Oklahoma may seem an unlikely place to discuss divorce and remarriage. After all, it’s the state that inspired a wholesome, well-scrubbed musical and spawned esteemed family man James Dobson. The land of oil wells, a prayer tower, and straight-living towns like Merle Haggard’s Muskogee are a world away from the revolving liaisons of Hollywood and the quickie marriage parlors of Reno.
But even the western end of the Bible Belt has been frayed by the growing national trend. All four ministers in this forum are confronting more and more people seeking remarriage. One said that fully half the requests he gets to officiate at weddings come from those previously married.
It’s a volatile subject. How can pastors minister to such people without undermining the Bible’s teaching on marriage? Of all the LEADERSHIP forums, this one provoked the most disagreement. Yet interestingly, the afternoon discussion in Tulsa was not disagreeable.
In voices softened with drawls and respect, the participants spoke honestly and openly. They are:
J. Hardin Boyer, pastor of Tulsa Bible Church, who does not remarry at all unless the previous spouse is dead;
Harold Ivan Smith, former Nazarene pastor until his own divorce, then a denominational specialist, now head of a Kansas City-based ministry to singles called Tear Catchers;
Ralph Speas, minister of Christian education at Tulsa’s Eastwood Baptist Church, who remarries only in the aftermath of adultery or desertion and requires the person first to make a serious attempt at reconciliation with the previous mate;
Robert Wise, pastor of Our Lord’s Community Church (Reformed Church in America) in Oklahoma City, who decides remarriage questions on a case-by-case basis.
None of the four speaks for his denomination or fellowship. Each simply articulates his personal attempt to minister to hurting people while maintaining biblical integrity.
Leadership: When divorced people come to your office asking for a wedding ceremony, what do you say?
Hardin Boyer: I feel my most important ministry is to give them a biblical view of divorce. Whether or not they agree with me, I think it’s critical for them to see what the Word of God says.
Even after the fact of a divorce, they need to know when it’s wrong to divorce and when it’s right to remarry. Then I ask, “Are you willing to subject yourself to the Word of God? Will you objectively study the passages and submit to them?”
And finally, I offer my help. Frequently these people are in turmoil. In most cases they’ve had personal problems to begin with that contributed to the divorce, and unless these are resolved, they’ll take them into the next marriage.
So even if I’m not willing to remarry them, I’ll refer them to pastors who will, and I tell them, “I’m here to help and counsel you.”
Leadership: When do you agree to remarry someone?
Boyer: I do not remarry people at all, unless the person’s spouse has died. I tell them, “You may have a biblical right to remarry, but this is my position.”
The reason is that even if I try to use Matthew 19’s exception clause (“for immorality”)-the situations I face are impossible to judge. Who’s the innocent party? Am I to track down the former mate? Has God called me to be a private detective?
Let’s say a woman comes to me and says, “My husband committed adultery.” Even though what he did was wrong (assuming he did it), how do I know how much part she had in driving him to it?
So I tell people, “This is my personal conviction. You may disagree totally, but I’ll respect your conviction if you’ll respect mine.”
Ralph Speas: I can see Hardin’s point in not wanting to be a judge. People can completely fool you, and no pastor wants to stand up there endorsing a remarriage when everybody else is smirking and saying, “We know what really happened.”
My position is different, though I still aim to let the Bible be my authority. I won’t remarry anybody unless the divorce was for reason of desertion or immorality. And by immorality I mean a lifestyle of immorality, not isolated acts.
One man told me, “My wife committed adultery, and I want a divorce.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “I didn’t know she had been living that way.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “It happened once twenty-five years ago.”
He didn’t have a case. The word in Matthew 19 is porneia, which means a lifestyle of immorality that the person refuses to quit.
Leadership: What do you do with the people you won’t remarry?
Speas: I try to help the person develop a creative lifestyle as a single. Sometimes the person needs to just forget about marriage for a while. I often tell people, “You can’t be happy married until you’re happy single.” The Bible is full of truths on how to cope with life where we are, not somewhere else.
Sometimes that means going back to attempt reconciliation with the former mate. Maybe it means facing responsibilities as a parent-you can divorce your spouse, but not your kids. I do everything I can to help these people, but first of all I want to know if they’ve measured up scripturally. I can’t get any peace unless I have that.
Harold Ivan Smith: Ralph, how long have you been at Eastwood?
Speas: Seven years.
Smith: In some churches, there could be two or three pastors in seven years, and the policy on remarriage could change drastically from pastor to pastor. That’s why I see a need to involve laity in at least an advisory capacity to provide continuity and consistency.
I don’t have problems with your point of view, or Hardin’s either, if those positions are consistent. What really bothers divorced people is inconsistency. Some pastors marry so-and-so but refuse to marry someone else, and the only reason seems to be personal whim. Divorced individuals want a policy set by the church as a whole.
Leadership: Robert, where do you come down in all of this?
Robert Wise: I think I represent a different position. You see, I can’t be as precise in saying, “Here’s what the Bible says, and that’s it.” Is the Bible a legal measuring stick, a list of requirements to be met? Or is there a spirit within the measuring stick that leads us to ask other questions that aren’t so easily answered?
What I’ve heard so far, which I respect, is a view of the Bible as essentially a legal document. I find it difficult, however, to come at the Bible that way.
One reason is the way Jesus dealt with people-for instance, the woman caught in adultery. He obviously stepped over one of the laws of Moses in that case. The woman was totally wrong; nothing about the situation tempers what she did. Yet Jesus responds with grace and forgiveness.
Perhaps it was arbitrary but certain people who are in the midst of wrong are willing to repent, to completely turn their lives in a new direction, to adopt a Christian lifestyle.
In the face of that, I’m personally unable to say, “OK, you’ve changed your life, changed your heart, but I can’t affirm that by officiating at your wedding. Good luck.” No, I have to say, “I’ve gone with you through this process, and now I’m willing to help you make this marriage work.”
So my position does contain some arbitrariness. Not that it doesn’t have guidelines, but those guidelines spring from the spirit of Scripture, which isn’t always black and white. If I minister to people, I find I have to wander into gray areas. Sometimes I’ll be wrong, but I think I’ll be redemptive.
Boyer: My problem with that, Robert, is that if you take such a view on divorce and remarriage, what keeps you from taking that view on whatever subject comes along? For instance, Ephesians 5 says certain things about how a man relates to his wife. If the laws of Scripture aren’t accurate and technical in details, then what keeps us from dismissing them whenever a problem area arises?
Wise: To be consistent, the principle has to hold. For example, in the case of Ephesians 5, it must be understood in spirit, not in law. So I see those instructions prefaced by the principle: Submit to one another.
Boyer: But does it have to be one or the other-the spirit or the law? Can’t they go together?
As I understand it, in Matthew 5 for instance, Christ interprets the law technically, but he says the spirit must go along with it. The Pharisees accepted the rigidity of the law, but there was no spirit, no heart behind it. Christ said that not only shall you not murder-technically-but you must not have a spirit of hate in your heart.
Wise: Exactly. I’m just suggesting that interpreting the letter involves the spirit, and I find I’m not able to be as precise about that as some others are.
That’s why I tend not to start the initial counseling time with biblical material. I’ve found that if I do, divorced people usually begin saying what they think I want to hear. They tell how crummy their ex was in order to justify the earlier divorce, so now it’s fine to proceed. Meanwhile, the new partner sits there nodding away.
If I play that game, I get nowhere. I might as well go ahead and marry them on the spot.
What I need to do instead-and it’s quite a trick-is to help the person really understand what happened in the first marriage. The place to start is psychological rather than doctrinal. I must peel back the layers of what went on before in such a way that they are confronted and don’t end up repeating history.
So I’ll say to the partner, “Have all of your questions about why he/she was divorced been completely answered? Is any area still unclear to you?” I’ll lean forward and stare right into the person’s eyes. “Are you sure?”
Often they start to back-pedal. “Well, there are a couple of things I’ve wondered about. … ” The conversation gets more and more honest the longer I play devil’s advocate.
Then, when I finally say, “Let’s take a look at what the Bible says,” people are ready to grasp its logic. They can see why God put it the way he did.
Leadership: Harold, what’s really going on inside divorced persons who want to remarry? What should pastors understand about them?
Smith: Some divorced people simply want to get married before their ex does-it’s almost a race to the altar-“I’ll show him I don’t need him.” That’s a danger.
For others, it’s a matter of legitimizing sex. I’m stunned by the number of people who get married a second time based on hormones. Then three months into the marriage, they find there’s nothing there.
But many times, remarriage has nothing to do with sexuality; it boils down to finances. There’s almost no way in our economy that divorced people can live on a single income, particularly those with children. Any church that takes a stand of no remarriage can’t just stop there; it needs to underwrite its theology financially. You must be ready to help that person be faithful to that point of Scripture.
Wise: Would that be as true for men as women?
Smith: Yes, because if they’re making regular alimony payments and child support, they’re financially strapped, too. Personally, I think that’s one reason living together has grown so dramatically.
Of course, it’s true that often women are in the tougher situation. The average divorced man in the United States pays alimony only fourteen months. So thousands of single mothers have no income-and along comes another man, and the second marriage has nothing to do with “biblical ideals.” It’s a financial arrangement.
Wise: That’s interesting. We’ve started helping some women in our church pursue legal action against former husbands, and they’ve been getting fairly decent settlements. It does change their emotional outlook. You can see a sort of sigh of relief, like “Finally-some breathing room.” When the church puts more strength behind the woman’s capacity to endure financially, it gives her the ability to be more responsible emotionally.
Smith: Your comments reflect the Oklahoma situation. But the law of the land is changing, particularly in California, where the courts now have only one mandate: joint custody. Theoretically, parents can never move away. Judges can force children as young as one or two to spend Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday with Mom and Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday with Dad. That’s the direction courts across the country are moving.
Also, the women’s movement has had an influence. Sometimes women must pay alimony to the husband. Occasionally the woman will abandon the children. One of my friends called her ex on her way to the airport and said, “I just got a great new job in Chicago. The kids and house are yours. See you later.” Suddenly he was the sole active parent.
Leadership: What other Bible passages, besides Matthew 19, shape your views of remarriage?
Boyer: Deuteronomy 24, of course-where the man gives his wife a certificate of divorce, sends her away, and she remarries another man. God then says that if her second husband divorces her, or if he dies, she cannot go back to her first husband because “she has been defiled.”
There are two interesting things about this. First, this doesn’t mean God institutes divorce. Deuteronomy 24 is simply telling what was happening in those days.
Second, somehow the woman was defiled by the second marriage. In Romans 7:3 Paul says if your husband dies, you’re free to remarry. But in Deuteronomy, you can’t remarry the first husband even if the second husband dies. It appears to me that even though she was divorced, she had no right to marry the second man, and because she did, she was defiled.
Smith: Another way of understanding that passage is to study what it meant to those it was written to. In that day, people didn’t know that sperm died; they thought it lived forever. That was why a woman was defiled-not because she was an awful person, but because in the future no one could guarantee which sperm had impregnated her. In Old Testament society, it was critical for a father to know a son was his offspring because he was passing his seed-an important concept then.
Old Testament marriages were primarily for procreation, for passing along the inheritance. Today’s marriages are relational. I think this adds a dimension to how we understand the living Word of God.
Wise: And in the Deuteronomical code, women were essentially property, so that the real problem of adultery was not the spiritual fracture but the confusing of property. It was a case of “You blemished my goods, so now you owe me.”
Boyer: Another, less confusing passage, is Malachi 2, where God talks about “your wife by covenant” and says he hates divorce. The word covenant is most important. In Joshua 9, we see that covenants are binding even when made under false pretenses. In God’s sight a covenant is not, should not, and-perhaps we may say-cannot be broken.
Leadership: How about the New Testament? Does it imply marital covenants cannot be broken?
Boyer: Mark 10 and Luke 16 both say that if you divorce and remarry, you commit adultery.
Some use 1 Corinthians 7 to justify desertion as biblical grounds for divorce. I reject that, because the word divorce is not used, and verse 11 specifically says if you leave, you must not remarry unless you come back to your previous mate. Saying desertion is grounds for divorce seems to me to be adding to what Christ said.
Lastly, Paul says that if you stay with your mate, you have the possibility of winning him or her to the Lord. But if you leave, what possibility is there?
So we’re back to Matthew 19. And even there, some good Bible scholars will say that immorality, in that passage, refers only to divorce, not remarriage. In other words, you can divorce for immorality, but you cannot remarry for any reason without committing adultery. I’m not sure where I stand on that, but it certainly seems to fit with all other Scripture.
In my view, Scripture teaches that the only possible basis for divorce is immorality, and I’m not sure that’s a biblical basis.
Smith: I respect that. We’ve made adultery grounds for divorce. In actuality it’s grounds for forgiveness.
Boyer: That’s what Hosea is all about. It shows that God forgives immorality. Hosea goes back to Gomer.
Wise: Interestingly enough, I agree with you on Matthew 19, Hardin, but with a different twist. I agree the covenant cannot be broken without adultery. But I see that describing what happens emotionally, not what happens legally.
When Jesus says you cause her to commit adultery, he’s not returning to Mosaic law. He’s describing an emotional and psychological reality. God’s intention for marriage is an intimate relationship between one man and one woman. When that is shattered, regardless of who the guilty party is, the effect is the same as adultery: the man and woman will reach for intimate relationships with someone else. These may not be sexual relationships. But people will find a place where they can be affirmed and heard in the depth of their being. When a spouse destroys that, it develops elsewhere.
Leadership: Then how do you respond?
Wise: Divorce is a very, very undesirable thing. But once it has happened, I find that the scriptural response is one of grace. As a minister, my job is to bring healing, to help the people see this as a grace situation.
It’s not unlike what happens in war. I cannot find it in Scripture, nor in myself, to say it’s right to kill in war (though a lot of churches get very good at that in wartime). I think killing is killing. But salvation isn’t given you because you somehow avoid killing-it always comes as a gift of God. No one is righteous.
I may be forced to go to war and kill, but that doesn’t make it right. Nor is divorce right. But in both cases, God’s grace can still come to me, and that’s the bottom line of Jesus’ ministry.
Speas: But should we sin that grace abound? Should we have a clever scheme of getting a divorce, marrying someone else, and saying, “It’s OK, God will forgive me”?
Wise: If I do that, I have violated the whole meaning of God’s grace.
Boyer: I think we need to make a distinction. Divorce is wrong, but it doesn’t mean a person lives under God’s judgment for the rest of his life. Like any sin-a wrong thought or desire-God can wipe it away.
But yet Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7 that sex is something special, that if you join yourself to a prostitute, you somehow sin against your body in a way unlike other sins. So adultery is a particular and different kind of sin. God forgives, yes, but still there are consequences.
That’s what Christ means in Matthew 19 where he says you become one flesh. How can you divide that? You cannot have a divorce without ripping up the oneness of a person’s being. He’s never the same again.
Smith: Some Christians love proof-texting, and we keep going to certain passages like Matthew 19. But I look at the context of Matthew 19.
It says, “When Jesus had finished saying these things. . .” What things? Matthew 18 is all about forgiving a person seventy times seven. And later in Matthew 19, Jesus says, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it has been given.” Then he talks about eunuchs-in a biblical sense, those who are not sexually active. My wife’s decision to divorce me made me a eunuch-not physically by castration, but by requiring sexual inactivity nonetheless. I’m remaining that way.
Jesus says, “Those who can accept this teaching should accept it.” I don’t think he was implying this is a great standard for everyone. The gift of celibacy is for those who can accept it. But there has to be another way for those who don’t have that gift.
Speas: I respect your opposition to proof-texting, but I do believe the Bible is a technical book, and it’s one I need to follow. In that I have security.
I do agree with you that divorce doesn’t mean you must remain celibate-if the divorce was for reason of immorality or desertion.
1 Corinthians 7 says that if the unbelieving partner departs, let him depart, and the brother or sister is not under bondage. I understand that to mean not just the bondage of remaining married to that person, but also the bondage of remaining single. God says it is not good for man to be alone. I personally believe every person ought to get married, and the exception is now and then. I think it’s God’s intention for everyone-because he’s made us that way-to live a married life biologically, psychologically, and spiritually.
Smith: What you have just stated is what I call the marriage myth, the notion that everybody ought to be married. This is what puts divorced people in such a bind.
You’re saying yes, we want creative singleness, but what you’re really saying is, “Too bad you can’t be in first class.” Pastors radiate this to a congregation, they model it, and everyone gets the idea they need to be married to be a whole person. And if you then tell divorced persons they don’t have a biblical basis to remarry, you heap up guilt and frustration. They’re trapped.
If a church takes a hard stand against divorce, it must take an equally high view of singleness. We must tell singles they can live life meaningfully. Peter says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.” Singles need to know they can live their lives redemptively, and it can be the greatest way they’ve ever lived.
Wise: Listening to this last exchange, I sense there’s a different approach to Scripture operating here. Not to put us in camps, but I see one group coming at divorce using Scripture as a technical book, a legal guideline. The other group comes at Scripture as an indicated direction.
We agree we need both spirit and law, but perhaps our differences center on whether we see the Bible more as law or more as spirit. Maybe this explains our divergence. There isn’t a single biblical view, but biblical views.
Leadership: That raises an interesting question. Within our readership, we’ve seen pastors take positions ranging from no remarriage except for widows and widowers, to remarriage only if the divorce was for certain reasons, to remarriage only if there’s been repentance and there’s good reason to believe the second marriage will work, to the position that “my job is to minister unconditionally to all who come, no questions asked.” How do you account for such a spectrum among people who all point to Scripture as their authority?
Smith: I see two principles at work. First, the only reason the church kept one position for so many years was because of the strength of a hierarchy. Today hierarchy is out; networks are in. It’s a consumer’s market where if a person doesn’t like what you teach/preach/model, he’ll go to the church down the block.
Second is “daddy’s daughter syndrome,” which means it doesn’t matter what your theology of divorce is, it will change if your daughter gets divorced. In my denomination, within a twelve-month period, six daughters of top-echelon leaders got divorces, and suddenly policies were reconsidered. It’s not as strong with “daddy’s son” for some reason. But with a daughter, daddies suddenly identify with the problem.
I don’t mean their revisions are self-serving. One man said to me, “For thirty years of ministry I had Matthew 19 down to a T, and then my daughter got divorced. I sat in my study for days and cried, remembering what I’d said to hundreds of people over the years. Those faces kept coming back to me, and I couldn’t help thinking, My God, what will I do if somebody says all those things to my daughter?”
You can’t ignore 1.8 million divorces each year. By sheer numbers, policy begins to change. For example, fifteen years ago, you couldn’t find two Southern Baptist churches that had single adult ministries, especially with divorced people participating. What a contrast today.
And a new wave is coming. Right now the economy is so bad a lot of people are stalling. They can’t afford a lawyer. But as soon as the economy picks up, we’re going to see an avalanche of divorces in this country, perhaps as high as three to four million for a year or two.
The church had better be ready. We have to adapt. It’s like Charles Wesley’s hymn says: “To serve the present age/ My calling to fulfill;/ Oh, may it all my pow’rs engage/ To do my Master’s will.”
Speas: I’m personally willing to face any situation and try to find what God’s Word says about it. Sometimes my interpretations change, not to accommodate the situation, but because the situation challenged my thinking, and I was able to see something new in Scripture.
But someday, will I try to accommodate a society that doesn’t believe in marriage and says, “Sure you can live together-that’s just fine”? If I liberalize my views of Scripture, I could. But if I continually seek to refine my interpretation while holding to the authority of what the Bible clearly says, I won’t.
Wise: I think that’s one point where we all agree. None of us wants to accommodate Scripture to the culture. Once we let social statistics dictate our understanding of Scripture, we’re back to the German church in 1932, and that’s a frightening specter.
So at least we’re all trying to maintain biblical integrity, even though we may see things differently.
Leadership: What do you think, Harold-has daddy’s daughter syndrome swung the pendulum too far?
Smith: I don’t know. I think the real problem is that we want black-and-white answers. I don’t believe we’re going to solve the divorce/remarriage crisis by taking Matthew 19 more literally.
The only solution is a better job of teaching marriage, a better job of preaching singleness and accepting singles so they don’t feel pushed into marriages, and more ongoing counseling.
As I see it, the five important questions every pastor needs to ask are:
1. Have you forgiven your ex?
2. Have you forgiven yourself?
3. Has enough time elapsed for healing and reconciliation? (at least two years, in my opinion)
4. Is there any unfinished business from this interval period?
5. Is remarriage God’s will for you?
One important issue we haven’t talked about is children. How do our policies on remarriage affect the 12.5 million children in the United States being raised by a single parent? What do they mean to a mother of three children who doesn’t have a strong male figure in the home? God never intended one in five families to be headed by single women.
Sometimes remarriage is the lesser of two evils. True, it doesn’t exactly fit the biblical perspective, but because it is providing an active surrogate father in a child’s life, it does have value in the Christian framework.
Boyer: Culture has a tremendous impact on us-just look at how we’re dressed here today. Coat and tie aren’t necessarily the best, but here we are, all conforming.
At some point, however, the church has to take a stringent stand: Here is exactly what the Word of God says, and this is how our body of believers is going to operate. If you give people an out, they’re going to take it.
Leadership: so you feel allowing remarriage undercuts the stand for strong marriages?
Boyer: I don’t think there’s any question. Who of us doesn’t find someone more attractive than our present wife? You can always find problems with your wife. Maybe she is a horrible housekeeper, maybe she has committed adultery, maybe she’s been in an accident and is paralyzed from the neck down. But if you’re committed to marriage, there are no outs.
If the church doesn’t take a stringent view on the sacredness and holiness of marriage-well, we certainly won’t get any help from the world.
Leadership: Is the concept of an innocent party, a “victim of divorce,” useless in dealing with requests to remarry? Or does it have a bearing?
Boyer: There’s no such thing as an innocent party. Anyone who’s done counseling knows that in marriage problems, two people are involved. Maybe the guilt is only 25 percent on one side, but does that give a pastor the freedom to remarry that person?
Then the next person comes claiming innocence, but you know he was 50 percent guilty. Do you refuse to remarry him? That’s where Harold’s question of inconsistency is exactly right.
Smith: The idea of innocence was a struggle for me because at the time of my divorce, I was a minister. If I had insisted I was the innocent party, I could have remained a pastor. But in my judgment, I couldn’t do that. It’s true that Jane left me, not vice versa. But when I began to deal with all the ways I’d failed her as a husband, there was no way I could point the finger of guilt at her alone. So I went ahead and surrendered my credentials.
And I don’t think healing really began to happen in my life until I admitted my guilt. That’s one of the best gifts you can give divorced people: helping them assume responsibility. You can’t help a person who’s always tattling on someone else.
Speas: I don’t know about the word innocent, but I do know that some people come who are at least willing to reconcile once we start talking seriously about that option. Even if the marriage cannot be reconciled, the personal relationship with the ex must.
One lady went to her former husband and actually got down on her knees to beg forgiveness for her part in the failed marriage. He wouldn’t listen-in fact, he married someone else six weeks later. But her conscience was right before God and before her husband.
In my mind, I would call her innocent and would think she has the right to remarry. The 1 Corinthians 7 passage says let her remain unmarried or be reconciled. The reason for remaining unmarried is so you can reconcile. When that possibility no longer exists, a person is free to remarry. Until the spouse remarries, we must patiently exhaust every opportunity to reconcile.
Leadership: If the spouse remains single, how long must a person try to reconcile before you would agree to another marriage?
Speas: Our policy is only when reconciliation is no longer possible-when the other spouse has remarried or died. The only two exceptions are if an unbelieving spouse has clearly deserted the person or is living a lifestyle of immorality.
Leadership: How about a Christian leaving a Christian? How long should one person attempt to reconcile?
Speas: I couldn’t enter a premarital counseling relationship with such a person at all until the spouse dies or is remarried. As Harold pointed out, we need to help these people find creative ways to live happily as singles if we can’t succeed at reconciliation.
Smith: I feel there’s a time, however, to let go of the past. This idea of perpetual reconciliation can be devastating, especially to women. Even in evangelical communities, we have what I call “ex-sex.” The man comes around to spend the night, and the woman thinks, It means he still loves me. Nonsense; it just means he wants some action, and she’s available.
Dangling the hope of reconciliation in this kind of situation is only harmful.
As much as I love Jane, there had to be a time I let go of her. She had made her choice, she continued to make choices, and I had to go a different route. There’s still love in my heart for her, but it’s on the back burner.
There comes a time when you let go and move on.
Boyer: I would disagree. I think it’s the opposite of what Scripture teaches. The whole point of Scripture is to do everything possible to bring the couple back together.
I’ll admit I’ve counseled some women to separate-if their husbands were physically abusing them. I think self-preservation is biblical, an instinct God has given.
But if people are willing to work at it, tremendous things can happen. I don’t want to sound overly pious, but I believe that through prayer, God can work miracles and restore marriages that had no emotions left but bitterness and hate. I’ve seen it happen.
Smith: I’m not sure there’s a set answer. But whatever happens, the church must be there to affirm these people. We’ve made terrific progress in eight years. When I went through divorce, there were no singles groups and maybe five books on the subject. Now churches are standing with the divorced.
What bugs me are churches that subtly shun divorced people, which sends them right into that second marriage, desperate for intimacy, for someone who’ll make them feel like a whole human being again. Churches that don’t support the divorced have to assume responsibility for the fact that 57 percent of second marriages fail.
Leadership: If you do officiate at remarriage ceremonies, how should they differ from marriage ceremonies?
Smith: Too many second marriages are in front of the minister and maybe one or two other people. There’s no celebration. We need a way to genuinely celebrate that out of the ashes, these people are rebuilding their lives. I’d like the congregation to be there, to stand with these people. Sometimes the second time around, after they’ve gone through hell and come back smelling like smoke, they understand more what the vows mean than two eighteen-year-olds do.
When the prodigal came home, they slayed the fatted calf. I was at one ceremony where 500 people showed up, and the groom, an older man who’d never been married, told his bride: “I’m accepting you as you are, and asking you to accept me as I am, blemishes and all.” It was a moving thing, an example of what redemptive grace can do.
Wise: What makes the difference is being in the context of the church. That’s what’s wrong with many marriages-first or second. They’re not in the context of the church-they’re only using the building.
We had a wedding at the church not long ago in which both people were divorced. They had gone through the whole process of identifying their previous failures and accepting new life in Christ. They had met each other in the context of the church, their lives had been changed there, and so they wanted to be married there.
I preached on marriage that Sunday morning, and then instead of giving an altar call, I gave a “wedding call,” and these two came forward to make their vows before the whole church. The marriage has to this point been extremely successful and, I would say, blessed by God.
Boyer: We need to remember, however, that the primary purpose of a wedding is not just to get rid of bad emotions and relax and be happy. Our primary purpose is to follow God’s will.
Remarriage may make a person happier, but the greater thing is whether or not he’s doing God’s will based on what the Word of God says.
Wise: God’s will is that divorce never happen in the first place. Once that’s shattered, then you’re talking about God’s will after the fact of his intentional will being broken. We’re in another ball game.
Speas: I was once very liberal about my attitude toward marriage. If a couple wanted me to marry them that day, I’d usher them into my living room, put music on the stereo, and do the ceremony right then. Some of the brides were even in curlers!
But my conscience was stricken. I gave myself to a study of what God’s Word said about marriage, divorce, and remarriage. And for the last ten years, I’ve been living by these stringent rules, rigid as they seem, and refusing to remarry anyone unless I’ve been able to counsel with them for three months beforehand.
In the last ten years, only one such couple I’ve married has gotten a divorce, and that was a case where I bent my three-month rule.
I think God has given me a set of rules to live by that will help people make better marriages.
Smith: I guess I believe in a God of mosaics. Some churches get a sheet of colored glass to stick in the windows. Other churches have gorgeous stained-glass windows made of broken pieces. In the craftsman’s hand, broken pieces have been shaped into a composite of beauty.
I’m not trying to justify divorce, but I’m saying God can take the failure in my life and shape it into the total meaning of what I am to become.
Some people demand solid sheets of glass. But I’m a mosaic. David and Bathsheba were mosaics, too. For their sin, they should have been stoned, or certainly made barren. But in Matthew 1, there they are, smack dab in the center of Christ’s genealogy. When God restores people, he makes changes. He rebuilds broken people.
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