Continuing on our series on Domestic Violence (DV), this week’s topic is divorce, which many Christians have mishandled, to the severe detriment of victims.
Many Christians claim that the only biblical grounds for divorce is marital unfaithfulness, and cite Matt 19:9 to support this. As such, many DV victims have been told by the church to return to their abuser, and simply pray that they will change. This stems from a dangerous misunderstanding of the Scriptures.
Author David Instone-Brewer (Divorce and Remarriage in the Church, 2003) has shown that in Matt 19, Jesus is adjudicating between two popular Rabbinical positions on divorce from Deut 24:1. One side claimed the difficult phrase ‘something indecent’ only refers to sexual immorality, while their opponents claimed it refers to anything a wife may do wrong (e.g. burn her husband’s toast). So when the Pharisees ask Jesus whether a man may divorce his wife for ‘any and every reason’ (Matt 9:3), they are simply asking ‘what does “something indecent” actually mean?’. Jesus tells them Deut 24:1 is only referring to sexual immorality.
This is why Jesus doesn’t mention the divorce law from Ex 21:7-11. It simply wasn’t part of that question. Yet Ex 21:11 specifically allows for divorce in situations of DV. We can add Paul’s provision in 1 Cor 7:15 to the list of cases not covered in Matt 19.
On top of this, allowing someone to continue in their sin (i.e. abusing you, or others) is actually wrong. So if someone shows a pattern of abuse, and refuses to seek counselling over it, the proper action is to leave them (separation first, then perhaps divorce). While I understand that leaving an abuser is sometimes difficult and dangerous, please do not stay on account of poor theology.
Brendan McLaughlin
