wideawake

gave up after 45 minutes of tossing and turning and decided to come in and try to type myself into sleepiness. not sure it will work, but the usual things are not helping and i'm trying to stay away from pills, especially since my alarm will sound in about 5 1/2 hours and the pills are good for eight. brain won't shut off, body won't cool down, so here i am. aren't you lucky?

guess now is as good a time as any to get into that glorious discussion of marriage and divorce and remarriage i keep yammering on about. first, however, a disclaimer or two. these thoughts are ones i am wrestling with. i don't claim to have all the answers - heck, i'm not even sure i'm asking the right questions. but to paraphrase brother merton, i believe my desire to please does in fact please. the following thoughts come from my interpretation of scripture. i have no "word of the Lord" or particular insight God has provided and much of the time i wish i believed otherwise because, well, it would make life less complicated. or more complicated, depending on how you see it.

enough stalling. i just wanted to make it clear the opinions expressed below are not necessarily the opinions expressed Above and if you already have rejected the thoughts from Above, then you're not going to think much of my thoughts below.

i don't think that made it clear, but i'm going to go on anyway.

back in seminary i came to the belief that in some circumstances, God does indeed permit divorce. this came from a reading of the usual old and new testament scriptures on marriage and divorce, specifically Christ's words in matthew, Paul's words in corinthians, and the storyteller's words in genesis about man and woman and one flesh. divorce is never the ideal and always a last resort, but there are times and places where the most loving action for both parties is to dissolve a harmful relationship. the other belief i came to during this time was that while divorce may be necessary at times, remarriage after divorce is not permitted under any circumstances.

i realize this seems like a grace-less position. how can someone be held responsible for decisions made at a young age? how can someone be held responsible for decisions made by another person? how can someone pay the price for another's sin? what kind of God would punish someone like that? what about grace? what about forgiveness?

originally, in the guarded ivory tower that is academia, those answers came easily. the example i used to use went something like this: a person in a moment of poor judgment has unprotected sex with a stranger and later discovers that they have an std. will God grant them forgiveness for their sin? of course. will he take away the consequence of that sin? no. His forgiveness does not wipe away the human consequences of the sin. that person will live the rest of their life with that std.

i then would draw the parallels - yes, God is able to forgive the sin of divorce - it is not the "unforgivable sin" many churches preach, either explicitly or implicitly. however, the breaking of the marriage covenant has consequences and we must live with those consequences. which, according to my reading of scripture, specifically matthew 19 and i corinthians 7, meant no remarriage.

most of the objections i've heard fall under what i label as the "But that's not fair!" argument. it's not fair that God would punish both parties equally when the other was unfaithful/dishonest/abusive/fill-in-the-blank. it's not fair that God would hold us accountable for decisions made in the "heat of the moment" or in the " throes of young love." it's not fair for God to expect someone to remain single for the rest of their lives.

i think most of these objections take a weak view of marriage. they reduce marriage to a contract between a man and a woman instead of a covenant between two souls and their God. in many ways, my understanding of marriage is more sacramental in nature - it is not so much something we do (though obviously the couple has an important part to play), but something God does. it is He that knits the souls together. it is He that weaves two separate stories into one. it is He that makes the two one, transforms them into one flesh.

because it is something God does, we cannot simply break it apart. it is why Christ declares "the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate" and follows it up with "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery" (Mark 10:8-9, 11-12).

so while we in our humanness see a broken contract, God sees us as one flesh still, which is why remarriage is seen as adultery. the contract may be broken, but the covenant still exists. which of course is much easier to hold on to in the rarefied air of the seminary classroom than in reality.

i also see these objections taking a weak view of the single life as well. many of the objections see being forced to remain single as a horrible punishment, like being single is a fate worse than death. God wouldn't expect anyone to live like that, especially someone who has already tasted the glorious fruits of the married life. it would be cruel to expect them to spend the rest of their lives without someone, wouldn't it?

obviously, i have a lovely set of baggage to go with this attitude, being unmarried as well as celibate. but it's hard for me to feel much sympathy for someone who will be "cursed" to be like i am. though not intended, it sets up the married life as the ideal and the single life as the less than, even though Christ himself was single (no matter what dan brown says) and Paul wished "that all men were as I am" (I Cor. 7:7).

the disconnect for me occurs on many different fronts. i've seen God bless second (and even third) marriages. i've seen friends torn apart by people they've loved who turned out to not be the person they believed them to be. i've heard viable objections raised - what about the verses where Jesus says "except for marital infidelity"(Matt. 19:9)? what about Paul's admonition, "if the unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances" (I Cor. 7:15)?

it's circumstances like this that have made me revisit and wrestle with my beliefs recently. maybe there are times when remarriage is permitted. but the problem is, when? marital infidelity would seem the simple answer, but how do you define that? is it simply having sex with someone who is not your spouse? or could it be for emotional or intellectual infidelity? what about abuse - could that be seen as a breaking of the marital vows? who makes the decision what is a viable reason for an "lawful" divorce? do we need to make a list? do we deal with it on a case by case basis? and if so, what principles do we judge those cases?

and my own baggage confuses the matter. what if i'm questioning my beliefs, not because i think they might be wrong, but because by abandoning them, i increase the possibility that i may not be cursed with having to live the rest of my life single? let's be honest - the odds of me finding someone to spend what little remains of my life who has never been married are becoming slimmer. cutting myself off from potential dates simply because they've been married before smacks of elitism - i'm better than you because i've never been married.

and yet i can't shake the feeling that perhaps we'd be better off if we saw marriage as a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. how many of us would take more time getting to know the person we're going to marry if we knew we only got one shot to get it right? how many of us would work harder at the relationship knowing if this goes bad, there won't be a chance for another? what if we saw ourselves as God sees us - as one flesh - and realized to tear that asunder wouldn't leave two separate souls, but two half ones?

ok, it's been almost two hours and i'm still not tired and i definitely haven't come to any grand conclusions. but the ideas are out there. feel free to disagree or even try to convince me i'm wrong. part of me would be happy to be convinced i'm in error. but only if it's to serve God's glory, not my own wants and needs. Æ

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