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.

The Holy Bible  : New International Version. 1996, c1984 . Zondervan: Grand Rapids

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.

Comments

[DLE]

The reason the divorce rate is up among Christians is we have failed in community. The rugged individualism that defines America has trumped the community of the Body of Christ. Our Christian families are no no longer connecting in solid community; they have become islands in the stream. And the devil is expert at picking off those lone islands.

We have got to stop living every family for itself. We as the Body of Christ are all responsible to each other. There is no longer any rugged individualism. Yet our churches still preach this. This is one reason why a church can have no problems with buying a state-of-the-art sound system for the church building while long unemployed members of the church face bankruptcy or losing their homes. That we see nothing wrong with this is sick. We should have the same attitude about divorce--it should make everyone in the church sick to stand by and let it happen.

[Vic3]

Excellent thoughts on divorce! Worth some deep consideration. For some rambling thoughts....

Among Christians, even those who have been divorced, divorce is almost universally viewed as "bad." Among non-Christians, don't you think the consensus still is that divorce is a bad thing? I don't have any statistics to back that up, but I've never heard anyone in person or in the media defend divorce as a good thing. Yes, divorced celebrities talk about "moving on" and about "starting new chapters," etc. Those comments are always in the shadow of a nasty or painful divorce to which they are trying to add a silver lining, either for the public's benefit or to encourage themselves.

Homosexuality is distinctive, though, precisely because the argument by those that support it is that it is not only acceptable, but is "normal." The complete denial that homosexuality is sinful is why Christians see homosexuality as a greater threat. I absolutely agree that divorce has done more damage to marriage, but I believe society still sees it as a bad thing. Does divorce undermine the authority of Scipture? Accepting homosexuality as normal does undermine the authority of Scripture...which ultimately would send our nation down the road to reprobation. Oops. I forgot. We are already walking down that road. That is why Christians are trying to stop the bleeding of our Judeo-Christian values before it is too late.

Still, I do not really disagree with you...yet anyway. Need to think on it some more. Great post.

[Vic3]

One more idea...and off topic...have you written about "gluttony" as a forgotten sin? It is listed right up there with murder and the other usual suspects, but I have never heard a sermon on it from an American pulpit.

[Bowden]

Sometimes I think the church in America has bought into the concept of serial monogamy.

Btw, did you know that where joint custody/coparenting is the default position by the courts, the divorce rate drops? (http://www.gocrc.com/research/spcrc97.html ) In other words, when people are convinced they will not be able to cleanly "start over" and will still have to deal with their soon-to-be-ex, they tend to stay together. There may be other ways besides a scarlet letter or a return to hiring a private investigator to prove infidelity to influence the divorce rate.

[Mike]

David:

I agree with your conclusions and your points, but take a different path to get to the same place. For now, let me just throw out a couple of things:

1. I'm not sure the collapse of the family necessarily results in the collapse of the church. If that were so, then why would Paul stress the advantages of being single (i.e., freer to serve Christ without the "distractions" of marriage) in 1 Cor 7? Or why would Christ speak of being a eunuch for the kingdom in a positive sense (Mt 19.12)? It's hard to imagine, but I don't think the end of marriage automatically spells doom for the church.

2. Divorce is not the problem; lack of faithfulness and/or love is the problem. God does "hate divorce," but is it not the cause of divorce that He hates? He did, after all, divorce Israel (Jer 3.8) and, although he invited her back, she never returned. So divorce cannot always be wrong or evil, but the sin that leads to divorce can be.

Don't misunderstand: as I said in my series on divorce and remarriage, the NT is without question pro-marriage and calls for believers to suffer rather than divorce. But the two preceding points I thought were worth making.

[carla]

Fascinating post.

I agree with you that it does seem odd to focus on homosexuality and practically disregard divorce.

[David Wayne]

Thanks again for another round of great comments. DLE - Bingo on rugged individualism.
Mike - thanks for pointing that out about the collapse of institution of marriage is not the death knell of the church. I should have been more careful in my wording - I was using the presupposition of those who say that society will collapse if the institution of marriage collapses. I should have pointed out that this is not a given. You are correct. And I do agree that there is a righteous cause for divorce - divorce is always precipitated by sin, but sometimes divorce is allowable as a response to one partner's sin.

[Tim]

The question still remains, "What is the church to do?" It's interesting that you're writing on this topic when a couple of days ago, another blogger wrote:
...my dad was divorced, and the legalism in my church destroyed his willingness to fellowship and worship with other Christians. In our church, divorced people were castigated weekly as the worst of sinners. Dad stayed home in shame.
How does the church find sympathy and compassion for those who are divorced without condoning it? Wouldn't any adverse preaching or teaching appear to be "castigating" in the eyes of the divorced?
And what of "Remarriage"? You never hear anything said about the divorced remaining single to avoid adultery.
It's a sticky subject and I think you are correct, the homosexual scare has blinded us to an equally devistating epidemic.

[Debbie]

Well said about divorce seeming to be more harmful to families than homosexuality. I agree there might be some other equally bad family-destroying sins - drunkenes, violence / loss of self-control, lust, etc.
I also liked Vic's point about how these things are perceived by the non-Christian world. Most of the sins are considered bad by the world as well, but homosexuality is sometimes smiled upon as "loving".

[Jack]

Kudos David for taking a very brave stand. I have gotten into no end of trouble trying to make exactly the same points. And the sad thing is that it is very difficult to make people understand that, in claiming that homosexuality is not the worst possible sin, I am in no way minimizing it.

My pastor has not actually asked me to stop talking about the subject but he gets visibly agitated whenever the subject comes up. I recently taught a bible study on 1 Kings (which you would think would be fairly safe from this point of view) but the last chapter has the line that Jehoshaphat cleansed Judah of the "Sodomites" (KJV). I did a little word study and it turns out that the Hebrew word (qadesh) here does not refer to Sodom but merely means "unclean". Pointing out this seemingly inoccuous fact however made a lot of people in the room uncomfortable, even though I was very specific that the early church probably knew a tradition that this uncleanness involved homosexuality since the vulgate has "effementati". But the perception was that I was being soft on homosexuality.

I think a lot of people in our community -- by which I mean specifically evangelical Christians, but I think it applies to American conservatives generally -- are upset by data that does not allow them the luxury of simple moral outrage. Most of us are not even tempted to homosexuality, but divorce strikes a lot closer to home.

Incidentally, I have seen studies that indicate that homosexuality occurs much more frequently in children from broken homes than those in stable families. So it may well be that reducing the number of divorces could have a long-term salutary effect on the prevalence of homosexuality as well. There are lots of caveats to this line of thinking, but it is food for thought.

[Alison]

Jack, I agree with your recent comment, but I am especially pleased you included that last part about homosexuality and broken homes. I think that is obvious, not just from studies, but from the progression of sins listed in the last half of Romans 1. It starts with people suppressing the truth (18). Then it goes into the results: As a result their thinking became futile and their hearts darkened (21); as a result God gave them over the sinful desires and sexual impurities (24); they worhipped created things instead of the Creator (25); as a result God gave them over to shameful lusts, exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones (26-27). It is clear that homosexual behavior is not only a sin, but is the result of sin (perhaps that of a previous generation). It doesn't take a great Bible scholar to figure that out, and yet very few people mention it. And you gave the exact reason -- homosexuality is a relatively safe sin for evangelicals to rail against. Start talking about divorce, though, and you're "judging." Thanks for the post.

[Milton Stanley]

You've written a challenging essay here, David. I wrote about it at my blog. Peace.

[Jeremy Pierce]

It's worth pointing out that divorce might be justified in some cases even if God hates all divorce. I suggest the acted out analogy with Hosea and his wife shows that it's wrong to think of God's judgment of Israel as divorce; Hosea was faithful, though Gomer was unfaithful. Still, even if you think of it that way, God's divorce of Israel would be a necessary response to Israel's sin, something God would already have thought terrible, and thus the divorce may be something God hates but insists needs to be done. So hating divorce as an evil is consistent with thinking of it as a necessary evil. This in some ways parallels most just war thinkers on the necessary evil of war.

[BikerDad]

Wow, I sure am late coming to the party.

I will say right out that I agree with the basic argument that divorce is a "forgotten factor", but I must point out that some of the reasons why are on display right in these comments.

Most Christians don't take divorce nearly as seriously as God does. Just as we may disregard "gluttony" in the list containing homosexuality, so to do we deal quite oddly in with the list of things God hates.

Do a study of things that God hates, and consider the "exceptions" to the hated behavior that you'll call "righteous." Methinks you'll find that the only exceptional aspect is the incredible variety of excuses we use to justify divorce and whitewash it afterwards, compared to the other behaviors that God hates...

Grace and peace, BD

[Frank Stephens]

Obviously, Christian divorce is an abomination. However, the divorce statistics are scewed. Large numbers of non-Christians live together and don't get married. At least Christians mostly marry, but samefully divorce without regard to Biblical admonitions agsinst divorce. So, what that means is that you cannot truly compare Christian and non-Christian divorce rates.

[Bala Cynwyd Divorce Lawyer]

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