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citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Decoding a High-Stakes Legislative Study: “No-Fault” Push in the UK

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by Standerinfamilycourt

The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him.   –  Proverbs 18:17

The “senior members of the Judiciary, the Family Mediation Task Force, Resolution (the national organization of family lawyers)”  have the perfectly “simple” solution to the Solomonic dilemma posed above:   make it henceforth unlawful for another to come and examine him.  
(At least, until they’re all back in court afterward, fighting over the level of support and visitation of the children, upon which the next 10 years of fees may be billed, post-decree.)

Thomas Pascoe of the Coalition for Marriage called the House of Commons legislative “impact assessment” supporting enactment of “no-fault” divorce in the UK, on the premise that it will reduce conflict, “very flawed”.    We call it, “not very original” – nor experientially true.    We couldn’t agree more with Mr. Pascoe.   In fact, after studying the study, we find his critique quite tactfully understated with regard to the entire study’s design, purpose and independence.    Based on U.S. experience, we have much to say about the validity of the very premise that conflict over the involuntary dissolution of one’s marriage, and abridgment of parental and property rights,  while innocent of any objective and provable charge, can or should be “managed” by the state as a primary goal of marriage regulation.    The U.S. experience shows the acrimony can only be postponed until after the “dissolution” is imposed, and that this particular state-of-affairs has a long track record of being extremely lucrative for the legal community, while imposing absolute totalitarianism on the citizenry as a whole, outside of the protected special class.

In Part 2 of our coverage of these developments, we do a “deep dive” into the validity of the report, gleaning what we can about sponsorship, financing for the study, design, independence and objectivity.    We do so from a U.S. experience-base of almost 50 years concerning the on-the-ground ability of the government to “manage conflict” in an adversarial divorce petition over inalienable property and parental rights, especially one where there’s no defense available to the “Respondent”, as is the appalling case in most U.S. states.   We concede that the British constitution differs in various respects with the U.S. Constitution when we use terms like “inalienable”, and we forthrightly concede that these things have eroded over time in the U.S. due primarily to judicial corruption.

Undertaking this task has actually required the reading of several ancillary reports in addition to the House of Commons recommendation (briefing) report, including the public vetting results, and a 171-page commissioned “research” paper financed by a liberal public policy foundation  (which states in a foreword that it also funded 1980’s research pushing  unilateral divorce-on-demand), and spearheaded by a family law professor.   This centerpiece research paper focuses primarily on administrative convenience for the courts, and “public perception” of the law, and not at all on evidence surrounding family integrity or outcomes (which should be paramount).

Pointedly  not considered in the design of this “study” was any highly relevant U.S. data resulting from similar policies as here proposed, or whether the unilateral divorce laws enacted in the United States and Canada are sustainable in light of their extensive, progressive  damage to the constitutional republics involved, nor even where similar policies (“postcard divorces”) had to be repealed even under communist regimes before those societies uttlerly collapsed.   Most tellingly, Professor Tinder ignored  Dr. Mark Regnerus’ landmark 2012 New Family Structures Study which was longitudinal over 15,000 subjects and a 30 year time period, and showed (among other things), that children raised in step-parent homes resulting from divorce did as almost poorly in their adult outcomes as children raised in single-parent homes – a clear rebuke on public policy which promotes non-widowed remarriage.    Indeed, the study was not concerned at all with family structure outcomes; did not ask that question, therefore did not consider any of the abundant data along those lines.  Despite engaging a statistics firm, this study did not even do a competent root cause analysis on the study questions it did ask, to validate the problem statement before defining “alternatives” and jumping to predetermined recommendations.

A properly-validated study would have examined the proposals from persistent reform efforts in other “no-fault” countries such as the United States, at least to have reasonable assurance that all viable reform models were being considered in this study.   We further note that if the problem statement and root cause analysis had been properly constructed, the rather trivial complaints which the study said “justified” reform would have been more properly attributed to the lack of availability of a joint petition based on “irretrievable breakdown”, rather than mis-attributed to fault-based grounds — as was the true case in the United States in 1969.  

It is quite implausible that Resolution would not have been aware of the steady wave “no-fault” reform bills over the last 15 years or so before legislatures in  Michigan, Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma,  where the persistent reform consensus has been around providing a combination of consent-only “no fault” grounds by mutual petition, and fault-based grounds that would apply in the event consent cannot be obtained.   The best of these reform efforts also seek to apply fault-based property and child custody standards which have the goal of reforming the perverse financial incentives involved in the family law industry’s practice of actively contributing to the promotion of family breakup, to judicial collusion and corruption, and to preemptive control of all related legislative committees.   It is also implausible that the lobbying organization “Resolution” would not be aware of the commercial advocacy of their counterparts in the various state bar associations and family law associations in the U.S.  Surely, they would be aware of the rapidly-growing Parents’ Rights movement backlash in North America that has resulted from the very policies which this “reform” campaign advocates.    Instead, this “study” takes a mere “snapshot” of existing problematic legislation which these intensifying reform efforts are aimed at, and disingenuously complains that the UK is “out of step” with what is occurring abroad.

In “standerinfamilycourt’s”  humble opinion, the only portion of these study documents that were not primarily lobbying propaganda was the very interesting public vetting results (which were basically ignored in the final recommendations), along with very valid criticisms in Section 5 of the report.

The official recommendation for the new legislation reads as follows:

“The Government proposes that there will still be only one ground for divorce: that the marriage has broken down irretrievably. However, this would be established in a new way. The Government proposes to move away completely from both the ability to allege “fault” and the ability to contest (defend) the divorce: We propose to move away from an approach that requires justification to the court of the reason for the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage to a process that requires notification to the court of irretrievable breakdown. We also propose to remove the ability of a spouse, as a general rule, to contest the divorce (this is formally called defending in the legal process…). The Government reasons that if one spouse has concluded that the marriage is over, then the legal process should respect that decision and should not place impediments in the way of a spouse who wants to bring the marriage to a legal end. Importantly, this change would also prevent the legal process from being used to exercise coercive control by one spouse over the other spouse who may be a victim of domestic abuse.

“The Government therefore proposes to repeal the requirement for petitioners to give evidence of one or more facts and to replace it with a process of giving notice of irretrievable breakdown. In this process, the person seeking the divorce (or potentially the couple jointly) would give notice to the court of the intention to divorce, stating their belief that the marriage had broken down irretrievably. Irretrievable breakdown would therefore continue to be the sole ground for divorce. In the two-stage decree process that we propose to retain, the court would not be able to grant the first and interim decree (the decree nisi) if it was not satisfied that the marriage had broken down irretrievably.”

(   SIFC :  Notice the clever pretense of a residual “judicial discretion function” in the last sentence, mimicking a pseudo separation-of-powers but no longer with any actual substance, since explicitly all that will be legally required is the Petitioner’s subjective assertion which would then bind the judges to just one possible decision, once appealed.   Under the U.S. Constitution this sort of window-dressing would be an imperative due to Articles 3 and 10.)

How did the vetting population feel about this?   And who were they?

Overwhelmingly, these UK citizens are opposed to the main legislative recommendation to remove fundamental family protections, but their voice is clearly being ignored.    This figure tracks right along with data gathered three decades ago in the U.S. that showed 80% of Respondents to a “no-fault” petition alleging “irretrievable breakdown” opposed the dissolution of the marriage based on religion and conscience, even if they could not afford to formally contest.   Clearly, these UK citizens know when their civil rights and the sovereignty of the family are at risk, and when they don’t buy into the problem definition to begin with.

Based on who the vetting population consisted of, it is clear to see who made up the 15% minority in favor of forced, non-consensual divorce.

  Independence in the research study?
SIFC found that in digging into the Nuffield study on which the legislative recommendations almost entirely rely,  the backward-engineering (n.b. desired solution defines the “problem” which scopes the “research”), and cozy relationships between the legislators, judiciary and the family law industry didn’t take long at all to detect.   Clicking over to the webpage of one of the partners in the study, statistician firm Bryson Purdon Social Research,  we find their list of current and past projects shows that they are regularly hired by legislators.   The acknowledgments page of the study gushes about the extensive contributions of the family law lobbying association in the UK called Resolution, several members of which served as advisors and “recruited interviewees”.

It would have been great to compare the list of officers and trustees of the Nuffield Foundation with those of Resolution, but unfortunately, the latter was unavailable to non-members.   We have already mentioned the study director’s extensive ties to family law.    As a touching finish, we read this dedication:  “This report is dedicated to the memory of Sir Nicholas Wall, a former President of the Family Division (of the Judiciary) and an advocate of divorce law reform.

Rationale for disregarding overwhelmingly negative public     input
On page 16 of the study, we read the following (bold emphasis added by SIFC):

“In our national opinion survey, 71% thought that fault should remain part of the law. However, the general public are unlikely to be aware that the current law does not in fact seek to make a definitive allocation of blame or of the very limited scrutiny that the court can undertake in practice.

( SIFC:  In other words, the ignorant peasantry simply “doesn’t understand” that the current statute is meant to preserve an appearance, and isn’t meant to foster the best family outcomes, renovate the system from the ground up so that the judiciary can manage its case load,  preserve fundamental rights of innocent family members or promote any meaningful changes in the existing power structures for the good of society as a whole.)

“Drawing on qualitative interviews with the parties, we drew a contrast between two different and mutually exclusive moralities in relation to divorce: a traditional one based on ideas about individual justice for the petitioner, and a responsibility morality based on the ‘good divorce’ where the focus is on harm-minimisation, especially in relation to children. The first emphasises the importance of a strict adherence to and finding of fault; the second would eliminate fault if possible.

“We also traced how adherents of both moralities experienced the divorce process. In general, the experience of both groups was largely negative, but for different reasons. For some embracing a justice morality, the pragmatic orientation of the justice system could be deeply frustrating, whilst for others the experience of fault turned out to be problematic due to the conflict and upset it generated. Those embracing a responsibility morality also found the experience difficult. Some were using fault pragmatically but found the process slow and painful; whilst some who were avoiding fault on principle found the long separation required to avoid fault very difficult in practical terms and also left them feeling they had lost control of private family decisions. A small number of interviewees a dopting the justice morality wanted the role of fault to be strengthened, but for most the removal of fault was strongly preferred. ”

(   SIFC :  The removal of fault may have been “preferred” for Resolution’s hand-picked interviewees for the study, but this was certainly not born out in Commons’ vetting effort with the general public, which showed an even stronger result at 83% than the still-overwhelming 71% found in the study.   We should also note that the last statement directly contradicts the beginning statement in this quote:  so, which is it, Resolution?)

Why is increasing the role of fault important to this “small number of interviewees”?   Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Professor of Government and Public Policy at Patrick Henry College, and author of two enormously important books,  “Taken into Custody” (2007) and “The New Politics of Sex: The Sexual Revolution, Civil Liberties, and the Growth of Governmental Power” (2017) travels all over Europe explaining this very eloquently…

Dr. Baskerville (~ 2 minutes):  “Nobody’s claiming we have to force somebody to live in a house with somebody they don’t want to live with.   The question is…who bears the consequences?  It’s a legal contract, or it should be, and if one walks away from it, what are the consequences?   Who gets the house?   Who gets the children or property and so forth ? Under what circumstances does the state have the role to come in and start allocating things?   So fine, if someone wants to leave a marriage then I think we have no choice but to allow them to do that.   But that’s not what we’re talking about here in the divorce machinery is positive state action against the other spouse.   Why should that spouse who wants to leave the marriage without legal grounds…

(   SIFC :  excluding purely subjective legal grounds not based in any provable offense against the marriage or family members)

“… shouldn’t he or she leave with just the clothes on their backs, what they can get in a suitcase, and nothing else?    Do they have the right to take the children, take the house, take the property with them when they leave?    And this, of course, is where the state has to step in and say…has to allocate fault. They have to say where justice and injustice is.”

We provide this additional brief link to another key segment of the February, 2019 interview with Dr. Baskerville, for important further context.   The study respondents in favor of increasing the role of fault know that the true best moral interest of the children and the only avenue to actual, objective justice, upon which a sustainable society depends, absolutely requires the application of fault, at least with respect to the effects of the divorce.    The real barrier to this policy alternative, of course, is the hoped-for business model of the family law special interests, including the sponsors and designers of this “research study”.

Quoting the “Equality Statement” within David Gauke’s report,

“The aim of the policy is to reduce conflict between couples involved in divorce, dissolution and legal separation. The policy objectives are in line with wider strategic objectives to deliver a modern courts and justice system, including to provide a fair and effective justice system which supports better outcomes for children and families.

“The objectives are:

• To ensure that the decision to divorce or dissolve a civil partnership continues to be a considered one

• To minimise the adversarial nature of the legal process, to reduce conflict and to support better outcomes by maximising the opportunity for the parties to agree arrangements for the future

• To make the legal process fair, transparent, and easier to navigate

• To reduce the opportunities for an abuser to misuse the legal process to perpetrate further abuse”

These are purely ideological statements, with an undertone of making the law as LGBTQ-friendly as possible (code word: “Equality”).    We point out that if a justice system which supports better outcomes for children and families were really the objective, then the research study would have been designed accordingly around family structure outcomes, and Dr. Regnerus’ rigorous 2012 NFSS study would have been invaluable support in reaching that outcome.

Because the April, 2019 position paper by Lord Chancellor David Gauke brings no other independent evidence to bear other than this heavily-biased and less-than-arm’s-length “research” (extensively requoted verbatim in the final recommendations, including the incomplete set of policy alternatives)– and the public citizen input has been patently ignored and discounted,  “standerinfamilycourt” rests our case against the validity of “support” for this legislation here, rather than picking apart the legislative conclusions point-by-point (which was nevertheless tempting!)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Deja-Vu All Over Again: The “No-Fault” Elite Legal and Media Scam Job in the UK

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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 is the voice of British church leadership (Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist) in defending the biblical Matthew 19:4-6 family?  (Indeed, it appears that the Queen’s counterpart to the U.S. Attorney General are aggressively pushing this deeply flawed policy legislation which 20 years ago failed its pilot testing in the UK and was scrapped).

Where is the mention of the sad fact that enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws has caused U.S. church doctrine to decay and church morality to utterly disintegrate?

Where is the mention that enactment of forced, “no-blame” divorce has rendered most U.S. states unable to balance their budgets?

Where is the disclosure that many of the states depend on Federal funds derived from taking children away from their fit parents and trafficking them to foster homes to narrow their deficit gaps?

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 that enactment of these statutes has literally ballooned the size of state and Federal government in the U.S.?

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?

Where is the mention of all the U.S. constitutional attorneys who have testified before state legislatures that they believe the U.S. unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws violate the Respondent’s fundamental constitutional rights in numerous ways?

Indeed, where is the mention of the mounting traffic in repeal and reform measures being filed each year in the various U.S. state legislatures because the system is failing?

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”.

And, oh, the shrieking, howling headlines from “across the pond” last year when Mrs. Owens (who most likely was recruited by the greedy elite special interests for the rarity and emotional pull of her case) lost her high court challenge by unanimous decision and was forced to wait one more year to immorally abandon her elderly husband while taking spoils.
“The courts can’t make Tini Owens love her husband!” whined Suzanne Moore at The Guardian.
“Nobody’s fault but the law”  echoed her Guardian colleague, Owen Bowcott.
“Tini Owens is locked into an unhappy marriage – this is why we need ‘no fault’ divorce”  (Guardian, again – Laura Barton).
“Tini Owens forced to stay married…”  howled the UK Daily Mail.

“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, must the 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!

 

 

Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

7 Important Contributions That “Standers” Are Making Toward the Repeal of Forced Divorce Laws

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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 mean they 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 direct consequence 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; 19:9 and Mark 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 young graduate student headed for pastorship in Colorado presents an unpopular scholarly paper to a group of peers on a Reformed campus in a western state, and also goes on to write a fiery book rebuking contemporary church leadership.    He follows his pastor father in a legacy of bringing the same message to retreats for covenant marriage standers and in other settings.

– 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 that during 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!

Church Discipline, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Divorce, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Letter from Menlo Park Jail

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by Standerinfamilycourt

“My Dear Fellow Clergymen,

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 be considered 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!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Sorry, But 50/50 Shared Parenting Won’t Solve the Constitutional Problem Or Help Raise Better Kids

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by Standerinfamilycourt

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 three ways 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 the   fiery 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!

Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Open Letter to All Self-Appointed Marriage Theologians

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Response by Standerinfamilycourt

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 between antinomianism and legalism (“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.
Jesus told us that entrance by consent into a holy matrimony union by witnessed vows results in God’s hand creating a new entity, declaring they are never again two but one-flesh, and closing off any human’s ability to dissolve or sever that entity other than by physical death.    This new entity is the inferior party to the holy matrimony covenant.   So then, who exactly is the superior party?   Malachi informs us that the superior party is God Himself.
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:
– do not take your own revenge
– do not demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
– if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven
– do not live for self
–  do not drag a fellow believer before a pagan court
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’s own spouse, 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, but impossible 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 sinner for 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 divorce from 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’s not 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!

 
Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Of Antinomians and Panderers Thereto

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by Standerinfamilycourt

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.com and Kris Vallotton have 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.

So….exchange several of us attempted to do!

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

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

“Standerinfamilycourt” Responds to Dr. Hilary Towers and Author Leila Miller

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Our response to this article,
Are the Church’s Teachings on Sexuality Still ‘Good News’ for the Divorced?
…which is (in part) about Protestant covenant marriage “standers” and their example to Roman Catholic divorcees.

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 directly stoking 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!

Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Who’s That Back-Door Funding the Southern Baptists These Days…(And WHY)?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Give us that Marxist social gospel
Give us that Marxist social gospel
Give us that Marxist social gospel
It’s good enough for most

It was good enough for the mainstream Methodists
Good enough for the Episcopalians
Good enough for the leftist Lutherans
It’s even good enough for this Pope   

Yeah!….( okay, “SIFC” will behave now.)

In the not-so-humble opinion of “standerinfamilycourt”, it’s way past time to recognize that the bride of Jesus Christ is not some sort of demographic-sensitive, finger-to-the-wind organizational hawker.   Her Husband never did allow one single soul to come to Him on his or her own terms while He walked the earth, not even the man who wanted to go home first and bury his ailing father.

It has been hard to miss the leftward drift over the past 3 or so years of The Gospel Coalition publication (TGC) and the related Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), both of which are Southern Baptist-affiliated organizations.    What do we mean by “leftward drift” ?    It’s easily recognizable to some of us with adult children whom we raised in conservative evangelical homes, or in traditional Catholic homes, but those big kids are now thinking Jesus died for “social justice” –  and they choose their current church accordingly, leaving some of us grateful that our grandchildren are in church at all, but….

Did Jesus die for “social justice” ?

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.
Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.
– John 18:36-37

Jesus laid down His life to bring the poor and lost into a future kingdom.    Yes, He taught us to do unto others as we would have done for us,  but the temporal (as He demonstrates Himself) is only PART of the equation, and it is, in fact, by far the lesser part.

While it might seem comforting to reason that the SBC is doing what all major organizations do in the 21st  century,  especially after losing a million members over the last decade, and they are appealing to what they perceive as their future demographic to try and recover the loss, yet there may possibly be a little more that’s afoot along with the demographic appeal, and it just might be a bit sinister.    This may seem a crass suggestion, but once the choice has been made to shift (or drift) mission from the eternal to the temporal, is not such discernment fair game?

In the fall of 2015, TGC contributor Joe Carter did an excellent three-part series of articles on the Communist roots of the U.S.
50-state unilateral divorce laws, and the deleterious impact they have had on the civility and stability of our society.    He promised a fourth installment which the marriage permanence community eagerly awaited, but for some reason, he has not delivered it –almost three years later.    Why?   Some have sought to find out, but Joe’s not saying.   (More about the reinvented Joe Carter below.)

As the Southern Baptist Convention gears up for its annual convention June 10-13 in Dallas, shortly after the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it appears the agenda will be heavy with more of the same.   The media has managed to keep the national attention riveted on “racism”, despite a rash of multi-racial school shootings, carried out by fatherless young men.    Denominational leaders are tripping all over themselves to “apologize” for our “segregated” churches, despite the fact that people quite freely make their own choice where they feel most comfortable attending, and you never see a “blacks only” or “whites only” sign in front of any church in this country.    Likely to be ignored (again) in the agenda is the fact that the 2018 host state and the neighboring state both have unilateral divorce repeal bills pending on the floors of their legislatures, and it’s a prime opportunity for the SBC to act on its year 2000 resolution — that is, presuming the denomination ever meant a single word of it.

The PMS Pasting of Paige Patterson

The family-friendly year 2000 SBC resolution entitled, “The Baptist Faith and Message” was presided over by the man who this week lost his job as head of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary over allegations that he is a “misogynist” and “patriarchal”, guilty in the first-degree of the unspeakable crime of counseling a physically and emotionally battered woman, some years earlier, in the identical fashion the Apostles Paul and Peter would have.   As described in the preceding blog post,  homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt brought a Y2K radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson to Spiritual Sounding Board, a blog site that “exposes” traditional biblical church conduct and morals (and especially, church leadership that cultivates this) as “abusive” and “controlling”.  SSB then proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women.    This inflamed the likes of leftist-leaning Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition garnering over 3,000 signatures demanding Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post.   The undersigned claimed to “affirm”  The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 principles (we’d beg to differ), which reads, in part:

“…All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society….In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth…

“Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race….The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation…..Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.”

Given that Jesus was abundantly and repeatedly clear that all “divorce” is man-made rebellion against the created order (Matt. 19:6,8), representing an un-Christlike and deliberate decision to take one’s own revenge, to never forgive, and to covet a different spouse, is it not at least possible that what really offended these women on Patterson’s part, is that many of them actually are adulterously-“remarried”, and therefore, Paul’s instruction for abuse found in 1 Cor. 7:11 casts an implicit moral judgment on their own unbiblical life choices, when counseled and publicly endorsed by a seminary head?    Around this blog, we call that the “shoe fits-syndrome”; nobody likes to be exposed, by the double-edged sword of God’s word, as a hypocrite – even indirectly.    This tragically-successful petition treats the socially conservative SBC year 2000 Resolution as though it were a bag of trail mix, because these same women (and possibly their pastors as well) have grown accustomed to treating God’s word the same way.   Don’t think for a moment that the well-financed globalist players pushing the Marxist breakdown of the family aren’t intimately familiar with the utter hypocrisy of the contemporary adulterated church (as well as the 50-year advanced pastor-intimidation-factor which unrepentant congregation members routinely wield), or that these globalist malefactors would even hesitate to “play” these gullible women, along with their horde of well-meaning sympathizers!

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.   For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.   – 2 Timothy 3:1-7

Swallow-Prior has also been openly critical of Dr. Patterson’s leadership to exclude women from theology professorships at the seminary, a feminist issue that can reasonably be associated with biblical instruction for a woman not to teach or exercise authority over men.    Swallow-Prior’s actions indicate that she is an LGBT sympathizer and is in alignment with a faction that wants to push the SBC in the direction of a leftist social-justice gospel.

(     SIFC:  Regrettably, Karen Swallow Prior was reported to have been hit by a bus on Wednesday in Nashville, one day after Patterson’s removal, and suffered serious injuries requiring emergency surgery.    Please be upholding this confused lady in prayer – Matthew 5:43-48 – for a healing from head to heart to toe, as God is gracious to deliver and instruct.   She reportedly is recovering well, according to an update from the same source.)

In the four-minute “smoking gun” audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused.   Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”,  and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce.    Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing Dr. Patterson could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries” — already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth.    From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about on occasion.   (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact).  He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady–rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’s have vocally characterized it as.    One has to seriously question the born-again experience of histrionical critics whose words and conduct show they do not trust the ability of God to supernaturally protect those who obey Him, and even worse, who cast aside as inconsequential the kingdom fruit of a former abuser being transformed, regenerated and born into the kingdom of God.

He counseled this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’….   Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but  SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard.   He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred….
“…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken.  He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her.  Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’  Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.

Additional audio “skeletons”  came out of the closet where Patterson either showed some bad judgment in sheltering sexual offenders, or related some anecdote in a way sure to inflame the “feminists-for-Christ”, who insisted he was “objectifying” women and girls, including this audio from 2014.  Lastly,  a late-breaking claim from a former seminary student who reportedly told blogging Enid, OK pastor Wade Burleson just this week that she had been raped on the campus of another Baptist seminary in 2003, and she alleged that Patterson had counseled her not to report it to the police.    This last story literally broke via the Washington Post (given by Burleson to young religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey) just as the deliberations for Patterson’s job were getting underway on Tuesday this past week, and this 11th hour story pretty much sealed his fate.   Since Patterson had earlier removed Burleson from a job on a missionary board, the latter was hardly a “disinterested party” when he took the tasty morsel to WaPo.   Snarks the previously-vanquished former underling of Patterson’s:  “A woman divorcing a man is far worse than a woman enduring physical abuse.  A single woman inviting a man into her apartment is a far worse sin than a single woman being raped by the man she invited over.”     Tell me this false shepherd Burleson isn’t  a cultural Marxist–and one with a festering personal vendetta, at that!

( SIFC:While any failure to timely report a felony crime to law enforcement officials is seriously unacceptable on the part of any school official — or any Samaritan with firsthand knowledge, for that matter, what was conveniently left to the side by Burleson, Dreher, et. al. in their screeds was any mention whether this perpetrator (another student) forced his way into the victim’s [apparently] on-campus living accommodation or was invited there, in violation of campus rules.   These schools typically require all students to sign their pre-consent to strong morals agreements as a condition of remaining a student in good standing.   Critics like journalist Rod Dreher, a former evangelical converted to Roman Catholicism, are decrying that the female victim was put on probation… while the male student was expelled and permanently barred from attending another SBC seminary.   While not completely conclusive, this strongly indicates that the victim violated the campus moral policies by inviting him in, and she received a proportionally lesser penalty that at least allowed her the opportunity to complete her studies if she was so-inclined.   The real question is whether the disciplinary actions were appropriately documented by school officials and whether those files still exist 15 years later.   Apparently, normal seminary disciplinary policies, formally pre-agreed by the students, aren’t supposed to be enforced, under #churchtoo ideology, against victims who suffer crime as a direct result of themselves violating school morals policies, because “it adds to their trauma”.   This, as concerns a seminary student, is supposed to be the moral equivalent of blaming a rape victim who–proverbially–had dressed like a streetwalker, according to the social justice ideology.)      

Ironically, the only story we’re aware of about Patterson’s leadership malfeasance that doesn’t seem at least questionable by objective biblical standards never even surfaced during this food fight in Fort Worth, but was well-known to SBC leadership for years.   We come by it due to a brief mention by relatively sympathetic Pulpit & Pen, who thinks disciplinary action against Patterson should have occurred ten years ago, and that he was politically singled out while other known bad and worse actors have come away unscathed so far.  The others, apparently, are lesser-known to the noisy outside social justice warriors–and they don’t run the institutions that influence church doctrine and shape future pastors.

We’re Being “Played” : Abuse As a “Silver Bullet”
Many believe the bottom line was that unless a way was found ahead of the conference to shove Patterson to the side, there was a reduced chance of carrying off a social justice theme at the June conference.   “Abuse” is one (but not the only one) of those potent, emotional core themes of the Left, right along with “bullying” — one that even the most ardent social conservatives will cast aside years of professional expertise in evidence and due process to treat an allegation emotionally if a painful personal experience stirs up those emotions.   As we saw with the successful last minute smear of former Chief Justice Roy Moore (who was for years an active advocate for intact, biblical families in carrying out his duties on the bench–in addition to his powerful opposition to the LGBT political agenda) prior to the December, 2017 special election in Alabama.     It is a signature trait of Soros interference with democratic processes that unproven (or unprovable) allegations will indeed carry the day if  visceral human emotions are skillfully played ,with inadequate time  or means to investigate allegations.   It has become an article of Leftist faith that to call man’s divorce immoral, and to require a man or woman to remain in a marriage they no longer want to be in is “social injustice”.

The Gilyard debacle could have been spun as precisely what it looks like: insensitive and negligent failure to protect female members of the congregations and staffs of a succession of churches from an obvious sexual predator.    One who was convicted, went to jail, and was installed in yet another pulpit as soon was he was released, as a matter of fact.   Why wasn’t it spun this time?  Perhaps the issue is that this sexual predator, apparently sheltered by Dr. Patterson for a couple of decades, is black.    Not good for the narrative.  The operatives knew that predominantly-female emotions were high enough  over uninvestigated and questionable charges, that it was unnecessary to hang the man over a real crime which didn’t fit the narrative.   And who was sheltering Dr. Patterson in the nine years since Gilyard went to prison –  any of the board members who voted this week to depose him, perchance?

(  SIFC:  Update,  June 1 ,2018 –  documentary evidence has now been made public by the wife of Dr. Patterson’s chief of staff, showing that it is likely that the 2003 “rape victim” at Southeastern Baptist Seminary was actually caught in consensual fornication, and more recently lied to the media about it.    This includes correspondence the “rape victim” sent to Dr. Patterson in 2003.

This should not be at all surprising, given the highly political rush to judgment, the revenge factor of some of the players, and likely outside meddling.    As the actual facts come to light, the Patterson proceedings bear even more resemblance to the politically-pivotal Roy Moore incident in December, 2017, where unsubstantiated allegations cost a Senate election.   Regrettably, on May 30 a faction of the Board of Trustees voted to reverse their May 23 decision based on continued feminist pressure, and vindictively stripped Dr. Patterson, age 75, of his retirement benefits, while he was out of the country, claiming, there was “new” – but undisclosed – “urgent” evidence.)

Another pastor from Oklahoma, Grady Arnold, was interviewed this week on the Janet Mefferd podcast show.    Pastor Arnold has written a resolution, discussed at the 20 minute mark, which he will be presenting at the conference to try to turn the SBC back from formally or informally embracing  cultural Marxism.    May the Lord put the wind at his back, but the resolution’s prospects don’t look very good at this point.

Rent-An-Evangelical
Mentioned earlier was the connection between removal petition instigator, Karen Swallow-Prior and the ERLC, between Jonathan Merritt and the George Soros-controlled secular publications that frequently carry his work.    Independent journalists such as Pulpit & Pen have been alleging for the past three years that one or more of the complex funding networks of Mr. Soros has been donating to both the ERLC and to The Gospel Coalition, which has manifested in the leftist undertones both have been steadily taking on.    In fact, Pulpit & Pen asserted on an April 10 facebook post that Soros / Riady-placed board members run the ERLC, but did not name any names.   The ministry website names only a massively large “Leadership Council” but does not disclose the names of ERLC board members.    This information is also unavailable on either Charity Navigator or Guidestar.     Presumably,  this board would include the likes of Tim Keller, and others involved with the Acton Institute.


Source:  Full length video, American Association of Evangelicals, 2016

Another Janet Mefferd podcast on May 18 featured an interview with Tom Littleton, another Southern Baptist pastor and writer, where Soros funding of SBC entities was discussed at the 20:30 mark. where Littleton says, “at some point I think that’s [the dirty money] going to surface….and it’s going to be a really damaging thing for some of these leaders when we see where some of this money is coming from.”

Unfortunately, conclusively proving the money trail is not so straightforward, because both of these SBC “suspect” organizations are able to classify themselves as disclosure-exempt religious organizations according to IRS rules for nonprofits.  That means the IRS Form 990 information returns that disclose financials and major donors which we might otherwise be able to look up on sites like Guidestar and Charity Navigator are not available to the public.    That said, the serendipity of a 2016 hacking and leaking incident resulted in access to strategy documents of the (Soros)  Open Society  Foundation that at least provide some pretty good circumstantial evidence.    The first “rented” evangelicals were already liberals, such as journalist Jim Wallis of Sojouners, who was forced to admit in 2011 to taking Soros money after originally denying it.

This is a map of the various locations for Soros funding organizations in the U.S.  — showing plenty of them in and around the SBC’s operating hubs.  Most deal with open borders immigration initiatives (which is how the first financial involvement with the ERLC was orchestrated), but not all do.

Source:  Soros FY2015 Reception and Placement Program Affiliate Sites

(    SIFC:   Here’s a quick guide to those Soros-funded organization acronymns on the above map illustration:

CWS*~^  –  Church World Service (open borders)
EMM*~ – Episcopal Migration Ministries (refugees)
ECDC* –  Ethiopian Community Development Council (refugees)
HIAS*  –   (refugees)
IRC^ –  International Rescue Campaign (refugees)
LIRS^ – Lutheran Immigration and Rescue Service (refugees)**
USCCB*~^ – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (ecumenism)
USCRI* – U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (open borders)
WR*^ –  World Relief (“human flourishing” – a.k.a. humanist responses to human suffering)

* Eight of these “social justice” organizations have a presence in the Chicagoland area, home to The Gospel Coalition.
~ Three of these have a presence in the Louisville, KY vicinity of the SBC /  ERLC national headquarters
^  Five of these have a presence in the Dallas / Fort Worth area where important SBC seminaries, including the one Dr. Patterson was just deposed from, are located.

** One of SIFC’s adult children is presently part of a liberal Lutheran church located in a university town in a Deep South state–which is also gay-affirming, divorce-and-remarriage-affirming, and deeply involved with this Soros-funded organization.    The church’s local leadership consists largely of liberal professors from the nearby secular university.   SIFC has attended services there numerous times and is quite familiar with the liberal culture of that church, where gay literature is displayed on the reception tables in the church lobby.)

Says Pulpit & Pen,  December, 2017:
“THINKING THIS THROUGH together for a moment… Joe Carter came to the ERLC soon after Russell Moore’s ascent and radical altering of the standard conservative Southern Baptist messaging on key topics, especially LGBTQ issues.  Carter serves as ERLC “Communications Specialist” while he still holds his Senior Editor job with Rev. Robert Sirico – the once radical left wing, Marxist gay activist Pentecostal (later) gay church pastor and founder of Metropolitan Community Churches (the world’s first gay denomination), who conducted some of the nations first gay marriages and boasted he would perform exorcisms to rebuke the heterosexual spirits from his opposition – who is now a Catholic Libertarian priest.  If that is not disturbing we are simply NOT paying attention!  Carter has also worked in high level editing positions with at least two other Catholic publications according to his biography….

(  SIFC:  This blogger personally became aware of a sodomy-affirming MCC evangelical “church” during the 1980’s while residing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the “buckle of the Bible Belt” and sequential polygamy capital of the nation–and considered both very disturbing!)

This December, 2017 article continues….
“Civil City Utopian Prophets and The Funding Machine
The following collaborations outlined as bullet points show the depths of Faith-Based involvement of Tim Keller and other evangelicals and institutions.  Several have been mentioned in previous articles without mention of the role Acton played in them.

  • Leading up to the 2009 infusion of untold billions of tax dollars by the Obama administration into the Faith Based Partnership overhaul – Tim Keller (page 80) and Friends, including the Acton Institute, worked with a Faith Based Partnership model in Orlando called “Seeking the Welfare of the City” (STWOTC) which resulted in the Polis Institute.  Richard Florida’s pro homosexual ideology was promoted by the Human Rights Campaign and Albert Mohler played a key role (page 76) as has the Acton Institute.  Acton still heavily promotes the “Welfare of the City” concept which centers around Faith Based Partnerships.  If participants like churches and ministries want to find funding to “save their cities” through Community Development grants, they must be inclusive and welcoming of one of the more destructive influences within the communities they are asserting they wish to help.  The erosion of the family and sexual liberation are two of the most compelling issues urban centers face.
    ……….
    “Are Money Changers Funding Acton and an Evangelical Deep State?

    • Another major player in what appears as an Evangelical Deep State is the National Christian Foundation of Alpharetta GA.  According to its history with Conservative Transparency and a 2016 990 forms /report, the NCF has brought about $6 Billion into its Christian philanthropy circles since 2011 (page 15 of the 990 shows $1,396,381,203 in 2016 alone.)  On requesting NCF to provide its donor and recipient list and history, the organization refused to supply any information whatsoever.  Various philanthropic sites do track some of the money and its sources, but given that NCF is a “Donor ADVISED fund,” the agreement upon giving is the intention of the donor is to be recognized but not required in the distribution.  What the Conservative Transparency tracking shows is that NCF giving in large part goes to political organizations like Acton Institute, Heritage Foundation, and a variety of organizations, many being Libertarian like Acton instead of conservative Christian organizations or ministries.  NCF helps coordinate giving for the Frankfurt School / Marxist-inspired Civilitas Group in which Tim Keller and Rick Warren serve as Board Members…..Since 2012 a marked departure from classic Evangelical conservative stance has taken place and Russell Moore, Tim Keller and others have been peddling the new, more civil, culturally relevant tone on social issues.  Given that their partners, like Acton and Sirico, all share the goals of harnessing Christian giving while  promoting a  Social Gospel and Faith Based Partnerships (FBP) it is fair to ask, “WHY?”Marvin Olasky, crowned the father of the Bush FBP agenda, later heavily funded and loaded with LGBTQ activism in the Obama years, provides conservative Christians with unquestioned news “from a Christian world view” in World Magazine.  Perhaps he should answer for his Fellowship with Acton Institute and Father Sirico knowing the LGBTQ infiltration of these circles and the programs he (Olasky) promotes.  Would Albert Mohler, the highly regarded head of Southern Seminary and SBC/ TGC/ evangelical leader clarify exactly what part of Richard Florida and HRC’s pro gay urban planning he believes is so vital for the church that he endorses it along with other strategies of the homosexual agenda.  There is little else in the Florida rhetoric except a heavy dose of Cultural Marxism. So what is the Appeal and what part of the ideology are we as the church to follow if NOT its push for LGBTQ “inclusion”?”

Another Christian journalist, Brannon Howse (World View Weekend), echoes this history and web of sinister connections between TGC and ERLC principals in his two-part series, “Exposing the Religious Trojan Horse of the Globalist Deep State” (March 28, 2018).    Presumably, these leaked documents enabled the reporting that was coming to light in 2017 and 2018 by these sources.

(  SIFC:  While Howse’s documented fact-gathering is indeed very useful, we put a heavy “disclaimer” on the toxic Calvinism that intrudes at the halfway-point of the Part 1 video.    Obedience to the commandments of Christ is not “salvation by works”, as Howse wrongly contends while critiquing Dr. John Piper as a “neo-Calvinist”.)

There are documents dating from at least 2008 to 2016. In June, 2016 the Open Society Foundations also had several documents leaked by DCLeaks. Bloomberg reported that the foundation notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the hacking.   DCLeaks.com link was provided in a PJ Media article, but no longer works.  One leaked memo posted by DCLeaks.com from Soros’ “Open Society” Foundations, for example, outlines a plot to co-opt Catholic officials and push Soros’ views within the Catholic Church and within the Christian world more broadly. To do that, Soros provided funding to two so-called faith-based organizations, PICO (People Improving Communities through Organizing), and Faith in Public Life (FPL) that would advance his extremism against a “faction of the church” that does not support it.

Among other schemes, Soros provided “essential resources” to secure the “buy-in of individual Catholic bishops to more publicly voice support of economic and racial justice messages.” The agenda was to create a “critical mass of bishops” to promote Soros’ interpretation of Pope Francis’ perceived anti-free-market activism and “racial justice agenda.” Numerous prominent Catholics have said Soros is radically distorting the pope’s message to further his own fundamentally anti-Catholic agenda.  Debatable, since the pontiff and the financier actually appear to be significantly aligned on matters of relativistic morality and “social justice”.

Soros money was used to help create an advanced propaganda campaign to promote one of Soros’ “Christian” puppets as a “leading commentator in high-profile outlets, such as USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, NBC, NPR, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.” Of course, if a “commentator” agrees with Soros, by definition he or she disagrees with the bible   Possibly five of these bad actors, who were key in the removal of Dr. Patterson last week, seem to fit this pattern very well:   Jonathan Merritt, Ed Stetzer, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Karen Swallow-Prior, and Beth Moore.   This 2014 Gospel Coalition video involves three of these individuals, and it accurately foreshadows (at about the 38 minute mark) what unfolded in 2018:  learning how to “play church nicely”, removing any obstacles to doing so, so that we can grow at the expense of souls and, if necessary, while setting aside the word of God for “pragmatism”.

The Hard Facts about Declining Baptist Church Membership
This whole conversation has been far more about heat, rather than light.   What gives any group of people the right to demand that church leadership move away from biblical practice and principles?  Or the right to murmur about everything else, short of whether Dr. P’s wife uses bagged salad greens in her submission to the “troglodyte” she married?   One of these days, either SIFC or somebody else is finally going to prove the unsavory, undisclosed financial connection between this whole initiative and the demonic pocketbook that has successfully “rented” evangelicals over the past few years in the SBC, RCC, and even in other countries, for immoral political ends that go well beyond the church.  Such would never be enabled if individuals claiming to be Christ-followers possessed the personal integrity to match their level of popular cultural influence.  Identity politics and victimhood doesn’t look any better on well-published  “Christians” than it does on anyone else.  
 
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
 

To be fair to the Southern Baptists, there needs to be some acknowledgments:  the Assemblies of God reportedly picked up 1 million members after they liberalized doctrine and practice in the area of marriage permanence.   The Roman Catholic Church also appears to be gaining members after a long drought which let up after the death of conservative John Paul II, and liberalization of sexual morality commenced in earnest under the last two popes.   The “social justice” gospel is attracting millennials and their young families back to mainline churches some four decades after their conservative evangelical parents once derided them as “dead churches” whose remaining members were primarily the elderly.  Even so, God does not care at all to have pews packed full of spiritually dead and morally lost people who are “compassionate” in the temporal sense only.    The Baptists and Catholics are about to find out what’s already evident in the resurgence of the mainline churches:  the “social justice” pact-with-the-devil contains a price tag out of which the homosexual agenda cannot be “line-item vetoed”.     That makes ERLC head, Dr. Russell Moore’s famous last words in 2015, “Evangelicals Won’t Cave”, (likely written while that SBC pact was being made with OSF) laughable only three years later, as we predicted at the time in our rebuttal.

While it’s strategically tempting to hope to fill empty pews by opening the U.S. borders and becoming gay-friendly, if the SBC doesn’t get back to true biblical bearings, and tell all opposed critics to take a hike, what we’re going to have is a strengthening in an already-strong, growing movement inside and outside the churches, to dump the corrupted denominations and opt for small house churches / lay pastors, which nobody can argue isn’t a 1st century biblical model.   In other words, a continued loss of membership despite “inclusion” (heretical liberalization) efforts.   I’d personally hate to see that transpire at this nasty and pivotal point in our national history, because we really need the GODLY political power of the collective church to restore a little of the kingdom of God in our nation for everyone else suffering from 50 years of Leftist misery, most especially the poor, during which the salt lost its savor.  Instead, we’re squabbling about whether the Apostles and church fathers were “misogynists” in the clear instructions, presumably God-breathed, they left today’s leadership to follow.   SIFC’s current young pastors would call this contemporary vexation a “first world problem”.

 

Yes, the SBC has lost a million members over the past decade, while the liberalizing RCC seems (temptingly) to be picking up members the past few of years, with their Leftist, gay-affirming, “annulment”-expediting, communion-adulterating Pope.  AOG likewise picked up members like nobody’s business from 1971 to 1984, adding 1 million members (far fewer souls, I daresay) as a direct result of voting to desecrate heterosexual marriage in the wake of unilateral divorce enactment in the early 1970’s.  The price they paid was the swift exit of the power of the Holy Spirit, as numbers grew by yet another million to-date, and it gradually became acceptable to haul exposed cleavage, drooping pants and the “spouse”-du-jour into church.  I know because I was there for most of it.  “Come as you are, stay as you are” does indeed work wonders for membership — until it doesn’t.   In this case,  the Southern Baptists can be presumed to be on the same side of “until it doesn’t” as the Pentecostals.   Tulsa didn’t get to be the divorce capital of the United States due to Catholic dominance.    It’s small wonder some SBC leaders are so keen to import potential new members through open or porous borders, rather than set a godly example that gains power over the “nones” as our godly forebears did.   

Teaching unbiblical, culturally-popular pseudo-values (including, never piss off the women) to future pastors also works – until it doesn’t.  The fixed moral wall that has been hit a couple of times previously in church history is Islamism (and its ancient predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar), a reprise of which would be perfectly fine with Mr. Soros.

Many of the lost members from these denominations and from the RCC are legally-discarded spouses (and their children) whose pastors failed in very significant ways to honor and uphold the lifelong sanctity of their biblical, God-joined covenant marriage, their numbers being added to by perhaps 400,000 to 500,000 a year in the U.S., based on current unilateral divorce rates.  Nobody at a major evangelical publication ever writes a single word about these disciples (except to insinuate that there’s something “wrong” with them), though the conservative Catholic publications increasingly connect with “standers’ ” obedience to biblical instruction.  Perhaps 25% of the disaffected women find their way into Anabaptist-heritage churches, or a few of the dwindling number of virtuous Catholic parishes.   The rest, including most of the men, join the virtual church, house churches or settle for spiritual isolation, if they want to obey the Lord and not take a replacement “spouse” adulterously. 
 

Women like Beth Moore and like Karen Swallow-Prior, who claim that Jesus prescribed marriage dissolution for all manner of perceived and actual abuse, as opposed to chaste separation with rehabilitation in mind and appropriate reliance on the criminal justice system (where warranted)–are hussies and Jezebels, no matter how many books they sell.  They will be found “correct” the day that Jesus accepts hard-heartedness, unforgiveness and self-promotion as acceptable attributes in His disciples.  And those who become so presumptuous as to build “abuse ministries” around the same ideology,  are apostates misleading others toward moral destruction.   Quite amusingly, the hard-Left feminists have recently expressed their extreme displeasure with the nouveaux “conservative” feminists who promote the judicial murder of God-joined covenant marriages; who promote sequential polyandry in the name of domestic “justice” — but still won’t give their unqualified endorsement to abortion on demand for all.    

Dr. Stephen Baskerville (May 3, 2017 – How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution, Crisis Magazine) :  “The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice. “

But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.   – Revelation 2:4-6

Will the Southern Baptist Convention not even measure up to the Christ-rebuked Ephesian church, by the time this story of shameless social pandering and denominational prostitution ends?   Will there be anyone left in power to “hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans”  by the time of the 2019 annual conference ?

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

 

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare

“Abuse” Lies Under Every Rock: Exposing An Abusive Abuse Ministry

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by Standerinfamilycourt

There are six things which the Lord hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16-19

Can a ministry that seeks to speak out on behalf of physically or emotionally-battered spouses be abusive in their own practices?Due to the extreme political sensitivity of this topic, and out of a sincere desire to do no further harm to a priceless, real covenant family, this blog has been over two years in the writing.   Current events, however, are causing this unresolved, mishandled, and highly-politicized abuse issue to fester in a way that is about to be very bad for a couple of states that are in an earnest-but-neglected battle to repeal their unilateral divorce laws. “Standerinfamilycourt” will explain a bit more about that later in this post, and in depth in another post which is in the works, scheduled for release in about another week.

We all rejoiced when the good news came a little over two years ago that Pastor Saeed Abedini had at long last been released from the Iranian prison that had held him for nearly four years.     His wife, Naghmeh, put up a tireless effort to enlist those who could campaign for his release.   Shortly before the harvest of her efforts, she took to her Facebook page to disclose to her more than 85,000 followers that Saeed had developed a pornography addiction prior to being detained in Iran, and that he had physically and verbally abused her since early in their marriage.   She implied that her husband had been abusive and controlling in his most recent communications with her just prior to his release.    Upon his release, the Abedinis and Franklin Graham announced that they would be spending a few days with the Grahams in North Carolina to try and reconcile the issues in their marriage.   Yet, barely within two days of Saeed’s landing on U.S. soil, Naghmeh filed a petition in an Idaho court for a legal separation, explaining that the action was necessary to protect her children.    Since it’s hard to imagine that she could have made these arrangements while across the country in North Carolina, it seems apparent that she had pre-arranged this filing some time well-prior to Saeed’s release.    What was going on here? 

On January 24,  about a week after Saeed’s January 16 release,  a couple of months after she had publicly disclosed Saeed’s alleged abuse, this pseudo-ministry made contact with Naghmeh on her Facebook page.   She indicates that she had been reading their blogs.

Naghmeh_ACFJ

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
1 Corinthians 15:33

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC Note:   It is obvious that if physical abuse endangers a spouse or children in the home, separation for a season is absolutely necessary, and reporting it to the criminal justice authorities is equally imperative.    The latter seldom happens, however, since it’s cheaper and more private to run to the so-called “family court” system, and since almost nobody in our culture today buys into the unchangeable biblical truth that “remarriage” constitutes soul-destroying adultery in God’s eyes, with no excuses and no exceptions.  Emotional abuse, however, can be “in the eye of the beholder”,  and is difficult to objectively assess, measure or prove.     This is all the more reason why Paul’s inspired instructions to the church in
1 Corinthians 7:10-11 and in 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 is timeless in its remedy for domestic violence cases (which didn’t suddenly arise in the 21st century, most likely), especially against the backdrop of biblical truth– that man’s civil paper does not unjoin what only God can unjoin, and does not dissolve the unconditional covenant with God, in the case of the original marriage of our youth.   Nor has a piece of civil paper ever “protected” anyone from any form of abuse.

The unilateral divorce laws were driven by a desire not to have to prove marital fault for this very reason, i.e. that there’s an expense to do so along with ugly public airing of personal misconduct, and attempting to do so might still fail for lack admissible evidence, etc.    The mantra about “forcing women to stay in an abusive marriage” (even if it’s for only a slightly longer period) is an overblown, emotionally-driven exaggeration, but it becomes irresistible to the economically-hurting, and to the emotionally-wounded.

This reckless “no-fault” ideology, however, ignores the equal protection and due process obligations that the civil authorities also owe the accused under our Constitution, including all state constitutions.   Current law, as well as these “ministries”,  presume the accused to be guilty based solely on the allegation, and in effect, deny the accused  even a trial, before parental and property rights are cut off.     They are hugely responsible for toxic impacts on the very children they claim to protect, by using the state as a vehicle to allow the petitioning party to alienate the accused party from their God-given parental rights.   All too often, the “abuse” that is alleged is never objectively examined, and on this slippery slope it sometimes amounts to little more than individual perception, out of a self-focused spirit and with the egging-on of financially interested “professionals”.

We’ll spend a little time extracting from the web page of this “ministry”,  and a similar one,  Spiritual Sounding Board, which is currently at the center of a Leftist move to remove a conservative Southern Baptist seminary president who related in an interview that he had refused to counsel divorce in a mild (and quite brief) domestic abuse case that occurred when that pastor-molder served decades ago as a pastor himself.    We will come back to that particular incident, which is being developed more fully in a blog post, to follow.

From one of the “abuse ministry” websites, referring to a post on the other website (click through to SSB’s link):

Abusive abuse “ministries” trade on emotions and biblically-false doctrine, hoping that anyone who calls out their wicked aims and antichrist direction will be censured for “adding to the suffering of the abused”.     Their ideology castigates churches who are faithful to the word of God, accusing them of “devaluing”  and “objectifying” women.   They “cry wolf” at all churches who follow the precepts of Jesus and Paul, with the effect that where there truly is a questionable church, such as the one that unsuccessfully sued Spritual Sounding Board’s Julie Anne Smith for defamation in 2012,  or Greg Locke’s Tennessee church,  the broad paintbrush stroke they employ intimidates many other pastors into appeasing this Jezebel spirit instead of following the way of Christ.    Worst of all, they add to the spiritual delusion of the abuse victims, steering them away from the biblical instruction that is truly available for them, and which truly works, both in the temporal life and with souls in eternity.     When God delivers supernatural protection and miraculous transformation of the abuser, birthing him or her into the kingdom of God, they discredit even that, because it conflicts with their pro-divorce, feminist narrative.    These “ministries” would have considered the Apostle Paul a “misogynist” (to the full extent they couldn’t get away with misquoting him, and with “sanitizing” his instructions to wives).

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.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.

The Apostle Peter,  similarly “misogynistic”….

In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, 2 as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. ….

You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit;  not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.  For,

“The one who desires life, to love and see good days,
Must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.
“He must turn away from evil and do good;
He must seek peace and pursue it.
“For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous,
And His ears attend to their prayer,
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good?  But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.


The above-posted  February, 2016 article by Spiritual Sounding Board,

Saeed Abedini and Franklin Graham Promote “Couples Counseling” to Reconcile the Abedinis. Because of Saeed’s Abuse, is This Counterproductive?

raises a few valid points:

– the offender (if he / she is actually such) must want to change before change is possible

– the victim(s) and offender do need physical separation for the necessary season

– individual counseling is typically necessary before couples-counseling is likely to succeed

…but the article reaches a destructive and unbiblical conclusion that jeopardizes the souls of everyone involved: husband, wife and children.    It also adds to the lethal effects on society as a whole, because it rushes the parties into the immoral, permanent abandonment of their marriage (unless the Lord intervenes some years later) under man’s false paper.    In some cases,  namely, the great many cases where the “marriage” was biblically unlawful at inception, this is an eternal mercy.    But in every case where God-joined holy matrimony was involved between some combination of a widowed or never-married man and woman,  this wicked, murmurring spirit is an abomination for which God will hold these practitioners responsible.

On the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ,

So they are no longer [never again] 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.

The Greek word for the Hebrew or Aramaic word Jesus used in Matt.   19:6  is “choresthetai”  which referred to the furrows between rows in a plowed field.   An effective translation of this word is, “to put distance between.”   That is a very apt description of how these groups operate.   In Proverbs 6, God calls that an abomination.

These “ministries” actively foment and promote biblically-forbidden hard-heartedness, using clever labels, slanderous emotions and caustic publicity.   Here, they arrogantly presumed that Franklin Graham would not have steered the Abedinis to the appropriate resources, had he been free of their own salacious publicity and interference.   Spiritual Sounding Board (incredibly) asks why Franklin Graham didn’t defer to the Abedinis’ home pastor in Idaho for the counseling, but a look at the facebook traffic and the writings of these groups just prior to this 2016 post makes that a hypocritical charge.  The ugly reality is that the avenue of working with the home church was effectively foreclosed because, long before Saeed’s plane from Iran had even landed, they had already demonized that Utah home church as “hiding” and “enabling” the abuser, until Naghmeh was rendered unwilling to submit to that pastor’s legitimate spiritual authority.

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, But she who shames him is like rottenness in his bones     Proverbs 12:4

 

WHAT DOES A GODLY, SCRIPTURAL ABUSE INTERVENTION EFFORT LOOK LIKE?

When banks train their staff how to recognize counterfeit bills, they are said to have them spend some time closely studying the real thing.    We can profitably do the same here.    These are the traits of a biblically-faithful and effective abuse and endangered-marriage ministry:

(1) It prays that the justification and sanctification experience will be genuine and renewed in both marriage partners (Luke 13:3; Matthew 7:21-23)

(2) It counsels a sole regenerated partner in servant-leadership and seeing their offending spouse the way Jesus sees them (1 Peter 3:1-7; 1 Corinthians 7:12-13, 16)

(3) It refrains from suppressing the uncomfortable truth about the eternal and societal consequences of our individual choice to obey or disobey God’s commandments (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21; Galatians 6:7-8; Hebrews 13:4)

(4) It banishes the evangelical weasel-words:  “ideal”, “design”, “purpose”, “intention”, “best” (etc.) from reference to marriage indissolubility, and replaces those words with REALITY, and COMMANDMENT.  (Matthew 19:6; Malachi 2:13-15)

(5) It draws a scripture-based distinction between lawful and unlawful marriages, and counsels accordingly, with souls and generations in mind (Matthew 5:27-32; Luke 16:18-31; Matthew 19:9b-KJV; Mark 10:11-12; Malachi 2:14-15)

(6) It recognizes the spiritual warfare, demonic nature of holy matrimony destruction, and trains the believing spouse(s) in the spiritual weapons (in a separate session with the believing spouse, if necessary) –  Ephesians 6:10-18; 2 Corinthians 10:4-6

(7) Where criminal behavior is evident and provable, it counsels toward criminal court, not “family court”  (Romans 13:1-4; Matthew 22:20-21; 1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(8) It frankly warns that a holy God recognizes neither man’s “divorce” nor attempts to “remarry”, despite the widespread iniquity they observe in the church  (Matthew 19:8; Matthew 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18b; Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39)

(9) It builds a deliberate knowledge base about the biblical validity, theology, practice methods, track record and faith of other marital therapists, and makes that available

(10) It attempts to advise against and mediate with authorities to eliminate relationship-hindering elements such as objectively-unnecessary no-contact and restraining orders

(11) It attempts to mediate with the pastor if there is an unbiblical element of the home church’s doctrine on marriage, divorce or remarriage, and it encourages submission to the leadership of the home church unless there is a biblically-solid reason not to (for example, unqualified pastor who is divorced and remarried)
– 2 Timothy 2:15; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6

(12) It teaches the biblical authority / responsibility structure of the home  (1 Corinthians 11:3)

(13) It cooperates with biblically-administered church discipline, and it helps to bring either or both spouses back into soft-hearted submission to valid church authority (Matthew 18:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5; James 5:19-20)

(14) It organizes essential material resources that enable the spouses to follow God’s instructions to separate chastely, and remain married (James 1:27; 1 Timothy 5:3-8; 1 Corinthians 7:11)

(15) It hones a skill set in defusing unhelpful, divisive emotions on both sides, and models longsuffering (Jeremiah 17:9; Galatians 5:22; Matthew 16:24)

(16) It leaves the control of the timeline in God’s hands, honoring Christ’s commandments not to take our own revenge and not to resort to pagan courtrooms (2 Peter 3:8-9; Romans 12:19;
1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(17) It operates under the fruit of the Spirit, and educates everyone involved about the works of the flesh, including the fact that all forms of humanistic thought directly conflict with following Christ, and examines common wrong assumptions and motives for humanistic thought.  (Galatians 5:22-23;  Matthew 16:24-25)

Of course, these steps are the very antidote to secular humanism and temporal values that today masquerade as “discipleship”.    Several of these elements expressly conflict with the feminist ideology of these groups.   “Standerinfamilycourt” makes no apologies for any of them, however “enabling” and “misogynistic” they may be deemed to be.    Most importantly, several of these ministering essentials cannot be accomplished in the virtual world, nor by buying the hawked publications on offer.   Hence, these “ministries” have virtually no biblically-valid role in the kingdom of God.

Now that we have a picture of what a biblically-valid ministry to physically and emotionally-battered spouses looks like,  we’re ready to meet the people and examine the philosophies behind Spiritual Sounding Board, and A Cry for Justice, while holding their characteristic dogmas and practices up to the light of scripture.

Julie Anne Smith, owner of Spiritual Sounding Board is a Washington resident who began blogging a few years ago on what she views as “abusive churches”, following an incident in 2010 or 2011 that affected her and other friends and family members at Beaverton Grace Bible Church, where the pastor at the time was Charles O’Neal, who remains the current head pastor.    Unlike her former pastor, Julie Anne doesn’t really tell us too much more about her own background, except that she was a home-schooling parent for 23-1/2 years.   Presumably, she’s been a homemaker for the bulk of her pre-blogging career.    She does not disclose on her site her education, professional experience, or even her account of coming to faith.    The summons of the dismissed suit quotes several online statements by her and various co-defendants, but none of the allegations are specific enough to cite any biblical authority to substantiate those opinions.     She apparently gets extensively interviewed around the Pacific Northwest area as a result of the dismissed lawsuit, but to her credit, she is apparently not hawking books.   A defining quote from her “About” page gives an idea of what she defines as church-orchestrated abuse:

“Another part of my story is connected with the Homeschool Movement – the subculture within the fundamental Christian homeschool group which includes practices such as: full-quiver, courtship, Patriarchy, stay-at-home daughters, modesty/purity teachings (the church/pastor who sued me also was connected with the Homeschool Movement).

“As a long-time homeschooling mother (23+ yrs), I have seen how some of these practices, especially the ones that devalue/depersonalize women and girls, have caused great harm, physically, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. We have a big problem with abuse in our Christian groups!”

While the primary purpose of this blog post is not to critique churches, we must start by saying that just because disaffected congregation members may personally disagree with biblical concepts such as encouraging large families, modest dress, chastity, honoring homemaking as a career choice, submission to the biblical family-structure, discouraging contemporary dating practices, none of this automatically renders a church “abusive”, unless members are chained there and not permitted by some strong mechanism to “vote with their feet”–or there is substantive evidence of financial abuse of church resources, or perhaps sexual immorality in the leadership.
The church’s website does not make any disclosure of a church board or plural leadership, which discerning folk should probably take as a potential “red flag”,  especially where there is more than one campus–which appears to be the case here, but this is the typical operating model for that denomination.     There seems to be pretty good disclosure of these facts on BGBC’s web page, which should best be left to the judgment of the public, in the absence of non-public malfeasance that could not be resolved according to biblical principles with Pastor O’Neal.    If there is any scriptural authority for any of Mrs. Smith’s opinions, she does not seem to cite them in her blog posts (even though she does appear to provide an extensive list of links to the work of others on a separate Resources tab).   Indeed, even when she is citing “experts” in her own writings on handling marital abusers, the typical link is not to a social science publication, but to a newspaper summary of an emotion-gripping incident, itself having no links to social science support.

The best that can be said of the 2012 lawsuit incident is that both sides seem to have behaved unbiblically.    The fact that the suit was dismissed, while the outcome seems correct and just, does not exonerate the public slander, reviling and lack of submission on Mrs. Smith (and company’s) part to biblical authority while voluntarily a part of the church.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality,  idolatry, sorcery, ENMITIES, STRIFE, jealousy, outbursts of anger, DISPUTES, DISSENTIONS, FACTIONS, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The fact that Pastor O’Neal felt compelled to bring the matter before pagan judges to protect perceived financial interests does not speak very well of him, either, by biblical standards.   Neither party seemed to have acted in a way that was a good witness to the community.    Smith does not give a “what we believe” section, and  tells us nothing further that creditably justifies her site, but she does provide what looks like a good resource list to help individuals decide for themselves whether they are involved with an abusive or controlling church, and ought to simply move on quietly.    Smith’s motives, however, seem vengeful and controlling (at least, intimidating) in their own right.   It should go without saying that church discipline and biblical admonition are valid and scriptural in the absence of any factors indicating mistreatment of those elements, and are not, in and of themselves, “controlling” behavior, as Spiritual Sounding Board frequently alleges.

Mrs. Smith goes on to tell us about her association with another blogger on the topic of church abuse, by the name of Brad Sargent, who goes by the moniker, “futuristguy” .     His role in this site does not seem extensive, but he’s described as having compiled the library of links to the lawsuit documents, and as a “survivor of church abuse”.   Evaluation of his materials will be outside the scope of this blog, while noting that he did write a blog on the Mars Hill Church controversy that led to the litigious 2014 removal of founding pastor, Mark Driscoll for pastoral misconduct.    Sargent’s own blogsite does not seem to be fixated on interference with families, but he did also weigh in separately on the recent Paige Patterson controversy.

It was to Spiritual Sounding Board that Christian homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt reportedly brought the year 2000 radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and scheduled speaker for the mid-June annual conference in Dallas of the Southern Baptist Convention.   In magpie fashion, Mrs. Smith proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women.    This inflamed the likes of Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition with over 3,000 signatures for Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post, which is scheduled to be discussed tomorrow, May 22.    Swallow-Prior has been openly critical of Dr. Patterson’s leadership to exclude women from theology professorships at the seminary, a feminist issue that can reasonably be associated with biblical instruction for a woman not to teach or exercise authority over men.    Swallow-Prior’s actions indicate that she is an LGBT sympathizer and is in alignment with a faction that wants to push the SBC in the direction of a leftist social-justice gospel.   There are suggestions that various Southern Baptist arms, including the ERLC, have benefitted from the largesse of George Soros’  Open Society Foundation,  and this Dallas seminary coup, if successful, has strong implications for the unilateral divorce repeal debate in Austin that resumes with the 2019 legislative session.

In the four-minute audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused.   Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”,  and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce.    Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing he could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries”, already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth.    Not that Dr. Patterson should be required to bow and scrape before these militant hussies, it is an important point of chronology that this interview pre-dated the inception of these groups by several years, so it is a bit unreasonable to even accuse him of “insensitivity”.   From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about.   (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact).    He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady, rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’s have vocally characterized it as in their smear campaign.

He told this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’….   Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but  SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard.   He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred….
“…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken.  He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her.  Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’  Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.

Folks, that’s how it’s supposed to work in the kingdom of God!
In fact, something similar happened nearly 40 years ago in SIFC’s home.

...Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.
– Matthew 21:31

That formerly abusive man will get into heaven before any of these harpies trying to remove Dr. Patterson will, trust me.   No civil paperwork needed.    In fact, the rebellious filing of a divorce petition, in direct violation of 1 Cor. 6:1-8, is the trigger that tends to create much of the violence, along with the illicit presence of an immoral relationship which an insecure woman who is not submitted to Christ will often herself introduce, in her own abusiveness toward the marriage.   On the other hand, a biblical, chaste separation, where the abuser knows and trusts that their spouse remains committed to the home and to reconciliation, will often lead to genuine repentance.
I find a little bit of flaw with Dr. Patterson’s articulation, but no fault whatsoever with his conduct.   The fact that these condemning women have so much open disdain for God’s word and for His ways tells me all I really need to know about their characters, and about their qualification for the “ministry” they claim.

In contrast to Spiritual Sounding Board,  the “ministry”  A Cry for Justice is a bit older and more established.
(Note: we have removed the earlier reference to tax-exempt nonprofit status  which was in error, after ACFJ advised this was not correct.)

When founded in 2012, it was run by Pastor Jeff Crippen, of Christ Reformation Church in Tillamook, Oregon, and by Barbara Roberts of Australia, who claims to have come out of an abusive marriage, and is presently in a biblically-adulterous remarriage with a man she also says has come out of an abusive marriage.    Both have written various books on the topic of domestic abuse / violence and the “acceptability” of divorce, since 2008-9.    Crippen is a former law enforcement professional, and bolsters the “authority” of his books with that background.   He appears to be in a 40-year covenant marriage.   Crippen makes various charges in this 2012 post against conservative Christian denominations and fellowships, some biblical, and some not-so-much, for example:

“Taking Stock

Therefore, if your church:

  1. embraces a theology  that presumes a church member/professing Christian really is a Christian, regardless of how they are living,
  2. emphasizes the headship of the husband and father and the submission of the wife and mother without getting right down to the “nitty-gritty” of what abuse of headship actually looks like, so that the men in the church even “squirm” in the pew if they are guilty,
  3. does not, like we used to, permit women to vote or to pray aloud,
  4. teaches that the marriage covenant is not to be broken, that divorce is wrong (that sounds biblical, but what it usually translates into is the clear implication that abuse is not grounds for divorce)
  5. teaches that abuse victims, normally women, are pleasing God and suffering for Christ by remaining in a marriage to an abuser,
  6. discourages (in some cases forbids) a wife from saying anything negative about her husband (this is often expressed as a discouraging ‘gossip’)

…then I suggest to you that it is not fundamentally the troubled marriage that is threatening the health of your church, but it is the climate that has been created which inevitably deals injustice to victims.”

“Injustice Destroys Unity

“As more and more people in the congregation begin to realize this injustice, unity is destroyed.  As we, pastors and leaders, dig our heels in further, all the while telling ourselves that we are standing faithful for Christ in this, we only add fuel to the fire.

“There was still another hard thing that I had to face:  just what do we think of women?  The fact is that most conservative, Bible-believing pastors like ourselves actually look down upon women.  We see them as inferior beings.  We object to this charge, but our actions betray our real attitudes.

“I had to ask myself, “Jeff, just exactly what is it that is going on in your head when a woman walks into your office and asks for help?”  The answer I ultimately saw was “I see her as an inferior being and I talk down to her.”  Really, and with ruthless honesty – “What does Pastor _________ think about a woman who walks into his office?”  “What does he think about his wife?”  Don’t rush to answers.  The first responses we give are usually wrong.”

(Extracted from “An Open Letter from a A Pastor to Pastors”,  September 6, 2012)

Crippen reportedly stepped away from the  ACFJ “ministry” in 2017, leaving it in the hands of Barbara Roberts and her assistants.   Roberts was the author of the decidedly unbiblical book, “Not Under Bondage: Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion”.

Of course, the very title of this tome suggests a reliance on the too-common eisegesis of 1 Corinthians 7:15, which itself relies on an abusive translation of the Greek term “douloo” to include the marriage bond, and in so doing, fabricates an out-of-context “exception” for both divorce and remarriage based on a spouse’s desertion.    No one-flesh supernatural, inseverable joining for this bunch — that “demeans” women and “enables” abuse!    This book was written in 2008, and Ms. Roberts entered her adulterous union in 2011.     While our Lord says all divorce is man-fabricated, Roberts claims there is a “distinction” between a “treacherous divorce” and “disciplinary divorce”…

“Disciplinary divorce is permitted by the Bible. It applies in cases of abuse, adultery and desertion, where a seriously mistreated spouse divorces a seriously offending spouse.

“Treacherous divorce is condemned by the Bible. It occurs when a spouse obtains divorce for reasons other than abuse, adultery or desertion. I did not invent those terms by the way, I got them from another author. To explain the scriptural basis for the distinction between disciplinary and treacherous divorce took a whole book, so I’d best not try to go into it here!

“Understanding the biblical principle of disciplinary divorce is liberating, especially for the victims of domestic abuse, who have been the Cinderellas in the divorce controversy for centuries. God doesn’t say that abused spouses have to stay, put up and suffer. They are free to separate, divorce and, if they choose, remarry. They don’t have to be sacrificed on the altar of the institution of marriage, at the hands of a cruel spouse and a judgemental [sic] church. They can seek freedom from bondage and rebuild their lives, without guilt or condemnation.” 

(We would add…without much of a healthy fear of God!)    So, this brings us to the nitty-gritty of the issue to remove a seminary head who is committed to biblical marriage permanence and whose actions reject the falsehoods of the “social justice gospel”.    The full (and grossly errant) ACFJ  “Position on Divorce” can be read here.

ACFJ defines “abuse” that justifies divorce as follows:  “A pattern of coercive control (ongoing actions or inactions) that proceeds from a mentality of entitlement to power, whereby, through intimidation, manipulation and isolation, the abuser keeps his* target subordinated and under his control. This pattern can be emotional, verbal, psychological, spiritual, sexual, financial, social and physical. Not all these elements need be present, e.g., physical abuse may not be part of it.”

ACFJ goes on to claim on their site (without biblical authority) that the marriage covenant is “broken” by this “abuse”.   On the contrary, our bible states that, although many things violate the marriage covenant, only physical death actually breaks it.     Somebody’s obviously lying here:  either it’s Barbara Roberts, the self-interested, legalized adulteress, hoping to sell her apostate book, or it’s Jesus and Paul.    What do you think?

There is some misapplied-but-interesting lore behind ACFJ’s iconic Facebook cover:   “Saint Lucy was a rich Christian woman of Sicily who refused marriage and gave her money to the poor. Her rejected suitor (a pagan fellow to whom her mother had betrothed her) denounced Lucy to the authorities during the Diocletian persecution. The Governor of Syracuse ordered Lucy to burn a sacrifice to the emperor’s image. When she refused the Governor sentenced her to be defiled in a brothel. Christian tradition states that when the guards came to take her away, they could not move her even when they hitched her to a team of oxen. Bundles of wood were then heaped about her and set on fire, but would not burn. Finally, she met her death by the sword in 304 AD.   A later legend says that Lucy’s eyes were gouged out as part of the persecution but were miraculously restored at her death.  In the painting Lucy is standing before the Governor who condemned her at the behest of the abuser who sought to marry her. She is pointing upward to Heaven, warning the judge of the wrath that will come upon him for siding with the ungodly. The Holy Spirit hovers over her.”

If the Holy Spirit is hovering over this (purportedly, persecuted) organization, it is a grieved and quenched one.   

“Standerinfamilycourt” would like to conclude this post with some balancing thoughts by Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College, and Research Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, The Independent Institute, and the Inter-American Institute, from his 2017 article, “How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution”:

“The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally, fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice.

“Even more serious are fabricated accusations of domestic violence, a well-known weapon in divorce courts and a tool of the feminist lobby for creating single-parent homes and depriving children of fathers. They constitute another clear and direct attack on justice. Some Christians have indeed weighed in—unhelpfully. 

“In ‘Freeing the Oppressed: A Call to Christians concerning Domestic Abuse‘, Ron Clark parrots standard, patently preposterous feminist claims (“every 15 seconds a spouse kills his wife”). His personalized definition of “domestic violence” bears no relation to plain English, with “manipulation,” “self-pity,” and even “apologies” classed as “violence.” His books are a litany of government falsehoods that are used to exacerbate the family crisis and augment government power. But even if Clark is right, then why are the other churches so silent? Here too, the church should have something to say, one way or the other.  But here too, as with divorce generally, as with rape accusations, they are silent.”

 We note that Dr. Baskerville is a tireless critic of our immoral and unconstitutional unilateral divorce laws, whose proponents are constantly seeking to justify with “straw-man” arguments, such as claims that stripping ALL (offending and non-offending) divorce defendants of their basic Bill of Rights protections is imperative to reducing spousal suicide from “feeling trapped in abusive marriages”.    While correlation studies have indeed been done that show a slight drop in spousal suicide rates with the rise in states that have passed unconstitutional “family laws”, those studies ignore important resulting factors like the hefty social costs, the suicide, homicide, physical and sexual abuse rates of children in the resulting broken homes, and the suicide rates among legally-abandoned spouses, especially those alienated from their children due to no fault of their own.

You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.   – Deuteronomy 16:19

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!