Divorced From Reality
Exposing the deception and dire consequences of our deal with the devil on divorce
This newsletter is chapter VI of an upcoming eBook on the scandal of Church-sanctioned divorce. If you haven’t already done so, please check out chapters I, II, III, IV, V, and VII, as well as the preface, afterword, and appendices A and B.
Divorce and remarriage in brief
We’ve been scrutinizing the modern Church’s default stance on divorce and remarriage for some time now, and there’s still some ground to cover yet. Below is an “abridged version,” if you like, of chapters I-V, summarized into five points for our Calvinist friends:
Marriage is one of the bedrock institutions of human society. Given its rapid disintegration in our day, the American Church must critically reexamine its increasingly lenient stance on divorce in light of holy scripture so that we can realign our practices with God’s original standard. If we fail to do this, then we will continue to be complicit in ushering in the judgment of God on our nation (see chapter I).
Jesus and Paul taught that Christians must not divorce since God joins husbands and wives together in a one-flesh covenant union for life (Matthew 19:4-8, 22:23-30; Mark 10:5-9; Romans 7:2; 1 Cor 7:10-13, 39; chapters II and III). However, even if they do separate/divorce, they cannot remarry another person so long as their preceding spouse is living, for to do so would constitute adultery (Matthew 5:32, 19:9; Mark 10:11, 12; Luke 16:18; Romans 7:3).
This position, termed the “indissolubility of marriage” or the “marriage permanence view,” was taught and practiced by the great majority of the Church until the Protestant Reformers of 16th century, under the influence of the Catholic humanist Erasmus, began formalizing divorce and remarriage for adultery and abandonment (chapter III).
Modern-day Protestants called evangelicals advocate for divorce and remarriage on these as well as many other related grounds despite the overwhelming Biblical, historical, and logical evidence against divorce exceptions (chapter IV).
Finally, given the many New Testament warnings that adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:27-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10; chapter V), Christians who find themselves in adultery through unlawful remarriage must repent by confessing their sin and leaving the sinful relationship (Matthew 14:4; Mark 6:18; John 8:3-11). Such Christians can then receive cleansing and forgiveness in Christ (Acts 3:19; 1 Corinthians 6:11; 1 John 1:5-10).
That, in brief, is the heart of the case we’ve been making thus far.
A nation, drawn and quartered
As we near the end of this extended journey on the topic of divorce and remarriage, it’s also worth pausing to remind ourselves again of the importance of such an exercise in the first place, particularly in our current cultural moment.1
So what exactly are we driving at with all of these forceful missives against divorce?
Simply put, the typical American family is in shambles due in no small part to our rampant culture of easy-peasy, no-fault divorce. It is our contention that the twin evils of divorce and adulterous remarriage lie upstream of a great many of our current cultural woes. Like a man being drawn and quartered in four different directions by lusty stallions (Jeremiah 5:8), divorce is a violent, destruction force that rips individuals, couples, families, and eventually even nations apart.
We believe that Christians who commit adultery through divorce and unlawful remarriage are unwittingly complicit in contributing to our national decent into sociosexual2 madness.
As American Christians watch with horror as marriage, sexuality, and the family descend into previously unthinkable lows on an almost daily basis, we have to stop and ask ourselves two questions: 1) “Are we at least partially at fault for these trends?” and 2) “What can we do to stop, or even reverse them?” Although we can’t always prevent our fellow citizens from dragging our country deeper into the gutter, we can certainly change our own behavior and tell others to do the same. Indeed, God will take us to task if we do not.
If we refuse to take control of the areas of our own lives that we do have the power to change, then God will give us over to the out-of-control behavior of others that we are powerless to change. If we repent now, there’s still hope that things may turn around for the good in both the Church and in our country. But if we continue to cling to the status quo, then we will get what we deserve: more judgment, pain, chaos, and decline.
And folks, according to God’s word (Leviticus 26:14-45,Deuteronomy 28:15-68), we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Smelling salts from Sodom
American Christians by and large refuse to see divorced and unlawfully remarried couples for what they truly are: adulterers. It’s such an unpleasant possibility to contemplate and would implicate so many in the Church that we simply make the typical knee-jerk excuses and push it out of our minds as quickly as possible. Case closed, moving on.
Because of this, God in His mercy has been slowly handing us over to the delightful little creatures that emerge from the shadows in the wake of our own compromises with the spirit of adultery (Hosea 4:12, 5:4). And as experience and history teach us, these seven other spirits are more evil than the first (Matthew 12:43-45).
God does this because it is easier to detect our faults in others than in ourselves. As the proverb goes, we are like “a skunk that can’t smell its own spray.” When we become desensitized to the stench of our own perversions, God will attempt to cure our nose blindness through the foul reek of another’s sin. Like a flagging heavyweight boxer drifting into and out of consciousness, sometimes we adulterers need a swift kick in the nostrils with sulfuric smelling salts from Sodom to snap us out of our stupor.
Recall that in the Bible, adultery, as well as fornication, incest, sodomy, bestiality, and so forth, are all categorized under the umbrella term porneia (πορνείᾳ), or illicit sexual intercourse of any kind. Although these sins differ in many important ways, including in degree of perversity, they are all porneia.
So despite committing what are at bottom the same kinds of sins as the LGBTQMYNAMEISLEGION3 crowd, our versions are much more presentable, especially for self-respecting religious types. In this sense, the “acceptable sins” of Christians, dressed in the familiar garb of old time religion, are actually much more dangerous than the naked depravities of the pagan revelers. The more blatant forms of porneia can be spotted from miles away by just about anyone with functioning eyes. Indeed, some are visible from outer space. But we Christians are often none the wiser to our own porn habits. We are the blind who claim to see, the lost who claim to be found. According to Jesus this is a more dire condition than the profligate sinner who knows he is wicked (John 9:40, 41):
“Some of the Pharisees near Him heard these things, and said to Him, ‘Are we also blind?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”
Spiritual self-deception is among the worst kinds of deception—it all sounds so good, but it is really a masquerade for evil (2 Corinthians 11:14; Colossians 2:4; 1 Timothy 6:20).
The divorce delusion
Unfortunately, sin has the nasty little habit of deceiving the sinner (Hebrews 3:12, 13):
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
This is why sin, though incalculably harmful, is most often ignored or rationalized away by those committing it. The enemy understands this well, but we do not. As the apocryphal Mark Twain quote puts it, “It is easier to con a man than to convince him he has been conned.”
Adulterous remarriages have the insidious quality of hiding in plain sight. One early Church father referred to such marriages as “fair-seeming adultery” conducted by “cloaked adulterers.”4 And that is precisely what “Christian” divorce and unlawful remarriage are: cloaks for wickedness (1 Peter 2:16).
And yet, like the token gay couple in everyone’s life that is just so irresistibly “nice,” many unlawfully remarried Christians have ostensibly upgraded to far better marriages than they previously knew. Although it is easy to mistake this as God’s blessing and approval of the union, the discerning Christian knows better than to fall for that trick. Instead, what one is witnessing in such cases is God’s longsuffering mercy love, which is designed to bring the disobedient to repentance (Romans 2:1-5; 2 Peter 3:3-9). Our marriages must draw their legitimacy from the objective truth of God’s law, and not merely the subjective “truth” of our experiences. Otherwise, we will surely fall prey to falsehood.5
In the real world, the one that we live in, the one that God made, adultery is always and everywhere condemned as sexual sin.
You can’t do it. Ever.
But Christians who commit adultery through divorce and unlawful remarriage have checked out of this world, at least on this topic. Instead, they inhabit an alternate universe in which God approves of adultery under certain conditions.
Such individuals are divorced from reality.
In this imaginary world, all you need to do is flash your “get out of marriage free” exception card and off you go. And for those who don’t have a legal out, but divorce and remarry anyways, not to worry. Just say you’re sorry and move on, I guess. What’s done is done. Say, who’s up for Five Guys after church?
That’s about the level to which we have descended nowadays. Pretty impressive stuff.
This is exactly the sort of nonchalant, garbage approach to the sanctity of marriage that Jesus called out among the religious hypocrites of His day (Matthew 5:31, 32):
“Remember the Scripture that says, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him do it legally, giving her divorce papers and her legal rights’? Too many of you are using that as a cover for selfishness and whim, pretending to be righteous just because you are ‘legal.’ Please, no more pretending. If you divorce your wife, you’re responsible for making her an adulteress (unless she has already made herself that by sexual promiscuity). And if you marry such a divorced adulteress, you’re automatically an adulterer yourself. You can’t use legal cover to mask a moral failure.”
Ouch. Jesus sure has a way of puncturing the pretensions false religion and snapping us back to reality.6
Christians today are making calls straight out of the same tired old playbook that the Pharisees used over two thousand years ago. Rather than obeying God’s straightforward command not to divorce, we choose to worm our way around His will and our consciences with flimsy legal technicalities that do not even remotely jibe with anything else in scripture.
Divorce is a delusion. Divorce “exceptions” are divorce projections, mere wishful thinking. The unavoidable truth is that prior to death, husbands and wives are stuck with one another. Period. Thus, even if a husband and wife become legally divorced in the eyes of Caesar, or even in the eyes of the Church, according to God, such individuals are still bound to one another “so long as they both shall live.” If either remarries before the other dies, it’s adultery.
That’s what Jesus taught on this subject (Matthew 5:32, 19:9; Mark 10:11, 12; Luke 16:18), and since He is Lord (Philippians 2:11; Revelation 19:16), we’re going with Him on this one.
Your best marriage, now!
It’s hard to imagine a message more antithetical to the message of the cross preached and exemplified by Jesus Christ than that of Joel Osteen’s now infamous volume Your Best Life Now.7 According to Osteen, God exists to make our short little sojourns on earth as maximally awesome as possible. You can have your crown without the cross and you can have it now, free of charge!
But wait…there’s more!
You can also enjoy a smooth transition from treasures on earth to eternal riches in heaven all courtesy of Jesus (whose life you will little resemble). Remember, He suffered it all so that we wouldn’t have to. Thanks Jesus!
So let’s get this straight: the one-and-only Son of God in the flesh (John 1:14), who always pleased the Father (John 8:29), had to suffer the worst that this life has to dish out even though He never once sinned (Hebrews 2:18, 4:15, 12:3), but we, God’s darling, spoiled little children, can just skate through life unscathed because we’re just so darn precious. So Jesus wasn’t above sacrifice, suffering, and sorrow, but if we just have enough faith, we can be.
Forget that Jesus said “No servant is greater than his master” and “If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well” (John 15:20). And never mind that He promised grief, persecution, and suffering in this life for His followers (Matthew 10:17-25, 24:9; Mark 10:30; Luke 6:40; John 13:16, 15:18-21, 16:33). That probably only applied to the twelve disciples.
But us? We’re special.
Christians worth the salt of their covenant (Leviticus 2:13; Matthew 5:13) can spot this sort of tripe without much effort.
And yet subtly, deep down, there’s a little Joel Osteen inside all of us peddling the very same lies. The message of total, uninterrupted prosperity here and now appeals to everyone’s fleshly instincts. We want to believe it. We carefully craft our lives to obtain it. And, frankly, as Americans, we deserve it. As heirs of the cargo cult of the white picket fence, we demand it as our God-given birth right.
When it comes to marriage, we have clearly drunken deep from the poisoned well of the prosperity gospel. We expect marital bliss and will settle for nothing less. We throw in the towel for petty reasons—how much more for serious sins like adultery, abandonment, and abuse? We do not enter marriage with a determined “for better or worse, till death to us part” mindset. Oh we still mouth those platitudes in our marriage vows, but we don’t mean it. Faithfulness to our covenant partner for Jesus’ sake, no matter the cost, is not even our aim. Rather, personal fulfillment, self-actualization, and unperturbed happiness are our goals, and no sacrifice is too great to obtain them.
Why can’t Christians be as zealous for God’s interests in our marriages as we are for our own? Didn’t God have our best in mind when He laid down the ground rules for marriage, as well as for the rest of life (Deuteronomy 10:12, 13)? Why does our immediate happiness almost always win out over God’s eternal glory, the most important end goal of the universe and the very reason why we exist in the first place? Yes, God does bestow untold benefits on couples that put Him first in their marriage and sacrifice their selfish “needs” for His higher purposes, but we have to keep our priorities straight.
Ultimately, we call it quits on our spouses because we believe that our way of doing marriage is superior to God’s. If we remain in the marriage when the going truly gets tough, we fear we’ll miss out on something better, that God will hold out on us for our unreasonable obedience. We have to divorce and remarry, we tell ourselves, or we will simply die. We have no choice but to disobey; the woman You gave me forced me to it, God (Genesis 3:12).
Lies, all lies, straight from Satan’s ancient box of tricks (Genesis 3:1-7).
Here’s the truth (Psalm 84:11, 12, emphasis mine):
“For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in You!”
Christians have forgotten that marriage, as with everything else in this life, is not primarily about this life. We do not marry to find bliss in this world, and ditch our partners the second they sin against us, even grievously so. Where would we be if God treated us this way? No, we marry and stay married to show the world the love of Christ for undeserving sinners like us (Ephesians 5:21-33), as well as to raise up godly offspring (Malachi 2:15). Personal happiness comes, but only as a consequence of obeying these greater ends.
The summum bonum, the highest good of marriage is to rightly represent the glorious God we worship, to show a watching world what He is really like. Since God never finally forsakes His covenant people for their unfaithfulness (Psalm 94:14; Romans 11:1, 2), neither should we. The reason God treats us this way is because He is perfectly, totally, and absolutely holy. He is not like us (Psalm 50:21). He is always faithful to His vows, displaying a longsuffering, steadfast love that endures forever (Psalm 136).
When we say “I do” for life to one person, forsaking all others, we should let our “Yes” be “Yes” and our “No” be “No”—anything beyond this is from the evil one (Matthew 5:37), who was a liar and a murder from the beginning (John 8:44).
The stench of death
When it comes to marriage, we’ve fallen a long way in a short time. The overton window has shifted radically towards acceptance of divorce from our parents’ and grandparents’ generations to our own. Gone are the social stigmas once associated with divorce and unlawful remarrige.8 Unless we rediscover God’s standard for holy matrimony, we will be incapable of seeing just how far we’ve fallen short of it. As someone once put it, “The world never feels fallen, because we grow accustomed to the fall.” 9
When fallen man decides he knows better than God when it comes to marriage (or anything, really) and begins divorcing and remarrying at will, eventually, “the due penalty of their error” comes back to bite him (Romans 1:27). What else but treachery and betrayal would one expect to reap in return for sowing such violence into our families (Galatians 6:7, 8)? And yes, according to God, speaking through the prophet Malachi, divorce is a clear act of violence (Malachi 2:13-16, emphasis mine):
“And this is the second thing you do: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and crying; so He does not regard the offering anymore, nor receive it with goodwill from your hands. Yet you say, ‘For what reason?’ Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously; yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant. But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. ‘For the Lord God of Israel says that He hates divorce, for it covers one’s garment with violence,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.”
Divorce and adulterous remarriage have the stench of death all over them.
The Apostle John, echoing the words of Jesus (Matthew 5:21-26), said that “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). Just as physical death separates married couples, those who serve their living, breathing spouse with divorce papers are in effect sending him or her a death wish. Divorce is an act of murderous hatred, pure and simple.
Adultery carried the death sentence in Israel under Mosaic law (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22; Ezekiel 16:38, 40; John 8:3-11), a practice that was still enforced in the time of Jesus and the apostles.10 And the truth is, adultery still carries with it the death sentence—it’s just that the sentence is executed by God, and not man (Genesis 2:17; Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 6:23).
We do not perceive this real danger because the sentence is usually not carried out immediately, thus emboldening sinful men to sin all the more (Ecclesiastes 8:11). “I divorced and remarried and things are going pretty great for me now. The roof didn’t cave in, lightening didn’t strike, so all must be well.” So goes our faulty reasoning. But as mentioned above, this is to mistake God’s patient forbearance as tacit approval for our sin (2 Peter 3). Satan whispers “You will not surely die,”11 and so like Adam and Eve, we sink our teeth into the bait and are relieved when we do not instantly drop dead (Genesis 3:4-6). “Whew. That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
But then the shame sets in (Genesis 3:7-11).
Our once promising remarriages begin to buckle under the weight of our disobedience and the judgment it brings (Genesis 3:12-24).
Our children go berserk (Genesis 4:1-16).
Society goes off the rails (Genesis 6:11-13).
Violence spreads like concentric waves caused by heavenly tear drops in a sea of blood (Genesis 6:5-7, 17, 7:4, 11, 12).
A flood of dissipation and judgment sweeps the globe (Matthew 24:36-42; 1 Peter 3:19, 20, 4:4; 2 Peter 2:4, 5, 9, 10, 3:3-7).
This is the patient, predictable progress of sin, “gradually, then suddenly”12 working out its catastrophic ends one person, family, and civilization at a time.
Oh divorce may be a violent tearing, but it is never a clean break. Like a sacrificial sin offering, you will be rent, gutted, and bled out, but slowly, and with your members still attached (Leviticus 1:14-17, 5:8, 9). You'll die, but it will be a slow, mostly imperceptible death, not because it is painless, but because you will lose the capacity to feel pain (1 Timothy 4:2). You may go a long time believing that things are ok, but if left untended, you may never recover.
Just as with king Abimelech of old who, unbeknownst to himself, took on another man’s wife, God would say to those who commit adultery through remarriage (Genesis 20:3, emphasis mine), “You are a dead man, for that woman you have taken is already married!” How many Christian men and woman now find themselves in such unwitting adultery, as dead men walking! Imagine a secret affair so hidden that no one knew about it, not even those in the affair!
If you think we are engaging in fear tactics with this sort of rhetoric, then you are absolutely correct, for it is by the fear of God that men depart from evil (Proverbs 16:6). No, this is not alarmism, this is realism.
Adultery is deadly—have nothing to do with it (Proverbs 6:20-35). Out of fear of the God who has the power to cast both body and soul into hell (Matthew 10:28), cut it off before it cuts you off for good (Matthew 5:27-32).
Here are just some of the terrible, but all too real spiritual and physical impacts of divorce:
Men who divorce their wives will be held responsible for their subsequent adultery through unlawful remarriage (Matthew 5:32). How does one possibly go about fixing that problem?
The prayers of men who treat their wives dishonorably will be hindered (1 Peter 3:7).
Those who divorce their spouses and unlawfully remarry bring tremendous harm upon themselves (Ephesians 5:28, 29) through the grief, sorrow, regret, pain, and dishonor that result from such actions (Proverbs 6:32): “He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself.”
God Himself opposes stubborn, prideful individuals who insist on divorcing despite His warnings (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5), reserving a severe beating for those who know His will, but fail to act accordingly (Luke 12:47; James 4:17).
Even if you receive forgiveness for your adultery, you and your family still stand to reap the awful consequences of your sin for years to come—just ask king David (2 Samuel 12)!
Divorce profoundly impacts the body physiologically, leading to greater risk of early death.13
Those who experience divorce as children are hormonally deficient as adults, have difficulty forming long-lasting bonds, and are predisposed to mood disorders, substance abuse, and other harmful behaviors.14
Indeed, the trauma of divorce is often described as worse than death because it entails a spouse departing of his or her own volition, rather than by the will of God in death.
Why then do so many Christians choose to divorce in spite of all these perils? It is because such individuals do not have their minds set on things above, where the God of the impossible dwells (Colossians 3:1-6), but rather on the flesh and the desires of the flesh,15 which lead to, you guessed it, death (Romans 8:6): “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.” We get so worked up and storm-tossed over our rocky marriage that we forget that our Lord is still with us in the boat (Matthew 8:24).
Our marriages, and indeed even our very lives are at stake in the battle that rages within us between the flesh and the Spirit (Galatians 5:17):
“For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.”
Divorce and unlawful remarriage are not, I repeat, not the solutions to your problems—if they were, then why do divorce rates increase in second and third marriages?16 It is sin, and not your marriage, that is the real problem, and it is true repentance, resolute faith in Christ, and the overcoming power of the Holy Spirit that are the only real solutions. In spite of your feelings to the contrary (Proverbs 3:5; Jeremiah 17:9), this is the testimony of God and universal human experience.
Divorce leads to death, not life, that much is clear (Proverbs 14:12): “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”
Let it go. Confess your sin. Repent. Turn from it. If you do, you will find forgiveness and healing in Christ (2 Corinthians 7:10): “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”
Embracing the ministry of reconciliation
There is a steep price to pay for rejecting God’s rules for marriage, but the rewards for obedience are nothing short of life from the dead (Romans 11:15). We’ve begun to count the cost of divorce and remarriage and the hard path back to the narrow way. In the final chapter of this book, we will turn to the beautiful fruits of repenting from these ugly sins: reconciliation, both with God, and, when possible, with each other.
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Meaning the social, interpersonal manifestations of human sexuality, and not the “sexual orientation” of the same name.
See “Why I Insist on Saying ‘LGBTQMYNAMEISLEGION’ and You Should Too” by John Zmirak of The Stream.
Athenagoras, Ch. 33 “Chastity of the Christians with Respect to Marriage” in A Plea for the Christians (177 AD). It should be noted that Athenagoras applied these descriptions not only to adulterous remarriages but also to remarriages that occurred after the death of a spouse, something which the Apostle Paul explicitly permits (Romans 7:2, 3; 1 Corinthians 7:39). Some critics of the marriage permanence view state that the precedent of the Early Church Fathers on divorce and remarriage is generally suspect due to the tendencies of some of the Fathers toward sexual asceticism (e.g., Andrew Naselli, “What the New Testament Teaches about Divorce and Remarriage.” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal. 2019; 24: 3–44.).
Although Paul certainly corrected similar excesses in his day (1 Corinthians 7:1; Colossians 2:20-23; 1 Timothy 4:1-5) he was no less adamant about embracing the rigors of true spiritual self-discipline (1 Corinthians 9:25-27, 15:10), in keeping with the Lord’s admonitions on self-denial (Matthew 16:24). Indeed, in the very passage where Paul concedes that married couples should have sexual relations (1 Corinthians 7:2-6), he famously extols the advantages of celibacy, which he personally preferred and repeatedly commended over marriage (1 Corinthians 7:6-9, 25-40).
Further, one could just as easily argue for the dismissal of the teachings of most modern day theologians on divorce and remarriage due to their opposite tendencies toward licentiousness, but that would be an equally unfair move. Regardless of the source, we must test all doctrines against the scriptures (Acts 17:11), rejecting what is evil and holding fast to what is good (Romans 12:9; 1 Corinthians 14:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:21).
To make matters worse, the Bible teaches that sexual sin, unlike other sins, is a sin against one’s own body, leading to some of the most insatiable kinds of fleshly bondage one can experience. This is why sexual sins are so difficult to kick once habituated (1 Corinthians 6:18-20, emphasis mine):
“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sine a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
Sexual sins are doubly pernicious: they are sins against one’s own body and sins against the body of Christ. The Bible’s attitude toward them can be summed up in one word: run!
Especially, as it turns out, in The Message Bible, or The Savage Translation as it should be called.
Nashville, TN: FaithWords, 2004. For a summary and review of Osteen’s book, see Greg Gilbert’s book review from 9Marks.
Some might say “Well, isn’t that a good thing? After all, we wouldn’t want divorcees walking around with a scarlet letter on their chests now, would we?” Of course, stigmas and taboos can have brutal social consequences for those who violate them. But that’s partly the point of social reinforcement mechanisms, for without such consequences, destructive behaviors spread like deadly contagions. As Christians, we must apply the best kind of godly peer-pressure on our fellow believers in the direction of repentance and righteousness, even while showing grace and humility toward those who have fallen (1 Corinthians 10:12; Galatians 6:1).
See “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here: What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?” by Brooke Jarvis of The New York Times Magazine.
For documentation, see appendix A “The Death Penalty for Adultery.”
Or, as pastor Dave Rolph once put it, in keeping with the original Hebrew, “You’re not going to die die […].”
From Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: “‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked. ‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’”
David A. Sbarra, Rita W. Law, and Robert M. Portley, “Divorce and Death: A Meta-Analysis and Research Agenda for Clinical, Social, and Health Psychology.” Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2011; 6(5): 454–474.
Maria L. Boccia, Christopher Cook, Lesley Marson, Cort Pedersen, “Parental divorce in childhood is related to lower urinary oxytocin concentrations in adulthood.” Journal of Comparative Psychology. 2021; 135(1): 74–81. Press release summary here.
In the Bible, the flesh refers to man’s fallen sin nature. In cases of divorce, the flesh typically focuses on the wrongs committed by the other party while downplaying its own faults. The flesh thinks only of its unfulfilled “needs” and obtaining what is best for itself rather than the well-being of others. Instead of putting God’s will first, the flesh cares only about what it selfishly craves in the moment, such as revenge and illicit sex.
For the latest 2023 statistics, see “Revealing Divorce Statistics In 2023” by Christy Bieber of Forbes.