In fact, He spoke of how it was (for the Jews) an ABOMINATION for a man to put away his wife, then, after she'd been with others, to remarry her. To US, that sounds like a love story, doesn't it? It comes across as some sort of they found they just couldn't live without each other Hallmark show. But in the Bible it's an abomination.Yet when God spoke of the matter (speaking of a nation that had turned away from Him), He said Even though it is an abomination, return to Me again! He was desperately in love.No one in my family has ever been divorced, yet I have come to see it in shades of gray instead of black and white. When someone divorces and remarries, some churches act like they need to then divorce their current spouse and return to their former one. Yet the Bible says that is an abomination!The woman at the well, BY JESUS' ACCOUNT, had had FIVE husbands. That is, Jesus didn't act like only the first marriage counted. He clearly was considering each marriage as somehow legitimate, even if for the wrong reasons (which we don't know the reasons). Here's the thing: With the exception of loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves (on which hang ALL the law and the prophets), every law of the OT is based on the normal range of human behavior. For instance, it is wrong to kill someone. Unless in self-defense. Unless it is execution for some crime. Unless in war. That is, in these unusual situations, killing is acceptable. But not otherwise. Lying? Same thing. If the Nazis knock on your door and wonder if you are hiding Jews, that is not the normal range of human experience. You would like (I hope!) in order to prevent an even GREATER moral travesty (the death of innocents).And that really is the key: You can break the moral code ONLY if doing so prevents an even greater moral failure. And since there are no greater moral failures than failing to love God and your neighbor, those are never to be broken. In fact, loving your neighbor as yourself might entail killing someone (say someone who was trying to kill your neighbor).The midwives in Egypt LIED to Pharaoh...AND GOD BLESSED THEM! They understood that the life or death of an infant was the stakes they were playing for, and they did whatever was necessary to prevent this ultimate act of evil against someone.BACK TO DIVORCE....The range of divorce-worthy behavior is typically cheating. Typically. But what about a man who beats his wife severely? Or refuses to support her? Or abandons her and the family? Or what if he is drug addict that endangers the kids by driving will under the influence and/or taking them to dangerous places, etc.? And what if, doing these things, he NEVER actually messes around with another woman? Well, some will tell you that the woman has no reason to divorce him. But these are extreme situations that I believe allow for divorce AND remarriage (divorce is not the sin; remarriage is the key issue).Consider this simple mental exercise: Which is best: For the women to KILL her husband...or to divorce him? Well, some churches would forgive the murder more readily than divorce. Something is clearly wrong with that. And, do we suppose that a girl who married at 18, has two kids, and is forced to divorce a husband that is violent toward her and her kids, must now live the rest of her life without married companionship to be pleasing to God? Must she and her children struggle financially because she is not permitted to remarry in good faith? I simply don't buy that. Why? First, because she is having to pay for the sins of her ex-husband--i.e., SHE is the one who supposedly can't remarry if she does what some say she should do, while the husband, already a low-life, could care less what the Bible or the Church says about matters. Second, I think that the situation is an extreme event, not like the typical range of human behavior in marriages, and so qualifies for an exemption as shown above.It's not necessarily easy to articulate, is it? Yet don't we find those extreme pacifists (e.g., the ones who don't believe even in defending their families with violence) who have such an easy way of explaining their moral position (e.g., We don't believe in ANY sort of violence) to come far short of what we believe true morality demands?
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