Divorce as the lesser of evils in a fallen world

Posted by Sappho on August 25th, 2005 filed in Marriage

If after careful consideration the marriage relationship is deemed beyond repair, and the effects of continuing the marriage to be more destructive of the welfare or persons than divorce, the decision for divorce may be recognized as a responsible choice, the lesser of several evils in a fallen world. Recognizing that each party generally bears some responsibility for the failure of the marriage, a decision for divorce may be made in reliance upon God’s grace.

Part of an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) statement on divorce, cited by ReligiousTolerance.org in its summary of Christian denominations’ positions on divorce

Another approach to divorce (I think most common among the more liberal Protestant denominations) is to see Jesus’ words as reflecting God’s intention for our marriages – that they last – but to allow that, in a fallen world, some marriages may be already broken to the point where severing them is the lesser evil. Another example of this approach can be found in my second year Education for Ministry material, when it comes to discussing the passage on divorce in Mark:

In any case there is nothing in the passage that refers to the situation when a marriage has irretrievably broken down. The root of the matter is one’s attitude to others. The specific issue in Jesus’ pronouncement is the arbitrary and selfish exercise of power by one person over another. As far as the possibility of divorce is concerned, there is no reason to suspect that Mark intends to state anything other than the understanding of marriage and divorce current in Judaism: “The altar sheds tears for him who divorces his first wife.” Indeed, the causeless divorce of a first wife, even if valid, is deemed to be an act contrary to the will of the Almighty. Yet where continued life together is absolutely impossible, it is recognized that no impediment should hinder the release of divorce.

This isn’t, after all, an approach confined to divorce; many Christians approach the Sermon on the Mount as a whole in the same way; it shows us the ideal that we fall short of, but it’s not to be taken seriously as a set of rules that we would actually always be able to follow. On the other hand, it’s my understanding that early Quakers did take the Sermon on the Mount seriously, in just that way.

In some ways, I find the “divorce as part of a fallen world” approach intuitively appealing, since it is close to how I tend to look at my parents’ own divorce. OK, my parents are flawed. Their marriage didn’t work out. But I can still appreciate them as parents, and I can still feel that we made the best of our second chances. So, maybe divorce involves sin, but don’t we already know that we all have sinned?

On the other hand, I think we need a certain caution against accepting too readily our failures to live the ideals that Jesus sets forth. This is especially clear to me when I consider those other teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, about loving your enemies and about turning the other cheek. We can argue about how we actually practically live these teachings, in the flawed world we face. But by the time we get to the point of suggesting a place for torture, or of dismissing the significance of Abu Ghraib, surely we’ve gone too far. And when a Christian minister gets to the point of calling for the assassination of a popularly elected leader in Venezuela, because he’s too socialist, someone has forgotten just who he’s supposed to be following. If Jesus’ teaching about loving our enemies means anything at all, there has to be something we won’t do to our enemy (and all our enemy’s innocent kin and neighbors) to win.

Similarly, it seems to me that Jesus’ teaching for my personal life ought to sometimes pull me up short, if I’m actually taking it seriously.