Jesus, Divorce, & Biblical Interpretation

"Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked him, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?' He answered them, 'What did Moses command you?' They said 'Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.'  But Jesus said to them, 'Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.  But from the beginning of creation, "God made them male and female.  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh."  So they are no longer two but one flesh...Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.'"

--Mark 10: 2-8, 11

I’ve been asked more than once whether or not I read Scripture literally.  My response is that I do. I read it literally in the context of the time and the place in which it was written, and I take into account the audience to whom it was written.  We call this historical criticism, putting a piece of Scripture into its historical content and trying to figure out what it meant at the time because, sometimes, what it means now isn’t what it meant then.  So, yes, when I read what Jesus says about divorce I think that he actually said it and actually meant it.  But what exactly did he mean?

In order to understand Jesus’ teaching we have to understand the institution of marriage from the viewpoint of ancient Judaism.  In that custom, a woman was quite literally a thing.  She was a possession, property.  She was something that was used to unite families and strengthen alliances.  Exodus even says that a daughter can be sold into slavery and that, unlike male slaves, she cannot ever earn her freedom.  The result of such a view was that a man could do whatever he wanted with the women in his life, including divorce his wife on almost any grounds, while the only grounds on which she could seek a divorce was if he were a leper!  So if the woman found no favor in the man’s eyes, for any reason, he could dismiss her—Deuteronomy 24 gave him that privilege.  So Jesus is looking at a society where men can dismiss women for no good reason, thus his statement that God never intends for divorce to happen is one in which he is calling his own people at this particular time to remember the sanctity of the institution and to remember that marriage is about spiritual unity; in fact, the commitment between two of God's people is a reminder of the commitment God has made with all of us.  Taking that into consideration, we can understand why Jesus would discourage the people in his time (that is, men) from willy-nilly divorcing their spouses.

But Jesus’ own statement changes as time goes by.  In the Gospel of Matthew, written about 10 years after Mark, Jesus is asked the same question and this time he tells the people that “Whoever divorces his wife—expect on the grounds of sexual immorality—commits adultery.”  This is in Matthew 19.  Here in Mark Jesus’ statement is black and white—“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery”—but in Matthew he gives an exception to that rule, and that is if the woman is unfaithful.  So which is the actual law, Mark's interpretation or Matthew's?

For each community of the gospels in its own time and place, what Jesus said was literal.  Each community took it to heart.  But times change.  All we have to do is look at how Mark and Matthew both handle this moment to see that it is nearly impossible to read Scripture through any other lens than the one with which it was written.  When we do that we misuse Scripture, forgetting that these texts, while sacred, are something that evolves.  Scripture isn’t static.  It is meant to be read with a critical eye, which is exactly what the rabbis of Jesus' own time did when they would read the Scripture in the synagogue, give an interpretation, and then hand it off to the next person to offer another viewpoint (Jesus himself does this on numerous occasions).  They knew that a passage of Scripture may not hold the same meaning now as it did when it was written.  

My parents are divorced.  I can remember reading this passage and crying because I thought this somehow meant my parents, who are wonderful people, had committed some kind of egregious sin because their marriage didn’t work out.  Some of you have been divorced.  That doesn’t make you miserable sinners.  Yes, it’s disappointing that divorce has become so commonplace in our society, but if we take Jesus’ words literally in our own time and place then that means all divorce is wrong. I can’t agree with that sentiment.  I can’t agree that someone who divorces a spouse over physical abuse is an adulterer.  I can’t agree that someone who divorces a spouse because he or she is manipulative or emotionally abusive is an adulterer.  And I don't think that there is some kind of special grace given to parents who stay together in a loveless marriage for the sake of their children.  I have seen too many kids traumatized by parents who do so, and I've seen too many perfectly normal and healthy kids whose parents split up. Times change.  If we apply the same ethics of Scripture to our own day, then that means we are limiting the grace of God and claiming that somehow God stopped speaking after our sacred texts were written. But God is not done speaking, and we are not meant to limit God to the pages of various books written over different periods of time to different people. 

I respect Scripture way too much to take every single word at face value and apply the ethics of its time to our own.  It deserves to be taken way more seriously than that.   I saw a politician the other day claim that this passage was proof that Jesus condemned gay marriage--evidently because Jesus said, "God made them male and female."  This is flat-out wrong!  The very concept of gay marriage was foreign to Jesus' time, as was the idea that people married for love, something that does not become commonplace until the 1800s.  To use this passage to promote one's own agenda is a gross misuse of Scripture. When preachers or politicians like that one say that this is God’s Word and it never ever changes, they’re wrong on two fronts.  Firstly, it does change.  The Exodus law that allowed women to be sold into slavery was not custom by Jesus’ time.  Secondly, God didn’t write the Scriptures.  God inspired them, sure.  Wrote, no.  Men wrote the Scriptures and put their own spin on it based on the context of their time. The Word of God is not the Bible, it is Jesus Christ.  He is the living, breathing, embodiment of God.  And while interpretations of the specifics of what he said may change over time—just look at Mark and Matthew—the truth of his message of love for God and for each other, and the truth of his death, resurrection, and ascension do not change.  Hold to those truths, and the rest is just details.    It's like Ben Witherington said:  "A text without context is a pretext for whatever you want it to mean!" 

So how should we read Scripture in light of a very difficult passage today?  Some preachers may say just to ignore it and preach on the epistle instead!  But we shouldn't do that.  Whenever we encounter pieces of Scripture that are so hard for us to take we should wrestles with it, listen to it, and dialogue with one another about it. Ask those critical questions:  who wrote it, to whom did they write it, and what was going on in the community?    To just say, “it says what it says and that is it” is to deny your own God-given reason, which can be dangerous; in fact, the very reason that snake-handling churches exist is because one single sentence of Scripture says that a sign of true discipleship is to take up serpents--it's in the extended ending of Mark's gospel.  Do not deny your capacity for reason that God has given you!  Use it to discern how God’s Spirit is moving in our time, and believe me, the Spirit is still moving.  Don’t limit God to just the pages of a book.  Read Scripture literally in the context of its time, but don’t take it so literally, and you may find God opened up to you in a whole new way.