The Word Abused . . .

“LIVING IN ADULTERY”: SECOND TIME AROUND

Since our article last year on “Living in Adultery” we have had such a vigorous response as to persuade us that the need for more study in this area is even greater than we presumed. Not only did we receive numerous letters from grateful souls who are now persuaded that there is some hope for people crushed by a broken marriage besides the oppressive measures usually meted out to them by leaders of their congregation, but several people wrote to tell us of particular instances among their own acquaintances of couples who not only had to suffer the pain of a shattered home, but who, amidst all the agony, had to take abuse from preachers and elders when they would not conform to the hard, legalistic line they laid down.

The following is typical, written by a sister in west Texas, about her daughter. The reference to the baby being taken from her helps us to see the misery this brought to the entire family. They had adopted the child from one of our orphanages. When the marriage failed almost a year later, the baby was taken back and given to someone else. The young mother then had to face her friends and relatives, all “our” church folk, schooled in the doctrine of “Living in Adultery.”

The husband would not accept counseling, and she could not stay with him unless he would. So the orphanage took the baby back after he had been ours for almost a year. She seemed to have enough heartbreak to finish her off when her mother-in-law called her to say she just wanted her to think over the fact that she would go to hell if she should ever marry again. We had to take her to a psychiatrist for months. These ex-in-laws are very faithful members of the congregation. We cannot be close any more, but we are not hateful to them. They nodded their heads in approval when the elders made public withdrawal of fellowship from another lovely, faithful girl who had been through a similar divorce and then married a Christian boy who had been divorced. Our daughter feels that the elders are so disapproving of her that maybe she is lost.

Walter Pigg sends us a story from Chicago of a sister he knew in the Pearl Harbor church, who led more people to Jesus than anyone else in the congregation. She was really a worker. She visited with backsliders and brought them back to the Lord, and if anyone came up missing at the assembly she would be among the first to check on them. She had to return to the states when her husband was transferred. The next time Walter saw her, she explained why she was no longer attending any assembly:

They told me that since George is my second husband that I was living in sin. No one taught me this when they studied with me before I was baptized. Now they have said, until I divorce my husband, I am not welcome. So I guess that’s it. I can’t divorce my husband. He is my life and I am his. I’ll just have to trust in God’s mercy, if there is any for me.

Brother Pigg also tells of this case, which touched upon his own life:

In 1920 a young man of 20 married an immature girl and a year later their marriage was dissolved. In 1925 he remarried and four children came to this marriage. By 1960, when he was finally introduced to the gospel and baptized, his four children were all married and he had several grandchildren. Was this man to be told to divorce his wife and go looking for the bride of 1920? For me, this also brought further study because this man is my father-in-law, and grandfather to my children.

The examples of such religious oppression could be multiplied. As if life were not already an almost impossible task to most people with broken marriages, some of our leaders choose to place upon them burdens too heavy for them to bear. Young preachers, who know all too little about human suffering, will dare to tell married couples of many years that if they expect to serve Jesus they must dissolve their marriage and break up their home, however much misery this brings to parents and children alike. Elders, rooted in the “living in adultery” syndrome of Church of Christism, will treat divorce as if it were the unpardonable sin, and they will insist that the divorced brother or sister remain unmarried the rest of his or her life, however burdensome this may prove to be, unless of course the separated mate is guilty of adultery. If adultery did not cause the divorce, then the two “innocent” ‘parties can wait it out, until one or the other marries again, committing adultery, which then frees the other one. He or she can then marry without “living in adultery.” I remember a divorced preacher, waiting for his former wife to marry, so he could then “scripturally” marry again!

All this of course in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace!

Any interpretation of the teaching of Jesus that places upon people, young and old alike, burdens that are so overbearing as to make life tyrannical is suspect. Jesus is the answer, not the problem; he is fore bearing, not overbearing. He invites the weary. on the grounds that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. His teaching must always be interpreted so as to be consistent with his grand mission on earth: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn. 10:10). Or, as John puts it: “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome” (1 Jn. 5:3). Peter’s great invitation, “Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious,” (1 Pet. 2:4) is for all broken lives in every possible circumstance. To tell brother Pigg’s father-in-law that in coming to Jesus he must give up the woman that has blessed and graced his life, because of a sin in his youth, is not only going too far, but makes Jesus a hard taskmaster instead of a merciful savior. The relevant passages can’t mean that, however they are to be interpreted.

We present here a few propositions that may help to clear the air on the question of divorce and remarriage. They will sharpen some points that we made in the previous article and set forth still others. In all this we are not claiming to give the last word on the subject. To the contrary we suggest the relevant scriptures do not allow for dogmatism or absolute certainty. Some who speak on this subject know more than they really know, to quote Socrates. Our plea is for more openness, more forbearance, more understanding. We hope these propositions, which we believe will stand up, will encourage this.

1. All people who are legally married are indeed married and therefore cannot be guilty of adultery in their relation with each other.

This does not mean they may not have sinned in divorcing, and in all that led up to the divorce. Jesus recognizes that when one “marries another” he is married. Even if one has two wives at the same time, legally married to them both, he may be a bigamist but not an adulterer. David had several wives, and Jesus tells us that even from the beginning God did not intend it, that Moses allowed it because of hardness of heart (Mt. 19:3-9). So God really intended for David to have but one wife, But he did not commit adultery in sleeping with them all. Yet he did commit adultery when he slept with Bathsheba, who was not one of his wives. That is what adultery is: sexual intercourse outside marriage. Even today the tribal chief that missionaries come upon, who has 20 wives, is not an adulterer — unless he has relations with women beside those 20! His situation may not please God, just as David’s did not, but it isn’t adultery that is the problem. It’s polygamy.

2. Adultery is a God-designated sin, but “Living in Adultery” is a man designated sin, and there is therefore no such sin.

Without exception “living in adultery” is applied to married people, who are not guilty of adultery for the simple reason that they are married. It is never applied to adulterers, people who have illicit sexual intercourse. One might point to Col. 3; 5-7 where Paul lists several sins, such as immorality and covetousness, and then says; “In these you once walked, when you lived in them,” and come up with the idea of living in adultery. This would be all right, for this refers to practicing these particular sins. But our people do not use “living in adultery” in this sense, for they apply it to people they believe to be “unscripturally married,” Only people who commit adultery can be accused of walking or living in it as in Col. 3:7. Since adultery is sex outside marriage, married people can in no way be accused of “living in adultery.” It is a theological sin, devised by the clergy, against those that violate the divorce laws that they legislate.

3. Sins committed in divorce and remarriage are not reparable as are many other sins.

You hear it said that if a man steals a horse and then repents, he ought to return the horse; if he steals another man’s wife and then repents, he ought to give the wife back. In short, one ought to quit sinning when he repents, whatever it is. But it is not so simple as that. A horse is mere property, a thing, something easily negotiable. When a man “steals” another man’s wife it is far more than possessing another’s property. He sleeps with her, and Paul says when this happens he becomes one body with her (1 Cor. 6:16). An old relationship has been broken and new one begun. If the man lives with her without legally marrying her, her husband might take her back and forgive her, like Hosea did. If he marries her, it becomes more complex, certainly after many years when there are children and even grandchildren. To pull that old bromide on such people, “If one steals a horse, etc.,” is to be asinine and ridiculous. Returning property or money is one thing, but to demand measures that wreck still another marriage and still another family is something else.

Yes, people sin in divorcing and remarrying (period). As I said in my previous article, I conclude that to Jesus all divorces are sinful — somebody has sinned — or at least an evil (a couple marries and then discovers a grave sexual abnormality on the part of one; they immediately divorce with perhaps neither of them sinning, though it be an evil). But the sin of divorce and remarriage is of such a nature as not to be reparable; that is, the old relationships cannot be reestablished, nor does it follow that the new relationship must be severed. It can only be redeemed. God forgives even when reparation is impossible. Murder is an irreparable sin; slander often is. Still God will forgive. The person whose life is strewn with a string of broken marriages can come to Jesus like any other sinner. Jesus will take him as he is, forgive his past, and sanctify his present marriage, teaching him that repentance means that he will quit his sin of divorce and remain married this time.

4. Divorce is not the unpardonable sin.

Jesus speaks of such a sin, but divorce is not it. Yet my brethren often treat divorced people as if it were the unpardonable sin. If the only way to “fix it” is to go back through a maze of tragic circumstances and restructure what has long faded away, then it must be unpardonable. If a young brother or sister, who fouled up a marriage while in high school or college and are now divorced, must live in celibacy the rest of their lives, casting to the wind all semblance of normalcy while yet in the bloom of youth, then it must be unpardonable. To the contrary, Jesus says that every sin that man commits against the Son of Man will be forgiven him (Mt. 12:31). There are many of our people, oppressed by the scourge of a broken marriage, who will rejoice that divorce is forgivable, even if irreparable.

It was amidst a bad marriage that one of the great prophets found these words, further esteemed by one of the great apostles:

Once you were no people but now you are God’s people;

Once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:10).

— the Editor