FIVE HUSBANDS AND TWO MEN: Christian Divorce and Re-Marriage? (Part 11 of 18)

21. The Dangers of Truth

Should we not teach baptism by immersion because some mischievous baptizer might drown the innocent?  Should we never fly because planes sometimes crash?  Should we throw away all electronic communication devices because some careless person abused the use of them for pornographic purposes?  Should we be angry at mirrors because they could be brutally blunt? Should we ban wives from kitchen knives because some aggrieved wife once upon a time used a kitchen knife to bloodily tell her stupid man that there could be a limit to enduring abuses?  Should we flee the Bible because some mischievous preacher led a few astray with distorted interpretations of it?  Should truth never be told because some unwary fellow might abuse it someday somehow?

That error is popular does not make it right.  At the risk of seeming to be making an argument for careless divorce, the balance should be provided.  In the face of rigid ancient opinions apparently founded on the scriptures, sincere but inaccurate opinions for that matter, providing a different perspective to the sincere ancient errors could be tough.   Besides, the fact that an opinion is sincere does not make it appropriate, for sincerity does not mean rightness.

John, the Apostle of love, writes: “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).  Was John, by giving notice of such a provision of grace, calling us to sin?  No.  “IF we sin” does not mean “WHEN you sin,” but there are those who abuse that scripture, as if grace were a license for sin.  Should the apostle have refrained from providing that balance because it was possible for that scripture to be abused by the inordinate and the extreme?

Apostle John, writing to his “little children” for whom God also had a place, made it clear: “these things write I unto you, that ye SIN NOT.”  That was the ideal demand of God: “sin not”; yet that understanding father of the church noted that the condition of being immature “little children” (or ‘hard hearted,’ as in other cases) could unfortunately dispose some of them to sin, at times.  If that happened, and the ideal condition was failed, those “little children” were not to remain in the sin as if life ended there, as if whoever has failed the ideal has failed altogether.  There was still a way out, provided by the Father of all.  Today, that scripture is handled by some Grace extremists to suggest that one can do whatever they wish and still get back, because Big Daddy Upstairs is always there to clean them up and prepare them for their next stupid escapade.  Should John not have written that verse because of the likelihood of such later abusers and abuses?  That grace is abused by some does not mean that grace is a fraud; that truth might hurt is not always a justification for why truth should not be told (Galatians 2:21).

The extreme conservative might unfairly judge this book as providing flippant windows of escape out of the very serious institution of marriage when one should be encouraging partners to stay in, despite the storms, and hopefully wage it through.  That is great counsel, which has worked in many cases; yet that does not imply that the other side to the matter is an error.  Rather than blaming the road sign for effectively pointing to an exit haven in the unfortunate event of an unexpected hazardous occurrence during the trip, we should save that energy to instruct road users on how to obey road rules and avoid those toxic conditions that induce the escape through those paths to which the road signs so eloquently point.  Such road signs to safety should worry us less than those who have made of marriage a caged wrestling tournament, which should only end either with the death of the weaker contestant or both.

When God instituted marriage, He gave each partner their roles, but modern culture, seeking to ‘modernise’ the divine order, has revised the roles and is suffering consequences in the form of unfortunate divorces, very many.  For example, cultures and societies that uphold the place of the wife as ‘helper,’ ‘submitted’ and “subject” unto her husband, rather than enthrone her as co-head with him, have far fewer divorces than those that teach and empower her to seek and insist on ‘equality’ with her head.  When such deviant societies emasculate the man into reverse ‘submission’ in the name of modernity, and encourage the wife to usurp his office, or turn men into loveless brutes whose protective and providing roles are relegated to third-party appliances, they bear the consequences of the divine order breached (Ephesians 5:22, 24, 25, 28; Colossians 3:18).

Data from around the world suggests that modern cultures have seen more divorces than in the more conservative past, and traditional or rural societies have fewer divorces than urban societies.  Also, Western (and Westernised) cultures have a higher divorce rate (between 40% and 50%) than more traditional cultures.  For example, the divorce rate in India is generally considered to be about 1%, and in traditional Jewish societies, about 20% or less, due to strong family structures and religious factors.  As we invest in teaching those ancient ‘road signs,’ we would have less need to bother about escape routes, apparently ‘cheaply’ provided.  In other words, if we took time to train our sons and daughters, our husbands and wives, on their proper roles according to the divine order, rather than let ‘modern’ culture and its books and social media do it for us, we would have less cause to worry about uncomfortable teachings that shake our proud traditional tables.

That having been said, we may not refrain from putting out truth because the wrong person might find in it an excuse for their wrong ways.  Someone will always find what they seek, whether they seek right or wrong.  If they don’t find it, they would usually ‘find’ something that looks like it, or something to call it (Matthew 7:7).  Saving truth should not be restrained because it is likely to be abused by chronic fault ‘finders.’

Any truth taken to the extreme is as dangerous as the error it condemns.  Any side of the marriage equation can be taken to the extreme.  It is to be expected that not everyone would judge this message as providing a needed balance.  After all, for me, too, this has been a learning, unlearning, and shocking relearning encounter, being confronted with disturbing fresh insights at variance with cherished old conceptions, without the process being sophistic.

22. In Such Cases…

When Paul said, “A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases,” he was addressing not only the specific case of someone insisting on leaving the marriage because the other had become spiritually unacceptable to or incompatible with them, he was also addressing other similar “cases.” He didn’t say, “in such a case,” but “in SUCH CASES.”  In other words, Paul was providing a guide, a general principle, especially as marriage issues are diverse from case to case.  Greek scholars tell us that the word used in that passage for “such cases” denotes a class, a category, a type.  That may be further clarified by considering other passages in the Bible where the word occurs.

We find the word in Matthew 18:5 which says, “And whoso shall receive one such [toioutos] little child in my name receiveth me.”  Did Jesus in that passage mean the specific child that He was holding up as an object lesson, or all ‘such’ tender-hearted people, all children?  We find the word in Mark 4:33: “And with many such [toioutos] parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it.”  Did Jesus restrict His point to the parable of the mustard seed that He had just told, or He meant all other ‘such’ [toioutos] cases?  We find the word in Mark 6:2; 7:8, 13; 10:14; Luke 13:2; John 4:23, and so on, referring not to a particular case but to a kind, a class, a category, a group that shares the same characteristics. Therefore, to restrict the clause in 1 Corinthians 7:15 to the specific situation of irreconcilable perspectives between partners only on the grounds of one partner having become a Christian, is a narrow reading of the passage.

Some sects are persuaded that unless the partners involved were a ‘Christian brother’ and a ‘Christian sister,’ or a Christian convert and a non-churched person, the exemption clause did not apply.  Paul was not speaking about an eagle; he meant birds, which includes the eagle as well as the sparrow and the parrot and the vulture.  He was not speaking of a horse; he meant animals, which includes not only the horse but also the cow, the dog, the lion, and the donkey.  Paul merely used the one case as a premise for addressing other “such cases” where conjugal harmony is threatened by a sudden change in perspectives to life by the husband or the wife, to the point of one party vehemently seeking to go and cannot be restrained because, again, two CANNOT “walk TOGETHER … except they be agreed” (Amos 3:3).

That Paul is not averse to remarriage after legitimate divorce appears to come out in two other verses in the chapter, where he states the possibility of remarriage (v.28) to the one who has been “loosed from a wife” (v.27).  He says that if such a person should remarry, they have not sinned.

27 Art thou BOUND unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou LOOSED from a wife? seek not a wife.

28 But and IF thou MARRY, thou hast NOT SINNED; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh: but I spare you (1 Corinthians 7:27-28).

When faith in God reasonably becomes the object of contention between the parties, when relationship with God is the basis for a choice by either party to stay or go, one should not sacrifice their righteousness merely to retain the other (Matthew 10:36-40; Luke 14:26-27).  That is the implicit point of Paul.  There are multiples of “such cases.”

We would find in the Bible that 1 Corinthians 7:15 is not the only instance where Paul addressed one case as a template for other “such cases.”  In Galatians 5:19-21, for example, Paul listed sins that he identified as “the works of the flesh.”  The list included such sins as adultery, fornication, heresies, drunkenness, idolatry, “and such like.”  He added that “they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”  To say that only the sins specifically listed there qualify as “works of the flesh” misses the meaning of “and such like” and “such things.”  Pornography is not on the list.  Does it therefore not qualify as a work of the flesh?  Can lewd dressing be reasonably considered under “and such like” or “such things”?  Gambling, pride, cheating in an exam, drug abuse and abortions, the falsification of personal documents such as a birth certificate or a driver’s license, are all missing from the list in Galatians 5.  Can we therefore say that they do not qualify as works of the flesh, or can we justly consider them as covered under “and such like,” and “such things”?

Paul’s exemption applies to the exact ‘case’ where an unbelieving partner no more wishes to remain married to a converted Christian partner (especially in some Muslim cultures), and other “such cases” where one partner physically vacates the house or the marriage, or deploys other legal or devious or forceful means to vacate the house and/or the marriage because they are unwilling to live with their ‘New’ partner.  It can apply to “such cases” where an actual departure or insistence to depart is not disposed to peace or reconciliation.  Such a departer, under the terms in 1 Corinthians 7:15, may qualify as an ‘unbeliever,’ and the other is released by the action of the departed.  Even where they might not be an ‘unbeliever,’ the case of violent insistence to depart, or the condition of one being a threat to “peace” in the home and in life, would seem to have fulfilled the conditions of “such cases.”

Paul’s clause does not say that the abandoned one should stay unmarried by reason of the departed.  It says that the abandoned one “is not under bondage in such cases,” implying that they were free.  Free from what, or free to do what?  Free to remarry, if they wish.  It is strange to insist on “bondage” where freedom is offered.  Might this explain the Samaritan case, as both writings, especially the epistles to the Corinthians, addressed a gentile audience, even though Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians was written more than three decades after the gospel of John?

From The Preacher’s diary, 

July 20, 2021. 

• A link to the e-book version of these posts shall be provided in the last three ‘Parts’ of this series.
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Watch out for:

• The call to peace
• Obeying Paul or Christ?
• Resolving The Samaritan Puzzle
• The Old Testament of Jesus
• God Hates Divorce
• Hardness of Heart
• What God has Joined Together
• The Pre-Eminence of Grace over Law