The Bible tells us many things: it tells us how to love God and worship Him, it tells us how to love each other, it tells us how to behave, it tells us how to raise our children, it tells us what to eat...in short, it covers most basic situations for human life. If human civilization were to fall today around the world, and we were knocked back into a new dark age, we could still follow the Bible's teachings. But most importantly, I think we're all agreed that the Bible tells God's will for humankind. From God's first command to us to his last, He's telling us what to do. We can basically agree that we can define "sin" as anything that is contrary to God's will for us.
So back to my original line of thought. It's been extremely difficult, the past several months, to reconcile my own actions against God's Word. I have left my marriage of my own accord; though I did a first try to reconcile to my former wife, I ultimately moved out. I picked up and left. I punched out faster than a Navy pilot from a burning F-14. (And in all honesty, my marriage had become something like that.) The point is, I went through with the divorce. Jesus explicitly says:
I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
He says this during the Sermon on the Mount, and he reiterates it when the Pharisees question him later about divorce. It's obvious that this was a serious topic. It follows that I am now, and forever will be, guilty of the sin of adultery, should I ever remarry (which I fully plan to do). That has been a difficult pill to swallow, very difficult indeed. In fact, these passages have made it difficult at times to turn to Jesus and ask him for his continuing strength and courage through these difficult times, to ask him for his wondrous compassion as I deal with this, to ask for buttressing of my faith and removal of fear in my life. I mean, how can I reasonably accept, as a Christian, that I am going against the explicit command of Jesus Christ himself, the person of God on Earth who came down to die for me and take my sin away? Could any of you who are Christian so easily accept it? How can I call myself a Christian? How can I turn my face toward Jesus as such a bald-faced sinner? How can I tell my children to follow God's Word as given to us in the Bible, yet be so hypocritical as to willingly ignore it myself? Many of my friends and relatives have tried hard to help me deal with this, to accept this. Some have told me, "well, sometimes it's still better this way." Yes, of course, in our human terms it might be, but that does not resolve the primary question. Others have brought up the idea of context, that in Jesus' time it was very common for men to divorce their wives so they could go run around with other women, or for other spurious reasons. I can't believe that, though; why else would Jesus have brought it up so prominently and precisely? And further, if we argue for "context", yet deny "context" when it is thrown back at us at other times (which we shall see shortly), how can we not call ourselves doubly hypocritical and just as morally ambiguous as those we argue against?
The second issue, homosexuality, is much thornier, as we all know. Its twists and turns are more intricate than the finest gold filigree, and more expensive, as well. We weave these threads on both sides. Again, context MUST NOT be brought up, not because it is necessarily irrelevant, but because context, as we see, eventually makes everything irrelevant. The explanation for the movement of the Earth around the Sun can be explained in Newtonian physics, but the context of Einstein's Relativity Theory and quantum physics makes Newton's explanation irrelevant. Yet it does not change the fact that the Earth still travels around the Sun. That is The Truth. We can argue context, and we can argue the meaning of words, and we can argue where the Spirit leads all day, but in the end, it comes down to the Law, as God gave it to us, and as expressed in the WHOLE Bible, and The Truth, which is God's will for us.
Some will say, "Jesus' words might have been relevant for that particular time, but not for what we know today." Are these people saying that God can change His mind? Well, perhaps he can, but I doubt it; I mean, he DOES know everything after all, right? You can't change your mind if you know the facts; God changing his mind would mean that he would be changing, in one moment, the nature of the entire universe. Over the course of the Bible, God doesn't change his mind, he changes the Law. Let's go to the second passage on divorce, where Jesus debates divorce with the Pharisees:
3Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"4"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,'[a] 5and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'[b]? 6So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
7"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
8Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."
10The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry."
11Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage[c]because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."
What is Jesus saying here? The Pharisees ask if divorce is acceptable. Jesus quotes scripture to them (which, I would argue, also invalidates the entire same-sex marriage argument, as he only talks about men and women getting married), and says it is not acceptable, and those who remarry are adulterers. Jesus' discussion of why Moses permitted divorce is even more troubling; it indicates that we were less civilized then, so divorce was a necessary evil, but we should know better now!! God did not changed the Truth, which was always set; he changed the Law that was delivered to us. In fact, not only did Jesus change the Law, but he changed it and made it even more difficult to follow, raising the bar even higher for our fallible human nature to aspire to. People today might bring up "inclusivity" and "openness", for Jesus was open and inclusive, but Jesus never loosens or compromises the Law. He never accepts what is contrary to God's will, and God's will is revealed to us first in the Law and again in the New Covenant. The New Covenant is, in fact, even more difficult to follow than the Law originally delivered in the Old Testament from Moses. I would liken this to how, as you progress in school, the concepts and ideas and skills you learn only become more difficult to master. Just as you probably asked yourself, "How can I ever learn this?" the first time you ever came up against calculus, or quantum physics, or exobiology, or constitutional law, or whatever your particular bugaboo was in school. We're held to a higher standard now. If you take the Bible as a whole, you can only ask, "Lord, how could I ever live up to all of this? How can I handle this material? How could I possibly follow Your will?"
The answer is simple...we can't. I can't. You can't. There is no one on the Earth, dead, living, or yet to be born, who can live up to God's will for us, save Jesus himself, and that's the whole point. In fact, it is in his sacrifice that he also provided to us not only eternal salvation, but also the paragon of faith in God, in that God commanded him to sacrifice himself, and he did so willingly for all of us. Jesus was God in human form, whereas we are all human, and all totally fallible. We cannot live up to that example. Every Christian theologian has agreed that we are sinful by our very nature. We cannot escape it. If homosexuality is part of human nature, as some claim, then it is sill sinful. If our desire to divorce is part of our nature (as it apparently was as far back as in Moses' time...nihil novum sub sole), then it is sinful. We could memorize the Bible, every word, every passage, and still not be able to live up to it completely. It is too much for us to do...on our own.
The only way to accept the Bible and not line-item-veto it into irrelevance is to simply accept the fact that we are sinners and could never possibly be otherwise, but that through God's transforming power, through the blood of Jesus Christ, we are all made whole. We do advance and grow, the material gets tougher, but the whole point of this life is that we learn that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Far too many people today seem to believe that if we just cross out enough of the Word, we can live up to it, as though it's something we can do on our own. Many dispute the Bible because it was put together by men, but God's guiding hand is in everything, and He didn't guide the process of formulating the Bible just so that we foolish humans could invalidate it. We believe we have outsmarted God, and can thus do as we please with His will as He has delivered it to us. But we will pay a terrible price for arrogance and pride in the face of the Living God. He says the following to Job:
8 "Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?9 Do you have an arm like God's,
and can your voice thunder like his?10 Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.11 Unleash the fury of your wrath,
look at every proud man and bring him low...
14 Then I myself will admit to you
that your own right hand can save you.
And Job answers:
2 "I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.3 You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?'
....
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
6 Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes."
Church leaders today say that Jesus would want us to accept homosexuals, and I agree, but Jesus would not want us to tell them that homosexuality is acceptable to God. There's more than enough evidence from the Bible to say that this is not the case, and contrary to popular belief, the Holy Spirit does not lead us away from God's will, but rather closer to it. Is it really that difficult to accept that we are all sinners? Many of these same church leaders willingly accept divorce, but paradoxically enough, they will tell you that you should try to avoid it. Many will recommend counseling or other active measures to reconcile. I agree, divorce should be avoided if possible, as sin should be avoided. But how can we decry one sin and tolerate another?
Follow God's will, as delivered to us in the Bible. You will sin, God knows that. That's why he sent Jesus in the first place. When you sin, repent in dust and ashes, acknowledging your sin, and God will forgive you. It really is that simple, and that alone has maintained my faith. Yes, I sinned in divorcing my wife. I also eat shellfish from time to time and wear clothes made of more than one fiber (also part of the Law as delivered in Leviticus). I am a sinner...just like I was yesterday, and like I was the day before, and like I was before the divorce, and like I will be tomorrow. The bumper sticker we've all seen makes the point best: "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." "Forgiven" doesn't mean "permitted" or "tolerated." When someone offends you, and you forgive them, you expect them not to do it. Sin is the same way with God. He expects us to try our best to not do that sin again. He will keep forgiving, but ultimately we must leave it behind us. That is The Truth.I have asked God to forgive me. I have put my sin behind me, as much as possible. With God's help, I can move on, and so must we all.
Thanks for reading along.
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