Marriage and Divorce
This is in response to the post on Desmond's blog. Go read that one first, and then come and read this.
When I think about these things I always remember the conversation between Christ and His apostles in Matt 19. He says to not get divorced -- and that divorce and remarriage is adultery. (And for all those through the ages who have wondered why God cares, I think posts like Desmond's nail it). The apostles' reaction is "If this is how it is, who would get married?" Christ's response was to basically agree with that assessment.
Marriage is hard. Making it work on a permanent basis takes so much work. Making it work and work well requires both people accept self-sacrificial view of the world -- to truly embrace the concept of agape love.
Which is a very unnatural thing for people. It is something we cannot grasp on our own.
Man's solution to the problem of the struggle of making marriage work is to either allow easy and cheap divorce (with all the associated problems that causes) or to engineer laws and relationships such that one party -- usually male -- can totally and completely dominate the entire thing.
So, either marriage is nothing (and we create legions of children with massive emotional problems) or women are chattel. Those are mankind's choices.
Fortunately, we are shown a better way. A way that we get from being recreated into something different.
But it is still hard, because grasping our reconciled nature is still a struggle, and it requires that we choose each and every day to go back after it.
It's hard. I see it all the time. For instance, my Dad's family. His dad and mom had what seems to me to have been a good marriage. It was at least a workable one, as they stayed together till death parted them. Very Christian sort of household.
Yet, of the four boys they had, two are divorced. Of the two that are still married to their original spouses, one has a very, very disfunctional sort of relationship (although both of them are, apparently, disfunctional in the same sort of ways so they are actually very happy together even as they destroy everything around them). The only one in still in a healthy, stable marriage is my dad. From the upbringing they had, one would have expected better than a 50% success rate.
That goes on to the next generation. Of the eight grandkids, 4 are still married to their original spouses (2 of which are me and my brother). Two are divorced, and two have never been married. One of the ones still married has a very, um, interesting relationship as she and her husband live almost independent lives -- he didn't even come to thanksgiving with her. She went by herself with one of the kids, while he did something else with the other one.
Again, not promising. It will probably get worse -- of these eight grandkids I am the oldest at just 30. The youngest is 19. Still, 25% of us have already been divorced.
My mom's family is a lot more stable -- all the kids are still married and of the six grandkids only one has been divorced and that was SO not his fault. Well, except that he married a person that no one in their right mind would have ever expected to remain faithful. So, I guess it is his fault, at least in part. But anyway, it's scary.
Marriage is hard. But this "divorce is just what happens" attitude we have is so very, very destructive. Divorce destroys lives, plain and simple. It would be much, much better if people would just not get married and never have kids, then do this. I see it all the time. Gloria works at an elementary school -- a private, Christian school no less -- and the shattered lives of all these children of divorce are absolutely on display for all to see.
Marriage is hard to make work. Failed marriages destroy lives. So, unless you can actually suck it up and learn how to live for someone other than yourself, don't do it. Just don't. Stay single. Don't have kids. Don't add to the pain already in this world.
When I think about these things I always remember the conversation between Christ and His apostles in Matt 19. He says to not get divorced -- and that divorce and remarriage is adultery. (And for all those through the ages who have wondered why God cares, I think posts like Desmond's nail it). The apostles' reaction is "If this is how it is, who would get married?" Christ's response was to basically agree with that assessment.
Marriage is hard. Making it work on a permanent basis takes so much work. Making it work and work well requires both people accept self-sacrificial view of the world -- to truly embrace the concept of agape love.
Which is a very unnatural thing for people. It is something we cannot grasp on our own.
Man's solution to the problem of the struggle of making marriage work is to either allow easy and cheap divorce (with all the associated problems that causes) or to engineer laws and relationships such that one party -- usually male -- can totally and completely dominate the entire thing.
So, either marriage is nothing (and we create legions of children with massive emotional problems) or women are chattel. Those are mankind's choices.
Fortunately, we are shown a better way. A way that we get from being recreated into something different.
But it is still hard, because grasping our reconciled nature is still a struggle, and it requires that we choose each and every day to go back after it.
It's hard. I see it all the time. For instance, my Dad's family. His dad and mom had what seems to me to have been a good marriage. It was at least a workable one, as they stayed together till death parted them. Very Christian sort of household.
Yet, of the four boys they had, two are divorced. Of the two that are still married to their original spouses, one has a very, very disfunctional sort of relationship (although both of them are, apparently, disfunctional in the same sort of ways so they are actually very happy together even as they destroy everything around them). The only one in still in a healthy, stable marriage is my dad. From the upbringing they had, one would have expected better than a 50% success rate.
That goes on to the next generation. Of the eight grandkids, 4 are still married to their original spouses (2 of which are me and my brother). Two are divorced, and two have never been married. One of the ones still married has a very, um, interesting relationship as she and her husband live almost independent lives -- he didn't even come to thanksgiving with her. She went by herself with one of the kids, while he did something else with the other one.
Again, not promising. It will probably get worse -- of these eight grandkids I am the oldest at just 30. The youngest is 19. Still, 25% of us have already been divorced.
My mom's family is a lot more stable -- all the kids are still married and of the six grandkids only one has been divorced and that was SO not his fault. Well, except that he married a person that no one in their right mind would have ever expected to remain faithful. So, I guess it is his fault, at least in part. But anyway, it's scary.
Marriage is hard. But this "divorce is just what happens" attitude we have is so very, very destructive. Divorce destroys lives, plain and simple. It would be much, much better if people would just not get married and never have kids, then do this. I see it all the time. Gloria works at an elementary school -- a private, Christian school no less -- and the shattered lives of all these children of divorce are absolutely on display for all to see.
Marriage is hard to make work. Failed marriages destroy lives. So, unless you can actually suck it up and learn how to live for someone other than yourself, don't do it. Just don't. Stay single. Don't have kids. Don't add to the pain already in this world.
posted by Christian Husband at 1:59 PM
24 Comments:
Where is Desmond's blog?
Yeah, I should have put a hot link in the text itself. But you could have looked at the handy-dandy blog list on the right of the blog.
Or, just go here:
http://desmonds-place.blogspot.com/
Good post. I agree and will probably elaborate more on this as I get a chance on my blog.
It's very encouraging to see another christian man struggling to live the core of the gospel in the training grounds of marriage.
Good post, XH.
I don't think the message from my/our experience is quite that divorce 'destroys' lives. By and large, my siblings (step- and otherwise) and I have lived decent, productive lives. But we DO have baggage, and that baggage is a pain in the ass.
It's worth repeating, tho, that there were several mitigating factors that made our situation a lot better than it might have been - the effective 'disappearance' of the 'exes', the birth of two new siblings, and my folks determination for building a new family. Most 'children of divorce' don't have it nearly so well as we did.
I suppose it's also worth mentioning that neither of my parents were the 'at fault' person for their divorces; once they got themselves a suitably 'reliable' partner, they did the marriage thing pretty well. That's also less-than-typical for second marriages.
Of the seven of us kids in our family (currently aged 36-51), six of us are married, none of us have been divorced, and three of us have celebrated silver anniversaries. It's something of a point of pride with us that divorce hasn't passed through to our generation.
I hate the idea of divorce, and I am keenly aware that among the things that are necessary for a marriage to survive and thrive is the simple determination that divorce will not be an option. But, as soon as I say that, I have to acknowledge that, while necessary, it isn't sufficient - unless your spouse has the same determination, it may not matter.
And, I also have to acknowledge just a little bit of ambivalence in myself, because, bad as my parents' divorce was, in the long run, our lives weren't ruined, and we just may have ended up with a better situation than we started with.
These are all very human realities, and they aren't 'mathematically' determined - people are simultaneously more fragile and more robust than they 'ought to be'. It's just one of those mysterious aspects of life, I think. . .
I don't see any handy-dandy blog list on the right. I see "About me", "Previous posts" and the power blogger button.
Strange?!?
That's weird, ax. I just updated the thing yesterday. I see it when I load up my page. I just assumed that meant everyone else could as well.
Stupid blogger software.
Des: See, I took the message of your post to be "wow, we were lucky to just escape with some baggage because, in general, it destroys lives." Maybe I just read too much into it. But that is what I, personally, got out of your story. Because it certainly isn't typical. At all.
Oh, and I hope I'm not digging too deep into something personal here, but it is interesting that you, a Catholic, are making distinctions between the "at fault" party and the "innocent" party. Doesn't the RCC teach that it really doesn't matter who was at fault? I've studied their views on this a bit and generally agree with them on it far more than I do the usual Protestant take.
Even in the Christian community, I see this as a struggle. It's a Catch-22. We aren't supposed to be having sex before we get married, so many Christians end up getting married young, which can cause some problems. Or, we hold out, which causes more problems, because our bodies were made to become sexual at 14 or 16 years old and we've been trying to "hold back" for a decade or two.
There's a lot of Christians divorcing just because it "didn't work out."
Good questions, XH; I'll try to do them justice. So long as you don't mind if my comment runs a bit long. . . ;)
You didn't necessarily take me wrong. In a lot of ways, we were really lucky. And there really are really nasty effects that accrue to children of divorce. But 'destroys' is too strong a word, at least as a blanket statement. Some people are effectively 'destroyed' by their parents' divorces; other folks are just left with 'baggage'. And baggage is something that I, personally, would rather do without, if I had my druthers.
And yeah, for the reasons I described, our situation wasn't real 'typical'. So maybe, in the 'big picture', there's more 'destruction' than 'baggage'; I don't know.
I'm not really sure how to respond to the 'theological' comment. I am fundamentally in harmony with what my church teaches about divorce. Perhaps my experience has tempered some of the 'dogmatism' I might otherwise have.
As re 'at fault', I'm not really staking out a 'theological' position, so much as describing the situation, perhaps with a less-than-useful 'shorthand'. Was my dad hard to live with? Probably; I know him well enough to know what my mother is talking about. But she left; he didn't. On my step-mother's side, her first husband, or so I'm told, was an abusive drunk who effectively abandoned the family. As you said in your post, she could be said to bear some responsibility for marrying him in the first place, but the fact is that, when it came to the actual break-up of the marriage, both of them were pretty one-sided situations. Again, from a 'theological' standpoint, I shouldn't admit that any good could come out of their divorces, but from a purely 'existential' standpoint, I can't simply say that it was wrong and leave it at that.
Do you catch what I mean when I say I'm 'ambivalent'?
And let me say to FTN that I understand what you're saying. I stand up and shout from the mountain tops about how incredibly valuable it was for Molly and me to know each other really, really well, and to have a fundamental respect for each other, before either of us thought of the other as a potential life-mate. I think that the Christian community that we were in facilitated that in some significant ways that wouldn't be in place in a lot of Christian places. Among members of our community who were single and married each other, there have been very few divorces (I can think of one off the top of my head).
And, if folks thought about it, it is a scandal that Christians divorce at just about the same rate as the secular culture.
OK, getting down off my soapbox now. . .
FTN: Good points. I have no solutions, but I do have some opinions. (shock!)
First, so very much of how we act in our own marriages is an imitation of how we saw our parents act. If your parents are screwed up and their marriage was screwed up, you'll probably be screwed up and so will YOUR marriage.
"for I, the LORD your God,... punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation..."
Our children DO pay for our sins, not the least in that they imitate the pattern we set.
So, we got to be careful. If the kids are stable and well-adjusted and have had a good example from their parents their marriages will be much more likely to succeed no matter if they marry young or old.
But age is definately a factor. I think it is one of the most screwed up facets of modern American culture that we don't have our kids actually "grow up" until their in their mid 20s. Time was, once you were in your late teens you were an adult. You were expected to act like one. Now, we expect kids in college (even grad school) to behave like semi-tame zoo-dwellers. Animal house indeed. We expect that the average 21 year old will be in college, getting plastered every night and hooking up with random people. We expect that they will not have jobs (and couldn't hold one if they had one) and will, instead, live off of mom and dad while "going to school". We expect that, in general, they won't even take their classes very seriously and will only get through because of grade inflation and a general lowering of all standards.
So, yeah, when kids get married young today, we expect that they aren't mature enough to actually understand what the commitment means or be able to really live it. And, as things stand now, we're probably right in that.
Yet, as you pointed out, biology is what it is. We, as a society, may delay emotional maturation by almost a decade, but physical maturation happens by God's clock, not ours.
Des: Ah crap, this post is already too long. I'll take up yours here in a minute.
OK, back now.
I'll stick by my usage of the word "destroys." I've seen it too many times. Way too many times. My friends. My brother's friends. My kids' friends. My friends' kids. I see it every day.
And why should this be surprising? Christ himself said that divorce is absolutely against God's plan and God's pattern:
"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, '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."
And, when we go against God's created order and created pattern, we should not expect anything good. We were made to fit into a particular designed world in a particular way. When we force ourselves out of that created order it is the literal square peg into the round hole situation. It is not what we were designed for.
Like all things, there is a spread of effects. Some people -- like you and your family -- luck out and get into the near tail of the bell-curve a few standard deviations off the mean. Most aren't so lucky. And some are on the other tail of the curve.
But even when are lucky in it, it is still against God's created order and God's created design. It is going to give you sub-optimal results.
My theological question was more, well, theological. Of course if someone is a good, committed person that just happens to get cheated on and finds another good, committed person who was also cheated on that pairing will work better than if the other two spouses hooked up. But that's beside the point. The RCC teaches -- and I have to, in general, agree with them -- that ALL second marriages are to be prohibited without exception.
Now, certainly, that would have some rather profound effects on how your life went, and if it worked out for your family, that is great.
But leaving your specific example and going into the general, I think that this is part and parcel of what Christ was talking about in Matt 19 as I quoted above. God meant this marriage thing to be permanent, and to Him it is. Always. Again, going against that is going against our created function and our created nature and will always give sub-optimal results as compared to trying your best to comform to the created order.
God gave us His rules for our own benefit. To keep us from harming ourselves and others. To keep us from destroying lives through our ignorance and corruption. If He says that marrying a divorced person is adultery then He says that for a reason, not just to hear Himself talk and not to just make life hard and not fun. It's to our own good to listen to Him.
Just for the record, I agree with you. And 'forever til death do us part' is how Molly and I have lived our marriage from the very beginning. On one level, that's what gives you the motivation to work at making your marriage strong - you're in it for the long haul, so you better figure out how to do it.
And all this talk about 'conforming to the created order' - be still my heart! How very 'Natural Law' of you! ;)
I also think that the Church (and here I'm using it in the sense of 'the Christian people', not just the Roman Catholic Church) would do well to teach her young people a whole lot better than is typically done about the seriousness of marriage, and about how to identify and choose a suitable life-partner. Something beyond "she's cute, and I'd really like to have sex with her". Molly and I were taught along exactly those lines, and as I never tire of saying, even just giving serious thought to what kind of woman I could spend my life with puts you farther along the road to a successful marriage than most people get these days.
Natural Law
ppppbbbbbbttttttt!!!!!!!
(That would be my tongue out making rasberries at you)
Eh. This isn't "natural law" the way the neo-platonists in the 4th century church started developing it -- but it IS from the Biblical connection they saw that let them hook natural law into Christian theology.
I mean, what was Christ's point? The Pharisees were asking him a question from a then-current rabbinical debate over the passage in Deuteronomy that allowed for divorces. Christ's answer went, not to the Law, but to creation. God created it this way.
Very similar to Paul's arguments against women holding leadership roles in the church in I Tim 2.
Like "natural law" it says that we were created a certain way and are designed to fit into THAT pattern. Unlike natural law, this approach basis the ideas about what is and is not part of this created order on scripture and not on philosophical speculation. It's not "I have thought really deeply about this and feel that such-and-such is a vital part of God's created plan." Instead it is, "I picked up the durn book and read it."
So, yes I DO agree with the basic statement of natural law theology that we should abide by God's created plan. I disagree about the details of that plan. Which is why I STILL don't think birth control is sinful.
OK, with that out of the way, let me say I agree whole-heartedly with your post. Instead of teaching our kids that "if they make a mistake and marry an idiot that divorce is an option," we should teach them, "Look, you get to have sex with one and only one person in your lifetime. Make sure you pick the right one the first time because the first time is the only time. If you make a bad choice you are really only left with the choice of remaining celibate for the rest of your life, or of living a life that will condemn you to hell. There is no third option of finding someone better. You had better choose carefully. You had better choose wisely."
OK, sorry - I had a pretty good idea what you'd think about Natural Law. I was just yanking your chain (did you see the little 'winky-face' emoticon?)
But, the current issue of 'First Things' has an interesting article on 'Protestants and Natural Law', if you're interested. I thought it was interesting, at any rate. . .
I saw the winky guy. Hence the zzrrbbt response.
First Things? Never heard of it. Sounds like I might want to read it, though.
'First Things' is a monthly journal on 'Religion and Public Life'. It's one of only two subscriptions that I've kept up (Touchstone magazine is the other).
It's fairly highbrow, and oriented to questions of 'public policy'. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus is the editor-in-chief, if you've heard of him.
My non-Catholic friends tell me that it's fairly 'Catholic' in tone, but it often contains articles by Lutheran/Reformed writers, and also Jewish ones.
If you're interested, check out their website:
www.firstthings.com
And, if you're interested in Touchstone, you can find them at:
www.touchstonemag.com
FWIW
I've extended on this basic post a bit at my place, well before reading any of the comments.
Thank goodness, as I think my post is long enough as it is!
D.
After a very emotional talk about state of my marriage with my in-laws, my father-in-law said this to me:
"God doesn't want marriages to break up. The reason that second and third marriages rarely work out is that they are searching for that same spiritual connection God gave them for each other in their first marriage. They can never get that back with someone else."
I think there should be some slight clarification here about what the RCC aknowledges as a marriage. Christian marriage, even if not in the Catholic Church is generally considered sacramental, and thus, bound by God.
A purely civil marriage, however, would not be recognized by the Church and so, as far as She is concerned, wasn't valid in the first place. Divorce from a civil marriage does not carry the same moral ramifications that it would from a sacramental one, as far as the RCC is concerned (I'm sure I can find a reference to back this up).
As to the question about an "innocent" party, this is from the Catechism. "It can happen that one of the spouses is the innocent victim of a divorce degreed by civil law; this spouse therefore has not contravened the moral law. There is a considerable difference between a spouse who has sincerely tried to be faithful to the sacrament of marriage and is unjustly abandoned, and one who through his own grave fault destroys a canonically valid marriage." -2386, CCC.
True, but, well, I disagree in the first place with the RCC's definition of marriage. The early church stayed out of marriage as it was seen as something that pre-existed the church and was out of its jurisdiction, except to recognize the necessity of fidelity. It DID recognize the difference between civil marriages and marriages in the eyes of God, but in the other direction. It would claim that all civil marriages (that were consummated) were marriages in the eyes of God, but so were many relationships that didn't involve the state at all.
For instance, Augustine once speculated on whether or not his past relationship with his live-in girl friend (as chronicled in Confessions) could have been considered a "real" marriage. He concluded that, yes, it could have if both parties had intended it to be permanent.
Which fits the Biblical definition of marriage, especially from the OT. Marriage was consent + commitment + the sex act. Oh, and sometimes that commitment thing wasn't necessarily there, as Deut 22 shows.
Second, the RCC may make a distinction between the "guilty" and "innocent" parties in a divorce, but it still bans BOTH from remarriage as it sees that there is no valid way to end a marriage in the eyes of God once established. Someone might end it in the eyes of the state, but to God it is still in existence until the death of one of the people involved.
This is a somewhat controversial teaching as many people teach that if someone cheats on you then you can divorce and remarry freely as their infidelity ended the marriage. This comes from a particular interpretation of Matt 19. I, personally just like the RCC, do not agree with that interpretation, but I will not declare it solid and infallible. Any way you look at it, that verse is hard to interpret and so there is room for a variety of opinions.
You're absolutely right. The Church does ban both the "innocent" and guilty" party from remarrying, but I appreciate the distinction being made. Imagine a person's marriage being destroyed by infidelity and abandonment and then having the added shame of feeling he/she is condemned by the Church. It is right that the Church make such a distinction. It is merciful.
Of course it is. It is also Biblical. That's what Paul was talking about in I Cor 7. "If the unbeliever leaves, let him go because you are not his slave."
You can't MAKE someone stay married to you. You can just honor your own commitments -- something which is applicable both before the other party leaves as well as after.
As for your point about what constitutes a civil marriage vs. sacramental, I think there's an important reason the Church makes the distinction.
A sacramental marriage is a covenant between God, a man, and a woman. It is a deliberate contract entered into freely and intentionally. The exchange of vows to each other and to God should carry more weight than two people who got drunk in Vegas and ended up with a license, or two people who moved in together and, out of habit more than design, never altered the situation.
The second two examples don't have anything to do with God or really, promises to each other. The theology on marriage and God's purpose for human love as it fits in with God's plan for our salvation is so awsome and such an integral part of who we are that raising the state of matrimony to a sacrament is a must: a dignity far above and beyond just two people promising to stay together until they die (although that's certainly part of it). Sacramental marriage is so much more than that.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this. I see too much scriptural evidence that it is God who joins the people in marriage, not the people -- so it is what God thinks and believes that is important, what people think and believe is less so. So, Deut 22 says that if a man simply has sex with a virgin the two are married and he may never divorce her. God has joined them together because, through the sex act, they have become one flesh. It is sacramental, but because God is involved, not because the church is involved.
But you disagree. Fine. You have your reasons, I have mine. Let's just stop arguing, it's getting obnoxious.
Done.
Gee, and here I thought it was just me. . .
;) to you both.
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