Matthew 5 and Divorce: Grounds for Abuse

Matthew 5 and Divorce: Grounds for Abuse

Divorce is one of the most controversial issues in the Church today. In the Bible, there is a handful of passages that talk about marriage and divorce-more in the New than in the Old Testament. Unfortunately, the Church has done a poor job in the areas of abuse. Most Christians believe that there are ONLY two permissible reasons :Physical Adultery and Physical Abandonment. Simply because it is explicit.
In one of the infamous divorce passages in Matthew 5, if you noticed VERY CAREFULLY, Jesus talks about Lust BEFORE and OATHS after the topic of divorce. If we interpret Lust and Oaths figuratively, then TO BE CONSISTENT you need to interpret the divorce passage figuratively as well. Otherwise, you would need to chop off your limbs and LITERALLY never make an oath, which would be a difficult if not possible venture. We all make oaths for marriage, court proceedings, work, loans, extracurricular activity memberships, church membership, etc.
So what was Jesus saying??? Jesus was saying to the original audience-The crowds and Pharisees, (not modern day America), that if you divorce for petty reasons, your divorce is invalid and by your sinful choice you have inadvertently caused the innocent spouse to be labelled as an adulteress.
In that culture, men who divorced their wives, put their wives in a very difficult position financially. The possible choices they had was to move back with their father (if he was alive or if he could handle the social shame), live as a poor beggar, and/or be a prostitute.
Linking this with the earlier lust passage, it is easy to see a Pharisee lusting after a woman, seducing her, and then marrying her because his wife was physically unattractive. The Pharisee's wife and the woman's husband would be labelled as adulterers because of the perpetrators' choice. The marriage was not broken for valid reasons. Again, this is hyperbole, Jesus was not creating a marriage/divorce manifesto.
It is surprising that so many would deny this interpretation, yet they create interpretational leeway for their doctrines such as infant baptism and end times views- Gog and Magog is Russia. Where is the consistency??? Divorce should be pursued for severe situations where destructive patterns have failed to be addressed and/or remedied for a particular period of time. Each case is not the same and should be treated with care. Destructive marriages are not prison sentences.
You don't have to be an egalitarian to respect a woman, you just need to be a human being.





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