What If What You Learned About Divorce Was Wrong?

A long while back, I read the story about Israel Houghton and his new lady. I wasn’t looking for any drama, but Facebook has a way of dropping things in your news feed. My alter ego Judgy McJudgerson came straight out the gate talking about “Oh, no he dii’int!” because, trust me, she was here for all of this! But what if what you learned about divorce was wrong? Israel separated from his wife and took up with another woman. And Israel was wrong for what he did.

Sadly, he’s far from the only person living contrary to Scripture when it comes to marriage, divorce, and remarriage. 

What if what you learned about divorce was wrong?

I’m not here to attack Israel. I admire his talent. One of his songs is always the first I play when I’m listening to my Christian playlist. He just happened to be in a situation that this ministry needs to address. Because of his position as a ministry leader, people look up to him and follow his example, thinking that because he’s a “man of God” that what he is doing is acceptable because it’s his life. But he is human and therefore fallible and susceptible to sin, falling to the temptation of twisting or ignoring the Scriptures to fit his needs. And not to be misguided, we’ve all done it at least once in our lives.

This isn’t Judgy talking. He is free to do what he wants with his life; that’s between him and God. I fully understand that people will do what they want.

I’m here to say is this: we each have a choice in life, either we do or don’t follow the Scriptures.

I want you to understand that God gives us no room or right to negotiate His commands nor to work around what He asks of us in order to suit our own wants and desires. Marriage and divorce are the biggest areas where we, as humans, try to find all sorts of loopholes in the Word.

I found myself in a similar situation

The big question and elephant in the room in Israel’s situation is this: can he marry his girlfriend? Should she enter into a relationship with him?

Let me be transparent for a moment.

My husband was separated when we met. Separated as in “legally married.” I knew that I couldn’t be more than friends with him because I refused to be his mistress. I truly admired that he was unwilling to cheat on his wife, regardless of the circumstances. We were friends for 2 years after his divorce before we dated. I knew his situation and had confidence that he had divorced for the right reasons.

Dating is different from being married, for sure. I entered into a relationship with him with a lot of caution because I knew that one day I wanted to marry him. I was afraid that I would be entering into a long-term situationship. My biggest concern was that he would never be able to marry me. 

How can you be scripturally divorced and remarried?

I was afraid that he’d disclosed to our minister that he’d cheated in retaliation for what his ex-wife did. I knew that according to Scripture, that was a sin that would prevent him from being remarried. What would I have done? I would have walked away.

infidelity

God makes allowance for scriptural divorce and scriptural remarriage. The allowance under scrutiny here {Mark 10:2-12} is that God allows for a covenant to be broken with Him if you’re cheated on.

To be conservative, there were a few opinions given on the matter in the comment sections all over the interwebs regarding what Israel could and should do in his new situation. Matt 5:31-32 and Luke 16:18 both talk about divorce and remarriage in the New Testament scriptures. I encourage you to check it out for yourself…but let me try to paraphrase it for you.

The cheatee is allowed to leave the marriage and remarry.

The cheater is not.

If the cheater remarries while the ex is still alive, the cheater (and their new spouse) are both adulterers. 

This article spells it out in much more detail than I’ve posted about here but please read the Bible for yourself!

Not taking care of or dishonoring your spouse

This is a topic that I’m still learning about but I attended a Christian conference in 2018 that had a track just for this. Leslie Vernick was the presenter on Emotionally Destructive Marriages and it was truly an eye-opener for me.

Ms. Vernick shared with the group her definition of an emotionally destructive marriage. “An emotionally destructive marriage is one where one’s personhood, dignity, and freedom of choice is regularly denied, criticized, or crushed. This can be done through words, behaviors, economics, attitudes, and misusing the scriptures.

Like most people, I believed that infidelity was the only recourse for scriptural divorce. As I sat and listened to her, it made a lot of things clear for me. Wondering what people were supposed to do if they found themselves in an abusive relationship; folks advising that a domestic violence victim has to stay in their marriage never sat well with me. How I would reconcile breaking a covenant for something outside of infidelity.

As I learned, unreconciled emotional and financial infidelity, as well as abuse (mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual) is also grounds for scriptural divorce. 

Colossians 3:19 ESV “Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.”

Ephesians 5:25 ESV “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,…”

I fully believe that any situation can be reconciled if both parties are willing to put in the work toward healing and forgiveness.  If your spouse has an unrepentant heart, exhibited through unchanged actions, then God is displeased with the unrepentant party. He does not want His children to be in harm’s way, especially from someone who has promised Him that they would take care of you and love you like another child of God:

If you find yourself in a situation where you are contemplating divorce, first consider these things:

• Are you or your spouse truly repentant for your sins? Before any healing and rebuilding can begin, the offending spouse has to be repentant for their actions. Only with true repentance can change have a chance of happening.
• Have you exhausted all the options to save your marriage? Counseling with a qualified practitioner can be a great first step toward reconciliation. We all have pasts and unprocessed trauma that can lead to destructive behaviors in marriage. Working with a professional can absolutely help to turn things around in your life and in your marriage.
• Do you need to try reconciliation through separation? Sometimes the best thing that we can do to save our marriage is to separate for a time. Separation is not a divorce. Marriages can get to a point where the spouses need some time away from each other to be able to come back together; this can be the last-ditch effort to rectify your marriage. 1 Corinthians 7:12-15a ESV instructs: “To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband…But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so.”

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