By Dr. John Huffman

"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. "But at the beginning of creation God made them male and female. 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." (Mark 10:5-9)

Although I have written often about marriage, I would just as soon not talk about divorce. It is one of the most painful topics one can address in contemporary America. Is there one of us who has not been touched by it in some painful manner? If you and I ourselves have not actually experienced our own divorce, at least we have vicariously walked through that tearing apart experience with a loved one. In my childhood days divorce was very much the exception instead of the norm. I knew very few Christian couples who were divorced. Obviously, that has changed.

This week, Religion News Service carried a story in which the opening paragraph reads:

Although traditional Christian teaching rejects divorce and stresses marital fidelity and family values are central to the religious conservatives moral agenda, recent data shows divorce strikes born-again Christians at about the same rate as those who don t profess a born-again experience.

The article goes on to note that the Barna Research Group, a California based polling and marketing organization that specializes in religion, even found that those who characterize themselves as "fundamentalists" have a slightly higher divorce rate than the general public.

Tom Whiteman, a Philadelphia psychologist and counselor, was disturbed by the data showing that Christians were no more immune to divorce than the general population. He focused on this matter in his doctoral research. He found that even though devout Christians divorce at about the same rate as others, they did so for different reasons. Whereas the number one reason cited for divorce in the general population was incompatibility, Christians rarely use that as grounds for divorce. In the Christian population, the primary reasons are adultery, abuse (including substance, physical and verbal abuse) and abandonment. In fact, Christians tend to hang on to bad marriages longer than others.

"The good news is that we are staying together longer and taking marriage seriously, but the bad news is we re putting up with a lot more pain, and ending up getting divorced anyway."

Although divorce is more frequent than ever before, it certainly is not a new topic. In fact, divorce was as painful a matter in the time of Jesus as it is today.

One day, the Pharisees were determined to trick Jesus with one of their loaded questions. They asked, " Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? " (Mark 10:2). Mark tells us that the Pharisees came and "tested" Jesus not with an honest question but with one designed to do Him evil. They were probing for His vulnerable point. They were trying to either cause Him to sin against God in a way which would publicly repudiate the moral force of His teaching or, with clever sophistry, to trick Him into some embarrassing statement which would facilitate their goal of putting Him to death.

Their question about divorce was a "no-win" topic for Jesus. There was no way He could answer their question without alienating someone. If He opposed divorce on legal grounds, He would end up contradicting the Law of Moses. If He opposed it on moral grounds, He exposed Himself to the same fate as John the Baptist, who, at the hands of the adulterer Herod Antipas, was beheaded. At the same time, if He accepted divorce on legal grounds, He subjected the rest of His teaching to the Law of Moses and the very constricted interpretation which the Pharisees gave to that law.

One thing that Jewish scholars could do very well was haggle over biblical interpretation. In Deuteronomy 24:1 Moses declared that a man could divorce his wife if he found out something "indecent" about her.

For one school of rabbis, followers of Shammai, that was to be interpreted with the utmost strictness. The matter of uncleanness was adultery, and that alone. She could be guilty of many other sins but unless there was actual sexual adultery that could be proven, there could be no divorce.

At the other extreme was the school of Hillel. These scholars gave the most liberal interpretation possible to the teaching of Moses. They went so far as to say that if she spoiled a dish of food, if she talked to a strange man, if she spoke disrespectfully of her in-laws, if her voice was too loud, or if her husband happen to find a more attractive woman, he could get rid of her. Divorce was permissible for the most trivial reasons. In the time of Jesus, as it is today, this was tragically common. Some women in the Jewish community hesitated to marry at all because the institution of marriage was so insecure. Jesus, by giving the answers which He gave, not only was dealing with a first-century epidemic of divorce, He was also protecting the rights of women who were so often treated as objects to be owned and then discarded by their husbands.

In a way, circumstances of His day were not that different from now. Except that now women are as quick to divorce men as men are to divorce women.

I had to wrestle intensely with this matter of divorce when sixteen years ago we called Bill Flanagan to join our pastoral staff. He already had a several-year track record for his singles ministry at the First Presbyterian Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Part of that ministry involved what we now know as the "Divorce Recovery Workshop." Flan was frank to tell me that the very addressing of this issue within the context of the church and the welcoming of divorced people into the programs of St. Andrew s could upset some people. And it did. Over the past twelve years we have had well over 11,000 divorced persons and their children who go through our twice-a-year, six-Thursday-nights-in-a-row Divorce Recovery Workshop. There have been some who have felt that we have been too accepting of divorce. On the other hand, because we make frequent mention of the pain accompanying divorce and speak out against divorce as too frequently used as a "way out" of difficulty, there are some who feel that we are too strict.

I know that this topic is threatening to some at this very moment because they are divorced. Perhaps you are divorced. You have worked through your pain. The last thing you need from me is to be made to feel guilty about this event which is now part of your past. On the other hand, there is someone right now dealing with tough stuff in their marriage. You may be one of these, and you need to hear what Jesus has to say about divorce. For this reason, I m tackling this tough topic.

Although Jesus doesn't have a whole lot to say about divorce, on those few occasions in which He addressed this topic what He did say was extremely sensitive to human pain and also very strong in the warning which it gives.

First, Jesus declares a realistic word.

He shares with us the legal protections designed in the Law of Moses. He did this by responding to the trick questions of the religious leaders with a question of His own. He asked, " What did Moses command you? "(Mark 10:3). Knowing that Moses had made provision for divorce, He readily anticipated their response. " Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away " (Mark 10:4).

At this point, Jesus notes why Moses allowed for this. He even catches them in the word which they used "permitted," which implies this was not the most ideal reality. Divorce was something that was designed to deal with human aberration. In essence, the permission Moses gave for divorce served, then and now, as an indictment of the human condition. Moses had hoped, at best, that this legislation would prove to be temporary in nature and would be ruled irrelevant by a spiritual revival among the Jews which would once again put the spirit of love above the letter of the Jewish law. Nonetheless, he was not prepared for persons to be damaged by marriage relationships which were abusive and destructive of human personhood.

Jesus responded to the trick question of the Pharisees by declaring that divorce was not God s standard, that Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of human hearts. Moses didn't command divorce. He simply permitted it for the protection of women so that they would not be subject to exploitation and vindictiveness. Or to put it another way, divorce was a divine concession to human weakness and acknowledgment of humankind s sinfulness. Moses, Jesus, and Paul never encouraged divorce. At the very best, it was a reluctant permission.

Second, Jesus gives a spiritual word.

Jesus is saying, God hates divorce. God never intended for male-female relationship to be ripped apart. Jesus states, " It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law "(Mark 10:5).

Then Jesus added these most telling words:

"But at the beginning of creation God made them male and female. 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 not man separate." (Mark 10:6-9)

I have been struggling to find a way to somehow get across to all of us that proper combination between the realism in which Jesus declares there is the necessity in certain cases for divorce but, on the other hand at a much deeper and profound level, get across the dreams which God has for those of us who are married. What I m trying to say will be successful not because with very clever juxtaposition of human words I somehow make those of you who have gone through the brokenness of divorce feel good about it and those who have not yet been divorced somehow be motivated to hang in there and make your marriage work. That would be a legitimate goal. I certainly am not here to try to make you feel guilty if you 've gone through the tragedy of divorce or to intimidate you into staying married in what may very well be a tragically abusive relationship.

What I would like to do is shift gears and simply read to you some statements that come out of contemporary life which I believe pretty well illustrate what Jesus was trying to get across.

I have over 20 huge file drawers in my study filled with manila folders into which I have, over the past 35 years, placed materials I have gathered by topic. One of these thick folders is labeled "Divorce." And the other is labeled "Marriage." Both are stuffed full of material.

Let me share some excerpts with you.

John Adam and Nancy Williamson, in their book titled Divorce: How and When to Let Go, wrote:

Your marriage can wear out. People change their values and lifestyles. People want to experience new things. Change is a part of life. Change and personal growth are traits for you to be proud of, indicative of a vital searching mind. You must accept the reality that in today s multifaceted world it is especially easy for two persons to grow apart. Letting go of your marriage if it is no longer fulfilling can be the most successful thing you have ever done. Getting a divorce can be a positive, problem-solving, growth-oriented step. It can be a personal triumph.

Does this sound familiar? Is this not the spirit of our day?

A friend of mine, Kent Hughes, writes:

What an amazing thing. By making self-fulfillment the guiding principle of life, one can call failure "success," disintegration "growth," and disaster "triumph."

The human mind is capable of immense perversity. How often those of us who are pastors have been confronted by persons who have used this rationale to walk out on a marriage of many years.

I think of someone right now who has worked so hard to convince me of the rightness of his divorce. He walked out on his wife, who had sacrificed her own education so she could work to pay his way through graduate school. She gave up her own possible professional advancement to stay home and raise their children. This was his wish. After twenty-plus years of this, he began to complain that she wasn' t as interesting as he d like her to be. She didn t have an education to match his. He found her "boring." Other women could carry on much more stimulating conversations. He complained about her appearance, and he moved out on her and in with a woman fifteen years younger, trying to convince both his wife and me, his pastor, that he was really doing her and the children a favor. How sad! How sickening! Her dreams had been shattered. The kids were dizzied, and their lives partially distorted by this family fracture.

I know a woman, and you know someone like her also, who, after a couple of decades of marriage and three children, is looking for more out of life than her husband offers. She aims a lot of blame at him for not being "sensitive enough," and she talks a lot about, "I have to be me. After all, self-actualization is what it s all about." You know the rest of the story.

Come over to St. Andrew s Presbyterian Church on Thursday night. Look in on the Divorce Recovery Workshop. You will see hundreds of men and women experiencing the pain and brokenness of commitments and hopes smashed. They are in the process of healing from broken dreams.

For over three decades I have been officiating at weddings. I have done the premarital counseling and married several hundred couples. I have never yet met a couple who, when they came to the alter, didn’t dream about spending the rest of their lives together. I must admit, in the last decade or so, I have done premarital counseling for couples who, because of what they observed of the shattered dreams of other couples, are a bit gun-shy of marriage. Every one of them will honestly express their deep desire for a commitment and relationship that will last " til death doth part."

God didn’t create marriage for divorce. He had something better in mind. Whether it s as heart-breakingly selfish as "my right to be me" or something at the other extreme as devastatingly catastrophic as spousal abuse, divorce wasn' t God s dream and plan for that couple. He allows it because of the hardness of heart of one or two people who are not willing to make those major adjustments that will produce health within the marriage relationship.

Let me read to you from a secular book titled Death of a Marriage by Pat Conroy. You are familiar with his novels. If you are contemplating a divorce and you have been asking the Lord for guidance, perhaps his honest statement will help you confront what s ahead.

Conroy writes:

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization. Two people declare war on each other, and their screams and tears infect their entire world with the bacilli of their pain. The greatest fury comes from the wound where love once issued forth.

I find it hard to believe how many people now get divorced, how many submit to such extraordinary pain. For there are no clean divorces. Divorces should be conducted in surgical wards. In my own case, I think it would have been easier if Barbara had died. I would have been gallant at her funeral and shed real tears far easier than staring across a table, telling each other it was over.

It was a killing thing to look at the mother of my children and know that we would not be together for the rest of our lives. It was terrifying to say goodbye, to reject a part of my own history.

When I went through my divorce I saw it as a country, and it was treeless, airless; there were no furloughs and no holidays. I entered without passport, without directions and absolutely alone. Insanity and hopelessness grew in that land like vast orchards of malignant fruit. I do not know the precise day that I arrived in that country. Nor am I certain that you can ever renounce your citizenship there.

Each divorce has its own metaphors that grow out of the dying marriage. One man was inordinately proud of his aquarium. He left his wife two weeks after the birth of their son. What visitors noticed next was that she was not taking care of the aquarium. The fish began dying. The two endings became linked in my mind.

For a long time I could not discover my own metaphor of loss until the death of our dog, Beau, who became the irrefutable message that Barbara and I were finished.

Beau was a feisty, crotchety dachshund Barbara had owned when we married. It took a year of pained toleration for us to form our alliance. But Beau had one of those Illuminating inner lives that only lovers of dogs can understand. He had a genius for companionship. To be licked by Beau when you awoke in the morning was a fine thing.

On one of the first days of our separation, when I went to the house to get some clothes, my youngest daughter, Megan, ran out to tell me that Beau had been hit by a car and taken to the animal clinic. I raced there and found Ruth Try, Beau s veterinarian. She carried Beau in to see me and laid him on the examining table.

I had not cried during the terrible breaking away from Barbara. I had told her I was angry at my inability to cry. Now I came apart completely. It was not weeping; it was screaming; it was despair.

The car had crushed Beau s spine, the X-ray showing irreparable damage. Beau looked up at me while Dr. Tyree handed me a piece of paper, saying that she needed my signature to put Beau to sleep.

I could not write my name because I could not see the paper. I leaned against the examining table and cried as I had never cried in my life, crying not just for Beau but for Barbara, the children, myself, for the death of a marriage, for inconsolable loss. Dr. Tyree touched me gently, and I heard her crying above me. And Beau, in the last grand gesture of his life, dragged himself the length of the table on his two good legs and began licking the tears as they ran down my face.

I had lost my dog and found my metaphor. In the X-ray of my dog s crushed spine, I was looking at a portrait of my broken marriage.

But there are no metaphors powerful enough to describe the moment when you tell the children about the divorce. Divorces without children are minor-league divorces. To look into the eyes of your children and to tell them that you are mutilating their family and changing all their tomorrows is an act of desperate courage that I never want to repeat. It is also their parents last act of solidarity and the absolute sign that the marriage is over. It felt as though I had doused my entire family with gasoline and struck a match.

The three girls entered the room and would not look at me or Barbara. Their faces, all dark wings and grief and human hurt, told me that they already knew. My betrayal of these young, sweet girls filled the room.

They wrote me notes of farewell, since it was I who was moving out. When I read them, I did not see how I could ever survive such excruciating pain. The notes said, "I love you, Daddy. I will visit you." For months I would dream of visiting my three daughters locked in a mental hospital. The fear of damaged children was my most crippling obsession.

For a year I walked around feeling as if I had undergone a lobotomy. There were records I could not listen to because of their association with Barbara, poems I could not read from books I could not pick up. There is a restaurant I will never return to because it was the scene of an angry argument between us. It was a year when memory was an acid.

I began to develop the odd habits of the very lonely. I turned the stereo on as soon as I entered my apartment. I drank to the point of not caring. I cooked elaborate meals for myself, then could not eat them.

I had entered into the dark country of divorce, and for a year I was one of its ruined citizens. I suffered. I survived. I studied myself on the edge, and introduced myself to the stranger who lived within.

Barbara and I had one success in our divorce, and it is an extraordinarily rare one. As the residue of anger and hurt subsided with time, we remained friends. We saw each other for lunch occasionally, and I met her boyfriend, Tom.

Once, when I was leaving a party, I looked back and saw Barbara and Tom holding hands. They looked very happy together, and it was painful to recognize it. I wanted to go back and say something to Tom, but I mostly wanted to say it to Barbara. I wanted to say that I admired Tom s taste in women.

Another clipping in my file is titled "Children Suffer Financially From Divorce." Two hundred families going through divorce were tracked for three years in the mid-1980s. The families were selected at random and reflected the U.S. population in every way, including income level, location, and race. It was the broadest study of its kind, taken from materials made available by the Census Bureau. The conclusion is that children can expect to become 37% poorer almost as soon as their families breakup.

Once parents separate, fewer than half the children surveyed receive child support, further impoverishing them, the study said. The study s trends held true regardless of race and income level.

Other findings of the census report include:

The percentage of children living in poverty increased from 19 percent of the total to 36 percent immediately after the family split up. The number of children in families receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children doubled after a divorce, from 9 percent to 18 percent. The number of children receiving food stamps increased from 10 percent before divorce to 27 percent after divorce.

Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee s exhaustive longitudinal study of children in broken families, Second Chances: Men, Women and Children, a Decade After Divorce, assesses the carnage that litters North America s matrimonial battlefields, producing children who are literally part of a lost generation. This study notes that although initially it is the older children who appear to be least affected by the divorce, the long-term impact on them is just as severe, if not more so than that upon the younger children.

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has just written a book titled The Divorce Culture. In it she laments the impact of divorce on children and the open wound that continues to fester. She notes the economic hardship which comes from divorce and declares that fatherless children could perhaps put up with economic difficulty if it weren' t for the appalling psychological fallout that comes from their parents breakup. She says that even the death of a parent is less traumatic. At least death is final. Divorce is an open wound that continues to fester. Death is usually involuntary; whereas divorce is voluntary on the part of at least one parent a distinction that is not lost on children. Whitehead calls for Americans to recover "vision of the obligated self, voluntarily bound to a set of roles, duties, and responsibilities and of a nation where sacrifice for the next generation guides adult ambitions and purposes."

I believe one of the most heart-breaking items I have in my file is a letter written by a young woman who grew up here at St. Andrew s. She wrote this for her class at Harbor High. I was so touched by it that I received permission not only from her, but from her mother and father to read it. Its contents are painful! Listen carefully to it, for this is what I as a pastor hear and feel from the children of divorce. It is titled "TORN IN TWO" and is written to her father.

My tears of sorrow are nothing new Because there are two sides to you: The love of which I am a part, And the hate which breaks my tender heart.

I act as though I do not care; Although I sob in deep despair. For I miss the father that I once knew Before my life was torn in two...

He used to be so loving and kind. Now hate and deception inhabit his mind. What did I do to deserve such a change? For now our relationship must rearrange.

His caring ways fade quickly away, As childish threats come into play. Whatever happened to being good friends? Then fly by many fatherless weekends.

While claiming that Christ is part of his life, He discards his daughters and his Ex-wife. Instead of sending any child support, He mails a summons to see us in court.

I know both sides of this pitiful tale, So must we dwell on each petty detail? I know things can t be the way that they were, But you 'll always and forever by my father.

Whenever we speak about matters of money, He says, "You shouldn' t even know about that, honey." But how could I not when each debt and loan Contributed to the loss of our home.

Perhaps my heart could take to mending, But his quest for revenge seems never ending. Revenge against the woman for whom he once cared; The one with whom two daughters he shared.

I hope that someday our quarrels will end. And we 'll find in each other a life-long friend. Will you ever open your heart and let the good shine through? Or will I always feel as if I m torn in two?

This is tough stuff, isn' t it? I know no better way to capture what Jesus was trying to say. This was not what God had in mind when he created man and woman and entrusted them to each other. God has dreams for you and me as to what marriage can be for a man and a woman and for their children.

Third, Jesus has a warning word.

It s a tough word for those who don t take their vows seriously and who initiate a marital breakup. He has declared that God s purpose for marriage has not changed. A contemporary provision which Moses gave for divorce is not God s norm. It is only the proof of human sin. Jesus could have made an angry attack on divorce. Instead He endeavored to elevate the sacredness of marriage. As David McKenna has so insightfully observed, a man is to break away from his parents and be joined to his wife so that "1 + 1 = 1" in their relationship. Yoked together in the presence of God, this relationship of husband and wife is permanent. Jesus has not intended to dodge the question put to Him by the Pharisees. Instead, by their own scriptures, they must admit God s original intention for marriage has not changed.

Later on, when Jesus and His disciples are alone in the house, the conversation continues. They are still confused about divorce. If what Jesus said publicly is taken literally, divorce is not permissible under any circumstances. His response now can be quite confusing. He says, " Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery " (Mark 10:11-12).

That s a strong warning. No, Jesus is not endeavoring to introduce a new legalism to produce twentieth-century Pharisees. At the same time, He refuses to back away from the truth that divorce is a symptom of sin and that permanence in marriage is God s intention. Take this in the context of Matthew s account. He quotes Jesus as saying, " Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery " (Matthew 19:8-9).

He s just saying, there s something more important than our own self-fulfillment and our own happiness. It is obedience to God s Word. This word "unfaithfulness" comes from the Greek work pornea, from which we get the English word pornography. It means unchastity, fornication, prostitution, and other kinds of unlawful intercourse. When applied to married persons it becomes "marital unfaithfulness." It may involve adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, and other distortions of our sexuality. It is the only grounds on which Jesus permitted divorce and remarriage. Even under these circumstances He didn‘t command divorce. He only permitted it. Even then it is not to be used simply as an excuse to get out of a marriage.

The apostle Paul elaborated slightly on this in l Corinthians 7:8-16. He spoke to a situation which Jesus did not address, that of believing spouses married to unbelieving partners. He urges the believing spouse to remain faithful to the marriage, yet not to force the non-believing spouse to stay in the marriage.

Let me give this final word which summarizes the whole tone of the New Testament teaching about marriage and divorce. We simply must, as Christians, live lives that run counter to this crazy, superficial, "soap-opera" culture in which we live. Commitment to a godly life does not guarantee that a marriage will work. But God does know how you and I function best. Our marriages can derive a deepening and a strength if we allow Him to help us.

We must offer God s grace to ourselves and others. Wherein circumstances have escalated beyond what we know is God s intention and divorce has become a reality, God still loves us. The Gospel is Good News. Christ s grace is sufficient for us. He wants to help wipe away the tears and bring healing, wholeness, and new beginning, empowered by his Holy Spirit, that ministers tenderly and gently to us and our need and the needs of those injured by our brokenness! At the same time, those of us who still are blessed to be married have the privilege to encounter the tough realities of life lived in relationship with another person, claiming Christ's help to work through the tough stuff, which will enable our marriages to be much healthier and a blessing to our children.

A sermon preached by John A. Huffman, Jr. February 16, 1997 Copyright 1997, John A. Huffman, Jr. All rights reserved. Thank you and God bless.