https://cordellcordell.co.uk/news/divorce_in_the_uk_stats_and_facts/
by Standerinfamilycourt
And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.” – Mark 10:11-12
This blog post has been in-progress for the better part of a year now. In a way, there’s both good and bad in that happenstance. On the “good” side, the British “wheels of progress” have ground very slowly – God be praised! On the bad side, we’ve witnessed an adulterous royal “wedding” (to which the U.S. sent its second most godless Anglican clergyman to take part in the nuptials), and….the echo chamber of the UK media has had little pushback as they trot out the same unsupportable arguments that have long been discredited and overwhelmingly disproven by the five decades of ruinous track record for unilateral “no-fault” divorce in the U.S.
A hopelessly flawed official report (“study” result) was published in the House of Commons in October, 2018 with enactment recommendations. Part 2 of this post will break down that “study” for our readers, in detail.
Since last spring, “standerinfamilycourt” has been reading an avalanche of articles that look and sound like they have literally been plucked from a dusty 1969 box, and retyped to add the requisite “u’s” and replace the “z’s” with “s’s”. Those articles were “snake oil” back then, when U.S. church and government leaders were shamefully duped by the latent cultural Marxism taking dead aim at the U.S. Bill of Rights, and they’re still “snake oil” in their recycled state as they’re being dusted off (again) in London.
Where’s the mention of the direct impact this regime has had on the willingness of U.S. young people to ever marry at all, rather than cohabit (and thereby keep the reckless totalitarian government out of their homes altogether), and the concupiscent attorneys out of their pockets?
Where is the mention of all the constitutional challenges being renewed by citizens in numerous states to try to overturn the various U.S. state laws and vindicate their violated fundamental rights?
The chief argument that seems to be carrying the day in the UK (according to the media and the official Parliamentary report) is the utterly bizarre notion that forcibly shredding someone’s family and destroying their generations, robbing their family’s hard-earned wealth and materially compromising most family members’ futures will somehow “reduce conflict”. Hello?
Another key U.S. reality that goes unmentioned in the UK (one-sided) debate: the bulk of attorney fees in the United States’ $100 billion-a-year “family law” industrial complex come not from the divorce itself, but from years and years of subsequent legal conflict between family members for so long as the children remain minors. Fifty years of U.S. experience have exposed this spurious “reduced acrimony” argument as completely untrue, so it’s beyond ridiculous that in a day and age of worldwide instant media access, elite special interests are pulling this over on the British public! If only the BBC would dare to air the U.S. documentary DivorceCorp,and give the railroaded British citizens a truthful look at their future under this “reform”.
“Barbaric!” they all hissed. Several of us would argue that what’s really barbaric is what the U.S. has been saddled with for decades, which was the literal incubator that has since led to a veritable Pandora’s Box of ever-worsening religious freedom and parental rights violations, for both intact and government-shattered families.
Not one of these liberal “rags” showed the least bit of concern or compassion for Tini’s grieving family members – the ones with the clean hands! How outrageous of every one of them to demonize this faithful and gracious husband who has every right and responsibility before God to keep his family whole.
The real fault in the Tini Owens case, contrary to the media hype and thick emotional huckstering, is that existing UK law still allows for an entirely unilateral divorce to be had by the offending party after 5 years of self-imposed non-cohabitation, and probably allows an abandoner to also take half of the family assets, which in the case of the Owenses, was considerable:
“They built up a hugely successful £5million-a-year mushroom growing business and amassed four ‘nice houses’, including a stunning £630,000 Cotswolds farmhouse, where the family lived, and holiday homes in Wales and France.” – Daily Mail, July, 2018
Much hand-wringing ensued the refusal of the appeals courts to hear the case, rather than state the obvious: Ms. Owens had separated from Mr. Owens in 2015, and according to one media source, had been in an adulterous relationship from 2012, so Mr. Owens could have filed a fault-based petition against her in due time much shorter than 5 years, but apparently feared God and had compassion for his wife. The reality is that the UK government did not owe Mrs. Owens a financial reward for selfishly breaking up her 40-year marriage and leaving her blameless husband four years ago. It is against sound public policy, indeed, for them to do so.
Three things tend to be a commonality with elite social engineering, as we’ve painfully learned here in the “colonies”: emotional pitches run absolutely amok in the media, the laser-like focus always locks onto the most extreme outlier case that could possibly be dredged up, as if this rare case was going to bind and ruin the whole nation, and lastly, there is a conspicuous absence of grassroots demand for the “urgent” change outside of commercially-paid and sponsored “surveys”.
As was the case in the U.S., and continues to be, there are a few quality voices speaking out against this poorly-justified piece of legislation, including Thomas Pascoe, campaign director at Coalition for Marriage, who recently said in an interview, “We already have no-fault divorce, but it takes between two years when both parties agree and five when they do not. This standstill period recognises the gravity of divorce. It allows both parties time to try and save the marriage and allows both time to make reasonable adjustments to their lives where no agreement can be found.”
Similarly, Colin Hart of the Christian Institute points out the resoundingly obvious truth that “no-blame” actually constitutes no justice.
Finally, in the House of Commons briefing paper, Sir Edward Leigh (Conservative) was quoted as having pointed to evidence from other countries which, he said, showed the wider consequences such legislation might have. ” Sir Edward then set out other potential impacts of family breakdown, drawing on evidence from a study in the US which argued that 75% of low-income divorced women with children had not been poor when they were married, but Douglas Allen also points out in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy that “the real negative impact of the no-fault divorce regime was on children, and increasing the divorce rate meant increasing numbers of disadvantaged children.” In the UK, Sir Edward continued, a 2009 review by the then Department for Children, Schools, and Families had found that a child not growing up in a two-parent family household was more likely to experience a number of problems which he detailed. He also spoke of other research on the effects of family breakdown. Sir Edward considered that the potential adverse consequences of no-fault divorce should rule out its introduction.” (Sir Edward was on the right track, but still didn’t have the gist or full evidence of what this kind of legislation has done in the U.S. after the divorce, nor that it has been the least bit successful in curbing “conflict” – a function of disingenuous problem definition by the majority.)
Sadly, none of these voices are availing themselves of the abundance of available, documented evidence that these policies have horribly failed in country after country around the world. History is eerily repeating itself fifty years later, with no lessons learned. As was true in the 1960’s, female attorneys have been conspiring this con job, and gaining the blind support of the elites. According to the president of the UK Supreme Court, Baroness Hale, the majority of “solicitors” (practicing attorneys) in the UK are women. She has been advocating for unilateral, forced divorce since the early 1990’s, as had the feminist U.S. womens’ bar groups. Lady Hale asserts in 2016, more than half of all divorce petitions were submitted on the basis of adultery or “unreasonable behavior” (a.k.a. “emotional abuse”, in U.S. legalspeak). We actually need to be honest about the fact that the main driver of divorce is, and always has been adultery (and the desire to legitimize adulterous relationships). Civilized, sustainable societies don’t incentivize adultery. The objective of these feminists has always been to remove the father from the family (forcibly, if necessary) so that he won’t be in a position to obstruct further social engineering.
These special interests allege that the (existing) law forces separating couples to “make more aggressive allegations against one another” in order to secure a divorce, verbatim the overblown 1969 argument in the U.S. , as if sweeping excrement under an “irreconcilable differences” rug, will take away the stench. On our side of the pond, we know that all this philosophy has accomplished is train our society to lie in ever-broader ways and blame others for our own self-indulgences.
This cartoon points out the U.S. situation where the very same lobbying professionals who were falsely asserting that unilateral divorce-on-demand would “reduce acrimony” – rather than merely postpone it, were actually about to start ramping up their profits by egging the acrimony on during the proceedings and long afterward – to the point of having non-custodial parents jailed and worse.
In the UK, it’s objectively true that such “aggressive” allegations must be made to shorten the waiting period from 5 years to 2 years under current law, while in the U.S. prior to 1970, only one state allowed a couple to mutually agree to end their marriage, while the UK does not allow for mutual consent divorces either, according to the government discussion paper(a fact that conveniently escapes the “problem” definition in the House of Commons analysis – for which there is, in fact, a commercial reason that goes undiscussed). Both were unstable situations, however, mustthe UK repeat the U.S. constitutional travesty of killing a gnat with a sledge hammer and reaping the harsh societal consequences? What would be wrong with instead implementing a mutual consent joint petition, with perhaps a 180 day waiting period? Why not retain fault-based grounds where there’s no consent, but eliminate the waiting period altogether if the charges are proven? As Thomas Pascoe pointed out, no alternative models were adequately considered, which strongly implies that a prescribed “solution” was looking for a “problem”, rather than the other way around.
No-fault divorce was reportedly first introduced by the Family Law Act 1996, but its provisions were later deemed “unworkable” after a pilot attempt and it was repealed. It has been widely supported by prominent members of the judiciary, lawyers and relationship charities (in other words, the elite, and not broad citizenship demands. ) Quoting a 2001 article in the Daily Mail about the repeal,
“The admission came as Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine at last killed off Part Two of the Family Law Act, which would have allowed a husband or wife to ditch their spouse in 12 months without ever having to bear blame or answer for their behaviour.
“Opponents of the law brought in nearly five years ago by John Major’s Tory government, and enthusiastically backed by Labour, insisted no-fault divorce would increase break-ups rather than help families.
“Lord Irvine has now acknowledged that the opponents of the system were right and the law would be repealed.”
So, what has changed, UK?
Between that previous attempt to move toward forced-divorce-on-demand and the current campaign, the Anglican Church liberalized its doctrine in 2002 to promote “remarriages” that Jesus consistently called adulterous, effectively clearing away any temporal reasons for meaningful opposition from the country’s largest and its state church.
Writes a friend of “standerinfamilycourt” who lives in Cornwall,
“It’s been handed over to the Crown prosecution who believe it’s the only way forward now for the Government to pass , So sad
“I spoke to my MP Derek Thomas Conservative MP for St Ives Cornwall, knew him before he was an MP but when I talked to him about divorce and remarriage his face went blank, end of conversation. I will have to write or email him a letter, we are going down the pan quickly here in the UK Brexit abortion now this, yes sad to say the big wigs here follow the States, money to be made let’s go go go.”
Perhaps this Cornish friend will now be able to educate her MP about the five-decade U.S. adventure in state-enforced family shredding, and inform him that a growing number of people in the States don’t think setting back the family clock 50 years is actually that bad an idea. This is not yet a “done deal”. Bad policy was enacted and repealed before in the UK. This is even worse policy, and does not deserve to be enacted, despite the powerful endorsements. Even India had the common sense to repeal faultless unilateral divorce practices in their country, ruling them unconstitutional violations of equal protection and property rights.
Discretion will guard you, Understanding will watch over you… To deliver you from the strange woman, From the adulteress who flatters with her words; That leaves the companion of her youth And forgets the covenant of her God; For her house sinks down to death And her tracks lead to the dead; None who go to her return again, Nor do they reach the paths of life. – Proverbs 2: 11, 16-18
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
The only silver lining in this sorry episode, where Arizona CPS engaged a SWAT team to kick down a family’s door over a reported disagreement with their child’s doctor, is that mainstream media (ABC, in this stance) chose to cover it, probably not understanding the glaring conservative implications, or that anyone “out there” would connect the dots…many dots. Nobody, however, who’s ever sat unwillingly in a “family court”, and experienced the horror of having a CPS, DCS, DFS (etc.) surgically-appended to their family life as a lasting consequence… can fail to connect those dots. Or grieve, as they watch our society literally disintegrating before their own eyes.
Why WAS the SWAT team utilized against an intact family with several children in the house, anyway? Could it be because societal decay causes such a large swath of our society to believe they must keep guns in the house? Could it be because the legal environment which makes a civil marriage certificate one of the most financially and emotionally dangerous documents a young couple could possibly obtain, means a presumption that the parents are less sovereign over their children because they’ve forgone marriage as the basis for their family structure? Or is it simply the profit motive…augmenting and protecting “state inventory” in order narrow an unbalanceable state fiscal budget by accessing Federal Title IV-D funds from a more central government (where widening national debt and fiscal deficits is more politically viable)?
Back in the better days of our U.S. Supreme Court, parental sovereignty was an immovable staple of our jurisprudence, even in cases where parental merit was questionable at best. Today, with 9,000+ cases submitted annually to SCOTUS, and perhaps one-third to half that number submitted to each of the state supreme courts in the course of a year, parental rights have virtually disintegrated with the practical reality that access to the benefit of those prior court precedents protecting parental sovereignty is no longer meaningfully available to most parents. Only the first appellate level in each state is actually required by law to hear a given case, and the system grants immunities to officials who abuse their posts to persecute or loot families…official (including judicial) immunities that must be overcome in the very courts that have grown increasingly inaccessible to most. Sometimes a gun in the house makes all the sense in the world, at this point in a society’s disintegration over the growing unreliability of the rule of law.
So, the remedy (says the local legislator and the media mouthpiece) is to pass legislation to require a warrant before family doors are kicked down and the gendarmerie goes in blasting. (What? You mean, like, actually enforce the 4th Amendment?) Tell that to the Ohio family whose teenager was confiscated because the state deemed it to be “abusive” that they were denying transgender treatments to their own child. No, the remedy, America, is to take the nearest exit ramp off the socialism interstate, and repeal unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws that have for five decades undermined the social and moral structure of this dying republic.
We must not confuse band-aids with eradicating surgery. Since when have we needed additional laws to deliver a fundamental Bill of Rights protection? The answer is clear: we “need” the additional laws because the rule-of-law has broken down due to deep-seated sustainability issues.
And, oh is the way back going to be slow and painful! Multi-generational painful. Parental ability and judgment has been compromised, on a macro level, by this third-generation family-shredding regime. Enactment of divorce-on-demand and (especially) its accompanying ban on consideration of marital fault in apportioning the consequences of forced family-shredding has literally institutionalized breaches of the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th commandments into our legislative and judicial systems, while the perverse financial incentives to look the other way have spread woefully to our nation’s churches. Nearly every state legislature in the union has various types of weapon-carry bills before it right now, either to preempt the reactionary gun-control symptoms of school and other mass shootings attributable to societal decay, or to combat the reduced security of our homes and venturings-out, in general.
Even under color of (man’s) law….
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” – Exodus 20:17
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
David Franklin, director for Bartow Baptist Association and Georgia coordinator for the National Day of Prayer, called upon those at the prayer gathering at the State Capitol to stretch their hands toward the two houses of legislators and pray for unity in the government. GERALD HARRIS/Index
by Standerinfamilycourt
“Now no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see the light.” – Luke 8:16
“….gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” – Galatians 5:23-24
There’s no question about it, disciples who make up their mind to pay the very high price to obey Christ, that is, to choose not to enter into a subsequent intimate relationship or civil marriage with another person while their legally-estranged true spouse is alive, is probably the most countercultural type of figure in modern society, probably on a scale with the first “Followers of the Way” in the first century church, even if their executed bodies are not being used as street torches, as recently depicted in the 2018 motion picture, “Paul, Apostle of Christ”.
“For we bestow our attention; not on the study of words, but on the exhibition and teaching of actions, — that a person should either remain as he was born, or be content with one marriage; for a second marriage is only a specious adultery. “For whoever puts away his wife,” says He, “and marries another, commits adultery;” not permitting a man to send her away whose virginity he has brought to an end, nor to marry again.” (Athenagoras – 175 A.D., A Plea For The Christians, 33)
“Standers”, for purposes of this post will also include those who, based on moral conscience and scriptural instruction, have exited a civilly-legal “marriage” of the sort Jesus called continuously adulterous, even if they’ve never actually had a covenant spouse (as Jesus defined in Matthew 19:4-6). The true measure is the extent that their life choices and the significant, visible sacrifices they make, speak biblical truth about marriage into a deafened, jaded culture, and this measure is what this post will bring into focus. Repenters from an unlawful union are standing for the sanctity of holy matrimony in their own circumstances, and quite often they suffer even greater censure and persecution at the hands of other believers than do those standing for the soul of their true one-flesh partner and for the rebuilding of their own covenant family. In a broader sense, the ranks of “standers” also includes pastors with congregations, many of whom are in intact biblical, covenant marriages, who gladly suffer very real career consequences (along with their family) as the high price for putting rightly-divided scripture and the souls of their flock above the corrupted circa-1970’s doctrine change of their denomination. Likewise, “standers” include Catholic priests who stand strong against abuse of annulment canons, and who speak out for the souls of those served communion while they are living in what that church euphemistically calls “irregular circumstances”.
Not all standers can go lobby at the state capital, or have the means (time, treasure, talent) to bring a constitutional appeal of their state statute, or create effective media that exposes the travesties of unilateral “no-fault” divorce to the uninformed, nay, the duped public. But, not being able to do these things certainly doesn’t meanthey aren’t making a very significant contribution in the big picture journey toward success. Of course, those whom the Lord has resourced to do both over time, will make an even greater contribution.
The truth is that many of these standers who have a covenant spouse off in the Far Country in an adulterous civil-only “marriage” to a counterfeit would actually prefer not to see unilateral “no-fault” laws reformed to be consent-based only. They fear the possibility that their prodigal may lose the ready ability to repent by divorcing out of these immoral arrangements, and may die in their sin as a result, if the counterfeit spouse won’t consent. There would certainly be a much greater risk of this if we went all the way back to the fault-only laws of the 1960’s. We talked to those reform risks in a much-earlier blog post. Meanwhile, the Lord is still using even the passive witness of covenant marriage standers in many powerful ways. Here we discuss just seven of them that relate to cultural influence.
At the end of our days, here is how the Lord will test the result of all of our choices and activities, in terms of how we’ve used our time, treasure and talent. Our part in getting an evil law repealed won’t count for much in itself, really, but the souls that we’ve helped to heaven as a result of the sacrifices in our role, most certainly will:
“For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” – 1 Corinthians 3:11-15
Here is how countless unsung “standers”, in their everyday lives, are making an enormous difference, in this life and the next:
1.) Standers’ eventual reconciliations with the spouse of their youth is slowly debunking the legal myth of “irreconcilable differences”
One of “standerinfamilycourt’s” absolute favorite activities is collecting, organizing and resharing all of the miraculous testimonies of covenant families being put back together by the Lord God Almighty after decades of estrangement, and after intervening adulterous remarriages that even involved the birth of non-covenant children.
The divorce industry estimates this is roughly 5% of couples the legal system has forcefully estranged at the request of just one of the spouses. To be sure, some of these reconciliations are sinful because the spouses involved still belong in God’s eyes to somebody else, namely the spouse of their youth.
But think of it: 1,000,000 marriages a year “dissolved” by the legal system for a span of 50 years since unilateral “no-fault” divorce was enacted in the 49 United States: that’s approaching 50 million marriages cumulatively, of which 5% is 2,500,000 “irretrievably broken” marriages nevertheless made whole again in that time span, over 40,000 for each state in the union. Just imagine if even 1,000 restored constituent couples showed up to register a 5-minute testimony before the state legislative committee hearing, where a bill is being considered to restrict the availability of “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for divorce only by mutual petition! Will such a bill continue to be killed “off the record” in the Calendar Committee, as has been the case in Texas at least once since 2017? Would mainstream news media dare to ignore a story like that?
2.) Standers’ celibacy (and typical financial sacrifice) acts like a vehicle-mounted bullhorn into the culture
Our culture has for centuries screamed that we are entitled to a sexual relationship throughout our lives, and therefore any law, moral or civil, that makes this less accessible is by definition harsh and unjust. This was the siren song of the Catholic humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, who quite literally managed to stamp the Protestant Reformation with the ticking time bomb of family-destroying licentiousness. Jesus begged to differ:
For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven….” – Matthew 19:12
Standers, if their motives are pure, always put eternal souls first in everything they undertake while their one-flesh spouse is off in the Far Country.
To be sure, it’s much easier not to be called a “divider of the brethren” by their pastor when they won’t go to that adulterous wedding, or won’t join that home group run by the adulterous couple who gives the most time and money to the church, or when they complain about the “marriage enrichment” class that’s scheduled featuring “the blended family pastor” being a bad influence on the flock. It’s much easier not to have their adult children upbraiding them for not being “emotionally stable” enough to “move on” and stop causing conflict in the extended family when their one-flesh has “remarried” the estranged spouse of another living person. It’s substantially less excruciating not to have to endure the pain and worry on the faces of our elderly parents who may well go to their graves wondering what’s going to happen to their child when we reach their age. (Truth be told, it’s hard enough dealing with those emotional thoughts in our own hearts from time to time.)
The pastor who no longer has a congregation, as a directconsequence of refusing to “marry” another, after his covenant wife has left him to “marry” a more prosperous pastor, but who goes on to establish an enduring marriage permanence ministry while he’s replaced in his former church role by a shepherd who is indeed “the husband of more than one wife”–perhaps creates the loudest bullhorn of all. But the congregation he was forced to leave may never fully understand the extent of their loss, this side of eternity. Here, unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws have successfully attacked a church with its own doctrine, removing a godly pastor in the process and replacing him with a godless one who only has the veneer of “managing his family well”.
3.) Standers’ lifestyle is actually admired by the future policy makers of our nation
The future policymakers of our nation are increasingly the children and grandchildren of divorce. They are some of the Sexual Revolution’s survivors. In four years of readership responses to 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce! , some of the best have come from those young people who are raising tiny children and still suffering from having too many “grandparents” in the picture. They can’t believe someone would make the kind of sacrifice it takes to actually obey the bible. They can’t believe the integrity of standers, compared to their own pastor. They can’t believe what they weren’t taught in church that might have made a huge difference in their estranged parents’ marriages. They can’t believe that they can yet draw a spiritual line in the sand in their own young family for the sake of their own children and grandchildren, and someone will stand with them. Some can’t believe that a few mature people will say, “Judgment begins with the house of the Lord”, so stop ragging on the gays when most of the heterosexuals are living in papered-over adultery.
“standerinfamilycourt” got the first taste of this in March, 2013 while attending the March For Marriage in Washington, D.C. organized by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). A parade of well-spoken, far-seeing millennials took the platform and talked about how the corruption of marriage had impacted their own families of origin. Many looked idealistically at the hope of repealing “no-fault” laws, recognizing that this was the vehicle that took the nation from “Point A” to where we now were, on that chilly early spring day when oral arguments were in progress at the Supreme Court for two same-sex marriage cases. It wouldn’t be long before some of the rulings to follow, in the spate of 2014-2015 homosexual rights cases, would embolden a revival of judicial challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws by the aggrieved, and would strengthen legislative efforts for “family law” reform, which were also reviving after a period of dormancy, made more urgent as the culture continued to deteriorate.
As authors Leila Miller and Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse capture in their respective books, these young adults grew up silenced and stifled to speak out against either their parents’ selfish personal choices or the government-promoted family fragmentation and sequential polygamy norm that prevailed in their church pews when they were growing up. Now they see adults not only not hesitating to “diss” the blatantly unscriptural “blended family pastor”, but also care so much about a return to 1st century biblical morality that they’re willing conspicuously to live it out in their own lives, in other words, to take up their cross and follow Christ.
Assuming the Lord stays His own hand of judgment long enough for the emerging voices in this generation to begin to have influence over their peers and the existing power structures, the pendulum will eventually swing back from the current cultural depravity. We see this even now, as a sizable percentage of this age group simply refuses to participate in the entrenched moral corruption.
4.) Standers’ unselfish prayer life goes straight to God’s ear on behalf of the nation for which they are interceding
Every covenant marriage stander lives with the very real possibility that their prodigal spouse will die unrepentant in their sin and wind up in hell. They live with the terrifying possibility that some or all of the children will emulate that parent, and meet the same eternal fate. They wish they could evacuate all their progeny from this immoral culture that prevails even at church, and go colonize Mars, if that could but change the trajectory for their covenant family. If they spend any time on their knees at all, they know that the situation was the result of demonic forces going all the way back to the snake in the Garden just before Eve bit the apple, and it’s going to take nothing less than God’s direct intervention to redeem any part of the situation.
Paul warned the Corinthian and Ephesian churches (and by extension, us):
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh,for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete. – 2 Corinthians 10:3-6
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. – Ephesians 6:12
It’s not at all fun to wear this armor. With so much on the line for them personally, however, standers tend to have more motivation to faithfully, consistently and persistently do so. Nobody wants to see their one-flesh life partner meet with the same fate as the rich man Jesus discusses at the end of Luke 16.
Meanwhile, God, who has been allowing a progressive series of ever more devastating (unheeded) judgments on the land over each of the past 5 decades since the enactment of civilly-forced divorce, along with legalized baby-murder and hireling behavior by His shepherds, is seeking for a reason not to go ahead and finalize His judgment. Standers know this. God finds various ways to keep reminding the community of covenant marriage standers that giving our nation over to its worst internal and external enemies is not His preferred choice of action, but the hour is very late, historically speaking.
Abraham came near and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it?Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” – Genesis 18: 23-25
5.) Standers are driving bible study much deeper than would be the case if this controversy over holiness did not exist in the church
Most Christians today assume that the myth that our founders “required” a rigid separation between church and state, while perceived as patently invalid when it comes to abortion or same-sex “marriage” being unacceptable, but when it comes to heterosexual marriage laws, they don’t see a substantial biblical issue. That’s because our bibles have been altered over time by the social engineers of the last two centuries, who posed as seminarians.
We all thought for a long time that we could simply select a contemporary English bible version that made the text within clear and relatable, with lots of “trustworthy” commentary notes at the bottom, bring it home to the coffee table, crack it open once in a while, and trust it completely as guidance for our lives. In fact, since Christ died (we were told) for our past, present and future sins, we were “under grace”, even if our understanding, hence our obedience to it, was less than perfect on an ongoing basis.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, right?
Little did most of us know, that most contemporary renderings of Romans 8:1 omit a very crucial last phrase from that verse…
“…no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk by the Spirit and not according to the flesh.”
And though most of us knew that Luke 16:18 forbid remarriage after man’s divorce without any exceptions, we didn’t dare imagine that the next 13 verses containing the story of the rich man and Lazarus was an eternal warning against seeking “your best life now”, by doing such a thing, even though it was literally the next thought out of Christ’s mouth, wrapping up the conversation in Luke 16. Indeed, in most of our churches, one simply did not speak of hell, especially concerning anyone who had ever repeated the Sinner’s Prayer, no matter how they were currently living….much less connect the adultery repeatedly spoken of by Jesus with regard to remarriage, with the adultery spoken of by Paul in asserting that such will have no inheritance in the kingdom of God (“do not be deceived”).
Even though there were at least three recorded instances of Jesus Christ warning that for any man to “marry” any divorced woman was committing adultery, we were assured by celebrity seminary presidents that this was only a one-time act, “over with” on the wedding night, then covered by “grace” and duly forgotten by God who “hates divorce” (yet, He allegedly “authorized” it for “biblical grounds” and allegedly was Himself “divorced”.) We were further assured, given that “all authority is from God“, we must obey civil laws that conflict with God’s law, and that therefore, there are “greater” and “lesser” grades of adultery (adultery-lite, if you will, in the presence of civil paper) with differing eternal outcomes than would appear to be supported by our bibles. We swallowed hard or scratched our heads at the blatant conflict between Matthew 5:32; 19:9andMark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18, but alas, the footnotes that might have shed some light in an earlier era, pre-1970’s… Revised Standard Version, Second Edition of the New Testament, 1972 – Matthew 19:9
….were now being quietly removed by the Zondervans who stocked those bible bookshelves and cut the sales deals with Amazon. Most of us, having not attended bible school or seminary, having not been taught the history of the scripture manuscript texts, nor whose hands those texts passed through (including when and why), having not been taught how blatantly that which issues forth from today’s pulpits is at profound variance with the unanimous writings of the 1st through 4th century church fathers – many of them actually martyred, most of us never would have imagined the need to dig hard for ourselves into our study of the bible, in a way that goes all the way back to those texts in their original languages. Most us didn’t at the time know the basis on which we truly needed to call out our denomination’s leadership when they changed their marriage doctrine in the 1970’s by a vote of the pastors, to accommodate unilateral “no-fault” divorce enactment.
Most of us had no idea that we couldn’t rely on the “scholars’ ” rendering of the koine Greek verb moods and tenses, where taking certain liberties could turn Christ’s or Paul’s meaning literally on its head, if it served to prop up the Sexual Revolution that was occurring in the church and had been ongoing since the 16th century for Protestants. (Without elaborating too much here, there is also irrefutable evidence that the same process was ongoing with Catholic bibles for the same reasons and in the same time frame. Try going to biblegateway.com and bringing up Matthew 19:9 in the old Douay-Rheims version, alongside the newer NABRE version, for just one illustration of this.)
All of that was until…. the civil law of the Sexual Revolution collided head-on with the holy matrimony unions of several clean-living seminarians who had a talent for research and writing, and also collided with a few bible school grads whose churches were censuring them for repenting of their adulterous civil-only unions by divorcing civil-only spouses who really belonged to someone else, and remaining celibate, upon their studious discovery of the undiluted truth about “marrying” the estranged spouse of another living person. Thankfully for all of us, by the Lord’s hand, this was occurring with divinely-orchestrated timing, just when technology and online resources were drastically bringing down the cost of the requisite research tools, and removing various barriers to accessing those tools, as well as barriers to broadly communicating their findings to anyone who was interested. This at times has led to confirmation by pastors and linguists half a world away. By then, there were at least tens of thousands of covenant marriage standers on social media who were looking for assurance that what the Holy Spirit was leading them in (intensely countercultural) was indeed backed by scripture they could test and research and confirm for themselves.
The books these scholars then wrote have been literal Godsends. When it becomes abundantly evident that we can’t trust the most acclaimed seminarians and publishers of the day, we must all assume responsibility for our own deep scholarship of original sources. We didn’t plan on any of this, but it’s not all bad. Bible study will probably never be “boring” again!
6.) Standers’ “saltiness” in remaining in a less-than-perfect church is affecting their pastor’s conscience, even if they’re seen by him as a “troublemaker”
“If you have a prayer request, volunteers are waiting to pray with you in the prayer room”, they said. “Stop in before you leave.”
The stander thinks, “uh-huh, how am I going to ask Mr. & Mrs. Blended to join me in praying that my spouse will leave their adulterous remarriage, rebuild our covenant family, escape hell by not dying in that ongoing state of sin, and set an example to our generations not to repeat his / her sin?”
This is just one of the many examples of the various crosses a stander bears to try and be salt and light in their local harlot church. No stander should ever attempt to do this unless (1) they are exceptionally strong spiritually and uber-confident of who they are in the Lord, and (2) the church is otherwise a strong discipling church where none of the pastors are living in that kind of sin. If there is anyone in spiritual authority in that church who is “married” to somebody else’s spouse, the proper biblical response is to flee that kind of unbiblical leadership.
Generally, to do this for any length of time, standers need to have a very strong support network among the virtual (and occasionally-meeting) marriage permanence community. If you hear your prodigal was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer, take it both places, by all means. Prayer requests for the demise of your one-flesh’s adulterous “blended” household probably belong only in the stander community, at least until the prodigal is on his or her way home. Or maybe not. Be led by the Holy Spirit in deciding, and you will not fulfill the evil desires of the flesh.
Some standers find themselves in trouble in bible studies and home groups. It goes without saying that someone in an adulterous remarriage is not qualified to teach or lead in the church, yet nevertheless, it’s quite common that they do, so the Lord will excuse a stander for declining to be under the leadership of such a person.
“Godly couples” in ongoing adultery with someone else’s spouse?
And is the “husband” onboard with leading this group?
However, some of the conflicts that might come up may not even involve questions of marriage. For example, goaded for some weeks to join a “small group”, and having received no response to a letter written to the senior pastor to orient him to the difficulty of a covenant marriage stander participating in a small group where couples in adulterous remarriages were also members, “standerinfamilycourt” decided to attend a large group under the leadership of one of the junior pastors. This was a gathering of around 100 people in a church that is approaching mega church size. We were instructed to cluster according to the town we live in, resulting in a sub-group of around 15. One man seemed to dominate the group, knew it all, and was a dogmatic Calvinist. As he went on about the Holy Spirit being a “guarantee” that one cannot lose their salvation, “standerinfamilycourt” ventured to inform him of what the Greek text literally said (see comments above about deep bible study), that the original texts use the word “arrabōn(ἀρραβὼν)“, meaning down-payment. Perhaps it was just the idea of a new face walking in and contradicting the man, but more likely, a lot of Christians were sold a comfy-system that they don’t want disturbed – ever. Even so, perhaps a little seed was planted for the other 13 participants enticing them to delve a little deeper.
Standers have a couple of unique opportunities in such churches, nevertheless. For example, why not volunteer to teach a generic class on applying hermeneutic principles to the study of scripture, how to use deep bible study tools found online, and the history of our bible texts to reconcile those areas where (usually manipulated) scripture seems to conflict with other scripture?
Some female standers with home space available have taken into their homes the young, abandoned wife with a baby — so that the church would not push her into an adulterous subsequent relationship using twisted scripture, rather than take on the church-wide responsibility to contribute to her longterm financial needs.
There are times when it is just not possible to stay in a church that does not subscribe to the no-excuses indissolubility of holy matrimony, according to scripture. Other times, though it’s frequently uncomfortable, that’s still where the Lord would have us right now. There’s very little chance that state legislative efforts cropping up in a few states to repeal “no-fault” grounds for divorce unless there’s mutual consent, will ever come up for a vote, much less pass and get signed into law, unless someone is there recruiting the pastor’s active support. The pastors to affluent suburban communities are actually the ones needing the most encouragement to support these efforts.
7.) Standers are emboldening more pastors and priests to forsake false, comfortable teaching for Christ’s hard teachings, straight-up and undiluted
This part of the movement is blessedly growing, which may be the influence that eventually pulls our nation back from the brink. Some of these pastors have experienced the walk of a stander, and the restoration of a God-joined holy matrimony union for themselves. Either way, God is orchestrating quite a bit of cross-pollination which also crosses denominations. It would be great to see these pastors begin engaging other pastors on “family law” reform, especially in states where a repeal or reform bill is active before the legislature.
– A Pennsylvania bible college president writes a book in 1957, a very disciplined hermeneutical masterpiece that the succeeding leadership of his evangelical denomination tried its best to keep buried deep in the bowels of their headquarters basement, even though at the time, it carried an endorsing foreword by the General Superintendent of that denomination.
– A Connecticut pastor in an intact original marriage who juggles his congregation, leadership of a K-12 school, and a weekly radio broadcast ministry…who confronts other pastors with Jeremiah 23 as needed, and calls out the adulterous legalized unions, urging physical repentance, is hopefully sending a few prodigal spouses home to their true mates.
– A fiery black pastor in an intact original marriage regularly dishes unpopular truth out to his Philadelphia-headquartered megachurch and its global satellites. His tone is far from “diplomatic”.
– A Milwaukee pastor in an intact original marriage realizes that government regulation of holy matrimony was never delegated by God, and in fact, Matthew 19:6,8 backs this pastor up completely. He refuses to marry anyone under a civil marriage license, and teaches his flock alternative means to secure property and other rights in biblical marriage, while forgoing some of the government benefits that doing so entails. God sees the weddings in this congregation as covenantally-binding all the same.
– A Canadian pastor in an intact original marriage commends a teenage girl in his congregation for walking in Paul’s 1 Corinthians 5 instructions while the guest of a church in the U.S. when she finds out that her host and hostess are in a “marriage” Jesus repeatedly called adulterous, and cuts the trip short because of it.
– An Ohio Baptist pastor in an intact original marriage refuses to perform any wedding he wouldn’t do right in front of Jesus Christ, and also refuses to take people already in those unions into this church as a couple, no exceptions, no excuses.
– Another Ohio pastor in an intact original marriage gives up his Cincinnati church congregation on good terms when his conscience no longer permits him to perform weddings over people with living, estranged prior spouses, nor fellowship with people in such a union. He tearfully apologizes to those he has done the wrong to in performing their biblically-unlawful marriage, then departs to form a house church and weekly conference call supportive of the stander community and reconciliation of holy matrimony unions. He writes a landmark book on the topic that carries a spirit of gentleness and truth.
– Another Baptist pastor in Arizona openly rebukes several pastors and leaders of large media ministries who are divorcing their covenant wife to “marry” an adulteress, and all too often, one who is another man’s legally-estranged wife.
– A famous evangelist in the Charismatic movement reconciles with his covenant wife instead of getting entangled in the pursuing attentions of a serially polygamous female “pastor”. (She went on to other infamous exploits, enough said.)
– A Florida pastor in a long marriage with a widow who gave up his congregation to write two landmark books on the indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony and the invalidity of subsequent civil marriages while an original estranged spouse is alive, including the required means of repentance.
– A soft-spoken seminary graduate on the east coast writes a very important scholarly and historical book, and accompanying historical paper before he himself marries, then later finds himself standing for his own marriage, and experiencing a God-orchestrated reconciliation in some very difficult circumstances.
– A Houston pastor in an intact marriage who uses his blog to patiently teach principled hermeneutics on a weekly basis.
– A courageous African Cardinal stands up to Pope Francis’ plans to allow civilly-divorced and remarried parishioners (who have estranged prior spouses from valid marriages still living) to take communion, and to further liberalize “annulment” practices.
– A Virginia pastor leaves the legal profession to establish a marriage permanence church and family integrity radio broadcast.
Are these diverse shepherds “harsh”, “unloving”, “Pharisaical”, “unmerciful”, “unpastoral”, “pushing a ‘works-based’ salvation” ?
No, unlike most of their peers who adhere to the majority opinion, they’re simply focusing on eternal souls, and eternal outcomes. They are the handful who are fulfilling Christ’s instructions to “feed my sheep”. The law of this territory is that souls are more important than feelings, once forced to make a choice between the two. Being “pastoral” utterly fails if most of the sheep don’t ever make it back into the right (eternal) fold. Pastors like this act as a voice of conscience to all other pastors, even in the midst of a denouncing and reviling response from them. Pastors like this remind everyone, from the county court judge to the Pope, that even if “possession is 9/10ths of the (civil) law”, Jesus echoed John the Baptizer in the firm rebuke that such possession never exceeds 0/10ths of GOD’s law. Taking it to the next level, “standerinfamilycourt” would like to challenge these exemplary pastors to consider that “the law is a teacher”, and take the case to their state capitol (preferably with a church bus full of like-minded saints), so that we can get back to the days when people didn’t typically go to hell for much more than not knowing Jesus. Just imagine the character of your congregations if murder or rape or theft were legal! You are the “salt” of the pastorates, so please do for biblical marriage what you’ve always been willing to do for the sanctity of life. We stand very little chance of success repealing this abomination in 50 states without the solid support of church leadership!
“standerinfamilycourt” would like to close with this: how many laws would ever get enacted, or how many immoral laws would remain on the books if everyone knew that availing ourselves of that particular law would send us to hell? How many legislators would vote for a law like that if they could see people in the hell-flames for observing it? How many would refuse to vote for repeal of such a law, or conspire to keep its repeal from coming to a general vote of our state representatives? We have immoral civil laws as a result of the traditions of men that were built around sincerely-believed and long-unquestioned heresies, such as Chapter 24 (V, VI) of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which forms the basis for the (extrabiblical) fault-based grounds for civil divorce. Having answered this question, apart from the example of standers conspicuously devoting their lives to the restored wholeness of their covenant families, snatching people from those flames, and willingly bucking the contemporary taboo against even speaking of hell, how else would the world ever find out that this is actually the case, according to God’s word?
And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember thatduring your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. – Luke 16:24-25
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas … But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms. “ (Rev. Martin Luther King, April 16, 1963)
Today marks a major milestone in the ministry of “standerinfamilycourt”. Someone was “triggered” over our blog on antinomianism and the Christian media pandering-for-profit to so-called “blended families.” Interestingly, the Facebook crew had just 24 hours earlier, approved this particular post to be “boosted” in a paid ad, deciding at that time, it met their “community standards”.
Of course we weren’t talking about “the Brady Bunch” here when we discussed these “blended families”. Back in the day, it was as reliable as twin beds in the TV-land marital bedroom that “the lovely lady” and the “man named Brady” were both widowed. We were instead talking about those who blatantly disobey New Testament scripture to drag their spouse before a pagan court to get “dissolution” papers, and then further disobey scripture to take advantage of biblically-immoral civil laws that allow them to “remarry” while their true spouse is still living. Jesus repeatedly told us that this amounted to ongoing adultery, as did the Apostle Paul.
For a couple of years, “standerinfamilycourt” has watched many distinguished others (who are vocal online about sexual ethics) get shut down without notice, and based only on someone “reporting” a post as “offensive”, find themselves unable to operate any sites they were associated with, including their personal wall (even if that’s not where the reported “infraction” occurred). Those who have gone before have usually “triggered” someone in the LGBTQ community, or their sympathizers. Meanwhile, since SIFC tends to believe that hand-wringing over mere symptoms (weaponized homosexualism, for example) of the root cancer (church leadership acquiescence to immoral and unconstitutional family laws) is a bit futile, unless surgery is scheduled at the source of the symptoms. “standerinfamilycourt” believes that the conditions others complain of in that realm are part of God’s slowly unfolding progressive judgment on the nation, ongoing for 50 years at least, eroding the privilege of effective constitutional protections, and which our church leadership alone could turn around, if only they weren’t utterly complicit with the breakdown in heterosexual ethics and families. Our site has long been blessed to fly under the radar screen, so to speak, in large part because of this wholistic philosophy. Almost never, in over four years, would a post on our site go after homosexuals for its own sake; always such posts are tied on our pages with owning the truth about evangelical hypocrisy with regard to “sanctified”, legalized adultery-with-paper. As our culture continues to erode, even this is “triggering” people. Such is the identical kind of “hate” John-the-Baptizer, Jesus Christ, the Apostles Paul and Jude, brother of Jesus, regularly expressed. Thank God, the penalty has been greatly reduced in our times for such “hate”. At least for now.
“Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never beconsidered an outsider anywhere within its bounds… ” MLK, April 16, 1963
Because many have “gone before” who are far more articulate than “standerinfamilycourt”, it almost seems redundant to complain (again) about the insult to our free speech protections in the 1st Amendment posed by the prevailing cultural norm: that everyone has some sort of fundamental right “not to be offended – ever“, which trumps free speech on a tech “platform” to which our Federal government grants immunity protections from damages for harmful content, provided they don’t censor content. Indeed, we are coming up on the anniversary of Mark Zuckerberg’s famous testimony before the U.S. senate, when Sen. Cruz asked him something like,“under the standards of the CDA (Communications Decency Act of 1996, section 230), would you call Facebook a “platform” or a “publisher”? The CEO insisted that Facebook was a “platform”. Yet the censorship is legendary at Facebook, and continues to grow without any sort of due process including notice or appeal. If that sounds familiar, think back to the unsubstantiated allegations brought for purely partisan political reasons against Justice Brett Kavanaugh last fall, where the accusers insisted that their mere allegation (never proven) should preempt his very “license to operate” on the bench, or even on the coaching bench. As MLK alludes to the need to do, “standerinfamilycourt” is still “working through” the best way to raise the necessary funds not to sit idly by behind a computer screen, but get out around the country to family policy councils, legislatures, standers’ retreats and other events, toward the end goal of abolishing forced faultless divorce and curbing adulterous remarriage in our country.
About three years ago “standerinfamilycourt” had a much-admired Australian counterpart whose Facebook community page had grown over the prior four years to just a bit larger following than Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional‘s current 780 or so. She was surely reaching the feeds of several thousand people each week, and she knew the traditional marriage activists in her own country well (such as the oft-incarcerated Bill Muhlenberg). Unlike our page, this owner went as aggressively and directly after the LGBTQ community as she did the blight of sanctioned, legalized adultery saturating the church. Then one day without warning, both her personal and her community pages disappeared, never to return. The hope was, by way of explanation, that her estranged, prodigal husband had repented and returned. Unfortunately, the covenant marriage stander community never found out exactly what happened to our comrade “Zipporah Moses”. This alone should reinforce how very precious our free speech protections are to us in the United States. Today’s gestapo are the large corporations rather than government storm troops.
“In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. ” MLK, April 16, 1963
This blog post will be the only open whining planned by “standerinfamilycourt” over this incident. It might be different if “demonetizing” our avenues to donation funds was on-the-line with our site, as was the case with The Activist Mommy, and PragerU. But this ministry just isn’t quite to that point yet, and only beginning to mull over a more formal future, with clarified objectives and a strategy roadmap currently being deliberated. We will continue to defy the Community Standard to the full extent necessary to put the biblical truth or other reliable facts across, but with no intentional offense being targeted at anyone. We aim to do so lovingly, and we do accept the full consequences or penalties for our choices, as graciously as possible, making the most of the time as the days grow evil. But for crying out loud, this time we “triggered” a white, female evangelical with the “offensive”, verbatim word of God!
Elizabeth Johnston, “The Activist Mommy” probably has a special place in her wardrobe for her Zuckerberg “slammer attire”, given her “hate” recidivism. We believe her initial “conviction” (more accurately, her accusation via “reporting”) was about a year ago. Early this week she had the delight to report in her blog on legislation introduced in the Florida Senate, which would fine social media firms $75,000 for each occurrence of censorship actions taken for political and religious reasons. Please support FL SB1722 and ask your own state representatives to sponsor similar bills. While this may seem like a slap on the wrist to the tech giants, the cumulative occurrences would soon add up, and just may help to trigger actual enforcement of the Federal law aimed at this, since liability is being imposed on firms for not complying with their claimed status as a “platform” due to the censorship they impose on conservative sites. As it stands now, any person can shut down a site for a period of from 24 hours to indefinitely just by claiming to be “offended”. That’s not due process! And “triggered” people, especially those who claim to be “Christians”, but feel the need to “report” content that quotes holy scripture in disciplined, accurate context, well…..you have no respect for the 1st Amendment, either.
UPDATE 3/14/2019: Well, as it turns out, “standerinfamilycourt” never did get a jail notice, and learned on Thursday that what was going on instead was a widespread and very long outage. Our record it seems is still free of FB felonies, despite the rebuffs and occasional threats we get from offended folks. The timing just happened to coincide with a threat by one of our disgruntled readers to report us. Our functionality was starting to return bit by bit on Wednesday evening. We publish this anyway, because most of the points made within are still perfectly true and valid.
Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way. Luke 6:26
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Then two women who were harlots came to the king and stood before him.The one woman said, “Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house.18 It happened on the third day after I gave birth, that this woman also gave birth to a child, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, only the two of us in the house. This woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on it.So she arose in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your maidservant slept, and laid him in her bosom, and laid her dead son in my bosom. When I rose in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead; but when I looked at him carefully in the morning, behold, he was not my son, whom I had borne.”Then the other woman said, “No! For the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.” But the first woman said, “No! For the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.” Thus they spoke before the king.
Then the king said, “ The one says, ‘This is my son who is living, and your son is the dead one’; and the other says, ‘No! For your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.’”The king said, “Get me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king.The king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”Then the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son and said, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means kill him.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him!” Then the king said, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother.”When all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had [o]handed down, they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to [p]administer justice.
– 1 Kings 3:16-27
Back in biblical times, sons were a big deal, even to “ladies of the night”, because sons were a means of longterm survival if there was no husband in the picture. It was on this basis that Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law repaid his treachery toward her by masquerading as a prostitute to get him to impregnate her, and when it was all said and done, he remarked that she was more righteous than he (duh!) Anyone who has been to “family court” knows that not much has changed: sons and daughters often translate into cash flow of varying reliability, courtesy of the court, for some women, and a few men as well, not to even mention some abusive state entities. It’s understandable, then, that the parent who’s ordered to provide the cash flow would so much rather have parenting time instead. Who can blame them? Given that the states also get Federal payola in the form of Title IV-D payments for collecting those child support payments, we now have those babies being divided threeways in “family court”, instead of in half as proposed in Solomon’s court.
There are lots of videos out there describing this ugly underbelly of Big Divorce, a $100 billion per year industry, that additionally costs state and Federal taxpayers another $100+ billion each year in transferred social costs from unilateral “no-fault” forced divorce laws. While we pointedly disagree with some of the spelling, and the conclusion, the facts and statistics are well-presented in this expose‘.
Trust us when we say that our empathies are always with the innocent Respondent who was forced into “family court” against their will and conscience, when they never did anything to harm their children or family. The typical situation:
Connie Covetous marries Billy Beergut, both previously single, but perhaps they were involved premaritally or cohabited first. Connie finishes school, has a couple of kids, and goes to work in a job making around what Billy makes. It’s still not enough to keep up with HGTV and the Travel Channel, and Billy doesn’t feel compelled to climb the economic ladder to make enough for upward mobility. She’s exhausted. He’s enjoying their kids and his hobbies. Connie starts complaining about Billy to a male coworker she admires, who is climbing the ladder and doing all the things to improve himself that she wishes Billy were doing. The male colleague complains back about his wife who “is taking him for granted”. The two become involved and promise each other to divorce their respective spouses. Under our legal system, it doesn’t matter whether or not those now-surplus spouses consent from the curb. The unilateral petitions will be granted 100% of the time, and a reason doesn’t have to be given. Neither discarded spouse does consent, so Billy is dragged into court, and he’s ordered to pay child support and become a part-time father, by an imperious “black-robe” perched above him. Now Connie’s household income is four times his, and he’s evicted from the family home to boot. Close to 70% of unilateral divorce petitions are filed by women in the United States, as even the divorce attorneys tell us. Only two states require mutual consent for “no-fault” divorce grounds, and technically only one state, Mississippi, has laws that don’t eventually enable a forced divorce against the consent of an innocent partner.
Is mandated 50-50 shared parenting really in the best interest of the child? That depends. Is it right for even 1% of the children’s time to be spent under Connie’s adulterous roof? Arguably, not! The trauma of remarriage has been shown in studies to be even worse for child outcomes than just the divorce, if the children are exposed to the legalized adultery partner. If Billy B. becomes a “stander”, and does not remarry or take on a girlfriend, the childrens’ outcomes will be better than if both parents remarry and are materially well off, no matter how little he’s allowed to see the kids. The kids will see the day-in, day-out moral example their father sets in honoring his marriage vows in the most difficult of circumstances, i.e., immoral civil paper ordering him not to honor those vows to protect and cherish. If, on the other hand, both parents are living in some form of state-licensed or unlicensed adultery, and that’s the forward plan, neither home is any better than the other for the kids, and they will be raised to believe adultery is an unavoidable cultural norm, that nothing in life is that reliable, and they will probably even avoid marriage as adults, having the next generation of kids out of wedlock.
If we go back to 1968 and earlier, we didn’t have these societal issues to any meaningful degree because we had fault-based custody decisions. That system worked well, and the reason it did has already been explained. That system was also much cheaper for the taxpayers of the day (some grandparents will actually remember when we used to balance our state and Federal budgets), and it helped our constitutional republic to thrive because we always raised a majority of solid, moral citizens in sufficient numbers to sustain it. Today that’s rapidly breaking down into cries for socialism among the children of this regime – as if unilateral, forced divorce isn’t already socialism, but clearly, blanket 50/50 shared parenting isn’t the answer from the sociological perspective. It’s only one more layer of socialism, transferring resources from the virtuous to the less virtuous on both a micro and macro level. (“standerinfamilycourt” is only coincidentally in agreement with the legal vultures of the “family court” regime on this one issue. Hopefully that won’t happen again.)
Let’s now look at it from the fundamental rights perspective, and the longstanding legal precedents that have come down under the Bill of Rights. The growing number of shared parenting activists out there are correct that there are due process and equal protection issues involved here, under the 14th amendment. But it’s not necessarily because they aren’t given the same amount of parenting time as the custodial parent, unless both parents are guilty of some equally grievous infraction against the marriage, the safety of the home, or the moral development of the children. In fact, the guy in the video is technically arguing against his own core argument, in a sort of laughable double-speak. For example, at ~5:30 minutes he says,
“creation of the ‘best interest of the children’ state statutes was unconstitutional! And a lie. They are vague value judgements (sic) and cannot be used until after harm to a child has been proven.”
On the contrary, SIFC would humbly propose that the mere filing of a unilateral divorce petition on “no-fault” grounds is prima facie evidence of harm to the child, as well as to grandchildren, both born and unborn. Under those circumstances, it should be a rebuttable presumption that the Petitioner(s) should not get more than supervised visitation, and no overnights, or whatever differing arrangement they mutually agree with the other spouse. That’s equal protection under the law, and the “best interest of the child”, friends. (Sword held at a respectful and safe distance from the baby.) SIFC does agree that the principle of Parens Patriae ~7:10 is definitionally incompatible with “no-fault” because an asserted fault must be established for this power of the state to apply, and that it has been rampantly abused by state courts, which are acting ministerially for legislatures who enacted the entire gamut of “no-fault” laws (not just grounds statutes) unconstitutionally.
The looting of the system evolved over time, escalating dramatically in the 1980’s. The violation of civil rights and constitutional precedent occurring at the first hearing, which this gentleman refers to ~8:10 actually consists of reducing the parental authority of the non-filing spouse below 100% unless there’s some fault basis! And the burden should be on the Petitioning side to prove this under the normal standards of evidence. On the other hand, even if it’s 50/50, the innocent spouse’s civil rights are already being violated by 50% – half the maimed, spiritually dead baby, so to speak. The constitutional issue this gentleman speaks of still remains under his split-the-baby approach, whether he’s being deprived of 50% of this parental sovereignty or 90% of it. Admittedly, 50% is financially less burdensome than 90% in terms of child support, but that’s really a separate property-taking issue, which is also better-adjudicated under a fault-basis. Under a proper repeal of non-consensual divorce on “no-fault” grounds, the divorce simply would not be granted unless the parents came to binding terms on all such matters so that nobody is forfeiting, nor being deprived of, their fundamental 14th amendment protections.
To be sure, most of the proposed legislation before legislatures in many states call for a “rebuttable presumption” that this is in the child’s best interest, something that is likely to prove to be utterly meaningless “window dressing” in practice, given the rampant judicial corruption throughout the family court system, and the high hurdles to court access that most of us experience, should the need arise to rebut the presumption. This will be a mere band-aid on a pustulent boil that needs full lancing and draining. It appears that the industrial family law machine and its lobbyists are somewhat split on the issue, looking as they always do through their primary lens: impact on longterm fee revenue. A few firms embrace it, realizing that nothing is ever really final. Most stand vehemently opposed, proving that pushing through forced divorces quickly, then litigating over children and support collections for years thereafter is the optimal business model. We should keep an eye on the trend in state enactment threat, those of us who hope to abolish non-consensual “no-fault” decrees altogether. Strategically, in the face of enactment of a law that has pretty strong public sympathy, as 50/50 shared parenting has, and seems inevitable — as a matter not of if but when, might there come a day when under those changed circumstances, we could start to persuade the “family law” lobby that forced faultless divorces are no longer in their business interest? Are they aware from their own market research that 80% of unilateral “no-fault” divorces in the U.S. aren’t really mutual, nor over “irreconcilable differences” other than adultery or the desire to pursue adultery legally?
“standerinfamilycourt” is aware that this post is not going to sit well with those who are already-divorced and not looking back, possibly “remarried”, strapped with child support payments and either alienated from their children, or allowed too little time with them. That sucks. Unfortunately, it boils down to the same choice you would have made for their sake if you were civilly still in that marriage. There would be no one on the side, for their sake, with or without the subsequent civil paper condoning it. You’d be on your knees taking your complaint to the Lord about any and all barriers to your being the parent He appointed you to be. You’d be sacrificing and laying down your life in order to raise them right, since you only get one shot at it. The Lord would see this and, in His time, move mountains in your behalf.
Here’s what the Righteous Judge says about the best interest of the child:
And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me;but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!
“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into thefiery hell.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven.For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.”
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. – James 3:1
A covenant marriage stander recently posted an urgent request to a marriage permanence Facebook group to “set her straight”, referring to a young lady with close to 2,000 followers who posted a “Note” entitled as above. Most of us know that no other topic on the face of the planet today generates more instant theologians. The transformative power of this topic on just about anybody and everybody is legendary, to say the very least.
It’s not that “standerinfamilycourt” believes someone must attend or graduate from bible school or seminary to write authoritatively on the indissolubility of holy matrimony. On the contrary, the more typical experience, over the past 150 years or so, is that such an educational component actually ruins its graduates and steers them far away from the Spirit-driven biblical truth, unless the Holy Spirit is very persistent in pursuing them and changing their heart. However, it seems reasonable that a person needs to either come from an exceptionally excellent discipling home in their youth, or they need to have lived long enough in adult life to have taken on some significant discipleship challenges before they are very likely to know whereof they speak. A fair impression concerning a young person, therefore, who has 2,000 followers and no other disclosed connection to ministry or background is, more likely than not, she’s doing a whole bunch of ear-tickling. The last thing we need in Christendom is an Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez personality creating a fifth gospel, lecturing and labeling as “legalist” anyone who declines to adopt it!
SIFC told this complaining stander that, after having read the Note, it is indeed erroneous on most of its points, but with no prior connection with this young lady, and no indication (since she lists herself as “single”) that her soul is in imminent peril from being herself in an adulterous legalized union, it does not seem appropriate to invade her wall for the purpose of spanking her in front of her followers. Now, somebody with a very public ministry and half a million followers, which merchandizes heresy and pockets the proceeds, is definitely a different kind of case. In this complained-of case, this open letter will need to suffice.
Dear Amateur Theologian:
Social media is a wonderful thing, affording opportunities that many of us would never have, otherwise, to make our voice heard to the masses. “Standerinfamilycourt” is not going to say that’s a bad thing, necessarily, but rather, that when it comes to our parallel life in the kingdom of God, it is a fearsomely responsible thing.
Our response to your Note of January 1, 2019 will linger in Luke, chapter 12 where Jesus says this:
“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows.But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
One advantage of youth and lack of experience is that more often than not, youthful exegetes will fit into the second grace category, but not indefinitely. That you can persuade close to 2,000 people to read your personal Note on your Facebook wall is very impressive, indeed. It would be even more impressive if that influence could be harnessed for the kingdom of God to pull people from the broad path that everyone wants to be on, but whose destination (Christ tells us) is destruction, over to the narrow path which requires us to lay our own lives down in this life, so consequently few want to be on that path but nevertheless its destination is eternal life. Even so, you clearly have a bright future as (perhaps) a writer for a “Christian” publication like Crosstalk where you can secure an even larger audience, as you hone your excellent writing skills and increase their commercial circulation. Indeed, most of us would say that you have been given much.
“I’m not writing this note to espouse an opinion. My heart is simply to bring some clarity to what the Scripture actually says, means, and requires of us”, you say.
You’re way ahead, my dear, perceiving already that popular Christian writers aren’t so presumptuous as to share truths or, even worse, moral absolutes. No, they’re endlessly humble and so they share “hearts”. That alone, will take you much further than someone who says, “thus saith the Lord.” However, we’d respectfully challenge that anything that doesn’t actually line up with “thus saith the Lord” is by definition…an opinion. Clarity is as clarity does, after all.
In addition to your very correct observation that …“It is too important a matter to leave to some surface, passive reading of scripture and neglect the diligent study required to come to an accurate understanding of God’s original intent”, you deserve additional kudos for recognizing the continuum betweenantinomianismandlegalism(“So, it was no surprise to see both legalism and antinomianism manifested in many views concerning marriage. “) This (accused) “legalist’s” main contribution to this conversation will be to hopefully bring your understanding of legalism more into alignment with what Christ told us the spirit of Phariseeism is. We’re quite sure that you wouldn’t want to fall into antinomianism unintentionally, by misunderstanding what actually constitutes “legalism” in the kingdom of God!
If it won’t overly offend you, we won’t directly link to that Note of yours, since attempting to refute hermeneutical errors point-by-point would make this post very long and boring , but we would like to give our readers a rough overall outline of its contents and, speaking as an unabashed “legalist” by your measuring stick, answer a few of your main points. Fair enough?
“Note” High-Level Outline:
(1) SAMT’s notion of covenant, and assertion that the marriage covenant is conditional and can be “broken”
(2) SAMT’s notion of marriage rights & duties / Failure to fulfill these
(3) SAMT’s notion of “biblical grounds for divorce”
(4) SAMT’s application of Deuteronomy and other Mosaic laws to marriage and divorce today
(5) SAMT’s assertion that there’s a difference between biblical references to divorces and “sending away”
(6) SAMT’s inferences from Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well
CONCERNING BIBLICAL COVENANT (Point 1): Our young Note-writer (hereafter, let’s call you “SAMT”: self-appointed marriage theologian) spends considerable time in the Garden of Eden recounting the creation basis of the first wedding, and asserts that the essential element of covenant is, therefore “do not be unequally yoked”, citing 2 Corinthians 6:14-18. You show in your version of this, “SAMT” that you profoundly misunderstand who the respective parties to the biblical marriage covenant actually are. “SAMT”, you imagine that the parties are simply the husband and the wife, which is the humanist view and is natural enough if you weren’t paying any attention to what Jesus, and the prophet Malachi said about that.
So where, then, does the notion come from that there’s a superior and an inferior party to every biblical covenant? It actually comes from ancient near-eastern culture, where covenants were absolutely binding on the more powerful of the two parties, even if the less powerful party had difficulty honoring their end. In fact, that was the whole point in making a covenant in the first place, there was a weaker party who might not keep up his or her end. In Genesis 15, Moses gives the account of how God illustrated this to Abram, just before he got his new name, Abraham:
And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” He said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?” So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds. The birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age….It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates…”
Obviously, God deliberately yoked Himself with an unequal covenant mate here. He did not require terrified Abram to walk between the split carcasses – He had to do so Himself! Later, He commanded Hosea to be unequally yoked to a prostitute in holy matrimony, although the walked-out marriage was anything but holy until Hosea redeemed Gomer, his God-joined one-flesh off the slave block. Hosea serves as a type, a foreshadowing of Jesus’ role. “SAMT”, if you’d like to learn more in-depth about biblical covenant, and about the nature of the God-joined one-flesh entity, please click here, and here. Your version is taken out of context, “SAMT” and in fact is a subtle mix of Christo-feminism, and long-winded excuses not to obey Christ’s most basic commandments, which do not actually exempt our one-flesh spouse and which include:
The upshot of all of this, “SAMT”: since God is one of the parties to the marriage covenant of our youth, and He has never once, in all of biblical history, ever failed to uphold His end of an unconditional covenant He was a party to, the marriage covenant can certainly be violated by the inferior party (and perhaps even by both husband and wife), but it is absolutely not possible for the marriage covenant to be broken, contrary to your humanistic assertion. You say you are “single”, and do you plan to exchange conditional wedding vows someday? “I might”, rather than “I do”? If that’s your plan, you are not actually consenting to holy matrimony, and as a consequence, God who knows your heart, will not create sarx mia , the supernatural one-flesh entity of holy matrimony. That might sound good to you, since you’d apparently rather shuck an unsatisfactory spouse in the name of Jesus, but your union will be no better than married gays or than today’s abundance of remarriage adulterers. If this is “harsh” and “judgmental” to you, then take it up with Him. The people you disagree with didn’t write the bible! Picture Credit: Sharon Henry
MARRIAGE RIGHTS, DUTIES AND DEFAULTS (Point 2) Says “SAMT” of this topic:
“God’s intent for marriage is that the two become one, and that they love and care for their spouse. Under the old covenant law, a husband had the responsibility to provide for the basic needs for his wife. If he did not do so, but he withheld any of these things from her she was free to go. She was released from the covenant because he did not keep it.”
As if Jesus never bothered to deliver the sermon on the mount, “SAMT” you look to the Mosaic law to define the rights, duties and remedies for defaults in marriage, and you insist that this remains the standard for Christ-followers. Your theory shows a considerable misunderstanding, even of Mosaic law. The above quote, taking scripture seriously out context, does not refer at all to God-joined holy matrimony. What you have latched onto refers to Moses’ attempt to regulate the practice of taking a concubine slave in addition to a God-joined covenant wife, in other words, the concurrent form of polygamy. You quote Exodus 21:10-11 :
If he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. If he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
What was the “money” involved? Her usual slave price to go free was waived. Our budding theologian somehow infers from this that a contemporary covenant wife may divorce her husband, despite everything both Christ and Paul clearly, specifically and repeatedly said to the contrary, after Jesus completely abrogated the Mosaic regulations for His higher law, and despite the fact that no woman under the Hebrew patriarchy ever had any right to divorce her husband for any reason. In doing this, “SAMT”, you ignore the effects of testing your theory by applying the hermeneutical principles of Culture and Comparison, and you twist the Content to suit your desired outcome. You did not Consult the writings of the early church fathers to see what they said to the contrary because they were echoing Christ and Paul. “SAMT”, it can’t be said often enough, that anything at all written about MDR isn’t even worth reading unless it is written in such a way that it demonstrates that these principles have been faithfully applied. Otherwise, the integrity of this topic soon gives way to feelings, emotions, lust and ideologies, typically humanism and feminism.
Do we have something that resembles the concubinage situation described in Exodus 21 today? Yes, indeed we do! It’s the consecutive polygamy of remarriage adultery, in fact. Today’s equivalent instruction for regulating this immorality, with the exception of “conjugal rights” (since Jesus made clear that such relations were continuously sinful): voluntarily provide for this adultery partner and any non-covenant children when you must separate from him or her to end the ongoing sexual sin.
We have to agree with you, “SAMT” in what you say next. Indeed, 1 Corinthians 7 is the “go-to” chapter in the New Testament for the rights and duties of marriage, with three important caveats, which we hope you didn’t miss:
(1) the rights and duties are strictly to one’sownspouse, the one God inseverably joined you to for life, not somebody else’s
(2) there is a male and female in each status being addressed, with this symmetry continuing throughout the chapter and four or five different statuses. We must not attempt to transfer the advice from one group to the other for our own convenience. Not one of these statuses addressed, however is a “divorced” category, only “married but estranged”. Paul believed Jesus that all divorce was man-made, and not only immoral, butimpossible between a one-flesh covenant couple.
(3) any separation between God-joined spouses was to be aimed at reconciliation when possible, not permanent severance.
You dish out some pretty good marriage advice from this point in your Note, “SAMT” (for a single person, anyway). But then you launch into a fiery manifesto on domestic abuse, with the peculiar bias that it’s always the man beating on the woman, and you declare:
“Many women who seek counsel from the church regarding their abusive situations at home are told that they still need to submit, or they are accused of being the cause of the abuse because they must have failed to be submissive enough. The stories of what women have been instructed to endure and sent back home to in the name of holiness is honestly disgusting.”
(Any chance that you go around beating up on pastors who don’t toe your ideological mark, “SAMT”?)
Instead of lingering on 1 Corinthians 7:11, where you just were, as the biblical remedy for an unsafe home, you’re then diving back into Mosaic law faster than you can say “Zipporah”! Your tone and ideology sound identical to the subject of an earlier blog of ours. In case it isn’t clear from scripture, nowhere does Christ or any of the Apostles give any permission to divorce for abuse or adultery or abandonment, but more about that when we get to your theories about “biblical grounds”.
Says “SAMT”… “God designed marriage to be a blessing to both the husband and wife. It is really sad that we have reduced it to some obligation to live under the same roof regardless of how the other party treats us.”
Says “SIFC”: God designed His relationship with us to be a blessing to Him and to everyone around us. It’s really sad that we have reduced it to some obligation for God to let us into heaven anyway regardless of how we treat Him.
And, oh “SAMT”, what have you done to the context and tone of Malachi 2, my dear? You have stood this poor prophet on his head! You drill right in on verse 16, “God hates divorce”, but this context of this is impossible to get right without starting at verse 13 and understanding who exactly the prophet was addressing when he spoke for the Lord in declaring that fellowship was broken with the priest of God who had divorced his wife and married another. You go into a litany of reasons why God hates divorce, but skip right over the one He forthrightly declares: it corrupts our offspring and our generations. You do this because you speak as more of a feminist than a disciple. No form of humanism is ever compatible with discipleship. They are polar opposites!
Next you say:
“However, when one party has broken covenant, God does not hold the innocent party to a broken covenant, and God does not call them a sinner for issuing a bill of divorce to someone who has broken covenant with them.
We’ve already covered the biblical fact that the marriage covenant can be violated but never broken due to who the covenant parties to holy matrimony actually are. So, let us ask you this, “SAMT”: does God ever call someone a sinnerfor disobeying Him?
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate. – Matt. 19:6
But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband(but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife. – 1 Corinthians 7:10-11
No, He actually likens the rebellious to a witch or a sorcerer, my dear.
“So, we can’t accuse everyone who has been through a divorce of being a sinner for having gone through it!” say you.
Very true, “SAMT”, but only if the person did not initiate the lawsuit before the pagan court, and did not even consent to it. If they did, they have practiced the sin of witchcraft and they need to repent. Even then, unless the marriage was biblically invalid from the beginning because of the existence of a prior living estranged spouse, they are still married in God’s eyes. If that seems like an “accusation” to you, then there’s something very wrong with your heart toward God.
God hates divorce but He Himself had one! “
No, “SAMT”. If you trouble to read just a bit further in Jeremiah 3, you soon find God saying, “return to Me, for I am married to you.” For more about the rampant abuse and proper exegesis of that particular scripture, please click here.
PRESUMED “GROUNDS” FOR DIVORCE , ATTEMPTS TO APPLY MOSAIC LAW TO CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE, WITH OR WITHOUT “PAPERWORK”
(Points 3 , 4, and 5)
From here, we’re about to dive into some heavy-duty scripture abuse debunking, “SAMT”. Scripture abuse always results when anyone fails to apply all five principles of disciplined hermeneutics before they make personal decisions and, even worse, presume to teach others: Content, Context, Culture, Comparison and Consultation. There’s nothing worse than treating the word of God like a bag of trail mix, latching on to things out of context and discarding or ignoring the bits you don’t like. Next you say….
“This verse [referring to Matthew 19:3-10] is often quoted to claim that divorce is only permitted in cases of adultery. Others claim it means divorce is only permitted in cases of fornication, meaning only when a man discovers his bride was not a virgin when they married. Some claim that even if divorce is permitted in the case of adultery or fornication, remarriage is never permitted. All of these opinions are wrong.”
Just as your own opinion is equally wrong, “SAMT”. Unfortunately, all of the above is both unsupported and directly contradicted by scripture, and more specifically, by the very words of Christ which we’ve already cited above, in verse 6, which is the only verse that deserves any focus in this passage, until we get to verse 12,where Jesus speaks of living as a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of God, after forbidding anyone to marry a divorced person. This, “SAMT”, makes everything you go on to say about what question the Pharisees actually asked amount to a total red herring. It doesn’t matter what they asked, only what Jesus said in response. Ditto for your leap back into Deuteronomy 24, since Jesus chose instead to quote Moses’ better word in Genesis 2:21-24, rather than Moses’ ill-fated attempt to regulate sin and hard-heartedness on the trail to the Promised Land.
Contrary to your assertion, adultery has never been biblical grounds for divorcefrom a God-joined union either in the New Testament, nor the Old Testament. Under Mosaic law, sexual sins against betrothal and marriage were punishable by stoning, not divorce. That’s because the one-flesh entity had to be severed somehow to allow for remarriage. Nobody can say with certainty what Moses wrote Deuteronomy 24:1-4 concerning, but it’s far more likely that this regulation was covering one of the many non-capital reason why a betrothal contract could not be consummated under Jewish rules of ceremonial cleanness (“some indecency”)–and so, the reason for defilement of the land existed both before and after the severed union. Whatever the reason for the Deuteronomy 24 passage, there is not a single Christian today to whom it applies, because Jesus abrogated all of the Mosaic regulations when He said of several things where the prior moral law was simply not worthy of the kingdom of God, “it is written, BUT I SAY UNTO YOU…” He also clearly commanded us to live reconciled lives.
This really gets people’s knickers in a twist throughout Christendom, but no other context is possible after the sermon on the mount, except that Jesus was disagreeing with both Hillel and Shammai. And it’snot a matter of “paperwork”, either!
“….MOSES allowed you to divorce your wives, BUT FROM THE BEGINNING, IT WAS NOT EVER SO!”– Matthew 19:8
Which brings us to debunking the definition of “legalism”…. The first thing to understand, “SAMT”, is that this is not a biblical term any more than, say, “homophobia” is. You will not find it in any translation, because it is the jargon of “Churchianity” . When Christ and Paul rebuked the behavior of the Pharisees, there are four key points:
(1) they were the ones pushing man-legalized immoral abandonment of covenant (2) they were the hangers-on to Mosaic regulation after Jesus abrogated all 613 of them in favor of a higher moral standard (3) Per Jesus, the 10 Commandments remain in full effect (4) If the word of God makes clear that dying in a certain state of sexual sin will cost us our inheritance in the kingdom of God, obeying is never “legalism”.
“Legalism” to Christ is applying any part of the Mosaic regulation that lies outside the 10 Commandments (you know, stuff like Deuteronomy 24:4). “Legalism”, therefore, excludes urging obedience to the direct commandments from Christ’s ministry. Around here, we call “legalism” Judaizing heresies, such as Paul spoke of to the Galatians. So, the solution to antinomianism is obedience to Christ’s commandments, not accusing those who do obey and who urge others to obey, of somehow holding people to (inferior) Mosaic standards. In fact, it’s usually the very same accusers like yourself who want to do that, in lieu of obeying Christ. Moses after all, was considerably more lenient in matters of marriage than is Christ. Almost everyone instinctively knows this, and that’s why they can’t seem to let go of Moses.
READING INTO JESUS’ CONVERSATION WITH THE SAMARITAN WOMAN AT THE WELL
“It is sad that so many so often misrepresent the heart of God. They read things in Scripture that are actually full of love and grace and the beauty of God’s heart towards the hurting with such jaded eyes. The story of the woman at the well is a prime example of this.“
What’s really sad is that some who would deign to teach others imagine that God’s “heart” is any different than what repeatedly came out of His Son’s mouth. That’s either blaspheming the Father or it’s accusing the Son. Which brings us to another red flag “no-no” of unsound hermeneutics — the negative inference, or what Jesus “didn’t say”. In this young lady’s defense, though, it’s quite common to see middle-aged seminarians do the same thing, though they should certainly know better.
In the case of the other scarlet lady with whom Jesus was merciful, the woman taken in adultery, here’s what Jesus didn’t say: “neither do I condemn you because nobody is without sin, and it’s impossible to live a holy life which is why I’m about to die for you. Stay away from those hypocritical Pharisees next time.” No, Jesus gave her a commandment: “Go and sin no more.”
Why would we imagine, that just because we don’t see the words captured in John’s account of the exchange at the well, Jesus did not tell this woman who was shacking up with a boyfriend the same thing He told the other adulteress? What Jesus supposedly “didn’t say” is no proof of anything! For a more in-depth discussion of what was actually going on at the well, click here.
“SAMT”, we’re just about done here. You spend the rest of your Note in righteous indignation, accusing biblical truth-tellers of “picking up stones” when they tell people what scripture says, while it’s clear that feminist ideology has a stone or two in your own hands. You make it sound pious by going on and on about God’s “heart” and your “heart” as if He’s schizophrenic and you’re not delusional. We hope you learn one day that words like “grace” and “love” cannot be limited to temporal matters and people’s feelings – since that’s actually not very “loving”. If your definition of “love”, “grace”, “mercy” doesn’t include an eternal dimension, you are at risk of “loving” people straight into hell. If you don’t believe us, try substituting other sins, ones that make you recoil, and see if it’s “unloving” or lacking “grace” to urge them to repent with their feet, at the risk of their feeling “shamed” and “condemnation”.
Here’s another side of God’s “heart”, SAMT… back to Luke 12:
I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.But I willwarn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!
Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division;for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. – Jude 4
Not for the first time have we blogged about this, but it seems so-called “blended families” are all the rage with anyone who wants to sell lots of “Christian” books these days. We’re told that these “families” are “blessed” (and just for good measure, the author will “bless” them), which is a bit strange since they are snapping up all of these books as a growing demographic: “– and their numbers were added to daily by the “family courts” of the land.” It’s kind of predictable that the targeted market won’t learn much from these books, however, so they’ll buy more to see if the advice works out any better. But what if….God doesn’t want these books to work any magic in these unbiblical living arrangements and immoral relationships? What if…the cost of “blended families”, who come together for reasons other than widowhood, is too eternally high to bear? What if… a truly loving God splits these “families” up out of eternal mercy for every member of that kind of household?
Very recently, both Ryan and Selena Frederick of Fierce Marriage.comand Kris Vallottonhave posted blogs with sure-fire marriage advice for those who purportedly “didn’t plan” to wind up in an adulterous remarriage by Christ’s standards, but now need to find a way to “thrive” (rather than repent). Ministry people who publicly spread soul-endangering heretical material to make a person feel better about remaining in their state of sin require somebody to make an attempt at an equally public, respectful response, supplying the biblical truth. Both of these ministries produce especially effective memes that are highly encouraging to those standing celibate until the Lord restores their God-joined, covenant union and removes their prodigal spouse, in true grace and mercy, from the legalized adulterous relationship they’ve fallen into, which they pray everyday their prodigal will live long enough to repent of — from the heart. As with RepentanceCry.com, whose divorced pastor/founder is currently “betrothed” to a younger woman who will (unless God intervenes) sinfully supplant his true estranged wife who is still living, SIFC is left with a dilemma over the rightness of continuing to use their materials on our pages. Unlike the case with RepentenceCry, neither of these other two ministries seem to be blocking dissenters at this point, so members of the marriage permanence movement are still able to exchange with them.
The tennis involved with commenters, who can’t abide anyone so confronting the ministry owners who have tickled their ears and validated their sinful choices, typically goes like this for anyone determined enough to sustain the online engagement:
Lob 1 : (aimed at page / ministry owners) straightforward Matthew 19:6 / Luke 16:18 appeal that God-joined holy matrimony is not dissoluble by anything but death, and that all non-widowed remarriage was consistently called adultery by Jesus.
Return 1: MIsuse of some combination of Matt.5:32, 1 Cor. 7:15 and Matthew 19:9 to “prove” otherwise, and point out the “error” of the lob. (They don’t know what to do with the actual scriptures in Lob 1, but they’re certain that theirs must override.)
Lob 2: Patient, hermeneutical explanation why the Returner’s interpretation of those scriptures to justify marrying again, while having an estranged spouse still living, is not hermeneutically correct, and suggesting that they study it further for a period of time.
Return 2: Projectile vomiting of everything the discarded spouse did, and / or what the true-spouse-of-the-new-spouse did, that God would surely not expect anyone to stay in the marriage and tolerate… these outrages against their happiness. (Optional insistence that Lob 2 is an untrustworthy “private interpretation” with denial that the Lob 1 scriptures say what they say and mean what they mean.)
Lob 3: Reminder from Matthew 19:6, 8 that Christ didn’t leave us with a choice whether to “remain in” such a marriage, but that He said we simply are in such a marriage until one of the original partners physically dies.
Return 3: Indignant playing of (you guessed it) – the Pharisee card, accompanied by various Pauline scriptures cited to purport that nobody is capable of living by the ten commandments, and any effort to do so is “salvation by works” and deceitful, self-righteous “boasting”.
The truncated form of Romans 8:1, quoted to omit “who walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh…” is especially popular at this juncture, accompanied with “by grace we are saved through faith, not of our own works lest any man should boast.” This, of course, is presumed to override anything Jesus ever said directly to the contrary of their sexual ethics, and asserted only to apply to those who are not “saved” yet, because those people don’t have their ticket punched by belief that their ticket is punched.
Lob 4: A friendly reminder about the sermon on the mount, concerning obedience to Christ out of a grateful heart, and that the 613 old rabbinic regulations to which Paul was actually referring as “the law” are only suspended upon our surrender to Christ’s lordship, perhaps quoting Luke 14:26 or Hebrews 10:26-29 or Matthew 7:21-23. (The 10 Commandments remain in full effect, notwithstanding Luther’s objections thereto.)
Return 4: (now growing demonstrably more heated, can go two different ways – path 1, revert to Return 1 and mechanically parrot this point again and again for the rest of the conversation, alternating this with vicious ad hominem slurs….or… shift into sorrowful-pious-humility mode with an offer to “pray” that the lobber will “get saved for real some day” – path 2, depending on the personality of the remarriage adulterer on the other side of the net, and assuming Lob 4 didn’t horrifically draw one of each, in tandem!) It tends to get really ugly from here, but four things are clear from both types of tennis partners:
(1) what they were once sold as the terms of salvation is not matching up with what’s now being presented…
(2) who they thought they were in Christ is now being shaken to the marrow of their bones (with which we should all achingly and deeply empathize)…
(3) if it means they can’t have their “salvation” on the terms they were sold, they’re not about to take our suggestion to study up to make sure they’re as “saved” as they think they are.
(4) they must have a full retraction and apology from you, and they will stalk you by tagging, with repetitive points and demands for “answers” to extraneous questions, day and night until they get it (or you decide life’s too short and block them), even if they happen to presently be separated from said legalized adultery partner.
By this point, there is zero question that we are dealing with one or more antinomians in the conversation. Antinomianism (from the Greek: ἀντί, “against” + νόμος, “law”) is any view which rejects laws or legalism and is against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so.[1] The term has both religious and secular meanings. In Christianity, an antinomian is one who takes the principle of salvation by faith and divine grace to the point of asserting that the saved are not bound to follow the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments.[2][3] The distinction between antinomian and other Christian views on moral law is that antinomians believe that obedience to the law is motivated by an internal principle flowing from belief rather than from any external compulsion. What they don’t take into account is that if you don’t obey, you can’t really claim to believe. The eighteen inches from head to heart has not been spanned. They’re stuck on simple mental assent which fails to engage their feet, in the way that the tax collector Zachheus’ feet were engaged when he came to saving faith. Following the ten commandments is an essential element of following Christ that precludes our own presumptions about what He “would want” for us which they were hoping might suspend one or more of those “impossible-to-follow” commandments. Jesus died, they insist, for our past, present (unrepented) and future sins!
If the site owners are paying attention, and booksellers good enough to make a living at it always pay attention, we’re about to find out if they, too, are antinomians. All too often, booksellers appealing enough to the masses to have half a million people following their facebook page, are almost always antinomians, not just people who honestly don’t know any better. The exchange with the Vallotton page has not been that contentious so far, and nobody was “unduly” triggered there by the truth-tellers. Vallotton, who has slightly under 400,000 followers seems to have a loyal opposition consisting mainly of the LGBT community and their sympathizers who are among the most vocal on that page, and that’s where most of his attention seemed to be going. Some marriage permanence disciples had already been there, challenging the premise that “blended families” are covenant families and are holy matrimony unions, before SIFC arrived there to comment. This was also true on the FierceMarriage page, where the owner’s response to the weekend proceedings arrived around noon Monday, as follows…..
“Hi everyone,
Ok, this is a very nuanced topic, and perhaps we didn’t do the intro justice. I’ll modify the introduction of the blog post so it’s not misleading, but I do want to address some things here about assumptions we’ve made—we’ve (wrongly) assumed that you know where we’re coming from and the premises we had in mind when posting this content.
“For clarity:
1: Divorce is never God’s best for any marriage, Christian or non-Christian alike. In fact, the Bible says that “God hates divorce”. (Malachi 2) It’s never His best for any marriage.
2: As a last resort, and “because of hardness of hearts”, the Bible gives two clear grounds for divorce: (1) sexual immorality (Matthew 5:32; 19:9) and (2) abandonment by an unbeliever (1 Corinthians 7:15). There is nuance to what constitutes “abandonment by an unbeliever” that can only be discerned on a case by case basis, with pastoral care, prayer, and biblical counseling.
3: The two grounds above shouldn’t be construed as situations “requiring” divorce. Divorce is not required or even encouraged in the above cases. They’re exceptions made, not imposed requirements. Repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation are always the best possible ways forward.
4: If the divorce was for unbiblical reasons, there are no grounds for remarriage. If there are instances where divorce occurs and it’s biblically justified, remarriage is acceptable for the innocent party. (Matthew 19:9) But even then, we encourage couples to fight hard for their marriage (see #3 above) through prayer, counseling, and pursuit of each other.
5: This is a very sensitive and nuanced topic for many that requires speaking “truth in love” in a relational context. We must speak truth, yes, but we must do so in a way that encourages others in Christ, builds each other up in him, and lovingly urges holiness in light of God’s grace in Jesus. For this reason, we urge you to only post comments if you can be lovingly truthful without being brash or harsh.
6: There are other questions like, “can I remarry if I got divorced while I was an unbeliever”. This, and questions like it, are complex questions that are very hard to answer quickly. For that reason, we urge you to get biblical counsel from a pastor who knows you and can read God’s Word with you to find the answer.
7: Finally, a divorced and/or remarried believer should not feel any less loved by God. This is not to condone sin, but rather, to reiterate that our being loved by God is a GIFT (“so that none may boast” Eph 2:9) despite our sin, and is good for our salvation in eternity and our sanctification until we get there.
(Uh-oh!)
“standerinfamilycourt’s” response:
Ryan and Selena, a growing number of pastors and other serious disciples who are familiar with the history of bible versions and revisions over the last 150 years, who are familiar with church history for the first 400 years, and who faithfully apply sound principles of scriptural hermeneutics in studying this topic deeply, must respectfully disagree with several of your points.
Overall, a couple of great books by faithful men of God would be a good read for the two of you.
“One Flesh” by Joe Fogel “Have You Not Read?” by Casey Whitaker “Til Death Do Us Part?” by Dr. Joseph Webb
Briefly answering a few of your points:
1. God has *commandments*, not “bests”, “ideals”, “purposes”, “designs” or the like. When Jesus said, “what God has joined, let no human (anthropos) put distance between (choresthetai)”, this was in the imperative mood. This is a commandment with eternal consequences if it goes unrepented. Further, Malachi 2 is (in full context) a rebuke of his priests who divorce their God-joined wife and marry another. God makes clear this breaks all fellowship with Him until repented, because HIs covenant remains with the still-living spouse of his youth. God does not hate the divorce out of remarriage adultery with some other living person’s God-joined spouse.
2. Since when has “hardness of heart” been an acceptable attribute in a Christ-follower? This makes the very dangerous assertion that God is obligated to make allowances for our unholy attitudes. This is not scriptural in any sense. Most of us have bibles that read: if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven (Matt. 18:23-35), do not demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Matt.5:38), do not take your own revenge (Rom. 12:19), and unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter heaven (Matt. 5:20). On the contrary, Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 describe what happens to an indulged hard heart in a disciple.
3 and 4. Studied deeply and responsibly, we find that the so-called “biblical grounds” for divorce simply don’t exist once principled hermeneutics are applied to the scriptures relied upon. Historically, they are the invention of the homosexual humanist Catholic monk known as Erasmus Desiderius, who was unsavory company for the likes of Martin Luther and other Reformers. All of the above 3 books address this in detail, as does our blog, www.standerinfamilycourt.com. The only biblical ground for divorce is to get out of a biblically immoral relationship with somebody other than your God-joined one-flesh original mate. The only biblical ground for remarriage to somebody other than that person is widowhood (Rom. 7:2-3; 1 Cor. 7:11,39).
5. Since on three separate occasions Jesus stated, with no exceptions, “EVERYONE / whosoever / whoso marries a divorced [person] enters into an ongoing state of adultery”, and since at least twice Paul warned, “do not be deceived…adulterers have no inheritance in the kingdom of God” (speaking only of those who die in that state), “speaking the truth in love” requires speaking the truth in eternal terms that lead to actual repentance – the cessation of the sin in order to recover that inheritance.
6. This question melts away once the evangelical myths of 5 centuries are dispensed with. Getting saved does not sever the one-flesh entity created by God’s hand with one’s true spouse, nor does it dissolve the covenant between that entity and God. Matt. 19:5-6,8 The truly regenerated person, properly discipled, should long to reconcile with their true spouse and should get out of their legalized adultery. Many manage to do so despite being discipled by hirelings, because the Holy Spirit directs their path, as Jesus promised He would.
7. It is definitely true that no sin, including even homosexuality, diminishes God’s love for us, but if we reject His commandments as regenerated people, the indwelling Holy Spirit (the main manifestation His enduring love) will drive us toward repentance. If we instead choose to grieve and quench the Holy Spirit instead of choosing to obey Him, we would be miserable in heaven for all eternity even if we arrived there, because we’d still resent moral absolutes just as we did on earth. He’s too loving to allow that. By contrast, there’s conclusive documentation from the minutes of annual conferences that many denominations in the 1970’s voted to officially change their marriage doctrine to accommodate the civil enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce in order not to lose finances and members, much like what is happening now with the homosexual community in the wake of legalized gay marriage. This is not soul-care in either case. Would you not make every effort to warn the homosexual that if they persist in their legalized sexual sin, they will not see heaven?
For about 4 years, your excellent memes have encouraged covenant marriage standers who follow our page, to obey Paul and remain chaste or be reconciled to the spouse of their youth. God has convicted many prodigals to exit their civil-only “marriage” and reconcile with their covenant spouse – to His great glory. If you persist in encouraging households that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous to remain in their sin, we will be compelled to blog an explanation as to why the fans of our page can no longer rely on your ministry. Precious souls are on the line here. You have used a public platform to advance a dangerous heresy (albeit you likely didn’t know any better). The godly response, therefore, needed to be equally public. Now you have ample basis for our suggestion that you study this a bit more purposefully, and we pray that you do.
We truly wish there was a “loving, nuanced” way to warn people that what they thought was holy matrimony, Jesus actually regards as ongoing adultery, and that it’s a heaven-or-hell matter. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; although the kisses of an enemy are profuse.” Prov. 27:6
“Let not many become teachers, for they will incur a harsher judgment.” James 3:1
Nobody relishes rebuking a ministry leader, or even an individual, in front of 500,000+ followers, and it should never be done lightly. The starting presumption should always be that they didn’t know any better, and the rebuke should never be more public than their infraction was — but the people to whom false doctrine was disseminated need the faithful biblical truth, even if unpleasant exchanges with “triggered” people must be endured, and even if it means the page owner cuts us off as “divisive”. There has been no further response all afternoon from the Fredericks, who seem to have become the infallible dispensers of marriage wisdom after less than 15 years’ experience. By the grace of God, may they remain so, in a world where “gray divorce” is the only growing category, and the church is growing increasingly immoral in all things marriage. That they have not been so quick to respond the second time seems like a good sign of character. Hopefully, they’re on Amazon right after dinner, looking for those three excellent books “standerinfamilycourt” recommended. “Standerinfamilycourt” was once a notorious antinomian, too, mentally equating all sins great and small, until the great and eternally merciful shaking came!
More probably, something needs to be said privately to Kris Vallotton, in light of his restrained response to those correcting him, but whose closing words in his blog piece go so far as to formally “bless” households Jesus called adulterous, and to encourage the divorced that “they can love (somebody other than their estranged, true spouse) again”:
“If you have been through a divorce and remarried, I bless you today. I bless your family and your children— both your biological kids and your step-children! I encourage you to say out loud that you receive this blessing for yourself and for your family!
“If you’ve been through a divorce and are single, I want to tell you today that you will love again.
( SIFC: People who have “been through a divorce” are NOT “single” unless their spouse is dead, or their spouse was already someone else’s spouse and not actually theirs in the first place.)
“Hear me: You WILL heal, and you WILL love again! God’s redemption is bigger than anything in your past and He can do miracles that we never even dreamed of before!”
“Standerinfamiycourt” would just love to be able to influence 400,000 or 500,000 souls all at once, given what we’re trying to accomplish in amassing enough support and influence to overthrow the unilateral “no-fault” divorce regime that brought us to where we are with the harlot church of today. But this will likely never be, because the moral price of discouraging anyone living in this sinful state from full, physical repentance is just too high, and Jesus has already prophesied otherwise:
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce! www.standerinfamilycourt.com
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]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 And He said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” Then He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” – Matthew 22: 20-22
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” – Declaration of Independence, 1776
This will be a long but important read. Take it in manageable settings as necessary, but “standerinfamilycourt” worked hard to make the content very worthwhile to those who hope to see unilateral “no-fault” divorce abolished in our lifetime, and no longer a part of our grandchildren’s adult reality as citizens. A special callout and thanks is in order to Matthew Johnston and Jeff Morgan for providing much of the expertise and content for this blog post. My assessment, however, of these materials is independent, and these two gentlemen may not agree with “standerfamilycourt’s” take on every point discussed here. I trust they will agree with much of it.
U.S. history is littered with ill-conceived and ideological Supreme Court decisions that have unjustly been applied for many decades afterward as controlling precedent, under the principle of stare decisis in a way that singles out entire groups of citizens for wholesale denial of their fundamental rights, often in defense of the Sexual Revolution. Typically this happens because the original faulty decision itself denied due process to one of the parties. The 1888 case, Maynard v. Hill, is in my view, one of those really bad decisions. It laid down two highly erroneous principles that eventually made the marriage contract unenforceable in the United States once the political climate ripened for toxic, Marxist legislation, in effect outlawing the permanent wedded union (as Jesus defined holy matrimony), almost a century before enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws in most U.S. states drove more nails into the marriage coffin. Maynard v Hill is one of the key cases that has been relied upon by various state Supreme Courts to rebuff any and all 1st and 14th Amendment challenges to nonconsensual “no-fault” laws, as enacted since then. This came despite the fact that many top constitutional attorneys today see these laws as unconstitutional in many different aspects.
First, this case unjustifiably removed the critical protection of Article 1 Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution from the marriage contract based on a very questionable rationale, to be discussed in depth below.
Next, this case asserted the superiority of the state’s claim of “publc policy” over the marriage relationship, above the private nature of the marriage contract between husband and wife, whereas any such claimed authority can only be traced back to a usurpation, from God’s perspective, by the 16th century Reformers who insisted that the state regulate holy matrimony. This was authority that Christ told us God reserved to Himself, according to His law. The state’s delegated role from the hand of God is to recognize and defend rightful marriages, not deign to create nor terminate them, according to Jesus’ pronouncement in Matthew 19:6 and 8.
Finally, the majority Justices upheld the actions of a territorial legislature (where there was not yet a state constitution), while operating under authority delegated to them by the U.S. Congress. This, while denying the accused, but possibly blameless, wife in another state her right to basic notice and procedural due process. This legislature unilaterally divorced her from her husband in absentia, at his adulterous request which was not based on any legitimate grounds. Indeed, at the time, there were no laws even defining grounds for divorce in the new territory. This Supreme Court held valid a special law specifically passed to “dissolve” her marriage, despite the fact that in doing so, the territorial legislature deprived her of liberty and property without allowing her any opportunity for representation, or even serving her notice that they were taking this action. She found out a few years later, according to the complaint in the case eventually brought by her heirs.
This case was brought by the Ohio covenant children of David and Lydia Maynard after both of their parents’ deaths, in an estate dispute over land that had been granted in Oregon territory (at the time of the ruling, the land had since become part of Washington state) to David after he abandoned Lydia under false pretenses in Ohio, and took up with another woman on his way out west. The land grant apparently had strings attached, such that twice as much land was granted to a married couple, which then had to be cultivated for a period of time within a certain time window. Shortly after securing both pieces of land based on his marriage to Lydia, he then requested his divorce be granted by the legislature. David had grown extremely influential as a founder of Seattle, and had held considerable sway with the legislature by the time he made his request. The divorce was granted upon his request, with documents external to the SCOTUS opinion showing that David accused his wife of adultery in his petition, and submitted hearsay letters from friends claiming to know individuals who had allegedly witnessed Mrs. Maynard in clandestine activities or compromising situations back in Ohio. However, because he could not legalize his adulterous union with his mistress within the time window for perfecting the land claim, the Territory revoked the grant of the portion of the land that had been granted to David based on his marriage to Lydia. In other words, Mr. Maynard’s attempted bait-and-switch scheme failed, and he suffered his just reward as a consequence. It was the validity of the special legislative divorce, and of the land grant revocation, that the couple’s adult children were challenging, in part arguing that Article 1 Section 10 prevented the legislature of Oregon Territory from impairing the marital contract between David and Lydia by granting the divorce-in-absentia via special law aimed at that particular marriage, and without any notice to one of the parties being so assailed.
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
( – Article 1 Section 10, U.S. Constitution)
Since the facts of the case state that the legislature of Oregon Territory was operating under the temporary authority delegation by an act of the U.S. Congress in the absence of a state constitution…
“The act of congress creating the territory of Oregon and establishing a government for it, passed on the 14th of August, 1848, vested the legislative power and authority of the territory in an assembly consisting of two boards, a council and a house of representatives. 9 St. c. 177, 4. It declared that the legislative power of the territory should ‘extend to all rightful subjects of legislation not inconsistent with the constitution and laws of the United States,’
…it seems reasonable that Congress should not have been deemed to be able to delegate authority to a territory that they did not at least possess themselves, either to pass special laws which defeated the separation-of-powers already integral to the U.S. Constitution (Article 3), or to carve out a relatively untested exception to the Contracts Clause. Yet, the authority to pass a special law granting a legislative divorce was justified by the majority, by relying on the history of U.S. states and territories who did not yet have a constitution who were following the English tradition of Parliament granting legislative divorces, and also upon the fact that various states were slow to transition from legislative divorces via special laws to a judicial procedure, in some cases even after a state constitution establishing separation-of-powers was ratified. It seems natural, given that divorces were so rare in the 18th and 19th centuries, that change in this area would not have been a burning priority. Eventually, however, many states constructed or amended their constitutions to require that divorces only be granted by a judicial process, a fact which the opinion acknowledges but dismisses on a very weak rationale, claiming that the historical reliance on legislative divorces justified the practice where there was not yet a state constitution, while completely ignoring the due process concerns that likely led to those provisions being adopted in various state constitutions.
With regard to the due process owed to Lydia Maynard, the 14th Amendment was not ratified until 1868, some 13 years after this legislative divorce was granted, but this was still 20 years prior to this landmark decision upholding the validity of the divorce-in-absentia for estate purposes. The court completely failed to apply the provisions of the 5th Amendment, ratified along with the Bill of Rights in 1791, to secure Mrs. Maynard’s right to the most basic procedural due process, including notice of the proceeding, which should have been more than justified by the fact that the territorial legislature was operating under delegated authority from the U.S. Congress.
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” (- 5th Amendment, U.S. Constitution)
Quoting from the majority opinion:
“The facts alleged in the bill of complaint, that no cause existed for the divorce, and that it was obtained without the knowledge of the wife cannot affect the validity of the act. Knowledge or ignorance of parties of intended legislation does not affect its validity if within the competency of the legislature.”
That unduly harsh statement may be true where public notice is posted for the intended enactment of general laws, but how could such a judicial statement have overridden anyone’s basic rights to due process with regard to notice and representation under the U.S. Constitution? They call these things fundamental rights for a reason! It would have been enlightening to read the dissenting opinions of Stanley Matthews and Horace Gray, but unfortunately, this blogger was unable to locate the text for those dissents online without a subscription service.
With regard to barring the application of Article 1 Section 10 to the marriage contract, the majority opinion quotes this isolated statement by Chief Justice John Marshall in Dartmouth College v Woodward (decided 1819), as follows:
“As was said by Chief Justice MARSHALL in the Dartmouth College Case, not by way of judgment, but in answer to objections urged to positions taken: ‘The provision of the constitution never has been understood to embrace other contracts than those which respect property or some object of value, and confer rights which may be asserted in a court of justice. It never has been understood to restrict the general right of the legislature to legislate on the subject of divorce.’ “
John Marshall, of course, was one of the nation’s founding statesmen who participated in the historic constitutional convention process, himself becoming a delegate in 1788 to the state convention that had been formed to ratify it, so he should certainly have been an excellent authority on the original intent of Article 1, Section 10. However, was the 1888 Supreme Court majority accurate in their presumption that Marshall was inclusively referring to unprovoked (unilateral) divorce, where the petitionerwas actually creating the contractual breach he was seeking “relief” from, when the former Chief Justice made the statement upon which the 1888 court (very selectively) relied to support their interpretation of the founders’ intent? Or… was Marshall simply stating that Article 1 Section 10 was not intended to impair the authority of the legislature to regulate divorce on a fault-basis that is consistent with the innocent party’s fundamental rights, including property and causeless government non-interference with family sovereignty?
One historical source indicates that Article 1 Section 10 was actually added to the final draft after no discussion had taken place in the Constitutional Convention:
” [The post-Convention drafting committee] made at least one important change to what the Convention had agreed to; {Rufus} King [of Massachusetts] wanted to prevent states from interfering in contracts. Although the Convention never took up the matter, his language was now inserted, creating the contract clause.[24]:243
In light of this, it is at least possible that Marshall’s statement, delivered 30 years after ratification, was not coming from firsthand debate or interactions with the drafters or Rufus King, even though he had been a part of the larger ratification process. There is at least some historical evidence that John Marshall did know King personally and continued to correspond with him in the years following ratification.
Chief Justice Marshall authored the majority opinion for Dartmouth College v Woodward, directly referring to the relevance to marriage contracts as follows:
“…it has been argued that the word “contract,” in its broadest sense, would comprehend the political relations between the government and its citizens, would extend to offices held within a State, for State purposes, and to many of those laws concerning civil institutions, which must change with circumstances and be modified by ordinary legislation, which deeply concern the public, and which, to preserve good government, the public judgment must control. That even marriage is a contract, and its obligations are affected by the laws respecting divorces. That the clause in the Constitution, if construed in its greatest latitude,would prohibit these laws.Taken in its broad, unlimited sense, the clause would be an unprofitable and vexatious interference with the internal concerns of a State, would unnecessarily and unwisely embarrass its legislation, and render immutable those civil institutions, which are established for purposes of internal government, and which, to subserve those purposes, ought to vary with varying circumstances. That, as the framers of the Constitution could never have intended to insert in that instrument a provision so unnecessary, so mischievous, and so repugnant to its general spirit, the term “contract” must be understood in a more limited sense. That it must be understood as intended to guard against a power of at least doubtful utility, the abuse of which had been extensively felt, and to restrain the legislature in future from violating the right to property. That, anterior to the formation of the Constitution, a course of legislation had prevailed in many, if not in all, of the States, which weakened the confidence of man in man, and embarrassed all transactions between individuals, by dispensing with a faithful performance of engagements….Those acts enable some tribunals not to impair a marriage contract, but to liberate one of the parties, because it has been broken by the other.When any State legislature shall pass an act annulling all marriage contracts, or allowing either party to annul it, without the consent of the other, it will be time enough to inquire, whether such an act be constitutional
It is important to note that neither the legislative act, nor the SCOTUS opinion refers to the charge of adultery that other sources indicate David Maynard tried to register with the legislature. Marshall continues thusly at a later juncture in his opinion…
“Could a law, compelling a specific performance, by giving a new remedy, be justly deemed an excess of legislative power? Thus far the contract of marriage has been considered with reference togeneral laws regulating divorces upon breaches of that contract. (Note: for the benefit of the innocent party is strongly implied here.)... But if the argument means to assert that the legislative power to dissolve such a contract, without any breach on either side, against the wishes of the parties, and without any judicial inquiry to ascertain a breach, I certainly am not prepared to admit such a power, or that its exercise would not entrench upon the prohibition of the Constitution. If, under the faith of existing laws, a contract of marriage be duly solemnized, or a marriage settlement be made (and marriage is always in law a valuable consideration for a contract), it is not easy to perceive why a dissolution of its obligations, without any default or assent of the parties, may not as well fall within the prohibition as any other contract for a valuable consideration.A man has just as good a right to his wife as to the propertyacquired under a marriagecontract.He has a legal right to her society and her fortune, and to divest such right, without his default and against his will, would be as flagrant a violation of the principles of justice as the confiscation of his own estate.” (Presumably, Marshall would have held the same true of David Maynard’s similarly-situated original wife.)
Marshall goes on in Dartmouth College v Woodward to confirm his personal uncertainty, even with his own superior and contemporary proximity to the founders, vis-à-vis the 1888 court, about the intent of Article 1 Section 10 to exclude or include the marriage contract:
“It is more than possible that the preservation of rights of this description was not particularly in the view of the framers of the Constitution when the clause under consideration was introduced into that instrument. It is probable that interferences of more frequent occurrence, to which the temptation was stronger, and of which the mischief was more extensive, constituted the great motive for imposing this restriction on the State legislatures. But although a particular and a rare case may not, in itself, be of sufficient magnitude to induce a rule, yet it must be governed by the rule, when established, unless some plain and strong reason for excluding it can be given. It is not enough to say that this particular case was not in the mind of the convention when the article was framed, nor of the American people when it was adopted. It is necessary to go further and to say that, had this particular case been suggested, the language would have been so varied as to exclude it, or it would have been made a special exception. The case, being within the words of the rule, must be within its operation likewise, unless there be something in the literal construction so obviously absurd or mischievous or repugnant to the general spirit of the instrument as to justify those who expound the Constitution in making it an exception.”
In light of the full context of what Chief Justice Marshall stated in that majority opinion, would it really be unreasonable to conclude that Justice Stephen Field was guilty of taking the portion of Marshall’s statement which he selectively quoted, materially out of context? After all, for the Maynards, there was no general law in Oregon Territory regarding divorces, which is why a special law had to be custom-crafted under stealth, one that impaired the marriage contract which had been broken by the party requesting the divorce, not the “other” whom Marshall specifically pointed to the need to protect. The Chief Justice indicated he was still fine with the parties themselves agreeing to annul their own contract by mutual consent (except that the matter was not yet legally “ripe” before his court), but in this 1853 Maynard instance, the party who was back home presumably honoring that marriage contract was deprived of notice of her husband’s hurried request to annul it legislatively. Had Justice Field shown true deference to stare decisis, he would have addressed these highly relevant points raised by Marshall, some of which had now indeed become ripe for review with the case before the 1888 court. Instead, it appears he stood Marshall’s very specific contrary guidance on its head by ignoring the portion that did not suit the court majority, for purely ideological reasons, under their conception of “public policy”.
The majority in Maynard went on to cite language in an earlier decision, Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 How. 402, where the question arose whether a reduction of the per diem compensation to certain canal commissioners below that originally provided when they took office, was an impairment of a contract with them within the constitutional prohibition; the court, holding that it was not such an impairment, said: ‘The contracts designed to be protected by the tenth section of the first article of that instrument are contracts by which perfect rights, certain, definite, fixed private rights of property, are vested. ‘It is also to be observed that, while marriage is often termed by text writers and in decisions of courts as a civil contract, generally to indicate that it must be founded upon the agreement of the parties, and does not require any religious ceremony for its solemnization, it is something more than a mere contract.”
Hold the phone! Obviously, if it is a “given” that Object A is a recognized member of Group B, and a constitutional principle applies to all members of Group B, then it won’t do to claim that a particular constitutional principle naming Group B shouldn’t apply to Object A just because Object A has some additional qualities. This is known as basic subset mathematics.
Further, the court used a circular argument which failed to take into account that the only element that would cause the marital estate vesting not to be “fixed” by the inherent indissolubility of the marriage bond is some sort of fault-basis, or barring that, their own failure to uphold the rule of law on behalf of the innocent spouse. They were, in effect, arguing that the possibility that someone might unlawfully abandon their marriage (or, indeed, that a rogue territorial legislature might violate the Constitution by enacting a special law without legal notice against that innocent spouse) “unvests” and “unperfects” the property rights that were conferred at the publicly-witnessed lawful wedding…(“I herewith plight thee my troth.”)
The majority in Maynard also had a considerable amount to say about “public policy”, most of it flawed and leaning too much toward social expediency, at the longterm expense of societal integrity. This should sound very familiar to the readers of this blog, since it has been quoted ad nauseum by self-interested attorneys, jurists and legislators alike ever since–as if it came down from the mountain on stone tablets. For example:
“…when the validity of acts dissolving the bonds of matrimony is assailed; the legitimacy of many children, the peace of many families, and the settlement of many estates depending upon its being sustained. ”
and…
“Many causes may arise, physical, moral, and intellectual, such as the contracting by one of the parties of an incurable disease like leprosy, or confirmed insanity, or hopeless idiocy, or a conviction of a felony, which would render the continuance of the marriage relation intolerable to the other party, and productive of no possible benefit to society.When the object of the relation has been thus defeated, and no jurisdiction is vested in the judicial tribunals to grant a divorce, it is not perceived that any principle should prevent the legislature itself from interfering, and putting an end to the relation in the interest of the parties as well as of society. If the act declaring the divorce should attempt to interfere with the rights of property vested in either party, a different question would be presented.”
Apparently, these MaynardJustices saw “public policy” as more of a concern as respects the fundamental rights of the subsequent family rather than of due process sustaining the fundamental rights of the original covenant family….“love the one you’re with”. Evidently, the choice of an illicit relationship by the party seeking to morally and financially abandon their family joins all of these other selfish reasons why honoring marriage vows would be “productive of no possible benefit to society”, and “intolerable to the petitioning party.” And in fact, the furtive act declaring the divorce did inevitably interfere with the rights of property vested in the innocent wife, if not in Oregon Territory, then back home in Ohio, whether that distant legislature intended this or not.
The intrusion on property rights from state interference without due cause upon the marriage contract is even more egregious in today’s society due to this malodorous precedent, with not only equity in homes and businesses at stake, but also employment-derived retirement assets as a “gray divorce” couple is at or near retirement age, or perhaps already retired. Because of concealed dissipation to finance an extramarital affair in the period before the guilty party files for unilateral “no-fault” divorce, unequal IRA and 401K balances will be a growing problem that didn’t exist back when most states took marital fault into strong consideration in dividing assets. In effect, many of today’s “family courts” are actually rewarding adulterous spouses for breaking up their own marriage, and transferring considerable wealth from earner to rival paramour, all while blaming the “Respondent” for choosing not to file their own petition – a clear religious freedom violation. And wouldn’t you know it? Quite ironically, there are divorce case precedents where solely for the purposes of dividing marital assets, the marriage contract is indeed deemed in a certain amount of doublespeak to be an “economic partnership”, by golly – MVR v TMR, New York (1982) 115 Misc 2d 674
The last thing to re-examine in assessing this Maynard case for validity in the current marriage debate is whether, in light of ratification of the U.S. Constitution which was specifically drafted to address the many flaws in English Parliamentary law, was the English parliamentary legal history–even continuing in the colonies as it did–still a reasonable basis upon which to hold the continued practice of legislative enactment of special laws constitutional? After all, the Maynardmajority acknowledged that several states had by that time incorporated specific prohibitions against special laws to grant divorces into their constitutions and pointed those cases toward the judiciary for a reason: to assure constitutional separation of powers, protection of constitutional due process, and individual fundamental rights. This trend therefore was far from something unknown to the majority, since they explicitly ceded this fact. More likely, this constitutional advance in the various states was ideologically objectionable to them. In the 1848 Ohio Supreme Court case, Bingham-v-Miller-1848 (1), we read concerning the general constitutionality of legislative divorces:
“The constitution confers no such power. The legislature is not sovereign; nor are all of the departments of government combined. The people, only, are sovereign. Nor can the matter be helped by implication, for the [Ohio] constitution in express terms declares that ‘all powers not hereby delegated, remain with the people…The constitution confers no power to grant divorces; from whence then can the legislature derive it? Not, like the British parliament, from sovereignty, because the legislature does not possess it; not from the constitution, because it does not confer it…
“The British Parliament is clothed, according to their notions, with sovereign power, and may do what they like; many if not all the legislatures of the colonies, and the old states, possessed and exercised both legislative and judicial power… Our legislature is clothed with the simple power to enact laws, and do some other things expressly authorized by the constitution. Beyond this, the legislature has no power at all. To grant a divorce is not to enact a law at all; an expression of the will of the lawmaking power that a marriage is dissolved is no law at all. It is a decree, an order, a judgment but not a law …”
Surely, back in 1819, Justice Marshall would have been acutely aware of from whence our Declaration of Independence explicitly states that the people’s sovereignty over fundamental rights emanates, and this was clearly not the British Parliament (to mildly understate it). On this basis alone, we can safely bet that legislative divorces and special laws would have been repugnant to Marshall’s experience as a Constitutional founder, though he was reportedly a deist and didn’t have the strong Christian worldview of many of his peers. And curiously, the majority opinion in Maynard cited several state-level cases in support of their conclusion from a variety of eastern and midwestern states including Pennsylvania, New York and Indiana but, very curiously, did not mention Bingham at all. Perhaps the dissenting opinion did, given its very high relevance.
One thing we learn from this case is that denial of fundamental due process has always been an essential element of easy, sleazy divorce, even back in the late 19th century when Marxist elements were beginning to emerge and influence the policy-making elites. Marshall’s voice, on the other hand, called back from the purer days in U.S. history before some of our intellectual elites began to succumb to Marxist ideologies – it would be interesting to note the extent the two dissenting Justices had vainly attempted to echo him.
All of this matters a great deal today, because anyone who looks at contemporary unilateral “no-fault” grounds for divorce, which prevail without mutual consent in 48 states as of this writing, along with their their surrounding, implementing statutes, cannot help but notice that in reducing the judiciary function to an administrative, ministerial role, where there is to be no finding of marital fault in most states for any aspect of unravelling a family, these laws amount to nothing more than the outlawed special laws of yesterday in blanket form, implemented by running them through specialized courts for appearance sake, in order to masquerade as general laws that non-substantively purport to require a judicial function. Yet, we all know that judges feel compelled by the law to accept the assertions in the petition and rule against the “Respondent” 100% of the time without regard to whether the allegation of “irreconcilable differences”, “irretrievable breakdown”, “insupportability”, etc. is factually true. In an increasing number of these cases, the pair has been successfully married for decades and suddenly became “irreconcilable” or “insupportable” according to the legal fiction. In other cases, we have statistics that at least 5% of supposedly “irreconcilable” couples reconcile with each other, even after subsequent marriages to others.
One of the things the Bingham v Miller jurists did was try to manage the chaos resulting from overturning a law of this nature after decades of unlawful practice, something the Maynard jurists openly declared that they lacked the fear of God and moral courage to do.
” To deny this long-exercised power, and declare all the consequences resulting from it void, is pregnant with fearful consequences. If it affected only the rights of property, we should not hesitate; but second marriages have been contracted, and children born, and it would bastardize all these, although born under the sanction of apparent wedlock, authorized by an act of the legislature before they were born, and in consequence of which the relation was formed which gave them birth. On account of these children, and for them only, we hesitate. “ – Justice Read, Ohio, 1848
We will be in substantially the same place with the rightful overturn or repeal of unilateral “no-fault” divorce and its effects, except that we will no longer have the legal label of “illegitimate” or “bastard” to contend with, since from about 1987, U.S. law no longer makes much distinction in the rights of children born in wedlock or out– in a government that has quite clearly lost the moral ability to even define or implement “wedlock”. Perversely, this will probably prove to be a silver lining for winding down today’s multiple remarriage mess. The Ohio court stated it had no issue with the property effects reverting back to the status they were prior to imposition of each unlawful dissolution, but only had an issue with the legal and social status of the children of the subsequent union(s). Although the case text doesn’t explicitly say this, the commentary on it states that the court held those subsequent unions to be “valid” for the sake of the children. Today we would ask, “which one(s)?” However, by Bingham’s own legal theory, it is a serious question whether this Ohio court actually possessed the constitutional authority to do so en masse without actually rehearing any of the cases based on grounds, but it does not appear that this case was appealed any higher. There was no way to declare all the marriages “valid” out of compassion without setting up a situation of concurrent, Muslim or Mormon style polygamy, in a moral space currently dominated by consecutive polygamy. Something like this will be the aftermath of correcting the almost unspeakable separation-of-powers evil brought about by unilateral “no-fault” grounds statutes. Theoretically, only the first marriage will be valid following such an event, but there are complexities even with that.
To conclude, we go back to the error of the Maynard court, and ask an interesting question:
Had the court made the right call on the issue of legislative divorces and special laws under the Article 10 theory that the Bingham court correctly laid out 40 years earlier, would it have been strictly necessary to address the merits of the contract argument of Article 1 Section 10 applying to marriage, or would it have been wiser to declare that argument “moot” and thereby avoid setting a questionable legal precedent with regard to contracts, one that even John Marshall was uncertain of?
Both questions had to be addressed once the wrong call was made concerning legislative divorces. That fatal event turned into a blowtorch on the sustainability of “no-fault” flames, coming as it did at the SCOTUS level. The Bingham court in Ohio importantly said this about the contract issue:
“Some eminent jurists have denied the power to the legislature, upon the ground that it is a law impairing the obligation of contracts, and therefore prohibited to the states by the constitution of the United States. We do not chose to place it upon this ground, because we believe that clause was inserted in the constitution for no such object, but as appliable to contracts of a wholly different nature. And besides, I believe it not only consistent with the theory of our government, but that our happiness, interest, and safety require us to deny to the general government any possible power not expressly granted, or clearly conferred. It is to the state where we have the control, that we must look for the protection of our dearest rights; and I would be the last to surrender up any right to the general government, and especially so dear a one as that of our domestic relations. This is a matter of our own, and we will keep it so.”
It is clear that there was considerable difference of opinion on the applicability of Article 1 Section 10 to the marriage contract among “eminent jurists” long after Marshall. Aside from the purism of the legal theory expressed in Bingham, this purism may actually become directly relevant to the constitutional wind-down of the blanketform of legislative divorces we are saddled with today. For example, in the all-too-common case of someone thrice-“married”, but the law under which they or their civil spouse’s divorce (and therefore, their subsequent civil union) is suddenly declared void by SCOTUS, whose contractual rights prevail? Aren’t the contract rights of the first spouse just as enforceable under Article 1 Section 10 as the third-and-current civil spouse? Perhaps not for marriages contracted after enactment of unilateral “no-fault” laws rendered the civil contract undertaken on the wedding day to be “at-will”, effectively mooting the contract argument that once existed for pretty much anyone under age 65 or so who didn’t first marry fairly young.
It’s fine to say that you can’t “unscramble eggs” or “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube”, as we frequently hear with regard to biblically-illicit subsequent marriages, but if unilateral “no-fault” divorce and its parental and property effects are ultimately overturned on an Article 10 / Article 3 argument and separation-of-powers, millions of “marriages”, and probably the bulk of all currently-legal U.S. marriages under prevailing trends, will be voided. If SIFC were a betting individual, the money would be on the current Justices rejecting the contract argument, not only out of stare decisis, but out of pure practicality and widespread mootness, to considerably cut down on the enormous and inevitable chaos of conflicting claims. There are purists among us who say that legislative repeal of unilateral divorce laws needs to take us back to 1969 (1958 for Oklahoma) based on this separation-of-powers constitutional principle, and not allow for even mutual petition “no-fault” grounds. While that may wind up being the reality in a court result, this will be very unpopular to get through any legislatures where repeal rather than voiding would allow for a more orderly wind-down of divorce-on-demand.
Is what SIFC has just described too remote a possibility for concern? Don’t bet on that! Legal challenges to pending unilateral “no-fault” divorce petitions have to-date been brought before county circuit judges in several states requesting a summary dismissal of the “no-fault” petition on Article 10 / Article 3 grounds, alleging that the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction to rubber-stamp divorces based on blanket legislative mandates that neither require nor permit a genuine judicial discretion. When that summary judgment is typically denied by the “family court” judge, this then opens up a legal route of Federal challenge outside the usual self-interested state appellate system, and cuts costs for a pro-se challenger down to manageable levels, at least until success is achieved at the first Federal level where the judge’s immunity is successfully challenged because of the lack of subject matter jurisdiction. At this point, the state AG and organizations like the ACLU will fiercely seek to defend existing laws and entrenched financial interests, probably hoping to empty their opponent’s purse before they prevail up the legal chain to SCOTUS. This sort of Federal appeal is also available to those whose wrongful divorce has already been finalized against their will, and for a few years thereafter, even following an unsuccessful state constitutional challenge on 1st and 14th Amendment grounds. These circumstances increase the possibility that constitutional challenges can be brought in numerous states (hence, Federal circuits) by people who might have deep enough pockets to sustain them, and thereby increase the likelihood that SCOTUS will see a “Federal question”, and ultimately agree to hear a case all nine justices would probably much rather not hear. It is also possible that as these cases gather traction in the lower Federal courts, there will be a huge push to amend state constitutions to remove the defect being challenged, by carving out a specific delegation which allows the “family courts” to carry on as usual, much easier to do (and much harder to organize effective opposition to), on the individual state level –when the other side has control of the money, the media and the popular culture.
Clearly there needs to be a strategic and proactive discussion among the movers and shakers in the marriage permanence movement about how the aftermath of successful constitutional challenge on this basis might be optimally managed, and what sort of strategic alliances need to be cultivated ahead of such a successful development, to have a chance of preventing unilateral “no-fault” divorce from reinventing itself on state constitutions, if so overturned.
There’s much to say here. Bottom line: Jesus told us in Matt. 19:8 that all “divorce” is a man-made fabrication “from the beginning”, a violation of the created order (Gen. 2:21-24; Matt. 19:4-6), and the only “marriage” God recognizes is both complementarian and life-long indissoluble by any acts or paper of men. He and Paul both go on to say that dying in the ongoing state of adultery – that is, “remarriage” after man-legalized abandonment of a God-joined spouse, sends people to hell (Matt. 5:27-32; Luke 16:15-31; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21).
The only people, therefore, who are actually “divorced” are the subsequent spouses who were never married in God’s eyes to begin with. True God-joined spouses are only immorally abandoned, according to the word of God, because only D-E-A-T-H ever dissolves those marriages. Jesus mentions NO religious test for this that is recorded within the four canonized gospels, nor do any of the Apostles reference such. Bluntly, all Christ-followers should vehemently object to Roman Catholic doctrine that waters down this truth via the papal contrivance of “nullity”, which today amounts to little more than revival of the vile medieval practice of selling indulgences.
By the “church” the obvious reference in this article is to the RCC, who since the 12th century has progressively watered down this hard truth with “annulment” (extra paper), a practice which is now almost universal in this country. The Protestant church, on the other hand, watered it down by ignoring / reinterpreting / obfuscating the scriptures, fraudulently handing jurisdiction over to the civil state by the Reformers, and by casting inexcusable doubt on the Apostles and early church fathers who unanimously confirmed the hard truth for 400 years–until history’s last “Donald Trump” came along (namely, the Emperor Constantine).
Under the concurrent polygamist, Constantine, the church took its first Leftist turn, in gratitude for being delivered from Roman persecution.
We saw this wicked cycle being played out again at the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, where in addition to the longstanding violation of Matt. 19:6, the largest evangelical denomination in the U.S. is now paving the way for sanctioned violation of Matt. 19:4, rather than repent of BOTH forms of marriage desecration, and rather than patiently endure the resulting persecution of staying true to biblical sexual ethics. Possibly the recent spectacle of human street torches on the big screen in the movie “The Apostle Paul” didn’t bode well, but there also seems to be increasing evidence of dirty money making its way into both the RCC and the SBC. The objective of the outside financial largesse, of course, is to complete the decades-long orchestrated political extinction of the biblical family.
“Irregular circumstances” need to be repented of by severance. This is a euphemistic canonical term for immoral life choices that Jesus and Paul both repeatedly tell us destroy the souls of those involved. Jesus couldn’t have been more clear that this is ongoing adultery in every case where there is a living, estranged spouse on either side. We can all empathize with the desire to lessen the stigma and trauma for the children of such illicit unions, but we must never lose sight of the betrayed children of covenant, and must never favor the illicit children over the covenant children (and covenant generations). God never did this. Jesus was graphically clear in Luke 16 when describing the eternal fate of such “married” people. We presume that then, as now, there were non-covenant children involved — just as there are children made in God’s image today being raised in sodomous unions.
In fact, while it’s great that this article highlights and praises the “standers” who endeavor to live chaste lives following man’s divorce, it’s also true that the only pure motivation for standing that goes the distance is the consuming and enduring desire to keep family members and our one-flesh mates (as well as their legalized adultery partners) out of hell by leaving the door wide open to their physical repentance. Any church that recognizes “irregular circumstances” and gives that any other treatment than what was prescribed by Paul in 1 Cor. 5 is directlystoking the demand for the rising, overwhelming incidence of divorce. We don’t need family flowcharts, we need on-our-face repentance in the holy fear of God!
The authors write:
“Protestants have a term for those spouses who remain true to a wayward spouse even in the wake of what may be a necessary separation and/or civil divorce: “standers.” Absent clear and enthusiastic support for this approach (both from within the Church and without), it simply does not occur to many faithful U.S. Catholics that ‘standing’ might be the most compassionate option for the abandoned spouse and his or her children.” (We standers certainly believe that the Apostle Paul would agree.)
This is an excellent observation, with a couple of caveats. First, most standers who are true Christ-followers do not consider civil divorce “necessary” under any circumstances, because they know it is of no effect in the kingdom of God. The obvious exception is, of course, divorce out of a “marriage” that Jesus repeatedly called ongoing adulterous (non-widowed “remarriage”) — a union which God is always precluded from participating in at all. This differs not one whit from a sodomous, legalized union for all the same reasons. Disciples in covenant marriages should endeavor not to participate in the civil system, and should be willing to endure whatever hardships necessary, rather than disobey 1 Cor. 6:1-8.
If the authors are under the impression that standers are ever civil divorce initiators, they are only fractionally correct. There are a handful of these who went from prodigal to stander after learning the truth, and then repenting (by leaving adulterous subsequent relationships, legalized or not). Separation without civil involvement may indeed be necessary for original marriages — and this is consistent with the instructions of the Apostle in 1 Cor. 7:10-11, not to divorce, and if divorced, to remain celibate until reconciled.
Secondly, local Protestant churches typically consider standers “pariahs” and a threat to the “unity” of the church. Some false shepherds will even carry out “church discipline” on vocal standers (instead of on the legalized adulterers whose souls are actually on the line). Of course, one does not necessarily need to have an estranged marriage to be a stander in the larger sense.
Thankfully, God is raising up a growing handful of Protestant pastors, with and without congregations, in an encouraging variety of evangelical denominations, who are coming into the biblical truth in the last few years, Berean-style, through deep study of original language scripture manuscripts and the writings of the ante-Nicene “church fathers“ (whereas their faithless peers would prefer to discard this valuable historic evidence in order to please and appease the religious humanists filling their pews)–and these true shepherds are coming into the unpopular truth by the wooing of the Holy Spirit. These men have determined to suffer the economic consequences and the censure entailed in refusing to do adulterous weddings, in attending marriage permanence retreats to encourage standers, in writing truthful books, and in preaching the truth without fear of the temporal consequences. SIFC and the angels in heaven can’t sing their praises loudly enough!
SIFC believes it was Dr. Towers who recently suggested that the effects of the standers’ movement on their children should be studied when there is a large enough sample size. Amen! At present, SIFC blogs anecdotally on this topic quite frequently. We would all hope that unilateral divorce will be abolished nationwide, well before sample size “n” can occur and before longitudinal results would ever become available. SIFC has historical doubts that the Lord will tarry that long in these Days of Noah, but absolutely applauds Dr. Towers’ desire to see this topic studied. Let’s be thankful that the Lord has orchestrated that Catholics and Protestants work together to turn the moral tide in church culture before it’s apocalyptically too late for our country.
All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
– Daniel 4:35
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!
Dear Members of the Texas State Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues:
I came before you in March of 2017 to testify for HB93 for the repeal of no-fault divorce laws in Texas. My testimony can be viewed online on your website.
Now I would like to present to you an analogy to help bring better understanding of what you are allowing when you have allowed no-fault divorce to continue in our state.
You received your privilege of representing people of our state when those people exercised their privilege to vote and voted for you. You chose to run; they chose to vote. The result is the seat you are now sitting in. All this took place because there are rules in place to create a healthy environment for us to “do government”.
So please imagine this chaotic scenario:
What would you think if one of your constituents walked into the Capitol Building one day and declared that you were no longer their choice for office and must be removed? This person is not just any constituent; this person voted for you.
And what would you think if they had the erroneous right and ability to remove you simply by making a subjective statement on how they no longer like this relationship you are now in, as voter and representative?
Imagine they could simply file a complaint at the information desk which would guarantee the issue be brought up on the House floor in front of everyone. There really is no need to discuss the issue on the floor, after all, because they need no reason for your removal. And you will have no opportunity to object to their statement because your side of the story need not be heard. How can you defend yourself, really, when you have not been accused of doing any wrong? The situation has nothing to do with your work performance, anyway. It all comes down to their whims and singular feelings about your relationship. They no longer want you in your seat. That is all that is needed.
What if you wanted to keep your seat? After all, this one voter does not represent your whole constituency; others are involved! I regret to tell you, the rules were changed years ago that allow one voter, any one voter, to remove you at any time for no reason other than their feelings, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Once the voter objects, your job is gone and your career is over. The entire process can be completed in as little as two months’ time, because we wouldn’t want to inconvenience the public with the legal bill to defend your job.
Please remember: this voter also has access to everything you own and all your private information. They can walk into your office at any time and take your computer, read your emails, force your aides to speak against you, even take over your office and lock your door! They can force your aides to become their aides and work for their campaign to elect someone else in your place. You cannot stop it. But then again, why would you? Even though they voluntarily entered this relationship and chose to vote, you wouldn’t want to force someone to stay enslaved in this voter/representative relationship, would you?
This process could take place at any time, with any representative, as many times as a person would choose, ad nauseum.
Representatives could be shuffled in and out of office the whole session long. I know that making laws is why you are in office, that’s your job, but it’s ok if your job never gets done due to these personal whims of one person. Sure, the whole of the public would pay the price, but aren’t this individual’s desires more important? The courts say this is in the best interest of all your constituents, though years of research would say they are exactly wrong.
Would you think this public policy is not such a great one and needs to be amended or removed?
What would you do if the media folks showed up and opposed your efforts to change these policies? They would make a handsome living off broadcasting these voter objections at the Capitol, after all. But they would not say that out loud; instead, they will tell you that you are being selfish and old-fashioned. They would say that the law is now in the eye of the beholder, subject to redefinition by anyone living under it. Would you be “ok” with that?
Chaos.
Can you imagine this sort of logic applied to every area of law? If it can happen to the most fundamental and important of relationships- family ties, human beings- why not apply to it to everything else, because everything else is less important?
This matter could not be more serious.
Where do we draw the line? Where do you draw the line?
You may think my analogy sounds impossible, but that is what people of 50 years ago thought of the idea of a society where people dissolve marriage and family with the click of a button, literally.
If you do not stop this nonsense here, this analogy that sounds impossible today could be the way of life tomorrow. You are in the position to draw the line.
Let’s reestablish a healthy environment to “do family”; support healthy family relationships by requiring contested divorce cases to be brought for real reasons and every case to be heard thoroughly by a judge. If doing what is in the best interest of the children is really valued at all in this legislature, I implore you to leave hypocrisy behind and protect family by repealing unilateral divorce.
Most sincerely,
Kristi Davis
Texas Citizen 3-Time (Generational) Divorce Sufferer under No-Fault Divorce in Texas
( SIFC:Kristi Davis testified on March 8, 2017 before this Texas Legislative Committee where at least three committee members actually derive income, either directly or indirectly, from unilateral divorce laws. She has recently launched a blog page called Healing and Repealing for Strong Family Trees – www.healingandrepealing.com )
