She shouldn't, but that doesn't mean she can't.
My point is that a woman leaving a man is not a divorce in the biblical sense.
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- Thread starter Gary Slaughenhaupt
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She shouldn't, but that doesn't mean she can't.
My point is that a woman leaving a man is not a divorce in the biblical sense.
If she does not care about doing the right thing than the distiction about divorce not being Biblical is probably lost on her. She is not following the Bible. She is just doing what she wants to do.
Slaughter me with legalism if you desire, but I will firmly maintain that there are males who need to be left. (Yes, males. Not men.)
1 Cor 7:10 is followed immediately by "but". She shouldn't leave. But, there are certain extremely exceptional circumstances that make the following verse necessary. The extreme situation obviously being when a woman's life is in danger and she has a need to get out of that situation, at least temporarily, for her own safety (and this is not a divorce as @tps26 has said). There is absolutely no indication that anything like that is the case here, so you are correct @cnystrom - she has no scriptural justification to leave. But I wouldn't jump from there to a completely legalistic stance that ignores the possibility of any exceptions to that rule.
Lost on her and the church leadership.
An obvious exception to this, would be where her safety or the safety of her children is concerned.
That hits real close to home for me personally, and I say a big AMEN to that.
Unfortunately women and enabling pastors like to use that as license for women to leave and remarry; justification for their embrace of the no-fault divorce regime. Which directly contradicts the text.
Of course, it’s all that they have.
But their abuse of this passage does not justify a legalistic stance.
Semi-legalistic I will buy, though.
It is abusive in this instance, where Gary has done nothing worthy of having her leave him. What the church has neglected to point out, is that the woman is not allowed to remarry, even if her husband commits fornication. They just assume that if she can divorce her husband, she can also remarry, when Paul is clear that she is bound to her husband as long as he is alive. She can only remarry after he dies. I don't know how to square that with the reality that some males are so disgusting in the things they have done, because Scripture indicates that they should be put to death for their crimes, and it seems heartless to tell their wives that they cannot remarry until he dies, if we won't do the right thing as a society, and put them to death, but I myself won't consider a divorced woman to be a potential second wife, regardless of the circumstances that led to the divorce. I know a woman personally, who has remained single for the past 30 plus years, and she won't remarry until her husband dies.
I agree with your first statement, but I respectfully disagree with the rest.
@Daniel DeLuca I think you are right regarding capital crimes committed by men... but, do you really think the woman should be held in bondage because society allows the evil one to live?
I tend to view the ex in many situations as functionally dead... had he lived in the time the Law was given, he'd be dead. Therefore, the divorced woman is available.
I think it’s very telling that Christ never asked the Church to die for him. He never allowed her to suffer deprivation or fear. She was always clothed and housed and coddled to the point of spoiling. Christ would never ask the Church to endure hardships for reasons she doesn’t understand. He would never draw hard lines in the sand and expect her to toe them no matter what, even to the point of death.
I understand the overall message you are trying to convey and that the very elect often try to find any type of justification to allow women an easy out from their marriage and justify it as "essential".
But, I'm sure that message doesn't include a woman remaining attached to her man to the point of death, especially if he is the potential source of her demise, not by deprivation, but by active, physical means. That would seem unrealistically harsh.
Christ's relationship to his bride is an analogy used to help us gauge our own marriage relationships, but analogies and allegories do begin to break down eventually.
Our relationship to Christ on a personal level is equated to being a child. That would include women. Jesus talked about millstones and those who offend one of those children. A divorce would seem to me to be a much less harsh consequence to a man rather than a millstone. The end result is still the same. She is unattached to him, but at least retains the possibility of being reconciled. The millstone would be equally just, but prevent any possibility of reconciliation.
She’s free to separate herself as long as she stays single. The penalty for adultery is death though, spiritual death. In the face of that physical death is a nothing and something we’re called to anyway.
Like @Mojo , I hear what you are saying, but let me throw a real live human being that I personally know out here as a case study.
She is divorced. He former husband physically, mentally and sexually abused her. For ten years. The last time he pistol whipped her, tried to kill her and left her for dead. During those ten years he had multiple sexual encounters and extended relationships with both married and unmarried women. Now, this woman has been divorced for ten+ years and desperately just wants love, healing, and protection. What should she do?
I see. I was just trying to get you to clarify if you felt a woman was obligated to endure a marriage, even to the point of death. I don't think anyone on here would advocate that. It's after she leaves that we mostly debate.
@Gary Slaughenhaupt, should we take this conversation to another thread, or leave it be?
It don't matter to me...
I’ve said it before, and maybe I’ll say it again. This conversation is like a line of drunk guys pissing in the wind until you understand that in Hebrew culture there was a living death that mattered in this instance just as much as physical death.
Obviously I’m not trying to get you to act against your beliefs, just encouraging you to educate those beliefs beyond where you are now
I would like to believe that I Cor 7:39 doesn't apply to the woman whose husband is still alive and should have been put to death, but I would just have to read between the lines, in order to believe that, and I had this discussion with Dr. William Luck, and I still can't come around to his way of thinking on that, but I do agree about how this conversation being like a bunch of drunk guys. Where I will say that I think the woman is freed, is when her husband is the one who divorced her, and he refuses to take her back, and I believe that husband should be made aware of his obligation to do so, before she remarries, and he should be made to understand that monogamy is no excuse for him refusing to take his wife back. When all of the above conditions are met, I still believe the woman commits adultery when she remarries, but the burden of responsibility for her doing so, does not fall on her shoulders. When Jesus said that the man who puts away his wife, except for fornication, causes her to commit adultery, that was a warning to the men, not the women.