Divorce & Remarriage

[Josh]

I don't like how it has become accepted by society as a matter of fact, that people - with children - can divorce for virtually any reason, whether it be a lack of intimacy, financial, conflict, you name it, and society will not "judge" them, not for their actions nor for the childrens sake, but rather be understanding.

I think this is terrible (as do many other people).

But woe to the married Christian living adulterously who through a seeking after God and truth comes to a place of conviction that they are living in sin! That person ought never divorce! All of a sudden it is about the children. All of a sudden it is about common sense. Etc.
The world despises the devout God fearing Christian.

That’s because it is a false conviction not grounded in scripture or in any reasonable church history. It’s another pointless Amish-Mennonite church rule, added to scripture, much like beards without mustaches.

My personal, lived experience is that a Plain church will excommunicate a woman for leaving her adulterous, cheating, and molestitm husband (especially if she remarries), long before they will discipline a man who is a serial molester and adulterer. That’s wrong, immoral, and against everything the New Testament and Jesus stands for. When Plain Anabaptists clean up their own filthy houses full of the worst wickedness and gross sexual sin I can imagine, they’ll have credibility to speak on the D&R issue.

[Neto]

SO this is my question. So obviously a marriage is a union before God and blessed by God. What if the "God" was pagan? Total unbelievers with completely different moral values. Then they find Jesus.

Did the unbeliever even understand marriage? Did the unbeliever understand the value of marriage for life? Was the unbeliever taught since childhood the value of marriage and the importance of it?

See this is where I'm having an issue. True that an unbeliever could suffer consequences of a past life, but I'm not speaking of health/legal issues. I'm speaking of spiritual.

As Mennonites, are we making the regenerated born again person "not so regenerated" and making the blood of Christ and his forgiveness of sins marginalized and boxed in?

When we take the example I gave in my original post, the couple was polytheistic. I'm dead serious too, many Hindus bless their marriage and home by allowing a cow to defecate in the living room! (not kidding) after the marriage. It's so far out there..... Shouldn't we just accept how the pagan/unbeliever comes?

In legal definition, it's called "ex post facto" law, which at least in America is legal. When we are reborn, we are then held to Christian standards right? It's like the government now writing a law and going back in time and prosecuting for it when it was never illegal. (ex post facto)

The regenerated person had "no idea" to the standard that marriage was and how seriously a Christian honors marriage. If the family came to Christ and lived for Christ, shouldn't we just give that couple to Christ and stay out of it?

I just want to make an observation based on my experience of living in a village of animists over a 17 year period. While yes, there were infractions of the rule mentioned to us (none that occurred during the period in which we lived there, as far as we heard, except for fornication), the people had a strict and high view of marriage. There was one case of divorce reported where no infidelity was involved. In that case, childlessness was the issue. The man remarried, but never had children with his second wife, either. The woman never remarried. Another woman remarried (but had no more children) after being abandoned by her husband after the death of a child, who took all of the other children with him, and left the tribe, and married an outsider.
So where did they get their high view of marriage? I believe that it is a part of the image of God, the Creator, stamped on the soul of every human being. Do all cultures follow the injunctions of this image? No. Some cultures go against it in one area, another culture violates it in a different area.

[GaryK]

Can you explain further? Divorce and remarriage is often quite traumatic for children. You seem to be dismissive of this reality.

Children of divorced and remarried parents don’t care what Plain people think. I know lots and lots of children whose parents are D&R. I can think of very few who care at all whether or not a Plain church condemns their remarriage.

I may have misunderstood what Mike was getting at when you responded that children don't care but I took his point differently than you seem to have understood it

Who told them to get a divorce? The Plain church?

Of course the Plain church did. One of the parents had a prior marriage decades ago.

The children (of the second, long lasting marriage) view their parents’ contact as being the reason their parents split up.

The child of the first marriage has been an adult for a long time and his parents have been D&R’d for a long time. He doesn’t care whether or not Plain people allow or don’t allow the remarriage.

Did the Plain church require them to go through a legal divorce or to simply separate? I don't recall ever hearing of a Plain church requiring a legal divorce but know of some that would have required some sort of separation along with a strong push for both parents to feel resonsible for the children's welfare and for the husband to provide for both the children and the mother.

[GaryK]

My personal, lived experience is that a Plain church will excommunicate a woman for leaving her adulterous, cheating, and molestitm husband (especially if she remarries), long before they will discipline a man who is a serial molester and adulterer. That’s wrong, immoral, and against everything the New Testament and Jesus stands for. When Plain Anabaptists clean up their own filthy houses full of the worst wickedness and gross sexual sin I can imagine, they’ll have credibility to speak on the D&R issue.

So because Plain Anabaptists don't have a clean house that makes their stand on D&R unbiblical but if they would clean house their view would become biblical? Sounds like a broad brush reaction to me. Your experience in this one case that you bring up from time to time does not mean that all CA's are like that.

[mike]

Ironically, it looks like most CAs seem to be allowing worldly government to decide what’s marriage.

If two heathen gentile getting legally bound together in a county clerks office is somehow a covenenatal bond at the throne of God, their perspective is quite detached, in my opinion.

A civil union is not the same thing as a Biblical marriage in which two become one.

Isn't that somewhat unfortunate for all the many children of unconverted couples, whose parents may become separated and remarried to other partners, and have subsequent families, then become converted and have those subsequent marriages blessed by the Christian church?

I don’t think the children care.

Of situations I know where children were involved and whose parents encountered a Plain church, they were extremely resentful for their parents getting a divorce. The child from the older marriage also didn’t care.

I don't quite understand you here. So the children of an established second marriage strongly cared about their parents divorcing, but the children of the first marriage didn't care when their parents divorced?

[mike]

Can you explain further? Divorce and remarriage is often quite traumatic for children. You seem to be dismissive of this reality.

Children of divorced and remarried parents don’t care what Plain people think. I know lots and lots of children whose parents are D&R. I can think of very few who care at all whether or not a Plain church condemns their remarriage.

Who told them to get a divorce? The Plain church?

Of course the Plain church did. One of the parents had a prior marriage decades ago.

The children (of the second, long lasting marriage) view their parents’ contact as being the reason their parents split up.

The child of the first marriage has been an adult for a long time and his parents have been D&R’d for a long time. He doesn’t care whether or not Plain people allow or don’t allow the remarriage.

When I talk about children caring, I'm not talking about them caring what plain churches think. I'm talking about caring when their parents divorce. This is completely and totally understandable and it is what makes divorce so incredibly sad. What I'm trying to understand is whether you think it is bad to ask second marriages to separate, because it will damage the children (we all know that it will), but that the children of separated first marriages don't care about that divorce.

If there are children from a separated first marriage, who are damaged from that separation, why prefer the children of a second marriage, which was wrong, over the children of the first marriage? I find it hard to believe that the children of a first marriage just don't care, while the children of a second marriage do. I think all children are hurt when their parents divorce for any reason.

In many ways there seem to be no good options when there is a second marriage. Things become really broken and sad. It is similar to when there is a child born out of wedlock, where it is impossible or wrong for the parents to ever be married. Children truly are the broken pieces when we choose not to follow the biblical teaching about marriage.

[mike]

It’s not time and children that’s my complaint. It’s holding converts to suffer the errors of their pre-convert past.

It’s just dumb.

That's one of the kinder things that is said of the CA position actually. But I understand why you feel that way.

A lot depends on what one's view of marriage is, and whether one being a professing Christian affects whether a marriage is valid. One might also ask, to what extent must a person suffer from the errors of their pre-convert past? Can all past mistakes prior to conversion simply be ignored, with no more consequences?

SO this is my question. So obviously a marriage is a union before God and blessed by God. What if the "God" was pagan? Total unbelievers with completely different moral values. Then they find Jesus.

Did the unbeliever even understand marriage? Did the unbeliever understand the value of marriage for life? Was the unbeliever taught since childhood the value of marriage and the importance of it?

See this is where I'm having an issue. True that an unbeliever could suffer consequences of a past life, but I'm not speaking of health/legal issues. I'm speaking of spiritual.

As Mennonites, are we making the regenerated born again person "not so regenerated" and making the blood of Christ and his forgiveness of sins marginalized and boxed in?

When we take the example I gave in my original post, the couple was polytheistic. I'm dead serious too, many Hindus bless their marriage and home by allowing a cow to defecate in the living room! (not kidding) after the marriage. It's so far out there..... Shouldn't we just accept how the pagan/unbeliever comes?

In legal definition, it's called "ex post facto" law, which at least in America is legal. When we are reborn, we are then held to Christian standards right? It's like the government now writing a law and going back in time and prosecuting for it when it was never illegal. (ex post facto)

The regenerated person had "no idea" to the standard that marriage was and how seriously a Christian honors marriage. If the family came to Christ and lived for Christ, shouldn't we just give that couple to Christ and stay out of it?

These are legitimate and hard questions and I don't know all the answers. This I do know. Spiritually speaking there is of course forgiveness and redemption for any sin one may commit. Even the most despised, the child molesters, sexual offenders, and the murderers, who are often spat upon by others who see their own sins as being much less evil. A regenerated born again person is truly a new person, and the blood of Christ is effective to the uttermost for him or her.

As to the perceived unfairness to a person who had no idea of God's will concerning marriage when they were married, I don't entirely know the answer to that. To what extent, again, do converted people need to feel responsible to make right the wrongs they committed when they were unconverted? Should a person who was an abuser of women prior to conversion expect all women to trust him fully once he has been saved?

Maybe they once had no conscience against stealing from people who wouldn't really miss the items. Maybe they had no idea the effect of their sin on others - does that mean that, once converted, they have no obligation to the people they sinned against? In the NT there are examples of people who, once converted, went back and made wrongs right. Does restitution and consequences for past sins, after conversion, only apply when those sins were done in ignorance of God's will?

[Chris]

It’s not time and children that’s my complaint. It’s holding converts to suffer the errors of their pre-convert past.

It’s just dumb.

That's one of the kinder things that is said of the CA position actually. But I understand why you feel that way.

A lot depends on what one's view of marriage is, and whether one being a professing Christian affects whether a marriage is valid. One might also ask, to what extent must a person suffer from the errors of their pre-convert past? Can all past mistakes prior to conversion simply be ignored, with no more consequences?

SO this is my question. So obviously a marriage is a union before God and blessed by God. What if the "God" was pagan? Total unbelievers with completely different moral values. Then they find Jesus.

Did the unbeliever even understand marriage? Did the unbeliever understand the value of marriage for life? Was the unbeliever taught since childhood the value of marriage and the importance of it?

See this is where I'm having an issue. True that an unbeliever could suffer consequences of a past life, but I'm not speaking of health/legal issues. I'm speaking of spiritual.

As Mennonites, are we making the regenerated born again person "not so regenerated" and making the blood of Christ and his forgiveness of sins marginalized and boxed in?

When we take the example I gave in my original post, the couple was polytheistic. I'm dead serious too, many Hindus bless their marriage and home by allowing a cow to defecate in the living room! (not kidding) after the marriage. It's so far out there..... Shouldn't we just accept how the pagan/unbeliever comes?

In legal definition, it's called "ex post facto" law, which at least in America is legal. When we are reborn, we are then held to Christian standards right? It's like the government now writing a law and going back in time and prosecuting for it when it was never illegal. (ex post facto)

The regenerated person had "no idea" to the standard that marriage was and how seriously a Christian honors marriage. If the family came to Christ and lived for Christ, shouldn't we just give that couple to Christ and stay out of it?

MAJOR EDIT: I have no idea why I typed legal when I mean ILLEGAL.

[Chris]

That's one of the kinder things that is said of the CA position actually. But I understand why you feel that way.

A lot depends on what one's view of marriage is, and whether one being a professing Christian affects whether a marriage is valid. One might also ask, to what extent must a person suffer from the errors of their pre-convert past? Can all past mistakes prior to conversion simply be ignored, with no more consequences?

SO this is my question. So obviously a marriage is a union before God and blessed by God. What if the "God" was pagan? Total unbelievers with completely different moral values. Then they find Jesus.

Did the unbeliever even understand marriage? Did the unbeliever understand the value of marriage for life? Was the unbeliever taught since childhood the value of marriage and the importance of it?

See this is where I'm having an issue. True that an unbeliever could suffer consequences of a past life, but I'm not speaking of health/legal issues. I'm speaking of spiritual.

As Mennonites, are we making the regenerated born again person "not so regenerated" and making the blood of Christ and his forgiveness of sins marginalized and boxed in?

When we take the example I gave in my original post, the couple was polytheistic. I'm dead serious too, many Hindus bless their marriage and home by allowing a cow to defecate in the living room! (not kidding) after the marriage. It's so far out there..... Shouldn't we just accept how the pagan/unbeliever comes?

In legal definition, it's called "ex post facto" law, which at least in America is legal. When we are reborn, we are then held to Christian standards right? It's like the government now writing a law and going back in time and prosecuting for it when it was never illegal. (ex post facto)

The regenerated person had "no idea" to the standard that marriage was and how seriously a Christian honors marriage. If the family came to Christ and lived for Christ, shouldn't we just give that couple to Christ and stay out of it?

These are legitimate and hard questions and I don't know all the answers. This I do know. Spiritually speaking there is of course forgiveness and redemption for any sin one may commit. Even the most despised, the child molesters, sexual offenders, and the murderers, who are often spat upon by others who see their own sins as being much less evil. A regenerated born again person is truly a new person, and the blood of Christ is effective to the uttermost for him or her.

As to the perceived unfairness to a person who had no idea of God's will concerning marriage when they were married, I don't entirely know the answer to that. To what extent, again, do converted people need to feel responsible to make right the wrongs they committed when they were unconverted? Should a person who was an abuser of women prior to conversion expect all women to trust him fully once he has been saved?

Maybe they once had no conscience against stealing from people who wouldn't really miss the items. Maybe they had no idea the effect of their sin on others - does that mean that, once converted, they have no obligation to the people they sinned against? In the NT there are examples of people who, once converted, went back and made wrongs right. Does restitution and consequences for past sins, after conversion, only apply when those sins were done in ignorance of God's will?

Okay, I totally agree with you. This is very much the belief/thoughts of many Mennonites (50-70%) (and yes I made up that number on a guess of people I've talked with).

Almost in general people say "I don't know". Or "I don't have all the answers". I agree neither do I.

Very very common humble answer with Menno culture (not saying that it isn't genuine). I answer the same way all the time and don't have all the answers.

The thing is, with us "not fully knowing" and "not having all the answers" should we jump on the Hindu couple who came to Christ together for their remarriage 25+ years ago and say "nope you can't be a member, have communion, etc.".

I mean we don't know. Can we just say "here Jesus, this is for you to know, not me"?

[mike]

That’s because it is a false conviction not grounded in scripture or in any reasonable church history. It’s another pointless Amish-Mennonite church rule, added to scripture, much like beards without mustaches.

My personal, lived experience is that a Plain church will excommunicate a woman for leaving her adulterous, cheating, and molestitm husband (especially if she remarries), long before they will discipline a man who is a serial molester and adulterer. That’s wrong, immoral, and against everything the New Testament and Jesus stands for.

Our experience has clearly not been the same. However I do agree with you whole-heartedly that such a situation is despicable and intolerable.

I don't expect to convince you on this issue, because you already believe that conservative Anabaptists hold their view of D&R as a tool to exclude undesirable people. This is a possibly legitimate difference of opinion between us, but I have a small hope that readers of this conversation can come away with a more fair perception of what the conservative Anabaptist view is, and why it is held so strongly.

When Plain Anabaptists clean up their own filthy houses full of the worst wickedness and gross sexual sin I can imagine, they’ll have credibility to speak on the D&R issue.

If the sin of an individual, group of individuals, or an entire congregation nullifies the ability of a faith tradition to speak the truth of the scripture, then there is hardly a Christian group of any kind, which has any history to speak of, that has any ability to teach the scriptures today. That includes your church.