There are some things you can get away with. What I am talking about is Christian morality. It is probably the culture that has infected the church, but there are some things we tolerate within the church because 'it is what it is' as they say. I like to call them socially acceptable Christian sins. I'm not talking about anything messy like pornography, murder, robbery, rape or gay marriage. I am talking about those nice tidy 'everyone has that issue' sins that we never talk about at church because everybody knows somebody that is afflicted by them.
We stand in our pulpits or sit in our classroom chairs and we talk about the awful state of the world and how happy we are that we do not live that way, what ever 'that way' may be, but quietly and under our noses, there is one thing that does not pass the Christian smell test.
Some will say I am not qualified to talk about this because I am not married, but I tell you I am, if only because Jesus was not married and Paul was not married and they both talked about this sin.
That sin is divorce. I am sorry, but there should not be divorce in a Christian family and yet the rate of divorce within the church is nearly equal with that of the world in general. It is a crime against God's plan for His people and yet it happens. And please note, I am not talking about those that were divorced prior to conversion here. I am talking about families that were formed within the church that become broken while serving Christ. Here is what Jesus said about divorce.
Matthew 19:1-12
When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For
there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who
have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live
like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can
accept this should accept it.”
There you have it. In God's eyes, a man and a woman that are married to each other become one unit. When divorce happens and then remarriage to others, these men and women commit adultery.
There are so many rationalizations for this behavior. We tell ourselves that since it's ok to remarry after the death of a marriage partner, then since I consider my ex dead to me, I can remarry and live the way I want to. Another popular rationalization is that marriage was different in Jesus' day. Men could divorce their wives for burning the toast; this is not true today, so the concept of divorce and remarriage is different.
No it is not. It is still adultery. There are other rationalizations for remarriage after divorce, but I will not go into them now.
My point here is that the American evangelical church tolerates this less than optimal situation and so there are divorced, remarried adulterous people that are active members in the church. Sin is present in the body and no one does anything about it. We preach it time and time again, that marriage is between a man and a woman and is forever in God's eyes, but we tolerate divorce and a remarried adulterous state among the membership. We are no different than the pharisees that Jesus was talking to.
We are basically saying that adultery is OK. We expect better, but we can live with it. We won't stand for fornicators, perverts and molesters, but if it's just adultery, well, everything will be all right.
That is a bit simplistic isn't it? Nevertheless, Christ's standard is what is written above. Christian divorce (oxymoron) and remarriage raises so many questions. Is the remarried state of divorced people recognized by God? To be moral, must they leave their new partner and go back to their old partner? What about the blended families? Can we split them up? Is that a problem?
You see this is what divorce does. It makes a mess. It makes a mess every bit as big as any other sin and many times divorce happens because of other sin problems within the marriage.
Now I do not want to be like the pharisees here. I am not a legalist (anymore). I have sinned and I will probably do so again. And yet I am in the Church. The other Christians at church tolerate me despite my sin and as long as they don't have to hear about it :^)))
So here is what I propose. Let all the sinners in. All of them. Let's quit squawking about specific sins. Let's uphold the whole standard and try to help each other to heaven at the same time. We are all broken. Let's help each other with the cleanup in aisle two.
