Divorce ...

To understand divorce one must first understand marriage. Marriage as we have redefined it, is no longer a union of merely two people, but of two people and our Lord. The priority of marriage is not just about what pleases us, but about how intimate a relationship can and should be with our Lord. As Christ becomes the real leader of our marriages and our wills become fully submitted to His will, divorce becomes a thing of the past, an antiquated idea, a concept no longer required. But this takes the commitment of two to submit themselves to our Lord, or divorce becomes viable again.

Divorce, like death itself, is a by-product of the effects of evil and selfishness in our realities. It occurs because both parties are not committed to the submission of their wills to Christ inside of our marriages. Many things can get in the way of this. Other priorities such as chemical addiction, unresolved emotional childhood trauma, even plain old greed in treating people like acquisitions can cloud the mind and keep us from submission to Christ. A life lived under these strong influences becomes impossible to change within human strength. It is the very reason why submission is SO important. We must be willing to change who WE are, before we can achieve real intimacy in our marriages. It is self-deception to believe only our partners must change, or commit to Christ, before our marriages are healed. It is the soul in the mirror who must submit and be willing to accept the concept they are wrong, ignorant, mistaken, and require change.

Many have debated the technical reasons why a divorce might be permitted under Biblical guidelines. The common philosophy is that only adultery by a spouse can somehow justify divorce, if the faithful spouse chooses it. And that remarriage is only possible after one spouse has been unfaithful to the other. This is a works-centric view of both divorce and marriage. It ignores the gospel completely and misunderstands the nature of marriage itself. First, if our marriages are of 3 including our Lord, then when does forgiveness become a relevant concept – only for smaller infractions? How does the infidelity of one spouse to the marriage, somehow justify the other one to follow suit? Do we only measure intimacy based on physical sexual expression, nothing else matters? This line of reasoning is based on the mistaken interpretation of council Christ gave to Pharisees bent on trapping him in a no-win question on marital law. It is not the complete picture by any means.

Fidelity to Christ must exist before fidelity to man can. My marital bond, my promise, my commitment to being faithful must be based upon the strength of my Lord, and my submission to Him, in order to be valid in the first place. My human “strength” has already been demonstrated to be worthless. My

“promises” are worth little if anything. The only commitments I am capable of making MUST by nature be based on strength that comes from outside of myself; strength that comes from Christ Himself. It is the reason we need a third leg in our marriages and in our lives. So then being unfaithful (the human condition) must occur to Christ, before it can ever be measured against my fellow man, including my spouse.

It is when I reject forgiveness, when I reject reform, when I reject divine truth that God has led me to, that I risk everything that is of value in my life, including my marriage and family. It is when I walk away from forgiveness, that forgiveness is unable to heal me. It is when I reject change, that I make a human pledge to continue to hurt those I am supposed to be demonstrating love to. It is when I reject truth that requires my recreation, my rethinking, my reevaluation of myself that I doom myself to a life alone of misery. It is not my partner who causes my divorce, it is me when I walk away from love itself.

There is nothing short of death that is so painful to witness, than a soul who walks away from the source of love, to pursue a course of misery and death. There is nothing so debilitating as offering love to partner who we intend to share eternity with, who at some point decides eternity is not what they want. Witnessing the premeditated embrace of pain, and knowing its consequence will be to attempt to consume all around us, is almost too much to bare. But Christ does it. He is forced to all the time. We have put Him in that position ourselves from time to time. Oh how Great His forgiveness to take us back after such a debacle, and how He mourns with all of heaven when we refuse to ever embrace Him again.

Divorce is a defacto result of losing our commitment to Christ. We cannot claim to be bound within a marriage while not wishing to be bound in the will of Christ. When we consciously separate ourselves from the source of love, the pain we embrace includes the destruction of the intimacy we have built with Him at the core of our marriage. As we separate from Christ, we simultaneously separate from our partners. This is divorce. A recognition of the effects of sin. Physical fidelity is nowhere nearly enough a standard to measure it by. It goes far deeper than that. A man who beats his wife, or belittles his wife, or treats his wife like another acquisition and refuses to be molded by submitting his will to Christ, is in effect divorcing his wife – no matter what the state of paperwork. A wife may not have filed for divorce in the courts, but when she humiliates her husband, runs him into the ground, nags him to the point of insanity, or is consumed by other higher priorities and refuses to submit her own will to Christ; she is in effect divorcing her husband already.

Our marital commitment and bond is tied directly to our dependence on Christ. When we throw ourselves at His feet for mercy; Mercy is ALWAYS given. When we harden our hearts and believe we need no forgiveness, none can be accepted. A marriage can forgive the most heinous of acts, the worst behavior known to man, the breaking of any vow or pledge, if the partners are still willing to humble themselves before the source of all love and forgiveness. Sexual promiscuity can damage a partner and strike a wound into their very soul, but if we humble ourselves to the master healer, He is capable of reaching into our very souls to effect a change and a healing. It is our connection to Christ alone that keeps us married, or sees us divorced from the lack of it.

This is a deeper understanding of both marriage and divorce than what has traditionally been offered within Christian teachings. So study it for yourself if you choose. But I maintain that marriage is a reflection of the trinity of heaven, it is a study of the intimacy that Christ desires to have with each of us, and it is a practical lesson on the break-down of self in order to build unity with another. These concepts are not possible based on human will and weakness. They are only possible through an intimate experimental knowledge of Christ. Like our salvation itself, our marriages require real interaction with Christ in order to survive. We must build trust in Him, before we can hope to have trust in each other. We must base unity on Him, before we can expect divergent opinions to meld into one. We must submit self on His alter, before service can be born in our hearts. True marriage is a reflection of all of these ideas. Divorce stands in opposition to them.

There are those who find themselves divorced already, or perhaps remarried already. The process may have occurred several times in their lives. For these hurting souls, there is the offer of infinite hope, from the one who is alone capable of offering a new beginning. Divorce may result from walking away from Christ, but this errant condition need not last a lifetime. We need not doom ourselves to be forever lost, because we made the HUGE mistake of leaving mercy for a while. We need not believe we are beyond redemption because we have left a massive wake of pain behind us given our actions that led us to this point. We may well have caused massive pain to many people, this is after all only the truthful results of embracing evil by choice. It is real. But love is greater than pain, and healing greater than destruction. Like the prodigal sons who walked before us, we can return from dining with pigs, to the feast our Father would offer us, if we are only willing to do so.

Returning to Christ can allow us to consider returning to marriage once again. Having rediscovered the source of unfailing love; can give us hope that divorce no more waits in our future. If we are willing to submit our wills once again to Christ, He is willing to take our lives and refashion them to something we could not even conceive of. Divorce drops off the radar along the way, like an old idea, or expression in language that just seems to lose relevance with the times. This is the secret to our future success, walking ever closer behind our Lord, depending on His wisdom instead of our own, submitting our will to Him to learn His desires instead of our own. It means rebirth is viable. It means healing can come no matter what our past. And more importantly, it means our new beginning can have no end. We can move our marriages beyond the possibility of divorce by committing our wills into submission to His. Praise God that He is willing to be such an integral part of our lives and marriages.