A Mennonite view of divorce and remarriage

[Josh]

there's much conflating of human law, human reasoning, and scriptures, without mutual recognition of when-where-how these leaps are being made.

on another note.
it's odd to imagine Jesus saying or suggesting we be faithful to "at least one marriage."
"pick one and stick with it?"

that sounds very human reasoning (to me.)

Jesus teaches to be faithful to your wife or husband and not to divorce them, except for adultery.

He doesn't talk much about what to do if your spouse leaves you, divorces you just because they want to be married to someone else.

It can be frustrating when the New Testament doesn't lay out a rigid code of what to do in every situation. I think that's where good pastors, good brothers and sisters in church, and good teaching can help each of us discern how we should live and how to handle situations not in scripture.

So I respect the way the Old Order Amish or Eastern approach marriage, and part of being in their community is accepting that. Easterns expect people like me not to reconcile with their first spouse. They have a lady who wanted to join their church, and since they didn't want her to get remarried, they sent a few families up to where she lived and started a new church, basically just for her. She feels content being a celibate person in that community now.

I respect the way moderate Beachy, Midwest, etc approach marriage as well - encouraging reconciliation with your first spouse. It's been good for me to learn to think that way.

I respect the Conservative Mennonite Conference's position where pastoral counselling and congregation discernment plays a role in helping people who are divorced or divorced and remarried figure out how to best walk in reconciliation with a past spouse, but also seek to accept those who are remarried and don't feel separation is the best way to follow Jesus.

I respect groups like the Apostolic Christian Church who discern that people in the world who haven't been following Jesus often don't understand that marriage should be for life, and accept that many people end up divorced or divorced and remarried before they start following Jesus. Yet they have very strong expectations of their own members - including converts - to not divorce and not remarry. I respect how they have maintained a culture with no divorce and remarriage yet do not expect converts with past divorces to become celibate.

[silentreader]

However the fact remains that almost any modern church that has accepted your view is only a generation from experiencing divorce and remarriage at nearly the same level as society around them. And some of us cannot accept that that is in fact what God has in mind for followers of his.

I'm not at all convinced that preventing people legitimately divorced from remarrying is the best way to do that.

Do you have any examples from history to show that allowing the legitimately divorced to remarry has been a good thing for society or for the church? To me, this is the elephant in the room that Protestants, Catholics, and and Mainstream Anabaptists don't want to talk about.

I wish we could talk about the elephant in the room of how tolerating divorce and remarriage would ruin our Plain communities, but without having to twist and stretch scripture to do so.

I'd be all for this!

I don't like when people make deductions from scripture to support their desires to remarry (and postulate their thoughts in a way that doesn't acknowledge that what they believe is not found in scripture, but is simply their speculations/deductions), neither do I like when people make deductions from scripture about what repentance and restitution is supposed to look like in divorce or remarriage situation (and postulate their thoughts in a way that doesn't acknowledge that what they believe is not found in scripture, but is simply their speculations/deductions.)
This needs to stop.
The "allowance for remarriage following divorce folks" will never convince the CAs if they keep doing this, and the CAs will never convince those who want to allow the divorced to remarry.

If the CAs want to convince the world of their position, they need to stop trying to build their case from a strictly exegetical standpoint, and rather make their case from a simple reading of scripture, coupled with a historical narrative of what it takes to build societies who intend to demonstrate what it would look like if everybody obeyed the King.

I don't think CA world will ever be inclined to listen to "mainstreamers" as long as mainstreamers don't have thriving societies of remarried folks and as long as mainstreamers keep positing their deductions as being scriptural truth. As long as mainstreamers spend more time looking for loopholes and exceptions instead of promoting what God intended from the beginning and promoting what Jesus attempted to fulfill or restore with his new Kingdom teaching, CAs will not be open to listening to them.

Someone has said that the difference between the early Anabaptists and the Reformers is that the early Anabaptists came to the scriptures with the attitude of, "Whatever the scripture tells us to do, we want to do it."
The Reformers came to the scripture with the attitude of, "We shouldn't do anything the scripture says we may not do."
It seems to me that this difference is huge and that both perspectives are still well and alive today in the Western world, even though they are no longer limited to the afore mentioned movements.

Unfortunately, ernie, we CAs are no less culpable of glossing over the 'simple reading of Scripture' when we want to make a point, and I'm not necessarily referring to anything in this thread.

[Ernie]

Unfortunately, ernie, we CAs are no less culpable of glossing over the 'simple reading of Scripture' when we want to make a point, and I'm not necessarily referring to anything in this thread.

More and more I am urging the teams that I am a part of to use scriptural terminology and phraseology as much as possible whenever we talk about debatable topics. We may mean different things but at least we will be using the same terminology/phraseology and it leaves open the possibility that we or the next generation will eventually believe the same thing.

Whenever we start using different terminology/phraseolgy that is not found in the Bible, there is a 99% chance that we or the next generation will eventually believe different things.

[temporal1]

Jesus teaches to be faithful to your wife or husband and not to divorce them, except for adultery.

He doesn't talk much about what to do if your spouse leaves you, divorces you just because they want to be married to someone else.

It can be frustrating when the New Testament doesn't lay out a rigid code of what to do in every situation. I think that's where good pastors, good brothers and sisters in church, and good teaching can help each of us discern how we should live and how to handle situations not in scripture.

So I respect the way the Old Order Amish or Eastern approach marriage, and part of being in their community is accepting that. Easterns expect people like me not to reconcile with their first spouse. They have a lady who wanted to join their church, and since they didn't want her to get remarried, they sent a few families up to where she lived and started a new church, basically just for her. She feels content being a celibate person in that community now.

I respect the way moderate Beachy, Midwest, etc approach marriage as well - encouraging reconciliation with your first spouse. It's been good for me to learn to think that way.

I respect the Conservative Mennonite Conference's position where pastoral counselling and congregation discernment plays a role in helping people who are divorced or divorced and remarried figure out how to best walk in reconciliation with a past spouse, but also seek to accept those who are remarried and don't feel separation is the best way to follow Jesus.

I respect groups like the Apostolic Christian Church who discern that people in the world who haven't been following Jesus often don't understand that marriage should be for life, and accept that many people end up divorced or divorced and remarried before they start following Jesus. Yet they have very strong expectations of their own members - including converts - to not divorce and not remarry. I respect how they have maintained a culture with no divorce and remarriage yet do not expect converts with past divorces to become celibate.

this is a good review of various sincere approaches to this difficult problem.
one important part is, Jesus does not want superficial prayers or acts. so, for anyone to simply walk-through the paces of what's required (by church rule) is not exactly the goal.
to feel "called" to act is an important factor as to what will work in the long term.

of course, it's not that simple, either!
there is a matter of obedience even when understanding or acceptance is not there!
you are correct, scriptures do not give us a step-by-step owner's manual to follow through every challenge.

it's a blessing to have the spiritual connection guiding.
sometimes we flounder before receiving it. sometimes, for years.
God is with us, throughout, even when we feel lost.

(for me) Hosea leads on this matter.
(as i read) Hosea represents the heart and spirit of Jesus, in his devotion to God, above all;
his spotless devotion led him to respond to Gomer
(as very few would have, but as Jesus would have.)
Jesus, also, was first devoted to God His Father, and, Jesus commanded us to do the very same.

Hosea is OT, but i cannot dismiss this book.
on MD, i learned of Hosea as an analogy of God and Israel, also, as a prophesy of the coming of Jesus Christ. i have learned nothing that detracts from its importance to understanding -
God's view of marriage.

for me, this is the central question: what is God's view of marriage?
for this, the Book of Hosea could not be more descriptive or detailed.

[Ernie]

If the CAs want to convince the world of their position, they need to stop trying to build their case from a strictly exegetical standpoint, and rather make their case from a simple reading of scripture, coupled with a historical narrative of what it takes to build societies who intend to demonstrate what it would look like if everybody obeyed the King.

I think this is what I was trying to do in the OP. I gave the commonly used passages as a basis for what I believe. The simple reading of these together does not allow for remarriage, in my opinion.

I think you did quite well in distinguishing what scripture says, what you have deducted from scripture, and what you conclude as a result. You don't try to make your readers think that you and God have this figured out and that if they agree with you, they are basically agreeing with God. I wish that everybody on MN would be this honest.

Here is an example from the OP that I appreciate.

It is clear in the verses above that it is permissible to separate in some cases. God will not hold his children accountable for impossible situations. It does not follow that the right to divorce automatically gives the right to remarry. I can’t truthfully say that God would never allow it, since I can’t speak for him. But I do feel that it would be a step downhill to swing the door open like most churches today do.

[justme]

lester would like this thread locked, and for people to start new threads to discuss further.
i'm going to do that at this time.