One of the most spiritually gut-wrenching events that a Christian can go through is a divorce. Even after a divorce is legally finalized, its sting can last a lifetime.
To make matters worse, it is not unusual for well-meaning Christians to add to the sting by giving alleged “biblical” counsel that condemns, as opposed to giving counsel that heals.
Christians who have undergone a divorce don’t need others to speak words of condemnation, because Christians who have undergone divorce often condemn themselves.
They do so whenever they compare themselves to the elderly married couple who have been married fifty years or more and who are in church every Sunday morning.
Divorced Christians condemn themselves when they read Bible verses about divorce but overlook the cultural context of those verses.
Sadly, preachers may also overlook the cultural context of those verses when preaching about divorce, thus adding to the emotional pain that divorced Christians experience.
I do not write about divorce as a preacher or as a professional counselor. Instead, I write about divorce as a Christian who has underwent and survived divorce. I write as someone who has been on the receiving end of bad counsel from preachers. I write as someone who has witnessed the pain that other divorced Christians experience.
It is not easy for me to write about this topic, but I do so with the hope of helping Christians who have been through divorce.
What I have come to believe about this topic is influenced by what the Bible says in Micah 6:8. In the JPS Tanakh, that verse says, “It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”
When talking about divorce, Jesus promoted justice and mercy, and he did so within the context of the ancient Jewish society. He was well aware that Jewish men had bad habit of divorcing their wives for unjust reasons, and he was well aware that people could be socially condemned for getting divorced for a just reason.
In Matthew 5:32, Jesus says, “I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
In Matthew 19:9, Jesus says, “I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Was Jesus turning a blind eye toward people who are physically abused by their spouses? Was he without mercy for people who have been abandoned by their spouses or who have been harmed by their spouses in ways that threaten their survival?
No, I do not believe so. God is just and merciful. It would be out of his character to require people to remain victims of abusive relationships that serve no purpose for his kingdom.
When one reads Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9, one sees the mercy that Jesus has for people who have been sinned against by their spouses. In those verses, Jesus clearly permits divorce for victims of sexual sin. Nowhere does the Bible speak against the victims of such sin becoming remarried after a divorce.
It is true that Jesus did not mention victims of abusive spouses, but to focus on a strict word-for-word interpretation of his words would be to miss the forest for the trees. Again, Jesus promoted justice and mercy. There is no justice and mercy in telling victims of abusive spouses that they cannot get divorced, or, if they are divorced, that they can never remarry. One can infer from the teachings of Jesus that victims of abusive spouses are under the same umbrella as victims of sexual sin.
Even if a Christian has just cause to get divorced, that Christian can still bear the pain of a shattered dream about marriage. We Christians can fool ourselves into thinking that, if only we had done this and that, then we wouldn’t have gone through divorce.
I wish that such were true, but it isn’t reality. That is because one cannot control what one’s spouse says or does. We Christians can do our best with the help of the Holy Spirit and still end up divorced. We only harm ourselves by comparing ourselves to an ideal that wasn’t realistic in the first place.
Yes, marriage can work between two Christians who are being led by the Holy Spirit and who give their relationship to God priority over their relationship to each other. That is why one can find in churches married couples who have been married for fifty years or longer.
Yet, it is wrong and harmful for divorced Christians to belittle themselves because their own marriages didn’t last “until death do us part”. If divorced Christians are divorced because of sin on their part, then they have this assurance from 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Divorce isn’t the unforgivable sin, and neither is remarriage.
Sadly, it isn’t unusual for divorced Christians to be re-victimized by people who take Bible verses out of cultural context, with some of those people being preachers or church elders.
As I see it, pastors should acknowledge that divorced Christians have been harmed by bad counsel coming from certain preachers. All too often, divorced Christians will stop attending church altogether because of how they have been treated by preachers or other church leaders. This is especially true when the divorced Christians were victims of sexual sin or abusive spouses.
Such Christians need the healing ministry of a local church, but they won’t get that healing if ministers don’t acknowledge all sources of those Christians’ pain, including the pain inflicted by bad preachers or bad elders.
I have encountered way too many Christians who have been too scared to set foot in a church because they expect to be condemned for being divorced, even when they got divorced because of an adulterous or physically-abusive spouse.
I felt that way after my divorce. While sitting through a church service, I would look at the 2-inch (5-centimeter) scar on my left arm that my ex-wife gave to me, and I would wonder if I was condemned to a life of singleness. I am certain that other divorced Christians have felt condemned, too.
Well, I have good news of divorced Christians. They are not condemned. In Romans 8:1, the Apostle Paul writes, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
God bestows his mercy on divorced Christians as much as he does on non-divorced Christians. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, divorced Christians can recover from divorce, and they can have another marriage, one that is pleasing to God.*
God works to restore the broken lives of all his children. That includes his divorced children.
*I am not saying that every divorced Christian will find another spouse, but that a divorced Christian can find another spouse. In my case, I met my late wife after my divorce. At the time that I met her, I was involved in a church that had a godly approach to divorce and remarriage.