There are only two ways to answer any question your kids ask: God's way or the world's. That said, parents don't always immediately know what the godly answer is and in that case, as my Godmother modeled for me this week, the best thing to do is to say, "I need to think about this for awhile first before answering but I WILL answer. Give me a little time." This is far better than spewing worldly words or advice you can never erase.
About a week and a half ago, a friend of ours stopped by without calling first. We hadn't seen him in about two years and with his new girlfriend in tow, he told us he was in the process of divorcing his wife of over a decade. Last we heard, they were separating so this was not shocking. He proceeded to give us the brief synopsis of the tumultuous last two years of events in his life. I will briefly summarize them for you as self-destructive though I doubt he would see it this way. He's lucky his legal issues are not larger and he's even more lucky he's not dead, need I say more? If divorce is such a good remedy for a "broken relationship," I certainly didn't see the evidence. What I did see grieved my soul immensely.
Daniel was the only child home when this person visited and he asked Mark why this couple whom he is familiar with, were divorcing. Divorces surround us, so much so that it's become the norm and we hardly stop to consider the consequences anymore. That is, until our children question it. Or someone asks our advice. What Daniel is really asking is first, what causes people to divorce and second and more importantly, if divorce can visit our home. To give godly answers to both questions requires us to examine God's plan for marriage, accepted reasons for divorce. and, once knowing those, comparing them to the world's view of divorce. Finally, we must examine our hearts and ask ourselves if we want to live integrous lives unto God or live as liars unto Satan. Will we follow God's plan for a successful marriage or make up our own rules as we go? Ultimately, it's our choice.
God's plan for humans from the beginning was for a man to marry a woman. Man was not complete by himself and he needed a "helper." Thus woman was brought out of man to complete him and God performed the first marriage. Marriage was designed to be a hedge against promiscuity. The only safe sex that isn't sin is in the marriage bed. Spouses are designed for each other; to fulfill a need for love and union that no one else can and additionally that no one else is supposed to. This kind of fulfillment is only accomplished with sacrificial love for each other - selflessness. God was so concerned about the necessary fusion of a married couple's relationship that He wrote in the Torah that for the first year of marriage, the husband shall do little more than stay home and make his wife happy. In short, a one year honeymoon. (Sounds delightful~) Marriage is God's gift to us for this life.
God's intent for marriage is that it's a binding commitment for this life not to be broken except by God through death. (Romans 7:2-3) Marriage is to serve as a model of our relationship with Christ, to teach us to be like Him and is marked by godly attributes such as love, peace, joy, grace, humility, service, patience, compassion, long suffering and forgiveness. Marriage is God's ideal environment for the raising of godly children. If parents have committed their lives to Christ, then they become the example of Christ centered living and children will grow up watching and learning to live in the Lord's will daily. What they learn as children, they will not depart from as adults. A godly marriage will grow stronger with age, as well as sweeter. The history the couple shares as they walk together toward eternity will become sacred.
When sin entered the picture, God laid out a couple exceptions under which it was acceptable for His children to divorce. One is sexual immorality. He, better than any other, knows the pain of this variety of wretched unfaithfulness. The second is when there is distress in the marriage that hinders the believer's relationship with God. The root cause of this anguish is being unequally yoked and in this case the believer is not bound if the unbeliever wishes to divorce over Holiness being despised. (1 Corinthians 7:10-17) Believers are called to live in peace but that by no means suggests that a divorce for either reason will not have ramifications on a believer's life as a whole.
A Christian couple has not only made vows of commitment to each other but also before and to God. The reverent "fear of God," and the authority of God over their lives becomes both the foundation and cement of the marriage. Honoring God by keeping our vows for life sets our marriages apart from the worldly. If only one spouse is a believer, the marriage is still holy as the unbeliever is sanctified through the believer's faith and there is adhesive to the commitment by at least the saved person and God. However, Christians are warned not to become unequally yoked because that marriage will always be on shaky ground until the one is saved, or departs. It's like shooting yourself in the foot before running a race yet God gives comfort and advice to those in this situation; run the race anyway and trust Him without fear of what the unbelieving spouse may do. 1 Peter 3:1-6
Unfortunately, there is no foundation nor cement in a worldly marriage. That kind of marriage is as flimsy as the paper the marriage license is printed upon because there is no authority (God) over the spouses and they do not live life with an eternal view. Have you ever noticed that when two unsaved people try to do something God ordained like marry, all hell breaks loose against them? They got along fine as an unmarried couple, but as soon as they married, their entire relationship went downhill. Why is that? It's because they have no foundation in Christ. They make decisions for their life and marriage fueled by the lusts of right now never looking at the future consequences of such actions. This "love" is a lie of the devil; let's compare the two. Godly Love is patient while lust wants everything now. Godly Love can put up with most anything while lust runs away from it's problems. Godly Love can bear sorrow for a season while lust cannot tolerate not having fun all the time. Godly Love will yield to it's Maker while lust will skew the lines of right and wrong to suit it's selfishness.
Without God in the marriage, one is simply "playing house." When one player decides the game isn't fun anymore, they will simply break free throwing all the shattered pieces of the house into the trash as if that life and all their history together was disposable and meaningless. Worldly or godly, all divorce is caused by the sin of at least one spouse. Whether it be adultery, hating God, or worse, divorce is the devil's playground, the beginning of a downward spiral whose root cause is selfishness. One person and perhaps both decided "their life" and "their happiness" was more important than the other person's. May God help their children should they have any, as they usually become pawns at that point when they are forced to choose between parents. Ultimately, once, "I deserve better than you," is spoken, the kid gloves come off and sin reigns like never before. All the amazing qualities that attracted one spouse to the other in the first place are forgotten and the focus is only on the qualities they hate. Suddenly they spew things like, "I don't know what I ever saw in you." How are children to process being casualties of such an uncivil war? God's intent was that they should never have to. Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful above all things, it is desperately wicked, who can know it? The only hope for the wicked heart is the Holy Spirit. The "preventative" for divorce is selflessness. Without the Holy Spirit, selflessness is impossible thus a worldly marriage has little hope of survival. Loving God's way (selflessly) is a choice, just as submitting your life to God is a choice. Neither choice is fueled by lust.
What is life but a table filled with choices set before us daily by God to teach and prepare us for eternity? Each day we all come to this table and freely choose who we'll spend eternity with by accepting or rejecting the authority of God over our lives. On one end of the table is a basket of blessings and on the other end is a bowl of curses. We choose which side to eat on based on our obedience or disobedience to Him. We partake of blessings when we honor God with our lives. Those blessings are abundant, freely given without sorrow and satisfy the soul. We partake of curses when we choose to live as we see fit, dishonoring God, starving our souls. If God isn't blessing our life then we end up striving to bless ourselves through worldly things. Worldly "blessings" are actually curses. They are elusive, costly, come with much striving and always short-lived. They amount to running to and fro chasing happiness but never finding it.
All disobedience to God has consequences and whether you be godly or worldly; it damages the soul. Don't get me wrong, sin is forgiven with repentance but the consequences of sin are not usually wiped away. We must live with the fallout of our choices. A godly person who is divorced has to reconcile themselves to that and whatever their part in it was. It is not an easy task and is comparable to grieving a death. The wounds are deep and may last the rest of their lifetime and while a person with Christ has hope of restoration; a person without Christ is lost - both in this world and the next one. Satan temporarily blinds the worldly person to the destruction of their soul by the divorce with various coping methods of denial: drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, partying, etc. but the sorrow will catch up eventually. For awhile they believe they are happier without their spouse, but if you "see between the lies," you'll find a lost person on the inside.
I saw that "lost" when this person visited. My sorrow has been heavy for this couple who now have to live with the consequences of this sin in their lives as well as the lives of the four children they are struggling to raise. Meanwhile, I just received the news that "so and so" and his wife are going to divorce as well. Thankfully they have no children but the sting of divorce will be with them for life. This is a couple without God so the mention of selflessness falls on deaf ears. Both couples' issues are likely the result of poor judgement in choosing a spouse in the first place because that choice was rooted in lust for the "right now" and not godly love for a lifetime. Divorce will not correct that "mistake" because it does correct the sin/lust problem. It instead makes it worse. Suddenly people who professed their undying love for each other hate each other with such passion that they seek out every opportunity to stab each other in the back. Selfishness reigns more than ever and is soon mixed with anger, resentment and bitterness which they will carry as baggage right into the next "relationship." This is one reason God warns not to stray from the wife of your youth. See Proverbs 5:1-23
There is sin that leads a worldly person down a path to a place where it's nearly impossible for them to hear God's call to repentance. That is scary lost! There is sin that your soul cannot fully recover from until God wipes every tear in Heaven - unless of course, your final destination is Hell and then you'll live with all your sins forever with no hope. There is sin that it would be better to die than commit. Divorce is one of those sins. I am certain that this is why God designed marriages to be broken by death rather than humans. Marriage isn't a game and divorce has serious consequences on the soul - in this life, and the next one.
Matthew 7:24-26
Jesus said, “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”
I want my my house built on the Rock, that is Jesus Christ. I want to stand firmly upon it at all times come what may. I got married for life; for better or for worse, until death and whatever God chooses for me to endure in this life, I will do so knowing He's preparing me to live with Him. That said, I would rather have my marriage broken by my death than by my sin. I crucify my flesh daily to be certain I never step foot on that path of selfishness which leads to so many worse things. I love Mark too much to do that to him. I'm more than blessed to be married to him for this journey to eternity. He is my everything on Earth just as God intended him to be.
That is what I plan to tell my children both now and in the future when they begin to consider marriages of their own.
That is what I plan to tell my children both now and in the future when they begin to consider marriages of their own.
4 comments:
Hi Jen,
I found your blog via Ann Voskamp's site and this post was so beautifully written. I am sorry to hear about Samuel...God bless you as you walk this path.
Blessings,
Susan
Thanks for this. I often get frustrated at how we Christians just blithely go along with our culture's tendency towards divorcing at the first sign of trouble. I've only been married five years and yet I grew up hearing: mom and dad will never ever get divorced. And indeed they just celebrated almost fifty years of marriage. It is work but having this foundation of understanding is critical I think. I mean: wow. Covenant. So huge. Thanks for this.
I hope this isn't too personal, but when you have these conversations with Daniel about sex and marriage, do you talk to him about the choices you made in your life and about the circumstances of his own conception and things like that? This is a question I've been pondering a lot lately--how to talk about these topics honestly, but knowing just how much to say...
Hi R.
Daniel is only 12 and not at all interested in girls yet, which is helpful. His main concern right now is that divorce isn't contageous.
Regarding sex and marriage, both Mark and my own parents never taught us anything about either. So we learned what we learned from friends instead. This is not how kids should be learning things so intimate. Mark has been very good about explaining things as Daniel has brought them up. Thankfully, Daniel feels comfortable enough to ask about things I would have NEVER been comfortable enough to ask my own parents. I think this is the key to any conversation you will have. Does you child feel like you are a safe person whom they can ask questions without fear. This is the environment we strive to keep here. We do that by admitting our own failures. We do not pretend we made all the right choices but we do explain what we learned by doing things wrong.
Best wishes!
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