by Standerinfamilycourt
Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. – James 4:4
August 29 is the traditional date that the martyrdom of Jesus’ older cousin, John the Baptizer, is recognized. Traditional marriage champions, both Catholic and evangelical (or what few remain of them in either church), rightly point to John for calling Herod and Herodias to physically repent of their adulterous remarriage. Jesus called John “the greatest of all those born of women”.
Our Catholic friends were particularly eloquent this year about the event where John sacrificed his head to warn two people, and everyone watching, from hell. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s brief video-chat focused refreshingly about what scripture suggests was going on in the daughter Salome’s heart, and in her mother Herodias’ heart. Meanwhile, Bai MacFarlane shared a piece by James Hahn where he makes the point that it is actually normal for sexual immorality to result in all sorts of wanton disregard for human life, in order to get rid of the evidence of guilty sin: “John the Baptist was murdered because of the sexual immorality of Herod and his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias knew that what they were doing was wrong and she no longer wished to be reminded of her sin. She wished to continue, for whatever reason, to live in this sin and John the Baptist was a painful reminder day in and day out. So trapped by this sin was she that she forfeited the possibility of gaining even half of the kingdom. Instead, driven by hate and guilt, she chose to hold the head of the Baptist on a platter.”
As Bai herself prefaced her post: “Separated-faithful spouses are a life-long voiceless reminder that marital abandonment and divorce are wrong. The perpetrators want separated spouses to shut up. On the feast day of John the Baptist, separated-faithful know they are in good company. (from James Hahn: “John the Baptist was murdered because of the sexual immorality of Herod and his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias knew that what they were doing was wrong and she no longer wished to be reminded of her sin).”
Herod and Herodias, of course, were papered-over adulterers. What they had done was perfectly legal in the eyes of men. The only thing is, the universal immorality of what they’d done cannot be papered over in the conscience, even with thick excuses. Jesus said very plainly, then He and His apostles, along with their disciples, reiterated many times and ways afterward:
“So they are no longer* two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate….Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been* this way. ” – Matthew 19:6,8
*The verb tense and mood of the original manuscript would more accurately read, “never again” for “no longer”, and would more accurately read “it has not ever been this way from the beginning”.
John, of course, was serving notice to the king of Judea that his “paper” expires upon his or her death, after which kingdom of God rules will govern his and her eternity. In God’s courthouse, Herod was still married to the daughter of the king of Petra, and Herodias was still married to Phillip.
In five years of exchanging daily with all kinds of people on this topic, these are the rationalizations that emerge. Some of them twist scripture and take it out of context to stand Christ’s meaning on its head. Others are simply man-fabricated (as is the concept of “divorce” itself) out of thin air and antichrist humanism.
So, what are the Top 10 Excuses for living with someone else’s spouse instead of the only person on the face of the earth that God’s hand joined me or you to?
10. The church says our first marriage(s) were never valid.
9. My church says my first marriage which took place before I became a Christian doesn’t count.
7. He / she never became a Christian and left me, so I’m not “bound”.
6. He / she committed adultery, “breaking” the marriage bond.
4. He / she was “controlling”.
3. He / she abused substances.
1. He / she was emotionally / physically abusive.
“standerinfamilycourt” does not yet have a ministry with the funds to poll people about such a sensitive topic as justifying the marrying of another person while our original spouse is still living, so the above is purely anecdotal. Here’s a recent polling view shared by the AARP of the claimed causes of the divorce itself:
According to these statistics, the #1 single driver at 27% (as was the case with Herod and his brother Phillip’s wife, Herodias) is infidelity. Nebulous cultural excuses like “growing apart” and “incompatibility” combine for another 37%, while domestic violence only comes in at 9% (and probably also includes emotional perceptions of “abuse”). How blessed it will be one day when God has our society turning around because a good-sized slice of that pie reflects “repentance from a biblically-unlawful union to gain heaven”.
If churches did the job Christ charged them with of making disciples, at the very least, there would be far fewer biblically-unlawful legalized unions occupying their pews. These post-divorce “weddings” wouldn’t take place to begin with, and we’d be hearing far fewer excuses, along with a sharply-reduced demand for divorce which is driven (in part) by immoral church acquiescence. But then, if churches today were doing the job Christ assigned to them, we wouldn’t be living, in the constitutional republic God established at the cost of much shed blood, under profoundly immoral and unconstitutional “family laws”.
He said,
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become lost its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.”– Matthew 19:6,8
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
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