In this thought-provoking episode, we explore the profound impact of divorce not just on couples but on children who find themselves caught in the crossfire. Drawing from biblical teachings, we delve into the consequences of family breakups and how societal and personal attitudes affect the younger generation. Navigating through the teachings of Jesus and Moses, the episode sheds light on the original intent of marriage as an enduring union and the contingencies made for when marriages falter.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 02 :
When you were on your way home from work yesterday and you drove by a schoolyard with a couple hundred kids out there either playing or waiting for buses or waiting for mom and dad to pick them up, did it ever cross your mind that of all those children out there, Fully one half of them, before they get grown, are going to go through, or already have been through, a divorce. Yeah, that’s the way it is. About half of the kids being born nowadays, before they reach adulthood, are going to go through the rupture of their family. Their parents, who once upon a time loved each other more than any other human being on the face of the planet… have now come sometimes to loathe and despise one another at the same kind of intensity they loved one another. They can’t stand one another anymore, and so they’re splitting up. And guess who gets the greatest emotional and psychological burden of it all? Right, the children. And what’s really sobering to realize is that of this group of kids who are going to go through this experience, about a third of those kids will go through it again. They’ll go through it again because mama didn’t learn much of anything about the selection of a husband from her first mistake, and so she’ll go right out and she’ll make the same mistake all over again. It’s amazing how many women marry exactly the same kind of man the second time around after all the abuse they got from the first one. But it happens. Most divorced children live with their mothers. The father’s commitment to them was made mostly through the mother. So dad goes out of the picture. And even when he stays connected on weekends, the relationship is corrupted. He never disciplines them. He leaves that to mama when they get back home. Because dad, what’s dad up to? Well, dad’s trying to be sure the kids keep on loving him. So what does he do? Oh, he spends money on them, spends time with them, gives them freedoms, doesn’t put restrictions on them because he doesn’t want them to feel bad about the time they get to spend with him. They go back home to mother, and mother has got to do all the discipline. Mother’s got to crack the whip. Mother’s got to clamp down on them. Mother’s got to repair the damage that dad did over the weekend. And so the kids go through this kind of a strange whipsaw. And dad, well, dad never provides the kind of discipline that only a father can provide. Because in order to provide the discipline that a true father can provide, you’ve got to be there. You’ve got to be there all the time. And both mother and father half the time undercut one another with the children because their competition that’s going on for the love of the children. And the children are sometimes used as pawns in the war between a man and a woman and their sacrifice to one parent’s need to get even. Children have even been used as a part of lies, a campaign of lies in custody suits. And it’s almost as though, I mean, I have to ask, does anybody let it cross between their ears? What’s going on in the kid’s mind? When all this is happening? When all these games are being played? One of the most stupid things I’ve heard in all the blather on this subject is the assertion that, well, the kids will be all right. I heard this from a friend of mine once upon a time who was getting a divorce. And I expressed real concern about his little boy. And he said, oh, he’ll be all right. People say, well, the kids will adjust to it. Well, yeah, they’ll adjust to it all right. But someone pointed out to me, people who go to prison adjust to it. People who get committed to a mental hospital adjust to it. What kind of adjustments do kids make to divorce? Well, they’ve done some studies on that, so you don’t have to guess. You don’t have to wonder. Well, I wonder what kind of adjustments the kids make when they have to go through this. Well, studies have shown that many of them tend to become more dependent, more passive, and more repetitive in the way they go about their lives and their days. Some of them become less affectionate than children are wont to be and more disobedient. Some kids begin to display resentment and anxiety and a lot of grief in their life. One study found that 10 years later, children are showing signs of stress left over from a divorce. They tend to have more ulcers. They tend to have a higher suicide rate. They don’t do as well in school. And when they grow up and get married, they are far more likely to divorce. And then, of course, a lot of them don’t want to get married at all. All the experience they’ve had with marriage and with family has been so negative that the last thing in the world they want to do is get married. And I hadn’t thought about it until I read some of this research, but it makes me wonder, is that one of the reasons why so few people are getting married? Well, I know a lot of people are getting married, but, I mean, relatively, it seems to me that half of the people who would have been getting married 40 years ago are now shacking up. They just move in with one or the other and live together for a year or two or three. And then when things get bad, instead of having to get a divorce, they just split up and go their separate ways. There’s no commitment. There’s no protection involved in it. And people who do that type of thing think they have a real relationship. Well, I guess they have a relationship, but they surely are not relatives. Oh, yeah, children do make adjustments to the breakup of marriage. But they’re not adjustments that I would ever want my children to have to go through. Would you? Maybe, maybe, and somewhere in all of this, we can begin to understand why Jesus took such a hard line on divorce. When the Pharisees came to Jesus and they said to him, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? It was an explosive issue they were bringing to Jesus. The way they asked this question had to do with a very sharp differentiation between schools of rabbinical thought, and they wanted to find out where Jesus was, and they thought they might trap him so they could get him in a box. And, you know, when you get people into a box where you know who they are, well, it’s a lot easier to deal with them. And Jesus’ answer was unambiguous. He said, no, it is not lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause. She burns a toast, give her a divorce. No, that’s not allowed. Jesus answered, this is his answer in his own words. You’ll find it in Matthew 19, verse 4. He answered and said to them, Haven’t you read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two, not three or four, shall be one flesh. Wherefore, there are no more two, but one flesh. And then he put the clincher on it. He said, What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. That’s not a lot of wiggle room in that, is there? Jesus came down and said, No, you can’t put away your wife for every cause. God has joined man and woman together, and man’s not supposed to put them apart. So, Jesus’ teaching on marriage was that it was God’s intent that marriage involve one man with one woman for life. Now, apart from the right and wrong of male and female relationships, look at the effect on the children. The very idea of family is undercut by divorce. The whole thing gets screwed up. Marriage and family don’t merely exist for the benefit of a man and woman. They are for the children of that union. The whole idea of God and His instructions was hold the family together. Mom and Dad, make some sacrifices, if you have to, to hold the family together. Your comfort is not as important as the security of your children. And just because the two of you don’t get along very well right now doesn’t mean you can’t sort those problems out. And for the sake of the children, you should try to sort it out. And incidentally, For the survival of your society, you need to sort it out. But the Pharisees, always ready to argue with Jesus, this time thought they had him. They had, in reply to what Jesus said, a legitimate question. They said to him, when Jesus said, no, no, what God has joined together, let not man put asunder. So they said, all right, Lord, our master, why did Moses then command to give them a writing of divorcement and to put her away? If that’s not supposed to happen, why did Moses say it could happen? No, they didn’t misunderstand Moses. They had Moses right. The section of Moses that they were talking about is found in Deuteronomy chapter 24. This is what it says, quote, When a man has taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes because… Oh, well, I see now. We have a because. We don’t just have that she finds no favor in his eyes. If he just marries her and then decides, well, I don’t like you after all as much as I thought I did. No, no. There has to be a cause. What’s the cause? Well, because he has found some uncleanness in her. The Hebrew expression here really means some matter of nakedness, and it’s just a euphemism, a figure of speech, for sexual uncleanness or for sexual sins. So when he has found that situation, then let him write her a bill of divorcement and give it into her hand and send her out of his house. So in principle, this has to work also both ways. The breach of the sexual union in marriage is terribly destructive. But what you have to do, he said, is you don’t just, she just doesn’t get up and move out and go move in with someone else. You give her a writing of divorcement. You formalize it so that she still has some kind of status in society. She’s not a whore. She just moved out of your house. And you’ve given her a writing of divorcement. She has a legitimate position. And it says in verse 2, when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. So you don’t have women who have been, let’s say, thrown out of the house without any legitimate status whatsoever and no other man would have them and here they are. That wasn’t a society in which there was an aid for dependent children or a welfare circumstance. It wasn’t a society where it would be real simple for a woman to go out and get a job as a secretary or receptionist somewhere. No, no. A woman who was thrown out of a family in this day and time could starve. But by giving her the writing of divorcement and by formalizing the relationship, he specifically allowed her to go and become another man’s wife. Now, this runs contrary to one of the classic interpretations of Jesus’ teaching on divorce. And that is that the marriage is never dissolved, never broken. And that the reason why a second marriage is adulterous is because the woman is still married to the first man until she’s dead. It doesn’t make any difference what kind of a louse he is, was, or have you. He’s still her husband. And even though she has… divorced him and gone out and married another guy, in some preacher’s eyes, she was still married to the first guy. And in order to really be right with God, she had to break up that marriage and go back to the first husband. Well, what’s wrong with that is that here you have, right out of the Bible, specific permission for a writing of divorcement, and that a woman might go and be another man’s wife. But how did Jesus handle that? Did he agree with Moses?
SPEAKER 03 :
We’ll talk about that when I come back after these words. What did Jesus really say about divorce? If you have been through the agony of divorce, do you have to live single for the rest of your life? Write or call for an eye-opening article, Is There Life After Divorce? So it’s pretty clear in the Law of Moses that when a woman has been given a written divorce, she has a right to go out and get married again, which establishes the fact that the first marriage is over.
SPEAKER 02 :
If it were somehow still lingering, that wouldn’t be permitted. Now Moses continues, that is God continues in telling Moses what to do. In verse 3 it says, If the latter husband, she’s gone and gotten married to another man, and if the latter husband hates her and writes her a bill of divorcement and gives it to her, he sends her out of his house. Or if the latter husband die, who took her to be his wife? In other words, all of a sudden this woman finds herself out of a marriage again. Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife after she is defiled. For that’s an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not cause the land to sin which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance. This expression, cause the land to sin, is kind of odd, perhaps on your ears. But what he’s talking about, lest you wreck your society, lest you tear apart your whole existence on the land. It’s actually an apt description of what we have done and are continuing to do in our land. Our land is sinning. The way marriages are coming apart and the way people are swapping beds and so forth, the land of the whole thing is coming unstuck. What had happened here? Well, God had acknowledged that marriages fail and told Moses what to do to keep things from falling apart. Society has to continue. So formalize all this so people aren’t running from bed to bed with all that that entails. Now, I ask the question, what did Jesus think of all this? How did Jesus handle it? Jesus, when the Pharisees had made the point about Moses’ law, replied to them this way. He said to them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. In other words, divorce was not a part of God’s plan. Neither was the mosquito that carries malaria a part of God’s plan. God created a perfect world, and when he finished each day of creation, he said, Behold, he looked upon all that he had made, and it was really good. The bad that exists in this world has got to be because of the damage that human beings have wreaked on God’s planet through the generations that have followed. Sin entered the picture, and many decisions had to be made about what to do about sin. Because actually, you can’t just kill every sinner because the first thing you know, there’s no one left. A surprising part of the law of Moses, and if you ever study it carefully, you’ll see what I mean. A surprising part of it is composed of judgments about what to do when sin has entered the picture. For example, the question arises, what do you do about a thief? Well, the simple thing to do is go out and kill him, but again, you can’t kill everybody that commits a sin. So what do you do? Well, the law had judgments about how he was to restore and what to do if he didn’t have anything to restore. He could be sold off into slavery and payment made to the person he damaged. Adultery was punishable by death. But you know what had to happen for the death penalty to be exacted in a case of adultery? You’re the husband. You found your wife has gone out and committed adultery. You take her before the judges. The question is judged. The truth is established. And the woman can be stoned. But guess who has got to throw the first stone at her to kill her? You do. And I think a lot of men just weren’t prepared to go that far. I don’t think a lot of men are really ready to kill their wives just because she had an affair. You remember the incident in the New Testament where Mary was found with child of the Holy Spirit. And we’re told that Joseph, who was a just man, was prepared to put her away privately. He thought she’d gotten pregnant by another man, and he was prepared to divorce her, but he didn’t want to make a public example of her. He didn’t want to stone her to death. Well, the fact is that Deuteronomy 24 tells you what you have to do in a situation where a man can’t live with a woman anymore and is not prepared to carry out the death penalty for what she’s done. Now, if no one is willing to do that, then the next question is, how shall this woman live? This is what Jesus was talking about when he said, Moses, because of the hardness of your heart allowed you to put away your wives. In other words, because you’re a bunch of sinners, now we’ve got to figure out what to do. When you can’t live with her anymore, you can’t forgive her, and there’s a certain degree of understanding that has to be carried in that regard. When a man’s wife or one’s husband, for that matter, has run around on them, there’s a terrible breach of confidence, a terrible breach of trust, and it will never be the same. And when you can’t forgive, you pretty well have to separate. Now what do we do? You know, in the end, Jesus accepted Moses’ judgment. He said, Moses permitted it because of the hardness of your heart, but from the beginning it wasn’t so. This isn’t what God had in mind. And then he goes on to say in verse 9, I say unto you, whoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commits adultery. And whoever marries her who is put away, commits adultery. Why? Well, because they still are considered as one in God’s eyes. Unless… Unless what? Well, unless there has been fornication. The Greek word in this case that’s translated fornication refers to sexual sins in general and includes every kind and variety of sexual betrayal that a woman or a man might engage in. So a man could put away his wife for sexual betrayal and she could marry another without committing adultery. If a woman found that a husband was engaged in homosexual acts, I’m sure she’d have exactly the same rights. Now, what is important about this passage is that Jesus acknowledges that a marriage can be broken. And when it really is broken by fornication, there is a right of remarriage, and Jesus acknowledges it when he says, “…except.” So what Jesus is saying then, whoever shall put away his wife except it be for fornication, and shall marry another commits adultery. Well then, if he puts her away for fornication and marries another, he is not committing adultery.
SPEAKER 03 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
Jesus’ disciples had a little trouble with that when he got through with it because after he’d made this statement that whoever shall put away his wife except it be for fornication and shall marry another commits adultery, and whoever marries her which is put away commits adultery, the disciples said, well, Master, if the case of the man be so with his wife, it’s good not to marry. Now, I don’t think Matthew understood how we’d take that. I think a lot of people looked at that and said, well, then that means it’s not a good idea for a man to ever get married. I don’t really think that’s what the disciples were saying. That doesn’t go along with what Jesus had been saying before. I don’t think they were talking about marriage in general. Their question doesn’t make any sense. I think they were saying that if what Jesus said is true, then it was best for those who were in this case not to marry again. In other words, people who have gone through this situation in their lives would probably be wise not to remarry, wouldn’t they? Not necessarily saying that as a generalized thing it’s better for people not to get married. I don’t think that’s their point. And Jesus, when they asked this question, said, All men cannot receive this saying except they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother’s womb, and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men, and there are some eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. What in the world does that mean? Well, to be a eunuch is to be without sex. Sometimes it was accomplished by castration. In other words, they were made eunuchs by men. Sometimes it was an accident of birth. They were born eunuchs, that is, unable to have sex. Sometimes people became eunuchs in a manner of speaking because of a decision they made personally to remain celibate for the rest of their life for the sake of God and for his work. As Jesus said, they made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. But what the most important thing Jesus said here is that everybody can’t do that. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. What Jesus is saying here is, believe it or not, is that he acknowledges that some people simply can’t live single. And in so saying, he allows for remarriage when reconciliation is impossible. Now, the writers of the New Testament were men of God, but they also were earthy themselves. They understood the problems that people deal with. And the Apostle Paul later, when he also deals with the subject of divorce, explains this thing a little further. The section is in 1 Corinthians 7, and it’s very interesting, beginning in verse 1. He says, “…now concerning the things whereof you wrote unto me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.” Now, be careful with that. Some people will come along and say, well, Paul said it’s good not to touch a woman. No, he didn’t. He said, concerning the things whereof you wrote to me, and we don’t know what that was. So we have to understand that that’s conditional. So Paul’s saying there are circumstances where it’s best for a given man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, he says, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and every woman have her own husband. Well, what’s that about? Well, it’s pretty simple, folks. What he is saying is that human beings are sexual creatures. God made us this way. We have needs. And for some of us, to try to live celibate, to be required to be away from the opposite sex and to live alone, just isn’t going to work. The result is the pressures are going to build up, and sooner or later we’re going to commit fornication, we will commit sin, and we will be in bad shape. Now, Paul goes on to talk about how it’s important for a man and his wife to have a sexual relationship and not to withhold that relationship from one another. And later in verse 7, he says, I would that all men were like I am. But every man has his proper gift of God, one after this manner and another after that. What he’s suggesting, I think, is that he himself had a gift. He was able to live the celibate life, and it posed no serious problem for him. But then he realized that all men weren’t like him. And so he said in verse 8, I say therefore to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they remain single like I am. But if they cannot contain, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn. What’s that about? Well, commentators disagree. They talk about whether it’s better to marry than to burn in hell, or it’s better to marry than to burn with passion. Well, I wouldn’t worry myself too much about that if I were you. All you need to know is that Paul is recognizing that there are people who cannot live the celibate life. And if they can’t, they’d better get married, for it’s far better for them to marry than to try to live that life and perhaps fall into sin, well, almost certainly fall into sin. Then he goes on to say to the married, I command, not I but the Lord, let not the wife depart from her husband. Don’t split up that marriage. If she departs, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband and don’t let the husband put away his wife. Now speaking to God’s people, he says this, if you can’t live with each other, well then go ahead and split up if you must. But try for reconciliation and don’t remarry. Live alone or get reconciled. You have that option. But he’s not through talking about this because he recognizes that there are going to be circumstances in which that is not an option. He says in verse 12, But to the rest I say, not the Lord, this is my judgment, not a commandment from God. If any brother has a wife who doesn’t believe and she is pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. This is talking about the problem of split marriages. One is a Christian, one is a pagan, which existed in that world. He said, let him not put her away. And the woman who has a husband that doesn’t believe, if he’s pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified or set apart by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is set apart by the husband. If that weren’t true, your children would not be holy before God. But if the unbelieving depart, and this is important, let him go. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace. Now, it’s a complicated… section that Paul advances here. And some people get confused because they think maybe he’s adding some new exception clause beyond what Christ added. But what Paul is acknowledging is the same thing Christ acknowledged. And that is there’s some people that it’s asking more of them than they can deliver to ask them to live alone for the rest of their lives. And so Paul says, try to be reconciled. But then he also acknowledges that if that’s not possible… that rather than try to live single and rather than try to face all the temptations and the struggles that you’re going to face, rather than fall into the sin of fornication, get married. And, of course, one of the most important things, I think, to understand from both Jesus and from Paul is that when you come to a relationship with God and come to yourself and come to realize where you’ve been and what you’ve done, and you’ve been divorced and you have been remarried and now you’re living with another person, There is no way that you can rectify the wrongs of the past by committing another wrong. You don’t break up an existing marriage that exists now to try to go back to a previous marriage, which Moses tells us you shouldn’t do anyway. You know, when you really understand that we are saved by grace through faith, that our past mistakes and our past sins need to be put under the blood of Jesus Christ, You can’t straighten out the past. Try to live right for the future. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart reminding you, take care of your marriage.
SPEAKER 03 :
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SPEAKER 01 :
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