Forgotten Factors in the Downfall of Nations: Divorce
Yesterday I did a post called Forgotten Factors in the Downfall of Nations: Sodom. I intended this to be the start of a little mini-series and today is part 2 where I want to take up the subject of divorce and homosexuality.
As a bit of a refreshed I want to mention that I am framing this in light of evangelical's penchant for issuing prophetic warnings of impending doom and judgment on our nation. You've heard the rhetoric haven't you - "America stands on the brink of judgment," or "if God doesn't judge us He'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah." These prophetic statements are usually followed by a description of a social ill, or two or three, that is fueling the fires of God's judgment.
I will say again what I said yesterday - that we need to be careful about presuming to know the mind of God and presuming to know when and if he's going to bring judgment upon us. Indeed He might, but fallen man ought to be a tad humble when presuming to understand the ways of God.
I also mentioned that the two biggies for evangelicals today are abortion and homosexuality - these are the reasons that most evangelicals believe that judgment is coming on America - because of our acceptance of these two heinous sins. Evangelicals understand that there are other big issues out there, but these are the two biggest of the biggies in their minds. I want to suggest that some of the other issues that we think are not quite so big might actually be bigger in God's mind than we think.
Yesterday I looked at the sin of Sodom. Most folks assume Sodom was judged because of their gross sexual immorality, but Ezekiel 16 shows that in fact, Sodom was judged for their arrogance, hedonism, materialism and unconcern for the poor. True, their immorality was a symptom of their arrogance and hedonism, but this lack of concern for the poor got an explicit mention in Ezekiel 16 whereas the sexual stuff didn't.
Today I want to look at evangelical's attitude toward homosexuality. Many evangelicals think that God's judgment is due to come upon us because of our acceptance of this. Our acceptance of homosexuality is said to be destroying the institution of marriage, and the destruction of our society is sure to follow. I suggest that the institution of marriage has been nearly destroyed by our acceptance of divorce. So, though I don't like all of the judgment rhetoric, if we presuppose that the destruction of the institution of marriage is grounds for judgment, then we need to look beyond homosexuality as the culprit.
To set this up I'll refer back to the good ol' days of my youth when I was attending Bill Gothard seminars and walking in some pretty fundamentalistic circles. This would have been back in the 80's when the homosexual movement wasn't near what it is today, but it was gathering a bit of momentum. We were all warned in many forums that the fall of great civilizations thorughout history has always been preceded by a society's acceptance of homosexuality. Acceptance of homosexuality was therefore, the straw that breaks the camel's back, etc. etc..
Many historical examples are given of this and whenever a Biblical reference was needed, to Romans 1 the preacher or speaker would go. According to Romans 1, so these folks taught, homosexuality was the last step in the development of reprobation. Once a society accepted this God handed them over to a reprobate heart. If you aren't familiar with the term reprobation, it was used in these discussions to describe a point of no return, a point beyond the fail-safe. Once a society got to that point there was no coming back. It is true that Romans 1 is full of warnings and that homosexuality is one of the things warned against, but it always seemed that things got a little over-balanced here. Homosexuals were made out to be the worst of the worst, the evilest of the evi. Yet it seems that, if we were to do justice to the text of Romans 1, then we would need to see that things like gossip, envy, greed, boasting and disobedience to parents were included in the list of the worst of the worst. I can't remember hearing a sermon to the effect that God was going to destroy this once great nation due to our acceptance of gossip, yet gossip is in the same list of sins as homosexuality. Yet there's a whole lot more gossip and disobeying of parents going on in the church than there is homosex. But I digress.
The point has always been that if the family is destroyed, the church will be destroyed and the nation will be destroyed. Therefore, that which destroys the family destroys the church. Homosexuality has been seen as a particular threat in this regard.
But there is a greater threat to the family that we accepted long before homosexuality ever got on the radar screen - divorce. Malachi 2:13-15 says:
13 Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. 14 You ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.
You can see a link between this and Romans 1. In Romans 1 God gave the people over and here we see that He has stopped paying attention to the offerings of His people. The reason given is that the people of Judah had begun to accept the practice of divorce. This is in a prophetic passage warning of impending judgment. Granted, their acceptance of divorce is not the only reason they faced judgment, but it was one reason and a very important reason. Or, maybe I should say that their lack of faithfulness to the marriage covenant was evidence of lack of faithfulness to God.
In any case, this passage indicates that when the people of God accept divorce God turns His back on them. The analogy is obvious - our nation has accepted the practice of divorce and it did so long before the present discussion of homosexuality came on the scene. If Malachi 2:13-15 has any applicability to our nation then those who think God is going to turn His back on us because of our failure to protect the family need to realize that, by this logic, God probably turned His back long before this homosexual moment.
Al Mohler's March 7, 2005 weblog talks about this. He quotes liberally from Stephen Baskerville of Howard University about his findings on the effects of divorce.
In an insightful article published in the March 2005 edition of Crisis magazine, Stephen Baskerville argues that America's embrace of easy divorce is the most significant reason that marriage is now threatened and, by some measures, hanging by a thread.
"The most direct threat to the family is divorce on demand," Baskerville bravely argues. "Sooner or later if civilization is to endure, it must be brought under control."
Mohler, quoting Baskerville, goes on to describe America's love affair with no-fault divorce. In the 70's there were no "no-fault" divorce laws on the books, but between 1977 and 1995 every state had legalized no-fault divorce.
Baskerville gets right to the heart of the matter, labeling no-fault divorce as a "misnomer." In reality, the "no-fault" language was taken from the world of automobile insurance. These new divorce laws did not really remove fault from the context of divorce, but they "did create unilateral and involuntary divorce, so that one spouse may end a marriage without any agreement or fault by the other." As Baskerville explains, "Moreover, the spouse who divorces or otherwise abrogates the marriage contract incurs no liability for the cost or consequences, creating a unique and unprecedented legal anomaly."
In many cases, the reality is even worse. In effect, no-fault divorce means that the courts now assist the violator of marriage vows. Any spouse can now demand a divorce for any reason and be assured that the courts will award the divorce--and will often grant disproportionate favor to the party seeking the divorce.
Divorce has also become a big business:
As if all that isn't bad enough, divorce has now become an industry. Some lawyers and law firms specialize in divorce practice, and Baskerville describes the legal divorce business as "a multibillion-dollar industry" in which a vast number of persons hold a vested interest. He writes: "The political interests that abolish marriage in the first place have only grown more wealthy and powerful off the system they created," adding: "Divorce and custody are the cash cow of the judiciary and directly employ a host of federal, state, and local officials, plus private hangers-on. More largely, the societal ills left by broken families create further employment and power for even larger armies of officials. So entrenched has divorce become within our political economy, and so diabolical is its ability to insinuate itself throughout our political culture, that even critics seem to have developed a stake in having something to bemoan. Hardly anyone has an incentive to bring it under control."
All of this makes Dennis Prager's April 12 Townhall column "The divorce-threatens-marriage lie," sound a little silly. Prager argues that the divorce doesn't threaten the institution of marriage whereas homosexuality does. He even goes so far as to argue that a 30 year marriage that ends in divorce is not necessarily a failed marriage. If a couple drifts apart and needs to move on, and if, over those thirty years they provided a loving environment that produced healthy kids, then the divorce doesn't equal failure.
Of course divorce threatens marriage. Marriage is by definition a permanent thing. Anything that threatens the permanence of marriage threatens the institution of marriage. I may be too hard on Prager here. If he is saying that the acceptance of divorce doesn't redefine the meaning of marriage whereas the acceptance of gay marriage does, then fine. In that respect he is correct - the institution of marriage is hurt by any attempt to define it as something other than between one man and one woman. But marriage means nothing if it doesn't mean permanence and our society has long ago accepted the idea of "non-permanent" marriage.
And I get back to my main point. If evangelicals are concerned about impending judgment from God we need to take the whole of the Scripture into account. There aren't that many practicing homosexuals in our evangelical churches, but if George Barna is correct, our churches are nearly half-full of folks who have been divorced. If evangelicals are serious about protecting the institution of marriage they need to focus the same amount of energy (or greater) on fighting divorce as they do fighting homosexuality. Granted, many do this and there are lots of ministries out there that focus on building marriage and preventing divorce. But they don't seem to be making as much headway as they could.
And for those politically minded Christians, the reversal of no-fault divorce laws should have as high a priority in their agendas as do the gay marriage issues.
Of course it goes without saying that while the church is fighting our no-fault divorce culture it needs to be ministering to the divorced. At this point I could start a whole new post on why divorce is not the worst sin, how there are innocent parties in divorces and how there is forgiveness and restoration for even guilty parties. Divorce does not warrant a scarlet letter for anyone. And for that matter neither does homosexuality.
What I am arguing against is our society's cavalier acceptance of the idea of divorce and in particular its acceptance and practice of the idea of no-fault divorce. The acceptance of this spelled doom for the family long before the acceptance of homosexuality ever did.
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