Have you ever thought through the issue of divorce? When you start thinking through the topic, you have to consider the act of divorce along with the motive behind it.
The motive behind seeking a divorce is a major issue to consider. The motive changes everything.
I am often amazed at how the excuse “I did it for the children” or some variation of this line of thinking is used.What amazes me, is that when I dig deeper, the children are merely the foil.
The children are the curtain that the spouse who initiated the divorce hides behind. Although children are given as the excuse, the real motive is more often vengeance.
When you get honest, the divorce is often surrounded by paybacks for hurts that have accumulated along the way. The hurts and undiscussed issues built up to the point where there is a rupture.
The rupture continues growing to the point of divorce. Although the real issue lies in their inability to navigate relationship issues, it is easier for them to say “it is for the children” and launch the divorce.
Divorce often provides protective cover from which a barrage of accusations and attacks are launched. It is amazing how many assaults are made from behind the protection of a lawyer.
The lawyers often provide comfort and encouragement, since pursuing further legal matters provides promises of continued income for them. The more legally contentious the divorce, the more comfort and encouragement and the more money made.
For them, the excuse is made “I am just seeing to it that my client’s rights are protected”.
Ironically, many wrongs are done in the name of protecting ‘rights’. This is where the word rights means one thing in legalese and a whole different thing in terms of moral right and wrong.
What is morally right is VERY different than what is legally right in such cases. So when the lawyers talk about what ‘the right thing to do’ is not the same as ‘what is morally right’.
By using the language of doing what is right or protecting what is ‘right’ the whole motive of vengeance is plastered with a veneer of ‘doing right’. When you cover vengeance with enough rights, it eventually convinces each party that it was the ‘right’ thing to do, even though at its root is vengeance in all its ugliness.
Divorce is one solution to marital and relationship issues. It is often a major power play in the marriage drama. There is often a fantasy that somehow the judges and lawyers will make the unruly spouse dance and do things that they would not do for you through talks and negotiations.
Divorce is also a counter solution to affairs popular in some church circles. The idea of divorce being an acceptable response to an affair is based on some of the writings of Erasmus.
Up until his writings, divorce was not viewed as an acceptable solution to affairs. Erasmus elaborated on what is often referred to as the ‘exception clause’. It is this exception clause that many Christians use as a reason for seeking divorce. My own experience is that many church people hide behind this teaching in order to mask their own vengeance motives.
Since Christians are not supposed to seek vengeance or divorce, when there is an opinion by one of the church scholars that you have an out, many people are interested in this ‘out’. This way, they can get their divorce and not have to face the relationship issues with a clear conscience.
They can opt out and not feel guilty based on some obscure writing by Erasmus on the exception clause.
By pleading that “my spouse had an affair”, they have their ‘get out of jail (marriage) free card” which they put into play. In many ways, they have as much vengeance in their heart as the non-Christians, but since they have an ‘approved out’, they refuse acknowledging their motives for the affair. Underneath all their excuses is the ugliness of vengeance.
No matter what you cover the motive for divorce in, underneath there are some ugly things. One of those ugly things is vengeance.
Best Regards,
Jeff
