Ezekiel 18:23—"'Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?'"
Ezekiel 33:11—"'Say to them, "As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live . . ."'"
God clearly says he is not delighted by the death of the wicked and actively prefers for them to turn to righteousness rather than perish. All the same, as much as God takes no pleasure in their death and longs for their repentance (see also verses like 1 Timothy 2:3-4 and 2 Peter 3:8-9), he inflexibly commands the just death of people who sin in certain ways elsewhere. However tragic any human death is because it is linked to sin one way or another, it is still justice to kill some people because of their own actions. I have listed two passages that address capital sins below.
Leviticus 20:9—"'Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head.'"
Deuteronomy 17:2-5—"If a man or woman living among you in one of the town the Lord gives you is found doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God in violation of his covenant, and contrary to my command has worshiped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars in the sky, and this has been brought to your attention, then you must investigate it thoroughly. If it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, take the man or woman who has done this evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death."
In various places, the Bible calls an assortment of other sins detestable besides worshipping other gods or the natural world as in Deuteronomy 17. What follows is a mere sampling. All sin is detestable because it is evil, of course, albeit not always equally detestable. When Proverbs 6 says seven things are detestable, it does not even mention the detestable sins called such in Deuteronomy 18 and Luke 16, for instance. But it does say that feet which rush into evil are detestable, without specifying any particular kind of evil. All sin is encompassed. The Bible, like reason, affirms that anything immoral would be detestable:
Deuteronomy 18:9-12—"When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you."
Proverbs 6:16-19—"There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community."
Luke 16:13-15—"'No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.' The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, 'You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God's sight.'"
If God hates the evil act, then he would also hate the evildoer, apart from whom there is no evil. Indeed, Deuteronomy 18 communicates as much about those who practice divination or necromancy. God hates them and other evildoers because of their evil acts or thoughts, without which they would not be wicked. But he does not actually hate divorce or divorcees, at least not in the sense that evangelicals might think. He would hate that divorce is warranted or necessary in the way he might hate that the unrepentantly wicked must die. Their death under proper conditions (i.e., not through murder or unjust tortures, but the likes of legitimate capital punishment or divinely appointed death from sickness) is a thing that in a very particular way merits celebration for the elimination of evil by removal of the evildoer. But the evil that made the sinner deserve to perish is a tragedy, along with the fact that the dead evildoer did not repent beforehand and thus potentially save their life.
There is a very easy way to demonstrate that divorce is not an abomination on Judeo-Christianity, at least not automatically: find at least one verse expressly permitting divorce. A lack of condemnation also accomplishes this, but one would have to read more of the Bible to notice an absence of such prohibition. Yet the Law, where God restates almost all of or clarifies more about the moral obligations sporadically touched on throughout Genesis in a very incomplete way, does both. The Law never condemns divorce as a whole, instead revealing that there must be some genuine error on the other spouse's part (Deuteronomy 24:1) and that divorce in certain very specific circumstances is wrong (Deuteronomy 22) unless there is something like abuse, such as unjust physical force (not for self-defense), aimed inside the marriage. For instance, Exodus 21:10-11, 26-27, Deuteronomy 23:15-16, and 1 Corinthians 7:15 all independently affirm one way or another that no man or woman loses all rights to divorce, no matter the scenario, based on their own misdeeds before or during the marriage.
Sometimes, as with Numbers 30:9, general divorce is brought up in the divine Law using a variation of the word without any condemnation. In other cases, like in Exodus 21:26-27, the context is not about marriage, though there are logical ramifications for marriage and divorce in the Bible's position on the issue at hand. Here, that is the abuse of male and female slaves. Passages like Deuteronomy 21:13-14 clearly speak of a marriage ending without actually using terms like "divorce", but it is very obvious from what is said that divorce is in view and ethically permissible in, at a minimum, the context addressed. The verses below are but a sample of the relevant passages from the Torah, arranged in sequential order:
Exodus 21:26-27—"'An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye. And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth.'"
Numbers 30:9—"'Any vow or obligation taken by a widow or divorced woman will be binding on her.'"
Deuteronomy 21:13-14—". . . After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her."
None of these or other passages call divorce some universal or near-universal act of wickedness. Instead, they clearly allow it and prescribe allowing one's partner to go free for abuse. If divorce was a sin, then God did the exact opposite of forbidding it by both explicitly and more subtly giving laws that permit divorce in a wide variety of situations. In fact, even lack of contentment with the marriage is a factor according to Deuteronomy 21:13-14 (and 24:1)—personal, amoral dissatisfaction is not the sole factor, but it is treated as relevant twice. As I love to point out, the only possibilities if all of the verses I have mentioned or alluded to are in the Bible are that 1) the Jesus of the gospels is an overtly insane, hypocritical heretic who forsakes reason and his own supposed religious philosophy, or 2) he does not mean exactly what he says. There is direct indication of the latter in the gospel accounts themselves [1].
Malachi 2 similarly does not present Yahweh as hating divorce. And if it did, either it would mean God hates divorce but it is still permissible in many circumstances, similar to how God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but still kills/will kill them as they deserve, or it would mean that God is himself an irrationalistic hypocrite, and therefore he is in the wrong. Guess which of these is not Biblical either way? God is said to not change (Malachi 3:6), so if the Bible is true, he absolutely did not arbitrarily "decide" that marriage is more important than the people in a marriage or anything else of more foundational philosophical significance, then arbitrarily decide that divorce is permissible, and then arbitrarily decide to hate divorce before his Son announces that divorce is suddenly always evil with at most one exception. Further disproving this incoherent stance on divorce is the fact that Jesus never even condemns divorce in his strictest wording: at best, he only condemns remarriage to a new partner following divorce.
And this is massive hyperbole that would otherwise outright contradict Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 24:1-4, 12:32). Deuteronomy 24 even makes the emphatic point that the party whose wrong spurred the other to end the marriage, in this example the wife, does not sin in remarrying. That is, remarriage is not a sin unless they/she marries a separate partner afterward and then, after the new partner dies or divorces them, remarries the original spouse. Neither does Paul condemn remarriage, all but saying it is of course allowed when he declares an abandoned or otherwise abused spouse as no longer bound or enslaved. See 1 Corinthians 7:15, which clearly uses the phrase "such cases" or "such circumstances" to reference scenarios far beyond the scope of literal physical abandonment. Also, see how the analogous passages in the Law about slaves going free for abuse, even if they had freely promised lifelong service with some of its own parallels to marriage (Exodus 21:5-6, Deuteronomy 15:16-17) and with no discrimination based on gender, never forbid the liberated servant from seeking a new master or mistress. Perhaps Paul recognized the equivalence of such servants to abused spouses when he wrote that the abandoned husband or wife is no longer enslaved/bound.
I myself was quite surprised even after years of being a rationalist at how utterly exaggerated the statement of Jesus is in Matthew 19:9. Almost as soon as I became a rationalist in early 2015, I saw that Biblical ethics explicitly allows for divorce far outside of what Jesus hyperbolically says is the one basis (Exodus 21:10-11 and 1 Corinthians 7:15 alone) and that God's moral nature requires that abuse of various kinds frees the victim of either gender to leave their relationship or situation (Exodus 21:26-27, Deuteronomy 23:15-16). But obviously, to the exact extent specified earlier, God is entirely fine with people divorcing because they lack personal interest in continuing the marriage according to Deuteronomy 21 and 24. Heretical anti-divorce and anti-remarriage theology I had already been exposed to before coming to rationalism did contribute to a level of initial wariness towards the issue that, even though I had already started making no assumptions, is entirely unnecessary.
God does not hate divorce as an intrinsic evil, nor does he automatically hate people who initiate divorce or have their marriages end by the wishes of the other party. He does hate the sins of husbands and wives that make divorce legitimate or even necessary for the safety or mental/physical wellbeing of a victimized partner. Divorce really is the best and divinely authorized solution to a wide variety of marital issues as soon as they appear. Sure, reconciliation is a valid solution, but it is absolutely never a moral requirement, and abusive partners need to acknowledg their stupidity and wrongs as much as they recall them whether or not a couple stays together. If more people were as ruthless in dismissing dating partners as romantic options for any rationalistic reason (not for their own emotional issues they force onto their partners, for instance), fewer people would even have to bother with the potentially harrowing process of divorce that is monetized and drawn out in an unbiblical society like that of America.
No comments:
Post a Comment