Living the tensions: Christians and divorce

Christian Century, July 30, 1997 by Max L. Stackhouse

Divorce deeply troubles Christians. They know that both scripture and tradition condemn it, and the evidence mounts that it is hard on kids, yet nearly everyone today has been touched by it, either personally or through families and friends. Not to face the issue openly in our churches would be a failure of moral nerve. But to be legalistic about divorce would align us with those who tried to trick Jesus by asking him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

Jesus recognized the trap in the question and answered these lawyers by referring to the law. He appealed to the ancient law of Moses, which permitted divorce under certain circumstances. But he went further, citing the very foundational design of God's creation: "`God made them male and female,'" he quotes. "`For this reason a man shall have his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.'" In his own words, he concludes, "Therefore what God has joined together let no one separate." The ideal for marriage is the heterosexual, monogamous lifelong union. That is what God intended; any departure from it is problematic.

But in the actual living of life, the people of God have had trouble with this hard saying of Jesus. Various sections of the Bible seem to present other arrangements, such as polygamy, as permissible. The laws of Moses allowed divorce and ramarriage, and Jesus himself forgave the woman taken in adultery. Throughout its history, the church has allowed various procedures for annulment and separation. John Milton, the great Puritan poet, was one of the first to publish a theological defense of divorce. But all these compromises recognize that the necessary decisions of life do not always match what God wants for us -- and what, at the deepest levels, we want for ourselves.

There are other sayings of Jesus that are equally hard to live out. The New Testament admonishes us to live peacefully with our neighbors. "Blessed are the peacemakers," Jesus says. Yet when Christians are confronted by murderers, rapists, or tyrants like Adolf Hitler, they may feel forced to respond with coercive force. Though war is wrong, it is sometimes the justifiable lesser to two evils. Similarly, though the biblical tradition presses us to trust in God's capacity to provide for us and to take no thought for the future, Christians have developed doctrines of responsible stewardship that involved careful financial planning, insurance and retirement funds.

In these matters, the Catholic approach has been somewhat different from the Protestant. The Catholic tradition set up a two-level morality, one for priest, monks and nuns and another for the laity. Those in religious orders are to avoid worldly activities that could result in divorce, require the use of coercive violence, or involve them in economic calculation. They take vows of chastity, poverty and obedience to church authorities.

The Protestant tradition has not made this kinds of distinction. Our tradition does not differentiate between clergy and laity, between a higher and a lower morality, as Catholicism does. We all confront equally the tensions between the ideal and the actual conditions of life. All are called to live in but not of the world. Protestants realize that some people will live all or most of their lives unmarried, and honor and include those who remain single. Through baptism and confirmation, we join the church, our most significant community, as individuals rather than as families. Protestantism demands perfection of all and yet acknowledges that none is perfect. Jesus tells the rich man who addresses him as "good teacher" that "no one is good but God alone." When the shocked disciples ask, Who, then, can be saved? Jesus replies that it is possible only with God. It is only through God's forgiveness and mercy that we can live admidst and engage the tensions of this world.

Everyone who has been divorced already knows something of this. No one thinks that divorce is wonderful; no one gets married in order to get divorced. When they marry, people hope and plan for a stable, constant, faithful relationship of mutual support and case. When the marital relationship begins to break down, when it becomes intolerable or even vicious, no moral person can avoid feeling shame and guilt. Even if each partner becomes convinced that the spouse bears most of the blame, each is still haunted by the feeling that perhaps "I, too, am guilty."

Sometimes, instead of blaming the spouse, one partner will take all the blame, condemning herself or himself to a dark pit of despair. Such a person has a hard time imagining forgiveness. Usually, when we probe the feelings of people whose marriage is ending, we find exactly what the Bible tell us: an ideal has been compromised. The ancient cries of the faithful surge from our hearts: "God help us. Lord have mercy."

Those who have stable marriages must not cast stones at those who divorce. Happy marriage are a precious gift which we should celebrate with thankfulness, for few if any deserve this gift. Those who hold troubled marriage together through sacrifice and determination are even more to be honored, for the courage to face daily difficulty is surely a sign of grace. We are all tempted to put our trust in activities that strain marriages: the drive for success, the lust for money, the pursuit of career, the deceptive solace of liquor, the fascination of sexual novelty, the quest for self-fulfillment. Jesus tells us that we must strive after the ideal, but that since our lives are often less than ideal, we dare not judge others, "lest we be judged."