Is Divorce Okay?
Text: Mark 10:1–12
Derek Helt
One time a couple of years ago my wife and I were talking with a friend of ours. Our friend happens to be a single mother with two children. In the course of our conversation, she began telling us about her marriage to the father of her children. We learned that he was not a very good husband to her or a very good father to their children. He was known to use drugs and party quite a bit. He would sometimes take off and be gone for days at time without telling his wife he was leaving. She told us that one time he left her home for week one winter when it was very cold and their plumbing wasn’t working. Our friend had to take care of her infant son, the animals, and haul the water they needed to the house, after breaking through the ice to get at it. When her oldest child was a toddler, she once found he’d gotten his fingers into a “mysterious white powder” that his father had left out on the coffee table. Surmising that this white powder was almost certainly cocaine, she told him, “I cannot physically stop you from doing this kind of stuff, but if my child gets hurt, you’ll wish you were never born!”
In addition to all these wonderful things, this man was also unfaithful to her, beginning shortly after they were married. One time she found another woman’s clothes in their walk-in closet. When she confronted him, her husband said, “Oh, those must be left from the people who lived here before.” They had been living in that house over three months and she knew this was not a valid explanation. However, she told us she believed him because she wanted to. All told, they were married over six years before they finally separated and even-tually divorced.
After she had told us her story, I asked her, “M------, why did you put up with all that garbage for so long? Why did you endanger your children, put up with the unfaithfulness, the lying, the neglect for so long before doing something about it?” I was not chiding her, but wanted to know what had been going through her head during those years that caused her to stay with this man and put up with his deplorable behavior. Her answer? “I’d already had one marriage go bad,” she said. “I was going to make this one work. I believed in marriage, that it was supposed to last forever — ‘Till death do us part’ — so I was going to ‘make it work’.”
Our friend’s story embodies the dilemma that we in the church face all the time: how do we uphold the biblical principle of lasting marriage, while at the same time be agents of God’s grace when marriages, and lives, come apart? The two objectives often seem to be at odds with each other.
Growing up, our children learn a lot of erroneous ideas about marriage. Knofel Staton, in his book ’Check Your Morality’, lists several of these falsehoods about marriage that young people often pick up while growing up (pp. 102–103). Here are several of them:
· Marriage will solve all my problems.
· If I get married, I will never be lonely again.
· By marriage I can escape my parents.
· Marriage is like an eternal date.
· I will change him/her after we are married.
· In marriage, our differences won’t cause trouble.
· Marriage is a trap or prison.
· Marriage takes all the fun out of life.
· Marriage is simply a legal piece of paper.
These lies, as well as many others of their ilk, will poison people’s marriages if they don’t learn the truth about marriage. God is the designer of the covenant of marriage; and what He designed resembles none of these lies in the least. In this message, I hope to answer a question that I am often asked — Is divorce okay? — by looking at God’s truth about marriage as it is found in the Bible. This is sometimes a difficult topic to address, but I firmly believe that God’s wisdom concerning marriage is simply too valuable to be ignored.
Let’s begin by taking a look at something Jesus said concerning divorce. It is found in Mark 10:1–12:
Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them. Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” When they were in the house again, the dis-ciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “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.” (NIV)
Now, the thing we need to keep in mind whenever we read in the Gospels about the times when the Pharisees and Jesus having conversation is that they never ask Jesus a question in order to learn what He thought about the subject. When they come to Jesus and pose a question to Him, they are always trying trip Him up, to trap Him, to get something they can use against Him. The fact is that they were jealous of Jesus’ popularity and angry that He always evaded their carefully planned logical and linguistic traps.
This exchange was no different. They did not really care what He thought about the subject, they just wanted ammunition to use against Him. This was nothing more than a fishing expedition. They asked Him, “Can a man divorce his wife? Is divorce okay?” Jesus answered with His own question, “What does the Law say?” What we call the Old Testament Law was the ultimate authority for them. They often referred to “Moses’ Law,” or sometimes, as here in Mark, they simply referred to it as “Moses,” because he was God’s mouthpiece in delivering the Law to Hebrews. These Pharisees knew law perfectly well, so they said, “The Law allows a man to divorce his wife.”
On the surface, this all looks very straightforward. However, things were anything but simple in reality. In Jesus’ day, the leading Jewish scholars had two differing opinions about divorce and what justified it. One opinion, the more “strict” of the two, said that a man could divorce his wife only if she were unfaithful to him. If she had an affair; or is she had said she was a virgin when they got married, but he found out she had previously had sexual relations with a man — both of these would justify a man divorcing his wife, according to the one line of reasoning. That rule said that unfaithfulness was only reason that justified divorce. The second, lest strict, opinion said that a man could divorce his wife for basically anything he found in her that he did not like. Say she burnt his toast one morning, he could go see a law-yer, have papers drawn up, and divorce her! Any reason, real or imagined, was good enough to justify his action to dissolve the marriage.
Human nature being was it is, the second opinion was the more popular of the two in Jesus’ day. Divorces were relatively easy to get. They could be justified by almost any rea-son, real or imagined. Notice, however, how they framed the question: “Can a man divorce his wife?” It was not, “Can a person divorce his or her spouse?” Nor was it, “Can a woman divorce her husband?” Women could not divorce their husbands — they did have some legal recourse, but in all practicality, a woman’s options were much more limited than a man’s. In fact, the Pharisee’s did not even believe that a husband could commit adultery against his wife. A wife could sin against her husband in this way, but a husband committing adultery against wife? No way. He could be unfaithful without committing adultery, in their minds; but a wife who was unfaithful, sexually, to her husband had clearly committed adultery against him. Double standards are nothing new to mankind.
This is why Jesus’ next comment was a real kick in teeth to them. He said, in essence, “That law was a concession by God because of the sinfulness of the human heart.” The Pharisees, you see, were looking for what they could get away with in marriage. But Jesus was telling them what they should strive for. Jesus goes on to state, “This is allowed, but that’s not how God meant it to be.” And then He quotes a passage from the book of Genesis, stating God’s original intent for the marital relationship. “It was originally designed to be a life-long commitment, not something to be entered into or gotten out of lightly.” Their ques-tion was framed as, “What can we get away with and still be technically obeying God’s Law?” Jesus’ answer was, “Here’s what you need to do in order to fulfill God’s original in-tent.”
Their problem was that they took the whole idea of marriage way too lightly. Viewed it like a person would view a business partnership — it is fine while it serves its purpose, but once the benefits are no longer there, then you need to look at how you can get out of it. Je-sus’ message to them was, “You guys missing whole point of marriage!”
I believe that we have much the same problem today. Over the last several decades, our culture has become very casual about accepting divorce and has created a social climate where divorce is viewed as an easy way to get out of one’s commitments. Couples seem to be much less likely nowadays to work through the tough times in their relationship than they were twenty or thirty years ago because divorce is relatively easy — legally speaking — and is accepted as perfectly fine behavior.
Now, if you’re reading this and you have been divorced, or you’re having marital problems, please don’t automatically think that I’m talking about you and your situation! Don’t put this paper down in a huff. Please read this through before you reflect on how it applies to you. It is true that over years, Christians have treated divorced people very badly, at times almost like outcasts. This is not right; it is not Christian; it is not biblical. Not every divorce has the same circumstances surrounding it and not everyone who gets divorced does so out of a lack of commitment or failure in understanding the seriousness of the marriage covenant.
That being said, the truth is that many, many people today do indeed take the whole institution of marriage way too lightly. A few years ago, a preacher friend of mine told me about a couple who came to him wanting get married. Visiting with them, he asked, “How do you know you’re in love?” It’s not unusual at all for a preacher to ask such a question of a couple coming to him to be married. We like to think we’re doing something more significant than fixing someone’s car or their plumbing. We believe marriage is a sacred covenant, and should be approached accordingly. This prospective groom, however, did not understand this. His answer was, “Well, if it doesn’t work out, we can always just get a divorce.” My friend then said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think going be able do wedding.”
Now, if this were an isolated incident, it really would be no big deal; but this type of attitude has reached epidemic proportions. We’ve all heard of things like people changing vows their vows to, “… as long as we both shall love,” instead of “… as long as we both shall live.” Marriage is often viewed as something that is all sweetness and light, instead of being more realistically pictured as the most profound of human relationships that often re-quires an intense, sustained effort to maintain. The central vow in a marriage covenant is, “I will be faithful to you alone,” and not “I will be completely, utterly happy in your presence for every moment of married life, or I will bail out.” Many people in our culture seem to have lost sight of this basic truth behind the marital relationship.
Tony Campolo, in his excellent book, "20 Hot Potatoes Christians are Afraid to Touch," has this to say:
I personally believe that most married couples inevitably come to a time when they wonder why they ever got married in the first place and think that it would be a relief to be “free” again. There comes that morning when the guy wakes up and looks across the bed to see his wife still asleep, her hair hanging down over her face and her mouth half open, and he asks, “How did I get into this?” Or perhaps she wakes up first to see her unshaven husband with (as in my case) no hair hanging down over his face, and she asks, “Is this what I’m stuck with for the rest of my life?” (p. 196)
In generations past, most couples certainly had these same moments of doubt, yet they remained committed to their spouses and families and went on to live the rest of their lives together. Such is no longer the case, in many circles. Divorce is seen not as a tragedy, or the lesser of two evils, but as something that can be easily done if one is not sexually at-tracted to his spouse anymore, or if they don’t get the giddy feeling they had when they first met, or if one partner finds themselves sexually attracted to another person, or even if they simply “grow apart,” as seems to happen to many people these days.
Some of you are probably saying to yourselves, “All this is true, but none of those reasons are why my (or my parents’, sister’s, etc.) marriage failed.” That may very well be true, but a great many marriages fail today because of simple neglect. People neglect their spouse, their commitment, and their relationship. Then they reach that moment of disillusionment Campolo described and decide that divorce is a realistic option for them. It has been said (rightly) that if two people decide divorce not an option, they can work through any dif-ficulty they might encounter in a marriage. However, if just one of the two people involved in the marriage decides that they want out, there is usually nothing the other person can do about it, ultimately.
Jesus was saying to the Pharisees, “You guys don’t understand what God intended marriage to be. You’re taking it to casually, you’re too self-oriented and completely missing the boat on the marriage issue.” Comedian Rita Rudner said, “Marriages don’t last. When I meet a guy, the first question I ask myself is: Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?”
Is it assuming too much on my part to say that we, as a society, have the same problem the Pharisees had? Sadly, I don’t think it is. The church, as the Body of Christ, needs to stop pretending that divorce — and, by implication, marriage itself— is no big deal. We need to teach our children this truth before they get old enough to start thinking about marriage; we need to be reminded of it ourselves. We need to encourage family members and friends to stay in their marriages, to work on working things out, to take their vows of life-long com-mitment seriously. We need to sit young couples down with older ones and have the older ones share their stories of how they overcame obstacles in their marriage, and to what depths they have gone to in fulfilling their vows.
A couple was celebrating golden wedding anniversary. Their domestic tranquillity had long been the talk of the town where they had spent their lives. The local newspaper reporter came by inquiring as to the secret of their long and happy marriage. The husband said, “Well, it all dates back to our honeymoon. We visited the Grand Canyon and took a trip down to bottom of the canyon by pack mule. We hadn’t gone too far when my wife’s mule stumbled. My wife quietly said, ‘That’s once.’ We proceeded just a little further and the mule stumbled again. Once more my wife quietly said, ‘That’s twice.’ We hadn’t gone a half-mile more when the mule stumbled a third time. My wife quietly removed a revolver from her pocket and shot that mule dead. I started to protest over her treatment of mule when she looked at me and quietly said ‘That’s once’.”
Now, that’s the kind of “stick-to-itativeness” we need to see more of! It may be a slight exaggeration, but I think you get the point!
Now, I want to caution you at this point: Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, or get only part of picture. I’m not saying that all marriages fail simply because people lack the commitment to work through problems. I’m not even saying that every marriage ought be saved. Certainly the wife whose husband is physically abusive to her or her children should never stay with him. Even if divorce is ultimately not in order, church leaders should never be the ones telling a woman to go back to the man when doing so puts her or the children in harm’s way! Get out of there, now! It should be unthinkable to the Christian to try and send her back.
And then there are all cases where one spouse doesn’t want the marriage to end, but there is little they can really do if the other has their heart set on getting out of the marriage. These are the stories that break my heart. I’ve known women whose husbands left them for another woman, or sometimes they left just to be rid of the “encumbrance” of a wife and kids. Interestingly enough, these women were almost all willing to take their husbands back, if the husband would have but repented — truly repented — and recommitted to his wife. I know a man whose wife was unfaithful to him. It’s almost like she went wild, having married young and never had the chance to be “on her own.” She left him with three, one of them still in diapers and on a bottle. Eventually, she came back and they patched their marriage together, only to have her leave a year or two later, this time for good. This man tried to do the right thing. He worked at his marriage. Granted, he was almost certainly an imperfect hus-band, as we all are, but he worked hard on saving his marriage. Now, however, he has live with the fact that his ex-wife is constantly poisoning their children’s minds against him when they visit her.
I know more of these types of stories than I have time to tell you this morning. It hurts me deeply when I recall them, and they did not even happen to me personally. But when I think of them, do you know what passage from Bible comes to my mind first? Malachi 2:16, which reads, in part, “‘I hate divorce,’ says the LORD God of Israel.”
That’s right! That’s the passage that comes to my mind. And know why? Because when I think of all the horror stories I’ve heard about marriages ending, I’m reminded of why it is that God hates divorce. If you want know why God hates divorce, ask someone who has been through one and they will tell you. Ask the woman who is left alone with children, a house payment, and an unreliable car when her husband decides he wants out. Ask the man who cherished his wife, but she has decided that she’d rather be in the arms of some low-life in a bar than in his. Ask the children who have lived through tears, uncertainty, and feelings of being personally rejected when mommy or daddy leaves the family. Ask the grandparents who have to jump through hoops just to see their own flesh and blood every once in a while. Ask them all why God hates divorce and they will tell you why. God hates divorce and it’s no wonder why. Anyone in their right mind hates what divorce does to peo-ple!
So, no, divorce is not okay. It is sometimes justifiable, more often it is inevitable; but it is most certainly not “okay.” Our marriage been such smooth sailing, relatively speaking, that my heart really goes out to people who have had cope with the fact that their closest, most personal of all relationships has gone sour. A husband or wife is supposed to be the person who is our refuge against the storms of life. They are to comfort us, help us cope with all the garbage that life just naturally throws at us. When that relationship is part of what’s wrong with one’s life, it can be overwhelming. And that is precisely why we must remember that God does indeed hate divorce, but He does not hate divorced people.
When a marriage fails, is a tragedy. It is a failure; there is some sin involved. Too of-ten, the church thinks the proper response is to point the finger of blame, to decide exactly how much fault lies with each party. Certainly there are times when the leadership of the church should exercise biblical oversight in this area. If a couple has just “grown apart,” or grown tired of each other, I believe they should be encouraged to work through their difficulties and try to salvage their marriage. The church should tell them, “We’ll help you however we can, but can’t you give it another try?”
But what more-often happens is that a marriage falls apart, and nobody really wants to be judgmental, so the church basically shuns both the husband and the wife. I’ve known of women whose husbands have left them and churches have treated them like they had some horrible disease. Maybe the wife was really the victim, but she is still asked to not be a part of choir, or to quit the children’s ministry, or to stop doing whatever she does as a ministry in the church. She’s told it’s “just for a while. It wouldn’t be appropriate right now. Surely you understand?” And maybe she’s rightfully thinking, “No, I don’t understand. I remained faith-ful, I put my heart and soul into that marriage. He left and now I’m getting punished.”
When she’s at church, people want to avoid the painful topic, so they end up not talking to her at all. The problem is that she’s already feeling like a failure, and if she has the courage to come to church, she should be supported and smothered with love — a smile, a hug, a simple, “Is there anything I can do?”
The truth is that we are all failures in certain areas of our lives. I seriously doubt that any of us can claim to have reached perfection. Yes, we have been cleansed from sin, but we still live with sin’s short-term consequences. Keeping this in mind, Christians must have open hearts and minds, as well as reach out in love to those who are hurting because of divorce.
Spiritually speaking, the person going through a divorce is usually in critical condition. They feel worthless because the man or woman they once loved above all others is no longer a part of their lives. They probably feel that they cannot do anything right. They can-not imagine a good future for themselves or their children. They have a serious need for real friendship. And they have real needs in taking care of practical, everyday problems.
As I said, my heart goes out to people in these situations. Just as we are in many other areas, are called by God, in this area of divorce, to both uphold and strive for a biblical understanding of import and duration of the marriage covenant. It’s a special relationship, unlike all other earthly relationships. It shouldn’t be entered into lightly nor dissolved on a whim. In fact, Jesus says that ideally it should last until death. We have to uphold that ideal, because the Bible teaches it.
However, at same the time, we are called to enthusiastically embrace those are touched by the terrible pain of divorce. Sometimes we need to urge repentance by the guilty party, or forgiveness by the one who was wronged, but we’ll always need be extenders of God’s grace. The fact that we must always, always remember is that He is the God of Second Chances and we can all start over again with Him. It is never too late for God to salvage our lives.
