Marriage in the Church

An acquaintance of mine recently remarried. She's a friend of mine on Facebook because I know her family well, but I'm not particularly close with her. She and her new husband look incredibly happy together, and all of our mutual friends were congratulating her on her wedding. But I didn't. Honestly, I'm confused by the whole situation. I don't know why she divorced her first husband (or even if she initiated the divorce). I do know that she still seems passionate about following and serving God, and probably is a lot better at those things than I am. It just gnaws away inside me that this is her second husband, that the vows she made the first time around have been broken, and that the community around her - the church community, the Christian community - spoke no words of sorrow or rebuke over the brokenness and is now publicly rejoicing in her new marriage. I don't know her story, and knowing her family I doubt that this divorce was entered into lightly, so I don't want to judge her specifically. For all I know, her first husband was abusive and unfaithful. But it makes me think. And in general, I see the church rejoicing at the beginning of marriages (which is all well and good) but sitting back silently when those marriages falter and fail.

Marriage is not strengthened when divorce is accepted.

The institution of marriage is a good thing, a God-ordained thing, meant to bring joy and sanctification to the participants and designed to represent the relationship between Christ and the church. So it is both natural and fitting that the church community should (in general) rejoice and celebrate the coming together of two people in marriage! But the intent and design of marriage necessitate boundaries and limitations to it. We would not rejoice if a father tried to marry his daughter, or if a man tried to marry multiple women, or if a friend tried to marry someone we knew to be abusive; those of us with more strictly Biblical views would also not rejoice if a man tried to marry another man, or if a Christian tried to marry an unbeliever. Some of those marriages act against the first purpose of marriage by destroying the spouses' joy or by making it more difficult for them to walk with God and grow in their faith; others work against the second purpose by twisting that imagery and distorting our understanding of the relationship between God and us as the church. Seeing the immediate and temporal happiness of the individuals entering into one of those skewed marriages might make it natural for us to want to rejoice in their coming together - but it might not be fitting if the relationship is inherently flawed.

One could respond that all relationships are flawed to some degree, and that no marriage adequately represents the relationship of Christ to the church, and I would of course agree. My own sin puts strain on my own marriage every day, eats away at my joy and my husband's joy, and dims our marital reflection of Christ. But incest, polygamy, and homosexuality are insurmountable obstacles to accurately reflecting the relationship between Christ and the church, no matter how happy and committed the individuals may be. On the other hand, a mismatched marriage would have the essence and character needed to reflect that relationship, and thus not be inherently flawed, but it may be unwise for a myriad of reasons. So I think the church should be firm about rejecting the first type of relationship (those which are in essence unable to reflect the full Biblical imagery of marriage) and should counsel against the second type but provide as much support as possible to those already in the midst of one (so that a bad situation might possibly redeemed, and the significant sin or area of discord used as a catalyst for sanctification and increased faith).

Divorce is difficult for me, however, because I'm often unsure of which category it falls into. Clearly, it destroys entirely the Christological imagery of marriage. Christ will not "divorce" or abandon His church, and our lack of faithfulness will not tear apart the relationship either. But I know that after a divorce people can go on to do great things and become great men and women of faith, and that God will even use the divorce to draw them to Himself. And the church should play a role in that redemptive work. Our judgment of the sin should not push the sinner farther away from Christ; rather, we should seek to respond in a way that pulls the sinner deep into the love whose depth and length and width and height are said to be beyond comprehension. The challenge is to do this well without compromising the truth that divorce hurts individuals, families, and society, Christians and unbelievers alike, by twisting our understanding of Christ's commitment and love for us.

So should I rejoice in a remarriage following divorce? I have, once, when the man remarrying had been abandoned by his wife in middle age for no reason other than her own feelings and whims. But even then I wondered if he should have let her go or if he should have continued to pursue her in love as long as possible, like Christ pursues us when we turn to our idols of comfort or power or respect. It's not a black and white issue, and I think culturally we are inclined to prioritize happiness over commitment. We might say that we value redemption more than atonement... we encourage people to simply move on and start over instead of taking the time to wrestle with and repent of the past. When someone vows before God to be committed to another person for a lifetime, and shoulders the mantle of reflecting God in one particular relationship just as he or she has endeavored to reflect Him as an individual, it is a serious matter. It is not to be entered into frivolously. That is why the whole church stands together (or should, at any rate) in witness to and support of the couple making those vows. It is an equally serious matter when those vows are broken, and yet the church does nothing. We rejoice when the oath-breaker stands a second time to make those same promises to a different person than before - but do we provide the counsel and support needed to make sure that this time the promises will be kept through the hard times once the swell of romantic love has ebbed away?

It breaks my heart to see so many marriages foundering on the shoals of life, to see the church dimming its warning lighthouse beacon, to see her members laboring on the shore to pick up the pieces instead of helping steer the ship to safer seas, or throwing together hasty and poorly-built boats instead of taking the time to construct sea-worthy vessels before sending them out from port. Should we be there to help people rebuild after a divorce? Of course. But we should be working even harder to keep that shipwreck from happening in the first place, instead of just counting on the skills of the rescue team. Our marriages are not simply private contracts that only hurt or help the individuals directly involved; they are also public statements of the nature of Christ and His relationship to His people, and we as the church need to fight for them, stand beside them, and give them the supplies and guidance they need to sail safely across the ocean of time.

An Introvert Looks at Community

Community seems like a beautiful concept, when thought about in the abstract - having people to love and be loved by, to know and be known by, to be able to mourn together and rejoice together, to cut through the deadening fog of isolation we've constructed. Even the tensions, conflicts, and hurts that accompany community seem welcome, if only we can have - even for a single moment - true connection of minds and true fellowship between hearts. To be known and valued - to have a place where one belongs - that is the climax of community and the prize for which everyone strives.

But most experiences of community fall incredibly short of this ideal. It's not that people have issues and those issues can make relationships messy and difficult; rather, it's that we attempt to artificially induce community in various ways and rarely (if ever) succeed in re-creating the matrix of shared life necessary for the opening of doors and the tearing down of walls. We meet with a group of randomly selected people once or twice a week and call them our "community," but never feel comfortable enough to share our deepest fears and dreams or expose our genuine personality - or, worse, realize after we've made ourselves vulnerable that (because of their own fears or self-defenses or lack of support) no one really cares about our sorrows and our hopes. So we fall back into our silences or our postures and regret that we ever revealed our real selves; we go on participating in our "community" for the sake of appearances or because of fun activities without engaging or investing in a deep and meaningful way.

Our churches, which ought to resemble that most closely-knit community, the family, are not exempt from this sort of artificiality, with its corresponding hypocrisy and superficiality. People greet each other in a scripted way, when the pastor or worship leader directs them to do so, and sigh with relief when the awkward moment is past so they can retreat back to themselves and the few friends they already know. When the sermon is over, the church empties as fast as possible, except for a few cliques who've managed to stay connected internally while remaining separate from the rest of the church body. In small groups, people share carefully selected prayer requests - small specific needs or vague and generalized issues, neither of which leaves them vulnerable before the rest of the group - or discuss the activities of their weeks without a word for the passions, emotions, and ideas churning inside them or the beauty and darkness of God speaking and sin acting in their worlds. There is always a fear of judgment; there is always a suspicion that the group is not bound together by an authentic-enough love to handle such dialogue and revelation.

I am sure that the solution to all of this is not to further separate and isolate ourselves - to give up on community because it has failed us so many times. But what, then, is the solution? What steps can we take toward genuine love in community?

Unbelonging

Psalm 107 is one of the most beautiful of all the psalms, and also one that illustrates God's love for and involvement in the lives of His people. Every time I read it, a different aspect or picture stands out to me. Today, what caught my attention was the first descriptive stanza, verses 4-9:

"They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way;
They found no city to dwell in.
Hungry and thirsty,
Their soul fainted in them.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He delivered them out of their distresses.
And He led them forth by the right way,
That they might go to a city for a dwelling place.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
For He satisfies the longing soul,
And fills the hungry soul with goodness."

It is a picture of loneliness and unbelonging, of souls who wander alone and unfruitful through barren desert places, trudging through the wilderness with empty hearts. To them, life must seem both meaningless and hopeless, as they long from the depths of their being for the joy and abundance they can neither find nor create. Yet though their sorrows lead them to the point of breaking, they do not stumble into the pit of Despair, for they remember in their desolation, despite the seeming futility of life, to cry to God who does not scorn the tears of a lost and broken soul.

When they so cry, out of the pain and the bitter empty ache of their hearts, He hears them not with condemnation or contempt, but with kindness and compassion. He hears them, and hearing them, He responds with action, entering their lives and changing its course. He leads them to a place where they can dwell: He gives them a home and a place to belong, and a community in which they can find both fellowship and purpose - where they can have their own needs met and also come to know joy and find meaning through serving and loving the people around them. In essence, He saves them from the barrenness of a life alone and loveless by restoring them to the human fellowship for which we were designed.

All too often, even here in an actual city, there is no community. Souls wander by in the wilderness of their isolation and loneliness, longing for love but unable to find it, looking for a place to belong, but turned away by the indifference of those who fail to even notice them. The deep, throbbing ache for a place and a people to belong to becomes the steady undercurrent of our existence, however we try to silence or ignore it. Oh, that God would bring the goodness of community and loving fellowship to our lives, here and now! Deliver us from the distress of our aloneness and unbelonging, Lord, and lead us by the right way, and satisfy this longing of our souls!