Posts tagged ‘Divorce’
Christmas: Grace Upon Grace
For a moment, put yourself in Joseph’s shoes. You come from an impoverished family and have endured a hardscrabble life. But now, finally, things are looking up. You are engaged to a good girl named Mary, and the two of you are on your way to a wedding. But then, she turns up pregnant. And you know the baby is not yours. What would you do?
2,000 years ago, in Israel and as a Jew, Joseph had only two options.
First, according to the law of Moses, he could have called for her life:
If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife – with the wife of his neighbor – both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10)
Second, as the son who Mary eventually bears notes, he could have divorced her:
I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. (Matthew 19:9)
Divorce displeases Jesus, but He permits it when sexual unfaithfulness is involved.
Death and divorce – these are Joseph’s options. Which will he choose? Matthew tells us:
He had in mind to divorce her. (Matthew 1:19)
Joseph chooses divorce over death. But there’s more to Joseph’s decision than just one option over the other. Matthew adds a very important qualifier to Joseph’s divorce decision:
He had in mind to divorce her quietly. (Matthew 1:19)
In the first century, divorces were often public spectacles, meant to shame an unfaithful spouse. But Joseph forfeits his opportunity to shame his fiancé, as Matthew makes explicit in the rest of this verse:
Because Joseph was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. (Matthew 1:19)
Joseph was walking a tightrope. As a pious Jew, devoted to following the law of Moses, he knew he couldn’t just continue on as if nothing had happened. But Joseph also knew that grimly responding to his fiancé’s perceived infidelity with all that he could do according to the law wasn’t what he should do, for shaming her would destroy her. Something else was needed.
Grace.
Joseph followed the letter of the law by planning to divorce Mary, but he also did everything he could not to retaliate against her even though he thought she had betrayed him. He responded to her apparent unfaithfulness with every bit of kindness he could muster. Joseph did the right thing according to the law and the loving thing according to grace.
Joseph’s path can be instructive for us as we face messy moral challenges in our lives. Respecting divine law is necessary and right. But we are also invited to seek opportunities to layer divine grace on top of divine law.
We can discipline our children and still remind them how much we love them.
We can reprimand an employee and still do everything we can to help them succeed.
We can adamantly disagree with someone while still treating them gently.
When Joseph layered grace on top of law, something incredible happened:
An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20-21)
When Joseph chose grace, an angel appeared to show him where even more grace could be found. He did not need to divorce Mary, for, contrary to appearances, she had not been unfaithful. Instead, she was being a radically faithful servant to the Lord who had miraculously gestated in her the Savior of the world (cf. Luke 1:38).
In John’s account of the Christmas story, he describes Jesus’ mission like this:
From His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. (John 1:16)
“Grace upon grace.” Grace that begets even more grace. Pile it high. Spread it wide. Do what Joseph did for Mary. And trust in what Jesus has done for us.
This is the miracle and the message of Christmas.
Divorce Inquiries Climb as the Pandemic Lingers
Among the casualties of the coronavirus are many Americans’ marriages. New released data indicates that sales of divorce agreements have soared by 34 percent during the pandemic. The pandemic seems to have had especially adverse effects on new marriages, with couples married five months or less pursuing divorce at double the rate of 2019. According to The Daily Mail, “the combination of quarantine life, wavering finances, mounting unemployment rates, illnesses, deaths of loved ones, mental illness and child care” has led to the spike in divorce inquiries.
As long as there has been marriage, there have been stressors and strains on marriages. History’s first marriage featured a husband who ill-advisedly blamed his wife for his bad behavior after he ate some forbidden fruit. When he was confronted by God over his sin, he claimed: “The woman You put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” (Genesis 3:12). His was quick to blame his wife instead of taking responsibility for his own sin. And couples have been following in his footsteps ever since.
In Jesus’ day, countless numbers of marriages were crumbling. Many Jewish rabbis in the first century permitted husbands to divorce their wives for pretty much any reason. There was one school of thought that actually taught that a husband may divorce his wife “if she spoiled a dish for him,” or “even if he found another woman more beautiful than she.” Jesus, however, was having none of this. He pointedly declared: “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9). Jesus wants couples to remain together, even during trying times.
COVID-19 has certainly brought its share of trials. Many marriages are struggling. Some are not surviving. But hope is not lost. Jesus, at the same time He confronts those who don’t take seriously a commitment to marriage, also comforts those who are struggling in marriage. He knows circumstances can become difficult, and He cares.
So, if you are struggling in your marriage, now is the time to ask for help. You can certainly reach out to the church where I serve, Concordia, and we would be happy to talk with you. COVID-19 has created enough casualties. Let’s not add our marriages to that sad list.
Saving Marriage from the Heartbreak Hotel
Credit: Viator.com
It seems as though declining marriage rates are not just changing our society sociologically, but are stressing the wedding capital of the world, Las Vegas, economically. In an article for Bloomberg, Jeanna Smialek explains how:
Roland August has officiated at thousands of weddings in Las Vegas, the self-proclaimed capital of “I do.”
But these days August – who often presides dressed as Elvis Presley – has a rare vantage point from which to observe the nation’s long shift toward “I don’t.” …
The wedding chapels where August works have seen business dwindle, he said, and Vegas is pushing to reverse the decline in an industry that generates as much as $3 billion in economic activity annually. In 2015 the surrounding county introduced a $14 surcharge on marriage licenses to pay for marketing, and local business leaders helped start a Wedding Chamber of Commerce last year.
A drop in weddings, it seems, amounts to a drop in revenue for a city that is known as being flush with cash. Of course, this is all part of a broader nationwide trend. The Pew Research Center reports that, whereas 72% of adults 18 years of age or older were married in 1960, now, only 50% are. But, if the graph published by Bloomberg is any indication, the nationwide decline in marriage has hit Nevada especially hard.
In one way, none of this is particularly surprising. For all the fun and levity, which are not bad things in and of themselves, that I’m sure Mr. August brings to the weddings he performs, vows taken without things like spiritual guidance from a pastor or other religious mentor, serious prior consideration of all the things marriage entails, a commitment to make marriage alone the sacred space for sex, and, often, even a baseline of sobriety do little more than to cheapen and make a mockery out of the whole institution. And when something becomes cheap, it inevitably becomes expendable. After all, if Britney Spears can drunkenly marry her childhood friend in Las Vegas and then have their marriage annulled 55 hours later, one has to wonder: why bother with marriage in the first place?
They key to reversing the decline in marriage and the denigration of marriage is not to try to repristinate the marriage-saturated days of 1960, hoping that, somehow, marriage rates will soar again if we just yell enough at the cultural forces that have damaged the institution. No, the key to a deeper appreciation of and desire for marriage is to consider what marriage is really meant to reflect. So here are three things that we can say, as Christians, marriage reflects.
Marriage reflects community in Christ.
One of the great mysteries of Christian teaching is that of the Trinity – that God is one, yet, at the same time, He is also three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus, God is in community, in some sense, with Himself. For centuries, professional theologians and Sunday School teachers alike have tried to explain this mystery in a way that is comprehensible. My Sunday School teacher, for instance, mused that the Trinity is like an apple. There is the peel, the flesh, and the core. These are three parts, and yet they are all part of one apple. The problem with this illustration, however, is that God is indivisible. He cannot be divided like an apple. He is not made up of three parts, but actually is three persons.
Thankfully, the Bible presents us with its own object lesson to help us understand the Trinity. What is this object lesson? Marriage. When marriage is given by God, He explains that it is meant to be when “a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). In marriage, there are two persons, and yet they are one flesh, even as in God, there are three persons, yet He is one God. Moreover, throughout this life, a husband and wife ought to be indivisible, as is God. This is why Jesus says divorce is so damaging – not only because it hurts the people involved, but because it tarnishes the very reflection of God! Thus, community in marriage, even if it is broken by sin, is meant to reflect the perfect community of the Trinity.
Marriage reflects the sacrifice of Christ.
As anyone who has been married for any amount of time will tell you, marriage requires sacrifice. It requires laying down your own wants, needs, and desires for the sake of another. The apostle Paul eloquently explains the sacrificial nature of marriage when he writes:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:25-27)
Paul notes that the sacrifice a husband makes for his wife ought to reflect the sacrifice that Christ made for His church, even if that sacrifice includes laying down his very life, as it did for Christ. Thus, at the same time marriage gives a community that reflects the Trinity, it also eats away at our proclivity toward selfishness. Marriage is fundamentally centered not on yourself, but on your spouse, even as God is fundamentally centered on us and on our salvation.
Marriage reflects eternity with Christ.
The best marriage is not the one you celebrate once a year on your anniversary. The best marriage is the one that is still to come:
I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready.” (Revelation 19:1, 6-7)
When the apostle John gets a window into eternity, he sees that every wedding on earth between a husband and wife is ultimately meant to reflect a perfect wedding in heaven between Christ and His people. Marriage in this age, then, however wonderful it can be, is not an end in and of itself. It is a sign pointing to something even greater. This is why Jesus, when He is questioned by the religious leaders about marriage in eternity, says, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30). Marriage between people till death do them part is meant to point to perfect communion with God where death no longer reigns. Marriage, then, at the same time it fills a longing, should also create a longing. It should create a longing for a deeper community that not even your spouse can meet. It should create a longing for a deeper community that only Christ can fill in His wedding feast.
This is what marriage is meant to reflect. It cannot be reduced, then, to a Vegas jag, or, for that matter, a well-planned out and exorbitantly expensive ceremony and reception. These things are not necessarily bad on their own terms, but if they become the things of marriage, they reduce marriage to something that is entertaining, cheap, and contrived. But marriage cannot stand if it is this. Marriage must stand as a gift from God that gives you community, costs you your very self, and points you to the One who gave Himself for you so that, on the Last Day, He can walk you down His eternal aisle.
No neon or Elvis costumes needed.
The Waning of Marriage
Right now at the church where I serve, we are in a series on marriage called “We Do.” As I see it, this series is important not only because many marriages are in trouble and in need of help, but because many marriages are not even getting started in the first place. The precipitous decline of marriage in this country is well documented. Take, for instance, the recent alarm sounded by Robert J. Samuelson of The Washington Post:
In 1960, only 12 percent of adults ages 25 to 34 had never married; by the time they were 45 to 54, the never-married share had dropped to 5 percent. Now fast forward. In 2010, 47 percent of Americans 25 to 34 had never married.[1]
Marriage rates are in a free-fall. But Samuelson’s explanation as to why marriage rates are tumbling is especially fascinating to me:
The stranglehold that marriage had on middle-class thinking and behavior began to weaken in the 1960s with birth control pills, publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique — an assault on women’s traditional housecleaning and child-rearing roles — and the gradual liberalization of divorce laws.
The resulting expansion of personal choice has been breathtaking. Those liberalized divorce laws have freed millions of women and men from unsatisfying or abusive marriages. (From 1960 to 1980, the divorce rate rose nearly 150 percent; it has since reversed about half that gain.) Taboos against premarital sex and cohabitation have virtually vanished. So has the stigma of out-of-wedlock birth or, for married couples, of not having children. With more job opportunities, women flooded the labor market.
Samuelson connects the decline of marriage to the “expansion of personal choice.” In other words, the more choices a person has – from the choice of pre-marital sex to birth control to cohabitation to divorce – the lower the chance a person will choose to marry or, as the case may be, stay married.
Sadly, the “expansion of personal choice” does not insure against the unintended and often painful consequences of personal choice. Samuelson cites Isabell Sawhill, author of Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage:
“New choices for adults,” Sawhill writes, “have not generally been helpful to the well-being of children.” Single-parent families have exploded. In 1950, they were 7 percent of families with children under 18; by 2013, they were 31 percent. Nor was the shift isolated. The share was 27 percent for whites, 34 percent for Hispanics and 62 percent for African Americans. By harming children’s emotional and intellectual development, the expansion of adult choices may have reduced society’s collective welfare.
It is not (as Sawhill repeatedly says) that all single-parent households are bad or that all two-parent families are good. But the advantage lies with the approach that can provide children more financial support and personal attention. Two low-income paychecks, or two good listeners, are better than one. With a colleague, Sawhill simulated the effect today if the marriage rates of 1970 still prevailed. The result: The child poverty rate would drop by about 20 percent — a “huge effect” compared with most government programs.
Our emancipation from marriage comes with a price – a price born by the children of those who have emancipated themselves from marriage. A higher poverty rate is the price most easily measured, but other things, such as the lack of “two listening ears” Sawhill refers to, are also among the prices our children must pay.
I am well aware, of course, that there are certain situations where a person should not get married or cannot stay married. But these situations are far fewer and farther between than our culture makes them out to be.
At the heart of our marriage-phobia is the fact that marriage calls on us to think beyond ourselves, which is not easy when we have all the freedom in the world to make decisions for ourselves. It turns out that when we are given unrestrained freedom to make decisions, we make selfish ones.
But this is where the Church has much to offer. We do, after all, worship a Savior who not only thought beyond Himself, but lived beyond Himself and died by Himself so we could be a family in God.
Ultimately, as followers of Christ, our hope is for a marriage on the Last Day when it will be sung: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:6-7).
If this is what we’re preparing and hoping for, we might as well get a little practice for our marriage on the Last Day by being married in this day. And that’s why marriage is good – even if it isn’t always easy.
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[1] Robert J. Samuelson, “The family deficit,” The Washington Post (10.26.2014).
Divorce, Remarriage, Communion, and the Catholic Church’s Existential Crisis
Credit: Wikipedia
I have to admit, I’d be in awe if I got the phone call Jaqui Lisbona did. On a Monday, a couple of weeks ago, Jaqui’s phone rang. Her husband picked it up and was greeted by a man who introduced himself as Father Bergoglio. You may know him better as Pope Francis. He asked to speak with Jaqui. Apparently, several months back, she had written a letter to the pontiff asking him if she could take Communion even though she was divorced. Apparently, her priest had been refusing her Communion for some time now according to the provisions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Today there are numerous Catholics in many countries who have recourse to civil divorce and contract new civil unions … The Church maintains that a new union cannot be recognized as valid, if the first marriage was. If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic Communion as long as this situation persists.[1]
In contradistinction to her priest’s ban, The Washington Post reports that the Pope told Jaqui “‘there was no problem’ with her taking Communion, and that he was ‘dealing with the issue’ of remarried divorcees.”[2] Predictably, this set off a firestorm of controversy with the Vatican ultimately having to respond:
Several telephone calls have taken place in the context of Pope Francis’ personal pastoral relationships. Since they do not in any way form part of the Pope’s public activities, no information or comments are to be expected from the Holy See Press Office. That which has been communicated in relation to this matter, outside the scope of personal relationships, and the consequent media amplification, cannot be confirmed as reliable, and is a source of misunderstanding and confusion. Therefore, consequences relating to the teaching of the Church are not to be inferred from these occurrences.
I like Ross Douthat’s analysis of this response: “This formulation may be technically correct, but it’s also a little bit absurd. Even in ‘private’ conversation, the Pope is, well, the Pope.”[3] Exactly. You can’t claim the Pope is the vicar of Christ on the one hand while having him contradict what other vicars of Christ before him have taught on the other.
With that being said, there is something to be commended in the stance that The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and even this woman’s priest, has taken with regard to remarried divorcees and Communion. In a world that all too readily sanctions divorce and remarriage for reasons as debase and selfish as “I’m in love with someone else and I want to marry them,” The Catechism of the Catholic Church helps to remind us of the gravity of divorce as a sin in God’s eyes.
Still, it has been interesting to watch Catholics struggle to respond to this situation. They are struggling with how to make a proper distinction between, oddly enough, the Law and the Gospel! Consider this by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry:
The question of the divorced-remarried and the sacraments is taking up a lot of our time. How should we look at this?
One of the many confounding things about the Jesus of the Gospels is that He fulfills the law, even strengthens the law, and yet extends mercy to literally anyone who wants it, no matter how deep their transgressions, and adopts a resolutely passionate attitude with sinners. This is encapsulated by His words to the adulterous woman: “I do not condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
As with all aspects of our faith, structured with paradox as it is, the temptation is always to strengthen one side of the “equation” too much at the expense of the other … Jesus says, “I do not condemn you. Go and sin no more.” One camp will say, “He said ‘I do not condemn you’!!!!!” One camp will say, “He said ‘Go and sin no more’!!!!!” …
It seems to me that the excesses go in these ways. The progressive excess is to use mercy as a (however well-intentioned) pretext to amend the law. The conservative excess is to use the law as a (however well-intentioned pretext) to refuse mercy.
Yes, God lays down the law. But God provides infinite mercy.[4]
It sounds to me like Gobry is having the existential crisis of a Lutheran and he doesn’t even know it! He is taking seriously the full weight of God’s law against divorce on the one hand while leaning on His sweet mercy for divorcées on the other.
Gobry even seems to suspect that the partaking of Communion to a divorcée’s blessing and benefit is not as simple as a humanly contrived promise to sin no more based squarely in a person’s will:
The juridical Gordian knot here is the necessary “firm resolve” not to commit the sin again. But it is not licentious to note that for all of us this firm resolve will be imperfect. Obviously, we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. But if we search our hearts, do we not find that “firm resolve” is drawn in shades of gray, rather than black or white? …
God’s law is as hard as His mercy is infinite. And none of us are righteous under the law. And none of us, if we are honest, can even be said to want to be righteous under the law, in every single dimension of our life. But, particularly in these delicate and demanding aspects of sexual life and life situations, the grace of wanting to want God’s will is already very precious and important. And is it not in those phases, where we are broken down, and all we can muster the strength to pray for is to want to want, or even to want to want to want, that the Church should be most present with the succor of her sacraments?
Gobry knows that rooting anything salvific and divinely beneficial in our actions or will is a fool’s errand. It’s not just that we aren’t righteous, it’s that we don’t even want to be righteous. Indeed, any righteous desire in our will is doomed to an infinite regress, rendered impotent because of sin. We only want to want to be righteous, or even want to want to want to be righteous. And even this is giving us too much credit.
So, what is the way out of this morass over who may worthily partake of Communion? Martin Luther would say, “That person is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words: ‘Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’”[5] Our worthiness to partake of Communion is not and cannot be based in our freedom from sin, our reparations for sin, or the fullness and genuineness of a promise not to commit more sin. With regard to the Catholic Church’s current quandary over divorce and remarriage specifically, worthiness for Communion cannot be the result of trying to fix the sin of divorce by, after remarrying, getting another divorce, for this is also a sin. No, our worthiness to partake on Communion can only be based on faith in the One who gives us His body and blood to remedy our unworthiness. Our worthiness must be based in Jesus because our worthiness is Jesus.
Existential crisis…remedied.
______________________________
[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1994), § 1650.
[2] Terrence McCoy, “Did Pope Francis just call and say divorced Catholics can take Communion?” The Washington Post (4.24.2014).
[3] Ross Douthat, “The Pope’s Phone Call,” The New York Times (4.26.2014).
[4] Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, “On Divine Mercy Sunday, Some Thoughts On Communion And Divorced-Remarried,” patheos.com (4.27.2014).
[5] Martin Luther, Large Catechism, “The Sacrament of the Altar,” Section 1.
When Marriage Isn’t What You Expect
From the pages of the New York Times comes this startling statistic:
A half-century ago, only 2.8 percent of Americans older than 50 were divorced. By 2000, 11.8 percent were. In 2011, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 15.4 percent were divorced and another 2.1 percent were separated. Some 13.5 percent were widowed.[1]
It turns out that for the first time in American history, more people over 50 are divorced than widowed. Sam Roberts, the deliverer of this sobering statistic, puts the situation curtly: “So much for ‘till death do us part.’”
Unsurprisingly, the reasons more and more couples are divorcing after they pass into their golden years are manifold and varied, but Stephanie Coontz’s analysis in this article of one of the reasons for the increasing divorce rate is especially insightful:
It’s still true that in general the longer you are married, the lower your chance of divorce, but it’s sure no guarantee anymore … Staying together until death do us part is a bigger challenge than it used to be because we expect so much more of marriage than we did in the past, and we have so many more options when a marriage doesn’t live up to those expectations.
Coontz’s analysis is sadly brilliant because it not only identifies a reason for marital breakdown – that people’s expectations from marriage are not being met – it also offers insight into what many believe about marital makeup. People increasingly view marriage as a commodity to be consumed rather than a commitment to be kept. This is why if the commodity of marriage does not live up to whatever arbitrary standards a particular spouse sets for the relationship, that spouse is willing to search elsewhere for a commodity that better meets their expectations.
Certainly there are – and should be – expectations for marriage. The Bible itself lays out certain expectations, including faithfulness (cf. Matthew 19:4-9) and gentleness (cf. Colossians 3:19). But a crassly consumer oriented view of marriage rooted in arbitrarily prescribed criteria is destined for failure. One person cannot meet the wants – or, for that matter, even the needs – of another person all the time. It is for these times, when disappointment with your spouse sets in, that commitment is needed. It is for these times that God’s wisdom on marriage is necessary: “A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Marriage means holding fast to your spouse in spite of disappointments, frustrations, and hurts along the way. This is what makes a marriage work. This is what makes a marriage last.
Your spouse will not always meet all your wants and needs. But your spouse can be devoted to you in love – even when you’re not all that fulfilling to be around. And you can be devoted to your spouse in love – even when they’re not all that fulfilling to be around. And such devotion can, in and of itself, be fulfilling.
[1] Sam Roberts, “Divorce After 50 Grows More Common,” New York Times (9.20.2013).
ABC Extra – The Divorce Debate
Divorce. Just the word is enough to make some people cringe, especially when this word is uttered in church. After all, some topics are so tender and contentious that people just assume public discourse on these issues be disallowed so that people’s thoughts and feelings on these subjects can echo privately and undisputedly in hallways of their hearts. This way, people do not have to suffer the cumbersome bother of articulating and defending a controversial position in public. Contrary to the prevailing zeitgeist, however, I would contend that issues such as divorce do need to be addressed publicly – precisely because of all the contention and confusion which surrounds them. For public discourse, when done intelligently and charitably, can lead to clarity concerning some of life’s most confusing riddles. This is why we chose to address the subject of divorce at Concordia this past weekend. And this is why Jesus chooses to address the subject of divorce in Matthew 19.
The scene is rife with tension. Jesus leaves Galilee and goes “to the other side of the Jordan” (verse 1). This region was under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, the tetrarch who divorced his wife so that he could marry the younger, prettier Herodius. When Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, calls Herod’s divorce into question, the ruler has John thrown into prison and later beheaded (cf. Matthew 14:6-11). It is with this episode looming in the background that some Pharisees ask Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason” (verse 3)? The verbiage of the Pharisees’ question alludes to a heated debate between two different rabbinic schools of theology in that day – the Hillel school and the Shammai school. The center of the debate swirled around Deuteronomy 24:1: “If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house.” The rabbis of the Hillel and Shammai schools heavily debated the phrase, “something indecent.” What does it mean to find “something indecent,” worthy of divorce, in a woman?
The Hebrew for “something indecent,” is erwat dabar – erwat, meaning “nakedness,” and dabar, meaning “a thing.” The Hillel school took this phrase, erwat dabar, as offering two separate and distinct reasons that a man could divorce his wife. On the one hand, a man could divorce his wife for erwat, that is, “nakedness,” which the rabbis interpreted as a circumlocution for adultery, meaning that if a man caught his wife naked in bed with another man, he could divorce her. But then, on the other hand, a man could also divorce his wife for dabar, meaning “a thing.” Well this isn’t very specific! Thus, the rabbis of the Hillel school capitalized on the generality of this word dabar and taught that a man could divorce his wife for adultery on the one hand and for anything else on the other! In other words, the rabbis of the Hillel school taught that a man could divorce his wife for “any and every reason.” Here, then, is the background to the question that the Pharisees ask Jesus.
Not everyone agreed with this liberal interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1, however. The rabbis of the Shammai school took the phrase erwat dabar as a single reason for divorce. That is, they interpreted this phrase to mean that a man could divorce his wife for “the naked thing,” that is, adultery. Thus, the Shammai school said that only adultery was an appropriate grounds for divorce.
So who’s right? It seems as though those in the Hillel school were allowing what they wanted to be true trump what they actually read to be true. In other words, they were allowing their desire to get an “any cause” divorce trump a more reasonable reading of Deuteronomy 24:1. In Hebrew, the word erwat is in a form called “construct.” A “construct” form in Hebrew is loosely analogous to a genitive, or possessive, case in more standard grammatical systems. Thus, from a sheer grammatical standpoint, the word erwat possesses the word dabar. Thus, this phrase refers to one reason for divorce, not to two. Literally, this phrase may be translated as, “the nakedness of a thing,” the “thing” being a person. Thus, this text is warning us things to “keep our clothes on” with people to whom we are not married.
Jesus, as a man who takes the biblical text seriously, upholds the interpretation that erwat dabar refers to one thing when responding to the Pharisees’ question: “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery” (verse 9). But Jesus actually takes His interpretation a step farther: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning” (verse 8). In other words, even divorce because of erwat dabar is not God’s ultimate plan. God’s ultimate plan is that a sinner repents, is forgiven, and receives a new tender heart toward their spouse. Divorce, if it can be avoided, is to be avoided.
Other challenges in a marriage that have the potential of leading to a divorce are outlined elsewhere in the Scriptures. These include abandonment by a spouse (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:15-16) and abuse, often considered to be a form of abandonment because it is a dereliction of marital duties (cf. Exodus 21:10-11). But whether the problem be adultery or abandonment or abuse, the root of all these problems is the same – a hard heart. And sadly, these hard hearts sometimes shatter marriages. But other times, miraculously, these hard hearts are softened and marriages are reconciled. And this is Jesus’ hope. This is Jesus’ plan.
And so, if you are trapped in a marriage that is loveless, cold, and draining, let me invite you get help. See a counselor. Share your experience with a pastor. Confess your sins and receive God’s forgiveness. For God’s forgiveness can crack even the hardest of hearts. And even if your marriage ultimately fails, you can rejoice in the promise that you are still party to a marriage that will last:
Then a voice came from the throne, saying: “Praise our God, all you His servants, you who fear Him, both small and great!” Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready.” (Revelation 9:5-7)
You are the bride of Christ. And your marriage to Him is a marriage that lasts – even into eternity. And in a world where marriages sadly and sometimes break, this is a marriage in which we can always rejoice and trust.
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