Hi Jenny,
I’m so sorry it’s taken me a long time to reply to your last email. My life seems to be full of caring for my 94 year old father who was gravely ill for a while, birthdays (mine) and wedding anniversary (ours). Wedding anniversary today actually. After all we have been through, I doubted we would make it to our 44 years, but we have and it truly is only because of Father God.
In your last email, you asked why the church stood so strongly and often harshly against divorce.
We truly believe, that without the direct intervention of God, we would not have made it to our 44th anniversary today. We would not still be married.
But, now to answer your question.
In order to understand the impact and devastation all the hard stance of ‘we were not allowed to get married,’ had on our lives, you have to know the teaching of the time. We were taught that divorce was wrong. Full stop. You can imagine the angst and soul-searching we went through ourselves; untangling previous teachings, digging for the truth.
But, no matter how much we explained to the church pastors that Stans ex-wife had divorced him, that he had become a Christian AFTER his divorce, the stance was very hard and nothing would change it. The condemnation was not from God. He never condemns. Condemnation comes from man and from the enemy of our lives – satan.
It became untenable to stay in that church. That led us to the other church where the house/money thing happened.
In examining what the Bible says about divorce, we learned a few things.
The reason that the Lord takes a very dim view on divorce is because our marriages are supposed to reflect our relationship with Jesus, the same intimacy of heart with Him. Therefore to hop from one partner to another is simply destroying ourselves. It destroys our innocence, leaving torn edges to our hearts. God is simply giving us direction in order to protect us.
The church took this all literally – don’t get me wrong, I do not like divorce either. It is so destructive. Having been to brink and back again, I know that you can heal from it, provided you both humble yourselves.
Please understand Jenny, that if a person in a marriage/partnership is being beaten, bullied, or any other of these heinous things, I would NEVER insist they stay in the marriage. It's not safe, and Jesus takes a very dim view of people who try to destroy others.
We learned so much during this time. So much compassion for others, and above all, to look at the truth in the Bible and that involves looking at what is taught from Jesus eyes – not the Greek/English mindset we have been taught from over the last 1000 years, but the Hebrew mindset. It is completely different.
I will leave this here for now.
Please email me with any questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Love always,
Justine
".... our marriages are supposed to reflect our relationship with Jesus ...." < Love this!
Your references to Church leaders being the ones to determine God's rules is interesting. As you know I really believe in the relevance of Churches but from the point of view that their primary job is all about fellowship or communion and not the legalities of the Word of God nor for that matter how we worship. The whole idea of who is in and who is out and how we do this or that as being the jurisdiction of any church or church leader is nonsense beyond advisor input.