Comments on: Anti-homosexual Christianity

By: SteveG

SteveG — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:10:12 +0000

Ooops … I meant to say, to adhere to the allowance of remarriage after divorce …

By: SteveG

SteveG — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:09:07 +0000

Granted, I’m not bound by the Bible as I’m not a Christian per se, though I do believe in God. But it’s always seemed to me that two principles should be true of any God who is both real and worthy of our worship:

1. Grace abounds. Whatever sins we may commit can never be bigger than God’s love. Divorce is not a good thing, and I don’t believe in taking marriage lightly. But in many cases divorce is the least bad option available. With apologies to Cheryl (whom I like and find to be intelligent and thoughtful even when we disagree), I think to adhere specifically to the allowance of divorce only for adultery is a legalism that inhibits love.

(That is even if the word actually means “divorce” as it is usually translated, and not “putting away,” as Reg argues.)

Secondly, ideas about sin and justice should make sense. To forbid easy divorce for trivial reasons makes sense. To argue that woman who flees an abuser is forbidden to find love and intimacy with another man after divorce does not make sesne.

Report comment to moderator

By: Reg

Reg — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:35:14 +0000

Part of our problem here is that we can’t allow for the POSSIBILITY that our beloved theologians could be wrong.

Report comment to moderator

By: Reg

Reg — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:33:34 +0000

Mt. 19:9
Whosoever shall put away (separate from) his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away (separated) committeth adultery.

This verse says nothing about WHY one can get divorced. It simply says not to marry someone who is (separated) not legally divorced.

It told the men that they had to obey rules, just like the court does with my ex-husband today.

You have to read it with the use of the phrase putting away, which is in the original and which you will NOT find in most modern translations.

Part of our problem here is that we can’t allow for the possiblily that our beloved theologians could be wrong.

Report comment to moderator

By: Reg

Reg — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:35:18 +0000

thank you, Steve! (Gregg Harris used this passage powerfully in 1993 at The Seasons of Life Seminar)
Here is what Job said:
Job 29
And Job again took up his parable and said,
Oh that I were as in the months of old
As in the days when God watched over me;
When his lamp shined upon my head,
And by his light I walked through darkness;
As I was in the ripeness of my days,
When the friendship of God was upon my tent;
When the almighty was yet within me,
And my children were about me;
When my steps were washed with butter,
And the rock poured me out streams of oil!
When I went forth to the gate unto the city,
When I prepared my seat in the street,
The young men saw me and hid themselves,
And the aged rose up and stood;
The princes refrained from talking,
And laid their hand on their mouth;
The voice of the nobles was hushed
And thier tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth.
for when the ear heard me, then it blessed me;
And when the eye saw me, it gave witness unto me:
Because I delieverd the poor that cried,
The fatherless also, that had none to help him.
the blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me;
And I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.
I put on righteousness, and it clothed me:
My justice was as a robe and a diadem.
I was eyes to the blind,
And feet to the lame.
I was a father to the needy:
And the cause of him that I knew not I searched out.
And i brake the jaws of the unrighteous,
And plucked the prey out of his teeth.
Then I said, I shall die in my nest,
And I shall multiply my days as the sand:
My root is spread out to the waters,
And the dew lieth all night upon my branch:
My glory is fresh in me,
And my bow is renewed in my hand.
Into me men give ear, and waited,
And kept silence for my counsel.
After my words they spake not again;
And my speech distilled upon them.
And they waited for me as for the rain.
I smiled on them, when they had no confidence;
And the light of my countenance they cast not down.
I chose out their way, and sat chief,
And dwelt as a king in the army,
As one that comforteth morners.

Report comment to moderator

By: Reg

Reg — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:33:16 +0000

I thought you might be the Steve G that I knew!!

Report comment to moderator

By: SteveG

SteveG — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:19:41 +0000

CherylD: In #221, you said: But when we start accepting divorce as acceptable for lesser reasons (as Reg seems to do), we have seriously downgraded the sanctity of marriage for all.

In 227, you said: I’ve said the same thing on other threads–that sometimes a wife who is being abused, whose children are being abused, or whose husband is draining the household finances by addictions (gambling, drinking, you name it), will need to divorce for her own protection and/or that of the children, though I don’t think she’s free to remarry unless there are biblical grounds for divorce, and most theologians would limit that to adultery.

Now I know you’ve never been married, but let me ask you to imagine that you are. You’re married and you have a young child. Your husband, at some point after you married him, develops a drinking problem. When he gets drunk, as he does a couple of times a week, his temper flares and he gets violent. You and your child are more often hiding bruises than not. You’ve both had to go to the emergency room more than once.

You’ve had him arrested, you’ve pleaded with him to seek treatment for his addiction, and nothing has worked. So finally, as a move of last resort, you leave. You flee to another state, file for divorce and try to begin to heal.

Two years later, you meet a gentle, generous loving man who loves both you and your child and wants to marry you. You have to say no.

This makes any sense at all to you, that God would not approve your marriage to this gentle man?

Constant physical abuse of both you and your child is a “lesser” reason than his having had a one-night adulterous liaison would have been?

Report comment to moderator

By: SteveG

SteveG — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:12:31 +0000

Reg … No, I’m not. Why?

Report comment to moderator

By: Reg

Reg — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:28:09 +0000

SteveG,
Are you from PA?

Report comment to moderator

By: SteveG

SteveG — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:05:09 +0000

I’ve said the same thing on other threads–that sometimes a wife who is being abused, whose children are being abused, or whose husband is draining the household finances by addictions (gambling, drinking, you name it), will need to divorce for her own protection and/or that of the children, though I don’t think she’s free to remarry unless there are biblical grounds for divorce, and most theologians would limit that to adultery.

It’s this kind of legalistic, incompassionate hardline stuff that makes the fundamentalist/evangelical position unattractive to many people who are otherwise Christian.

So a young woman who marries unwisely, gets beaten, sees her children beaten, is going to have to either suck it up and deal or else get out of it and remain without human romantic and sexual intimacy for the rest of her life?

You can have it.

Report comment to moderator