Marriage is a God-given sacrament, one to be entered into soberly and prayerfully. It should not be used to assuage your guilt or solve some problem. Using marriage for such purposes actually blasphemes God more than unsanctioned rack-hitting because marriage is a sacramental covenant ordained by God, committed to in the presence of God. if your motives stink of apostasy, God is insulted by your abuse of His privilege. It is worse than the unbeliever taking communion. You are marrying the wrong person at the wrong time and for the wrong reason, all for show, just because you’re embarrassed that people know you’re engaging in morally questionable behavior.
The
woman kept calling herself “single.”
She was not "single." She was divorced. Five times.
Now married to Husband #6 and giving marital advice to gullible
Church Folk, the woman was telling amusing anecdotes about her
various marriages and sexual encounters in between while gassing
up the room with alleged praises to God. And I'm thinking to
myself, I'm sitting in a room full of idiots. Church Folk
are so easily lead, so incredibly naive, that they'd sit under
the teaching of an obviously disturbed, insecure and immature
woman who treats marriage as a trivial romantic experience much
like dating in high school. As Christians, we are no longer
under the Law but under Grace, but shall we continue in sin
that grace may abound? [Romans 6] The Law provides us
structure and guidance so that we are aware of sin [Romans 7:7].
In our modern culture, we give people who have remarried a pass,
pastors performing these nuptials and congregations welcoming
these second and third pastiche families, as if remarriage is
somehow less sinful than sex outside of marriage. Marriage is a
very serious commitment and, while we can thumb wrestle over the
meaning and consequences of fornication, adultery is an
unambiguous sin. The Law considers sexually active divorcees to
be in a state of adultery, and remarried divorcées to be causing
their second or third or tenth wives to enter into a perpetual
state of adultery [Matt 5:31-32]. I'm sure your pastor has some
doctrinal Heimlich Maneuver, some investigation of scripture,
that helps everybody sleep at night—the remarrieds and the
pastor who perform such "sacraments," —but this is the truth.
Getting remarried may make your pastor feel better or
your friends and family feel better, but in terms of God's Law,
a parking ticket is a parking ticket: you're committing adultery
either way. If God's grace is enough to forgive your adultery
within your remarriage, why isn't it enough to forgive your
sexual activity outside of marriage? Why do we subject God's
Holy Word to a moral test, morality being whatever society—not
God—says it is? And why do we applaud perverting God's
sacrament of marriage, His special, precious and divine gift to
us, to be used as, ostensibly, a shield against social ostracization for loving someone intimately?
This is the morass we sink into once we start judging anybody
for anything. Only God can judge us. What concerns me is our
lack of humility. Lord, I am not worthy to receive You.
We're not. We are not deserving of a second chance, either in
life or in marriage. But grace abounds, grace we routinely take
for granted. Choosing to remarry should be a humbling,
life-altering decision made in the fear of God. Lord, I am
not worthy to receive You. It's not a joke, like this
desperately lost and confused woman the pastor has actually
placed in leadership, giggling over her five ex-husbands. A
second chance is an amazing gift. Just understand, in terms of
biblical Law (which we selectively observe as it suits us),
remarrying is just as great a sin as sexually engaging without
the benefit of matrimony: God cannot bless either state.
Divorcees seeking marriage in order to have sex without a guilty
conscience are getting it all wrong. They are living lives of
superstition and not an honest or informed Christian experience.
Should divorced people spend the rest of their lives alone? I
don't think God is asking us to, but I believe God is glorified
by our willingness to spend the rest of our lives alone
in order to give meaning and truth to the vows we took in His
presence. I wasn't so offended by this nutty lady referring to
herself as intermittently "single" as I was by the lack of
deference she gave to the sacrament itself. As Catholics take
communion, they recite, corporately, Lord, I am not worthy to
receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed, a
reference to the Centurion's plea for Jesus to heal his servant
in Matthew 8:5-11. The centurion answers the Lord, “Lord, I am
not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word
and my servant will be healed.” It is the only response humble
enough to be fitting of Jesus’ invitation. The fact is, we are
not worthy, yet through an act of sheer grace, our souls can be
made suitable for the divine presence.
God responds to our motives: not only to what we do but to what
we are willing to do, to what we are willing to
sacrifice for Him. Most people I know are not willing to be
alone, not willing to honor that vow, and take for granted that
hell won't be their reward for putting their selfishness,
loneliness, and personal neediness ahead of or in place of an
actual relationships with God. The fact is, you never should
have gotten married in the first place. Yu married the wrong
person at the wrong time for the wrong reason, and no you're
Stuck Like Chuck. Bail out if you want to, but you made that
vow, you said those words—for better or worse. Going in, we all
recognized this as a possibility but never thought it would
happen to us., that we could be left on the beach. Nobody's
asking you to lock yourself in a closet for the rest of your
life, bt, to be an actual Christian as opposed to just being
Church Folk, we should be willing to go it alone if
that's His will for our lives. I don't know anyone at all who
has ever put their lives in that context.
Divorced people are not
“single,” are never “single” again. They've been through
something that has changed their lives forever. It is wrong to
think of ourselves as “single" or to be involved in a “single's
ministry” with persons who have never been married. Marriage is
a lifelong covenant between two people and God. Calling
ourselves “single” denies the sovereignty of God and the
holiness of that covenant.
It’s like suffering a terrible car crash and, after the car
comes out of the body shop, driving around calling the car
“new.” It is not new. It’s been through a major trauma. It will
never be new again. Which doesn’t mean life doesn’t go on, but
that the marriage experience is part of our journey. We have
learned and we have grown, two things calling ourselves “single”
denies. Divorced—most especially multiple-divorced—people
running around calling themselves “Single” are acting childishly
and foolishly, having learned nothing, remaining immature and
ready to make the same mistakes over and over.
Our faith in Jesus Christ calls us to admit our faults, not deny
them. James 5:16 says “Confess your faults one to another, and
pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual
fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” KJV
I realize some are rolling their eyes, saying, “It’s just an
expression.” Expressions matter. What we say and how we say it
matters (James 3:2-12). Our testimony matters. Sister, brother:
you are not “single,” and will never be “single” again.
Singleness is a gift from God, one virtually none of us fully
appreciate when we have it. Most of us, myself included, have
abused the privilege of singleness, taking it for granted and
rushing into bondage with one bad relationship after another. Most of us
cannot handle being alone (I Corinthians 7:7-9). The marriage
covenant is a sacrament, like communion—another thing we often
fail to take seriously. Calling yourself “single,” even as “just
an expression,” reduces the sacrament of marriage to just
another dating experience and denies the sovereignty of God in
our lives.
The Apostle Paul provided lots of guidance about marriage,
especially in I Corinthians Chapter 7. The takeaway from that
chapter is Paul doesn’t like women very much. He honors them
like mothers while condescending to them like children. He
writes extremely few words to women, as the vast majority of his
writings were to men. Paul would rather no one married, but
accepts that some people cannot control themselves sexually and
would, therefore, be better off within the bond of marriage.
This is considerably stupid thinking. People who are having
trouble controlling themselves outside of marriage will have
trouble controlling themselves inside of marriage. Sisters; if
he can’t keep it in his pants, don’t marry him. A man (or woman)
with a sexual addiction can and will never be satisfied by a
lifelong partner. Paul is incredibly wrong in this idiotic
notion of getting married if you can’t control yourself. If
you’re having trouble controlling yourself, see a doctor. I’m
sure there’s some pill that can help you keep Mr. Johnson in
perspective.
Third Time's The charm: Ideally, a vow before God shuld actually mean something.
Let Your Conscience be Your Guide?
Mary Fairchild of
About.Com put it this way:
Though divorce is a serious matter in God's opinion (Malachi
2:16), it is not the unforgivable sin. If you confess your sins
to God and ask for forgiveness, you are forgiven (1 John 1:9)
and can move on with your life. If you can confess your sin to
your former spouse and ask forgiveness without causing further
hurt, you should seek to do so. From this point forward you
should commit to honor God's Word pertaining to marriage. Then
if your conscience permits you to remarry, you should do so
carefully and reverently when the time comes. Only marry a
fellow believer. If your conscience tells you to remain single,
then remain single.
Conscience can trick you sometimes. Your conscience is a
powerful mechanism, ingeniously designed by God to prompt our
moral compass. But it is not necessarily an absolute thing. So
far as I know, the only real test of love is time. If it’s
really love, then what’s the rush? If you’re all hot for sister,
give it a year. Get to really know her—the good and the bad.
Then see where you’re at. The main reason most Church Folk I
know remarry is for sex. If you took sex out of the equation,
there’d be no pressing need to remarry. Loving someone is no
sin. Being close to someone doesn’t require God’s blessing or,
say, a license. In most cases, these are folks who have hot
drawers. They are probably already hitting the rack together,
anyway, and their conscience is driving them to marry to avoid
shame. But avoiding shame is a disastrously stupid reason to
marry.
There is, in fact, only one reason to ever marry: the absolute
conviction that this is the person God has ordained for your
life. And that conviction needs to be tested and tried. You have
to give it time. A firm foundation is made from concrete. But
just because concrete appears solid doesn’t make it so. Concrete
not only has to dry (where it looks solid), it has to *cure,* a
chemical process of reaching its absolute hardness and purity.
Time is the only way concrete will cure. Marrying someone while
you’re still in that heightened state of arousal, that dimwit
infatuation where your nose is all wide over the person and you
can’t keep your hands off of them—is a stupid thing to do.
You’re not building on a firm foundation and you’re not giving
that foundation time to cure. You just want to hit it. Or you’re
already hitting it and you feel guilty.
Marriage is a God-given sacrament, one to be entered into
soberly and prayerfully. It should not be used to assuage your
guilt or solve some problem. Using marriage for such purposes
actually blasphemes God more than the unsanctioned rack-hitting
because marriage is a sacramental covenant ordained by God,
committed to in the presence of God. As I’ve said many times,
God responds not to our words or even to our deeds but to our
motives. You can throw the biggest Juanita Bynum circus-wedding
in the world, if your motives stink of apostasy, God is insulted
by your abuse of His privilege. It is worse than the unbeliever
taking communion. You are marrying the wrong person at the wrong
time and for the wrong reason, all for show, just because you’re
embarrassed that people know you’re engaging in morally
questionable behavior.
For me, it’s really not a question of conscience. I still love
my wife. It’s really that simple: God has not released me from
that bond. We stood together and made a promise before God. I
take that sort of thing seriously. I can't imagine some woman
being gullible enough to actually take a wedding vow from me
seriously. Why would she believe me? I mean, I took that vow
before, said those words before. I gave her everything.
Everything. Everything I was, everything I ever wanted out
of life, I surrendered for her. And she still left. Why would I
believe the next her? How could I trust her? I don’t
trust her. I don’t believe her. I won’t stand before God and
pretend. I won’t stand there and tell that lie. Your mileage may
vary, but a sober perspective on this business of serial
marriage casts serious doubt on the maturity and sanity of
people who keep putting themselves through that. It seems
ultimately selfish; playing with God while calling yourself
“Christian.”
Beyond that, I’m old and
cranky and frankly have not met anyone I was even remotely
interested in marrying. I’d rather not have a half-baked
marriage of sexual convenience, someone to keep me company and
remind me to use fabric softener in the wash. What I had was
amazing. Magical. Intoxicating. Once you’ve experienced that,
it’s really hard to settle for second best.
I tend to suspect the people who nag me about remarrying have
never themselves actually experienced that kind of love. There’s
no definitive litmus test to tell you when it’s really love as
opposed to infatuation or something else. But we’ve been apart
twenty years, now. and there has not been a single day that I
have not thought of her, prayed for her. It was an experience
I’ll always cherish, and one I am forced to honor by not
cheapening it to merely one of a rapid succession of
“marriages.”
Your own mileage may vary, but I've yet to hear a convincing
argument in favor of Christians remarrying and, certainly, not
the ridiculous serial marrying of a third or fifth spouse. God
does not bless sin. God is not glorified, not pleased, by
our reducing this divine and amazing gift to just sex. I'm happy
to listen to any pastor who wants to give this a shot, convince
me they're not blaspheming God by performing these serial
unions, but I'd advise him not to hold his breath. We're
Christians. Believe it or not, once upon a time that used to
mean something.
Christopher J. Priest
5 July 2013
editor@praisenet.org
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