely … until this generation or so. The Romans now have a problem where “annulment” — which is supposed to be about undoing that which was never licit in the first places such as inadvertent incest — has become in effect no fault divorce.
Chris, it’s taken me nearly a decade to pound this rubble of divorce into a tougher foundation to avoid such future mistakes. I grew up in the Southern US, ‘The Bible Belt’ as it was once called. I grew up Baptist. My parents sent me to very, very legalistic schools (something they regret now—but they were trying to give me a foundation) and thus, most of my life, I heard the Word about how bad divorce is in the eyes of God.
When I divorced my ex-wife a decade ago, my world fell apart. I’d FAILED Christianity 101 in my eyes. Instead of seeking God out to heal and rectify, I ran. Stayed on the run for years, spiritually. For some time, I all but hated everyone and everything. I was looking at things in the wrong context. I reacted with emotion and continued to do so for so many years. It wasn’t until life kicked my ass (two bouts of unemployment, both over a year long, loss of all my assets, savings, etc.) that I knew I had to gain a new perspective. I have now, and it’s more precious to me than gold.
But you’re right: the consequences never leave. I am disqualified from many things. This is the crow I hate eating. Nonetheless, it’s my own to dine on often.
I reckon all we can do is continue pounding the rubble until it’s fine enough to mix into a concrete foundation. Perhaps there is no complete restoration for us; and yet how God has shown us Truth through the rubble never ceases to astound me.