Difficult Teachings

The concept of divorce and remarriage is an extremely difficult topic and I find it so troubling. The primary problem, though, is that our culture has so much divorce and remarriage that the extremely blunt teaching of Jesus on the topic is difficult to swallow. Thus the teaching is difficult not because it is actually difficult to understand what the Bible is saying but rather because it is so difficult to actually face the clarity when surrounded by a culture that, quite frankly, completely trivializes marriage. According to a recent review of the book Divorce And Remarriage: A Redemptive Theology by Rubel Shelly:

Shelly claims that what unites Christians is a common commitment to God's plan for marriage including the warnings on divorce. These issues are inarguable. The confusion and controversy results from the nature of the penance for those in disobedience to the divine principles. Shelly asserts, "Divorce is not a sin in its own special class that requires a lifelong penance of remaining single, celibate, and companionless. Can we really bring ourselves to believe that the sinner whose offense is divorce has no spiritual option but to live with his failure forever? Can we really be persuaded that Jesus leaves no option to marry again for someone divorced against her will by a mean-spirited soul."

Shelly's primary assertion here is, "Divorce is not a sin in its own special class that requires a lifelong penance of remaining single, celibate and companionless." His remaining questions are built upon this. Unfortunately I feel misled by his assertion in the first place:

[Jesus] said to them, Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. (Matthew 19:8-9)

The problem with this passage is that it is so plain. There are so many things in the Bible that are difficult to understand on their face, but this teaching appears so simple. Is that misleading? Does Jesus not really mean what he is saying? Is it possible to divorce and remarry (without an unfaithful partner) and not commit adultery? Shelly tries to answer these thorny problems by invoking deeper theology:

He names this theological view, the "radical continuity of the Word of God" and maintains that adhering to this understanding of the continuous connection of the Old and New Testament is essential in order to effectively challenge more traditional discussions of scriptures relating to divorce and remarriage. Shelly concludes that all the scriptures lead to reveal God's redemption plan and are all unmistakably connected by the interwoven thread of Jesus Christ. Using this "continuity" view, Shelly states, "... anything that Jesus or Paul says on the subject must be consistent with the Old Testament material, for Holy Scripture is progressive revelation - from partial to full, but never from error to truth. ...The teachings in our canonical New Testament are to be interpreted with a view toward their continuity with the Old Testament."

So understanding the Old Testament in continuity with the New is the answer here? That is, I must understand Jesus' statement in Matthew 19 in light of the teaching on marriage in the Old Testament. That seems strange, especially given that the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by invoking the Old Testament and Jesus' answer was in response to this. Look at the entire passage now:

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. They said to him, Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? He said to them, Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. (Matthew 19:3-9)

So the Pharisees invoke the teaching of Moses on this subject and Jesus responds by telling them what? He responds by violating Shelly's "radical continuity" view. Jesus tells them that Moses "allowed" them to divorce their wives because of their "hardness of heart." That is, the teaching of the Old Testament on marriage is consistent with the New, but only if you go back to the beginning and in the beginning there was only one man and one woman and no divorce, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." How can we deal with divorce and remarriage then, without looking at the teaching of Jesus square in the face? What are we to do with this teaching but look sadly at the world around us and realize how many there are which have put themselves into a situation where they are perpetually committing adultery? Even the disciples of Jesus realized that this was something unique in his teaching because in Matthew 19:10 they said, "If such is the case of a man with his wife it is better not to marry."

It gets even worse when we go to the teachings of Paul. In 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 Paul writes:

To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.

This is in a passage where Paul is clearly dividing the parts of his discourse where he is giving his own opinion from those where God is speaking through him. In these verses he clearly states, "not I, but the Lord" and then goes on to say that the wife shouldn't separate from her husband but if she does she should remain unmarried. Now, it is possible to look at this passage as though it were only applicable to that time and was specifically given to the Corinthian church because of the trials they were going to undergo, but you have to work at it and a simple understanding of this passage has it working very well with the teaching of Jesus. Don't they sound awfully similar? Don't 1 Corinthians 7 and Matthew 19 seem to teach some very similar things? If we didn't live in a culture that trivialized marriage and where we all know many people who have divorced and remarried and think nothing of it what would these passages seem to say? Wouldn't they be obvious in that case? Wouldn't we only have a problem and say that they are "difficult" if we found them hard to accept in a culture that so clearly denies what they say (as in fact we do)?

So when Shelly says, "Divorce is not a sin in its own special class that requires a lifelong penance of remaining single, celibate, and companionless" isn't he telling us that the teachings of Paul and Jesus that seem to say the exact opposite of what he wants us to believe? Why would he do this? Does it make sense to believe that Shelly has really discovered some deep and complex theological truth that makes Jesus' teaching much more difficult to understand but which allows us to condone a very obvious cultural weakness? Wouldn't we need to be on guard against the clear bias of our culture in this regard and wouldn't working uphill against quite clear passages in the Bible be an indicator that we were instead allowing that culture to warp our understanding of what God is trying to tell us?

Dust in the Wind

I think humans have an unavoidable obsession with death. That may seem obvious to some people, but I'm not sure it is to everybody. Most people want to keep that in the closet. It doesn't matter, though, because the shortness of our life and the fact that we are surrounded by the dead and dying always brings itself to our attention in one way or another.

Blaise Pascal wrote:

The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end for ever.

That seems like a big downer, doesn't it? But that really doesn't matter, because it is the truth. In this country where youth is glorified, not only for its health and beauty but also, ridiculously, for its knowledge, we would do well to remember that there is wisdom in the contemplation of the end of this life because when it comes won't we want to have figured out what we think of it and whether or not we wasted our lives and opportunities when we had them.

Shall We Seek Power?

In the debate over women's roles in the church the terms complementarian and egalitarian have been utilized to describe the different views. Roughly speaking, and as applied to the sphere of the church, the complementarian view is the more traditional one, with men being the only ones allowed to hold positions of leadership in the church and the egalitarian is the opposing view, that women can also hold leadership positions in the church. A recent comment on a blog post stated:

The essential difference between complementarians and egalitarians is the distribution of power. Yes, egalitarians want the same (equal) power. Yes, complementarians believe men should have more power, which is different. But that does not mean that egalitarians believe men and women are the same in every way. Maybe some do (I haven’t read any that do) but I don’t.

I don't know, but I think that this really misses what Christian leadership is supposed to be. Jesus tells us this about his idea of leadership:

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:42-45)

He demonstrated this attitude with his life:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

"Servant", "obedient", "slave" - these don't sound like "power" or even "equality." This sounds like "leadership" in the church isn't about "power" at all but rather about the inversion of what a worldly culture thinks about power. I would go so far as to say that if "power" is what you seek in the church then you should never be a leader of the church, man or woman. I would go so far as to say that anyone who seeks power disqualifies themselves from Christian leadership by definition. They may hold the post of a leader if they have managed to "lord it over" the people and they may "exercise authority" over the church, but to God they are not "great" and they are not leaders.