Questions About Divorce Debate

[Mateos Weinzapfel]

Hearingtheir story gives the three of us a reference point and a context for their current situation. I also want the couple to remember that at one time, the relationship was good. Marriage was good. Life was full of hope.

Couples should also remember there is usually a significant reason for the disagreement. One spouse (or both) may be dealing with a deeply held position, a dream (ideal) or other background issues. Uncovering this issue may help a couple reach a healthy compromise.

Choosing to divorce should never be easy or considered without input from wise counsel and a spiritual community. If an unfaithful spouse shows no prospect of repentance or refuses offers of help and restoration, divorce is permissible. However, God never intended divorce to be the answer.

The Bible releases a spouse from the marriage bond under limited circumstances: sexual immorality and abandonment. But what about spouses who suffer abuse? What does the Bible say to a woman married to a physically abusive man? Or the husband of an out-of-control substance abuser? Or worse, a spouse married to someone with violent or criminal intentions? Does the Bible say that spouses must stay in an abusive marriage?

Anyone who has experienced a divorce knows that its effects continue for decades. Divorce hits like a tornado and leaves a trail of devastation and heartache. Among the victims are innocent children who must deal with the destruction for years to come.

In addition to the findings by Anderson and Hetherington, researcher Judith Wallerstein also studied the long-term effects of divorce. Wallerstein studied families over 25 years and determined that divorce may leave lasting effects from which children may never fully recover.

Linda Waite, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, has studied the financial consequences of divorce. In her book, The Case for Marriage, Waite shows that couples can work together to build wealth, but after a divorce, there is no mutual support. For example, two households cost more to run. Even if finances are distributed evenly, the standard of living almost always drops.

If you and your spouse are struggling, seek help. Connect with a trusted group of mature Christians or a pastor who can provide wise counsel. You can also seek advice from a marriage therapist. When looking for a marriage counselor, consider the following qualifications: If you want to talk to a therapist, look for someone who is licensed and has advanced training in the areas of marriage and relationships. Consider these points when searching for a qualified marriage therapist:

Is divorce the right answer? In her book, The Case for Marriage, Waite followed couples for five years to check in on their marriages. She found that those who faced their challenges and managed conflicts reported a healthy marriage and a happy spouse. The social sciences indicate that change is possible.

When her husband confessed a porn addiction, Shelly thought she had forgiven him. A year later, she was still holding hatred toward him. That realization started her on the path toward true forgiveness.

Just under a year ago, I wrote a post entitled The Institution of Marriage, Same-Sex Unions, and Procreation on the subject of same-sex marriage. With the topic such a live one, I frequently get asked follow-up questions and wanted a single place to direct people where such questions could be addressed. This is my attempt to provide such a place.

Further to this, the love and commitment of individual couples has always had a rather uneasy relationship to marriage as an institution. While married couples are typically expected to get married in large part on the basis of a love for and a willing commitment to each other, the institution of marriage exists not to affirm this love and willing commitment as such, but to create something more certain and lasting beyond that. Marriage typically places considerable restrictions upon love. It places limitations and pressures upon our choices of suitable partners. It denies us the right to have sexual relationships with persons we might love outside of marriage bonds.

For many, the institution of marriage is designed to make it very difficult and costly for them to get out of a relationship with someone that they stopped loving many years ago and may now positively detest. While it begins with a willing commitment of two persons to each other, marriage renders that commitment something objective and binding upon the persons, even should the commitment become an unwilling one. The flipside of the romantic grounding of marriage upon love and willing commitment is a strong divorce culture, because for a significant percentage of marriages, what began as a willing and loving commitment will not always remain that way.

What the framing of such a question reveals is that the re-imagining of marriage taking place in many quarters does not merely rest with the issue of whether two men or two women can marry each other just like a man and a woman. Rather, the very sort of thing that marriage itself is is in the process of being re-imagined. As I have argued elsewhere, marriage is ceasing to be about institutional norms and public values and is gradually moving towards a more privatized lifestyle consumer model.

The legalization of inter-racial marriage is frequently taken as an analogy for the present same-sex marriage debates. The contrast between the two examples is illuminating, however. There was general agreement that an inter-racial marriage was a possible entity. The debate was purely over whether the possibility should be a legal one. However, there is not the same agreement that a same-sex marriage is a possible entity.

The prohibition of inter-racial marriage discriminated on the basis of skin colour, which, relative to the nature and ends of marriage, is a very bad reason upon which to discriminate. However, in discriminating between the committed sexual partnerships of same-sex couples and couples of the opposite sex there are many more grounds upon which to discriminate and, relative to the ends and nature of marriage, a strong argument can be made that they are good ones.

As it functions in contemporary discourse, especially surrounding gender, sexuality, and forms of relationships, egalitarianism tends to be a self-asserting dogma, often making it impervious to reasonable discourse. I firmly agree with egalitarianism on the point that, when things are truly equal relative to a particular end, they should be treated equally. We should never discriminate between persons or entities on the basis of irrelevant criteria. However, when we are trying to have a debate about the natures and ends of particular realities and which criteria are relevant in particular contexts, to speak about equality merely begs the question.

I do not believe that they should. However, there are ways to grant or secure such rights without redefining marriage. To redefine an institution as fundamental to human society as marriage for the sole purpose of addressing such problems is extreme overkill. More troubling, the suggestion that one not infrequently encounters that it would be a sufficient rationale for doing so betrays an alarmingly hollow view of what marriage actually stands for.

The Christian teaching on subjects such as marriage, gender, and sexuality are extensive. Most of this teaching takes a positive form, filling out such realities as sexual dimorphism with meaning and purpose, rather than the negative form of prohibiting particular behaviours (although there is plenty of that too). One of the problems with the assumption that Jesus never spoke to the subject of same-sex marriage is that, rather than taking our bearings from close attention to the positive teaching, it presumes that our answers would only be found in the form of negative prohibitions. However, the positive statements that Jesus makes about marriage clearly reveal that he is speaking about something quite different from same-sex relationships.

No. One does not have to exclude LGBT persons from those to whom we owe equitable treatment and recognition of personal dignity in order to oppose same-sex marriage. Opposition to same-sex marriage can be quite consistent with support for civil rights for LGBT persons more generally. The arguments that I have raised against same-sex marriage here and elsewhere do not presuppose opposition of homosexual relations, nor even to their recognition by society. The question that we are addressing here is not about the morality of homosexual practice (a question that must be addressed in its own place), but about the meaning of marriage.

A further and absolutely crucial difference between divorce and same-sex marriage is that divorce has never pretended to be anything other than a tragic sign that something has gone seriously wrong somewhere and that something sought for was not successfully attained. However, same-sex marriage takes much of the same value system of which divorce was a symptom and calls us both to celebrate it and to present it as integral to the meaning of marriage. Divorce typically acknowledges the compromises and the sacrifices that it is making: same-sex marriage strenuously denies them.

However, I have yet to see a convincing reason why legalizing same-sex marriage will open a legal door to polygamy. Nor, more importantly, is there much of a cultural desire for it: the will of our society is running in very different directions. Even if polygamy were made possible, it would be fringe in contrast to same-sex marriage, which is in the mainstream. The following are a few reasons why polygamy goes against the zeitgeist.

3. Polygamous groups tend to be highly procreative and polygamous families tend to place a lot of emphasis on children. Marriage is oriented towards the production of a new generation, not mere sexual gratification or romantic companionship. Once again, this is directly contrary to the current trend.

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