Divorce and Remarriage

[kateliz]

I see my post was ignored after it was completely misinterpreted. I posted that I learned my stance on remarriage was unbiblical, (I read things out of those verses years ago that I now see aren't in there at all.) I now see that if you aren't the one divorcing, (unless for those two valid reasons,) you can remarry while your ex-spouse is alive. I had to do a complete 180 on that.

Prodigal, no, even after a divorce you can't have sex outside of marriage. That'd be a sin. But as I've stated now twice, it seems to be biblical that you can remarry if you weren't the one divorcing, or divorced your spouse for those two reasons. Sort of back to square one kind of a thing.

[ochotseat]

I'm not without sexual sin myself.

You used to be gay, right?

she literally couldn't relax or sit still until she had sex.

What a h*

[ochotseat]

I see my post was ignored after it was completely misinterpreted.
.

I know you're not talking about me.
What makes you think people care so much about your posts that they have to reply to every single one of them?

[Dan]

I see my post was ignored after it was completely misinterpreted.
.

I know you're not talking about me.
What makes you think people care so much about your posts that they have to reply to every single one of them?

The fact that we are a community that respects and holds everyone's opinion in high regard. Every post by every member is important and should be used to further a discussion.

[Prodigal Son]

littleshepard:

does research show the more you have it the more you want it?

[j316]

It appears to me that you people think that it only takes one person to make a marriage. A marriage is a union of two people, if one of them is abusive or adulterous there is no real union and no marriage. Jesus recognized that and let us out of unproductive legalistic marriages.

The jewish laws recognized the problem but offered only an inequitable human solution.

We create a lot of unreal and unrealistic situations in our lives through willfulness and ignorance. It would not be kind of God to hold us to a contract entered into under such circumstances.

If a marriage ends up in divorce through the fault of one of the partners it is sin for the sinner and misfortune for the other. Are both doomed? No.

[Silvertusk]

I have just finished my last marriage preperation session with my minister and I was amazed by how much was actually in the Bible to help you get through a marriage. One of the words that stuck with me was the Agape (Sp?) love that Jesus offers. The one where we have to will ourselfs to love someone in spite of their behaviour. This level of unconditional love certainly seems hard to obtain and yet it is the same level that Jesus offers us.

I think it really does come down to trusting in God and Jesus to help people through difficult times in their relationships - because as someone mentioned it is hard, near impossible at times. These sessions were invaluable and in this secular materialistic world we live in where marriage seems to be following the hollywood trend it does give hope that maybe there are some people out there who view marriage as something more than a legal arrangement that can be cast off with out a second thought.

It really is a spiritual bonding between two people witnessed by God. And surely something that is bonded by God - we must then look to God when we fray that connection.

(Disclaimer - I am well aware of my nievity in this area so I apologise if I have offended anyone)

As for divorce - well that is a tricky area. If both people are stong christians then you would hope that both of them would listen to the teachings of Jesus and use what he taught about love to help them get through difficulties in marriage. My parents got divorced because of adultery and were not really christians - well my Dad wasn't.

But then it all comes down to circumstances really. For example does God want someone to stay in an abusive relationship - are you suppose to stay in a place where your very life is threatened? I would think that God would be fair in all matters so even if you divorced and there was no reconciliation and you genuinely saught forgiveness - then I am pretty sure that God wouldn't want you to live the rest of your life in misery and alone.

Trust in God in all matters I guess.

Silvertusk.

[Michelle]

After reading all these posts on divorce and remarriage I thought I should relate something that happened to me. May be what I went through might sound a warning to others regarding this issue.
Many years ago (about twenty), I fled from an extremely phycological and pysically abusive marrige to a womens refuge. While there I had the opportunity to attend a christian tent ministry and became a born again christian. I had been brought up in a christian family. Also while in that refuge I met a christian couple who insistd that because I was now a christian and was at that point in time only seperated I should return to my husband.

I listened to these people and returned instead of staying seperated so that I could get divorced. These people did not even bother to listen to my situation, but were so dogmatic in their opinion that I was convinced they were right.
Well they weren't right at all! In fact they put me in a situation that has almost completey destroyed my trust in people. When I returned at the time I was living in complete isolation in the country. I had no means of transport and not one person from any church ever came near me to check on my welfare or even to share christian beliefs with me. This gave my then spouse the opportunity to increase the level of abuse to the point that it became torture. I was denied the basic right of being allowed to eat like normal people, but was only allowed to have just enough to stay barely alive. I was deprived of sleep then verbally abused for hours on end until I my mind could be controlled any way he wanted. He had me believing that I was hated by everyone; that I didn't have the right to live and that all the problems he had were caused by me.
I am now divorced now and have been for a few years.I am now just beginning to be able to start to trust people and get my life back together again even though I am scarred pychologically. I still have flashbacks constantly about what I endured. I have lost my faith, although I have begun to go to church once more. For me divorce saved my life. I dont see that as being wrong in any way. I have no plans in getting remarried, nor do I have any desire to have sex.
I just want to thank all of you who have the sense not to be dogmatic about issues such as this. It means so much to someone such as myself. My situation is not unique. Some people have gone through much worse. I met a lady while in that refuge who had been tied up like a dog.
For all those people who insist that their opinion on divorce and remarriage is absolutely right, please remember that what you say might have consequences for other people. How do they know they aren't responsible for driving someone to suicide, or putting them at risk of being murdered.

[Byblos]

WOW! Michelle. I am so sorry you had to experience all of this. I don't have any words of wisdom or anything like that. All I can say is that traumatic experiences have the potential to send a person to an undesirable extreme. It looks like you are relying on the Lord to keep you centered and to help you heal; that's great. I don't know why bad things happen to good people but I do know that without God there can be no true inner peace.

Good luck to you and welcome to the board.

God bless,

Byblos.

[Canuckster1127]

I echo Byblos' sentiments.

I am so sorry that this happened to you.

Far too often, people hold up Scriptural principles like this and attempt to guide other's decisions, and then they neglect their own responsibilities to love, follow-up and act like a community.

No person should have to remain in a position where real abuse takes place whether it is as a spouse (most of the time it is the wife abused, but not always) or as a Child etc.

The Biblical passages advocating obedience and respect for a husband by a wife are there. They are given following the command for a husband to be loving and self-sacrificing for his wife. Physical abuse, verbal berating and emotional manipulation do not fall under protection. As a former-pastor, I can tell you that I've seen a few situations where I have counselled for a separation and for the wife to leave a home rather than return to abuse. I even once had to confront a husband who came to me demanding I stop interfering in his marriage by having his wife get counselling. Fortunately, I'm a pretty big guy, which apparently surprised him and so he backed down very quickly.

Not every marriage where this happens has to end. Counselling can help. Often, good old repentence for sin is a big part of the answer as well.

I'm sorry the advice that was given to you at the time you were at a decision point, was apparently so bad. I don't doubt it was sincere, but I know it is often given without consideration of the danger it puts people in, and many have experienced things like you and worse.

My prayer for you, and it seems God is working on your life based on what you're saying, is that you will experience healing and God's Will in your life to be restored to where you can experience a healthy relationship with someone that is better based upon the entire picture that God paints in this area.

One of the most healing things you can do is to take your bad experience and use it to help someone else. It sounds like you're doing that.

God bless you, I'm glad you are here and I if any of us can help you think work and pray through some things, you have only to ask.

Bart

[FFC]

Hi Michelle,
I read your post and am angered and appalled that you have been treated that way. This is the danger of listening to legalistic and dogmatic advice no matter how sincere it is.

May I ask a couple of sincere questions? Don't feel obligated to answer them.

1. Looking back do you see any good that came out of that time, that you possibly wouldn't have if you didn't go through it ( I'm not sure I asked that right)? It's just that stories like this make me think of all that Jacob's son Joseph went through and how in the end he was able to say to his brothers "what you meant for evil God meant for good".

2. Have you been able to forgive God for allowing what happened to you?

God bless you, Michelle.
FFC

[FFC]

2. Have you been able to forgive God for allowing what happened to you?

Michelle, I just wanted to clarify what I meant when I asked this question. I didn't mean to imply that God would ever need forgiveness, since He never sins, what I meant was have you come to terms with the emotional hurt that God allowed in your life, or do you still hold bitterness toward Him?

[Michelle]

Thankyou everyone for your very reassuring comments. I still find that at the present time I am not able to forgive the person who did this to me, and at times I do have a lot of anger toward God. I know this is wrong and at times I feel so confused.
I feel resentment at times because maybe there was a reason for me being in that situation before I went to the refuge (ie. to teach me about suffering), however why put me right back in it again after I went. I keep thinking how I was so spiritually weak and vulnerable at that time and how I should not have been put back in that situation a second time. Still, God has his reasons and who am I to question why!
My main problem has been, that this person was almost pure evil. People talk about good and evil and about the Devil, I can testify that he is very real. I am not implying that my ex was the devil. What I am saying is that the devil is a spiritual being who is able to influence humans on earth. At times I would look into my ex-husbands eyes and they would be completely different. It was as if there was somebody else inside him. It is very hard to describe exactly what it was like. I mean there was the sheer hatred I could see in his eyes, but this was something more sinister and I could really sense something evil present. My ex fooled me into allowing me just once to go to church, and made out he wanted to go too. He went forward while there and suposedly became a born again Christian. I say supposedly because he did that so that I would feel I could trust him, while unknown to me he was spiking my drinks to get me under his influence again. He later laughed at how he used Christians and their beliefs to make me trust him so he could do this to me.

[Canuckster1127]

Michelle,

As you've been so honest and up front in sharing some difficult things, I'm going to take a little bit of a risk and share some things with you from my own life.

By doing this I'm not claiming to have been through anything like you or to minimize what you've experienced. It bothers me when people try to claim they know how I'm feeling or what I've been through. What they seem to be saying is that I have no right to feel the way I do or that my experience wasn't all that bad.

I'm 43, a male and was brought up in an alcoholic home. My Dad drank heavily until I was 8 years old. I was the oldest of 3 boys. I discovered later in life that my Dad had been married once before and divorced after 6 months for reasons that were never entirely made clear to me. He claimed she cheated on him which may or may not have been true. He met my mom, she got pregnant, they married in July of 1962 and I was born in November of 1962. This was a "family secret" and never discussed or acknowledged openly. Again, I learned it later in life although, I always knew there was something about me that my Dad resented and as the oldest son, I always felt singled out and hated for something that was about who I was rather than anything I had done.

My dad was an extremely abusive man. Early in the marriage, he hit my mom on a few occassions (she shared this with me again as I got older). She was able at one point to stand up to him and tell him if he ever did it again, she was leaving him and apparently that worked as he didn't hit her again that I ever observed. However, that did not apply to me or my brothers. We took regular, very severe beatings usually with a belt, an extension cord or a shoe. A beating for Dad was rarely about discipline. It was about dominance and control. The measure for a beating with him was to administer it until we broke down.

Worse than this, he was verbally and emotionally abusinve as well. There was a steady stream of ridicule aimed at us to let us know we were "twits" "idiots" "fools" and "lazy" etc. Extensive periods of silence were employed where questions or needs expressed were met with no acknowledgement. Beating were always accompanied with outpourings of anger, yelling, belittlement etc.

At times he would take all three of us boys over some offense, real or imagined, lay us over the bed and walk back and forth asking us to guess which of us he would hit next. Sometimes the blow would land beside our head to see if he could make us flinch. He would use this method to break us down if there was some offense, again real or imagined, and none of us would confess to it. When one would break down and confess the other would be sent out and then another beating administered to the offender who had already reached his limits. As the oldest, I learned to just volunteer that I had done something (whether I had or not) in order to spare my brothers the beating and minimize what would happen to me.

I learned in the midst of some of this some coping methods to endure much of this. I learned to disassociate and separate in my mind to where I almost became an observer in the room imagining that it was someone else being beaten. My ability to absorb abuse became very high. Of course, this would simply prolong the beatings as my dad wouldn't finish them until he observed me to "break."

In addition to this, my dad was extremely vigilant in enforcing family rules that we never spoke with people outside our family about anything within the family. We constantly moved never staying in a home, school, church etc for more than 2 -3 years. We were not allowed to have friends in to our house very often.

As I stated, Dad quite drinking when I was 8 and went to AA. Sadly, he was worse sober than he was drunk.

He professed to be a Christian. He often preached to us from the Bible about respecting and obeying. God knows what his spiritual condition was. Outwardly it was used to support the regime of control and abuse he constructed in our home and lives.

I could state more, but I think this paints the picture.

As a child growing up in this environment, I didn't know that this was not normal. It was not until I became an adult, married and moved out of this that I learned ours was a dysfunctional home and family and I'm still learning the depth of the impact that much of this had upon me.

I have wrestled with anger toward God. I've also wrestled for quite some time with anger toward my father that has resolved itself somewhat in just the past 10 years. He died 2 years ago.

I know a lot of the platitudes and trite words that are said and I've said them to others and myself. In many ways, it's been hard for me to really develop a deeper relationship with God because much of the way I view God is through the experience I had with my Dad.

I suspect some of this may be similar for you, but I won't presume that.

Anyway, if you want to talk some about it here on the board, or in private, if you think it will help, I'm willing.

Again, glad you're here and I will pray for you as you work though some of this. It is indeed a journey.

Bart

[puritan lad]

Of course, if this divorce and remarriage does become an issue, you can always become a Muslim. Check this out

Man, 68, marries 201 times