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Are you saying divorce for abuse or adultery is “giving up” on your marriage?

pexels-photo-800323.jpegSince Tuesday, when Desiring God published my letter to a woman married to an unbeliever, I have received many private messages from Desiring God readers.  Among them questions, objections and concerns were brought up that I responded to privately.  I want to address those issues here.  This post will be the beginning of a few posts dealing with the most common questions I received from my article.  But before I delve into sharing my thoughts on these issues, I just want to say: I am not a trained counselor, pastor or scholar. But I am a woman in awe of Christ. He’s got a hold of me.  I just want to follow him.

Through my hard marriage I’ve been tested and I’ve learned a few lessons I think are important to share.  My hope is that as I share what God is teaching me He will be honored and someone will be helped.

One of the responses I received went something like this:

Q: Are you saying if you divorce your spouse for a good (Biblical) reason, such as abuse or adultery, you’re sinfully “giving up”?

A: Anytime a person speaks about divorce in the Christian community serious concerns rise to the surface.  What about cases of abuse? What about adultery?  Isn’t there Biblical cause for divorce?  All of those questions are serious and Biblical answers should be sought out. But my article wasn’t specifically aimed at those issues. My aim was to speak to women, who like me, are married to unbelievers, and feel like giving up at times because it’s just hard.

Sometimes I feel like those issues are brought up sort of like the issues of rape, incest and harm to the mother’s health are brought up when speaking about abortion. I know there are hurt women who’ve been abused and abandoned by their husbands and then found no support or help in their churches and/or from people they trusted .  These women are not who I was aiming my thoughts at in my article at Desiring God.  But addressing issues of adultery and abuse is very important.

My article was speaking specifically to women ready to give up on their marriages because of the everyday hard things of my being married to a man that doesn’t share your love of Jesus. I also had in mind women I know who’ve left their Christian husbands because their marriages were getting hard.

Why Most of Us Divorce

The truth is the majority of divorces, as well as the majority of abortions, are not carried out because of abuse, adultery, rape, incest or life-threatening health issues.  The majority of divorces (and abortions) are carried out because of the inconvenience of dying to self and dealing with the hard things of loving a sinful person.  We get tired of each others sinfulness.  We get tired of being not loved well.  Whether it be marriage or raising children, both require commitment to die daily to your own needs and wants, trust Christ to provide all that for you, and to get down low and engage in the mess real relationships are.

As I see it in scripture, God created marriage. And for the Christian, marriage is a ministry, not a place to find your ultimate fulfillment.

Whether you’re married to a believer or unbeliever, the example God is displaying in you as his child is one of his faithfulness and self-sacrificial love. But that faithfulness and love is not to be confused with enabling or ignoring adultery or abuse. The Christian woman is called in marriage help her husband by faithfully loving him and dealing with his sin with the grace and truth found in Christ.  That includes everyday offenses, abuse, adultery and all other kinds of terrible situations one can find themselves in when they’re married to a fallen person.

We all sin.  There is no escaping that.  And whether it be an accumulation of passivity or aggressiveness, or negligence to cherish, or refusal to show longed-for affection… whatever daily sin-pattern you can bring up as an example, it’s going to get hard to enjoy and love the person you vowed to be faithful to until death parts you.  You are going to have to suffer something to love your spouse.  You are going to have to die to something to foster a loving relationship.

Don’t Mistake Mercy for Enabling Evil

When it comes to particularly egregious sins like adultery, physical or emotional abuse, theft, drug use, alcoholism, addictions, etc., God provides a way to deal with these kinds of sins with transparency, boundaries, accountability and safety.  Women who find themselves in relationships with these evils will need wise council, Biblical guidance and clarity on the difference between mercy and enabling. God teaches us to expose and deal with sin in a way that hopes for restoration and reconciliation. But a cheap-grace message taught in church can lead to a misunderstanding of the gospel, the mark of Christ’s majesty in Christian submission, forgiveness, mercy and reconciliation.

This confusion about how the gospel of Christ plays out in dealing with sin in our daily lives, combined with our natural tendency to either wink at sin (boys will be boys… that’s just her personality, etc.), sweep it under the rug, enable it, or condemn the person for doing it, has led many into unhealthy relationships.  When we mistake mercy for enabling sin and  grace for ignoring wickedness, and then condemn people for sins we personally can’t handle, we cheapen the costly blood of Christ and minimize his  power to change lives.

Author Jen Wilkin summed up the heart of the problem in pointing out that the gospel is not just being declared innocent of sin in a recent tweet:

“Don’t reduce “gospel-centered” to “justification-centered”. The Good News is more than our freedom from sin’s penalty. It’s also our progressive freedom from sin’s power and ultimate freedom from sin’s presence. Justification, sanctification, and glorification are all the gospel.”

Looking back in my marriage my thinking has been clouded by a misunderstanding of grace and my self-preserving tendancy to not deal with sin like Christ teaches us to.  Both the Old and New Testament show us a God who is faithful to his covenant with his people, and exposes and disciplines them for the purpose of their redemption.

Help From The Scriptures and a Warning

In the Old Testament the Lord’s people are typified as a wife to God (Read Hosea). Israel is adulterous in her relationship with God. But her unfaithfulness and betrayal is not ignored, winked at or enabled.  And although Israel’s sinfulness is dealt with harshly, she is not utterly condemned because God is faithful. In the New Testament you see Christ deal with Israel’s ugly, bigoted, perverse, greedy, hypocritical and abusive behavior. And he clearly speaks to the harsh consequences adultery can have on a marriage (Matthew 5:31-32)

Much wisdom can be gleaned from looking at how God dealt with his people’s sin in the Bible.  But I want to give a clear warning here to women who might misunderstand the gospel: You and I are not Christ. We cannot save our spouses.  We don’t suffer to atone for their sin.

It is not your job to suffer abuse to save your husband. Christ did that.

If your husband is abusive, the kind of suffering you may be called is the loss of your marriage because you hold your husband accountable for his sin using the governmental and legal means God provides.  Hand your husband over to the legal authorities, seek safety for yourself while giving your life to following Christ and interceding for your husband.

Whether it be adultery or abuse, Christ does not lead us to enable, ignore or dismiss the sin in our spouses lives.  He leads us to humbly, yet boldly expose sin and follow him.  We should pray for and want our husband’s to be truly saved and made new. And that is shown by our willingness to deal boldly with our husband’s sins in the light. Saving grace and mercy is not shown by enabling, ignoring or dismissing a husband’s evil behavior.

John 13 is on passage that has taught me to vulnerably expose the sin that needs to be brought into the light and then forgive.

Not ignore.

Not say it’s ok.

But to do what the Bible teaches us to do: expect to see repentance and reparations (fruit of repentance) before reconciliation can happen.

Ignoring, enabling or dismissing your husband’s adultery, abuse, addictions, etc. is not the way Christ has called you to be a Christian wife to him.

Get Help and Follow Jesus

If you find yourself in a marriage to an abusive man seek safety and legal help.  If you find yourself in a marriage wrecked by adultery, unless your spouse is repentant and willing to seek counseling and set up measures of accountability and do the hard work of establishing trust over a long period of time, send him away.  Wait on God. Pray. Get counseling for yourself. And get on with following Christ.

Your truth and grace stance with your husband may be the very means by which God does a life-changing work in him.

May God bless you as you seek Christ and follow him!

“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible,  for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Awake, O sleeper,
    and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.” -Ephesians 5:11-14

 

*** For more help, here is a list of a couple of books and resources I have found helpful in gaining sobriety and wisdom in being a Christian wife.

Boundaries In Marriage by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

Healing Your Marriage When Trust is Broken by Cindy Beall

Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

Enough Is Enough by Gary Thomas

Divine Guidelines For Marriage from Grace To You

 

confessions and desires of a world-digesting writer/eater cell

Merriam-Webster defines a writer as: (noun) One that writes.

Big shocker.

I’ve been writing, well since I was about 5.  First just letters, then short, three word sentences without punctuation, then onto complete sentences and paragraphs.  By seventh grade when I had Mrs. Spicer for English I was writing essays and stories and poems and loving it.  In between there around the age of nine I started journaling.  For me, writing has been a way to process my thoughts, feelings and circumstances.  When Jesus became real and beautiful to me at age sixteen writing was the way I processed what I was reading in the Bible and the conflicting feelings I was experiencing as an insecure girl wanting to find my place in the world.  I wrote a play for my youth group and more essays and poems and filled a few more teddy bear and flower decorated journals.  
Between those early teen years and now I have married, graduated from nursing school, labored two sons into the world and moved several times.  In between those words are years of trials and joys.  Some too hard to speak about.  All digested in the writings of my private journals.  Also in there somewhere I discovered the blog.  I had no idea.  Up till my discovery of Blogger all my writings were private letters, journals, poems and word docs.  As women in my church, close friends and family encouraged me, I began to blog more.  
In the past 10 years or so of blogging I have been introduced to the endless voices in the public square.  It’s quite overwhelming actually, the volume of published content by anyone and everyone on the internet. A simple google search on any topic will give you pages and pages of links from the famous and professional to the stay-at-home-mom who managed to squeeze in a half hour of blogging in her day full of household management tasks and human-raising efforts.  (A thought-provoking article here about the tsunami of un-governed writings and teachings available on the internet for the consumption of the church and it’s implications.)
In the beginning of my blogging efforts I set out to promote my blog- reading other blogs, commenting, participating in mommy-blog contests, etc.  And then my marriage took a dive into troubled waters.  During that time I stepped away from public writing and became aware of my mixed up priorities and the praise-seeking sin at the root of all my efforts.  Writing had ceased to be a tool for processing life.  It had become an obsessive exercise to be known.  I hated finding that out about myself.  But it was the beginning of dealing with a besetting sin that was dragging me down on my race of faith. 
As I returned to meditating on God’s words more and processing what I was finding there in private journals, I slowly returned to selectively writing on my blog again.  This time with a decision not to self-promote or to check stats or seek comments, but just to offer in a public way my meditations on God’s word and life with a prayer that it might encourage someone out there.  
Writing for me has never been an identity or profession.  To me, calling myself a writer because I write is sort of like calling myself an eater because I eat.  It’s a fact. Big deal. Writing is the way I chew on life and digest it.  Ignorantly I’ve sort of thought everyone does that.  Having two sons who don’t enjoy reading or writing like I do has taught me that not everyone experiences life best with books and ink and words.  Not everyone feels a sense that heaven might smell a lot like the intoxicating paper pages scent of Barnes and Nobel. 
Somehow, the process of digesting life that is so necessary for me has encouraged others.  I’ve been told it’s a gift.  I haven’t thought of it that way.  But listening to others and hearing God say, “Do your part in the body of Christ! Use your gifts for the good of the body,” (my paraphrase of Romans 12:3-8), I have started to take more seriously the stewardship of a gift God has given me to process the Word and the world in writing for the purpose of pointing others to him.  I want to do this while thinking of myself soberly and less.  For me this means beginning to submit public writings not just here on my blog at my will, but to men and women in the church (worldwide) who can help me steward this gift for the good of the church and God’s glory.  
Desiring God has been a source of much encouragement to me in my walk with Christ and so was the first venue through which I have submitted a couple articles and have been so humbled to have published there.  The decision to submit writings to editors and people who give feedback and criticism and sometimes just a simple rejection opens me up to learning to take this gift God has given and start stewarding it for the multiplication of his kingdom.  I’m excited to learn.  I really don’t feel comfortable calling myself a writer because I need to write.  But I do feel comfortable calling myself a glad and happy servant of my Servant King Jesus to the people he loves!  
I mean, I am a nobody.  Really.  There are plenty of famous and much better writers out there.  But, I am a cell in this body.  And maybe it’s just another cell or two that needs to fight off some invading sin or needs help to lift it’s spiritually-anemic head.  If that’s one of the ways God wants to use my life I say a hearty, “Yes!”
If you’re reading this I’d appreciate your prayers that I would seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and forget about myself and be more others minded for their good and God’s glory in my writing.  Pray that I’d learn to use writing as a means of building up the church and bringing God glory.  
May God build up his people, even with a world-digesting writer/eater cell like me.