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New How People Change 6-10 Compatibility Mode

In John’s case, the problem was that he was simply too content.  He had reached a plateau in his relationship with God.  He had a strong faith and was involved in his church, but there were Thorns in his life that just weren’t going away.  For example, John had an explosive temper.  He regularly blew up in traffic and got mad at his wife when they worked together around the house.  He could barely control his anger at the officials at his children’s athletic events.

John also struggled with debt.  He always had his eye on the next new tool or ‘man-toy.’  He drove a late model luxury car and lived in a house he couldn’t afford.  despite several raises and a reasonable budget, John’s materialism had led him into debt.

John had problems in his relationship with his wife, Meg.  Rather than a relationship of servant love, tenderness, and unity, their marriage had the feel of military détente.  They didn’t fight a lot; they just lived separate lives and ended each day sleeping in the same bed.  Meg didn’t feel close to John, so she surrounded herself with friends with whom she shared her joys and sorrows.

There are many Johns in our churches–People who know the Lord but whose lives clearly need change.  Yet they live in the Christian community with no sense of urgency or evidence of a personal agenda for growth.  As Christians, they are far too easily satisfied.

God calls you to be dissatisfied.  You should be discontent, restless, and hungry!  The Christian life is a state of thankful discontent or joyful dissatisfaction.  That is, I live every day thankful for the grace that has changed my life, but I am not satisfied.  Why not?  Because, when I look at myself honestly, I have to admit that I am not all I can be in Christ.   I am thankful for the many things in my life that would not be there without his grace, but I will not settle for a partial inheritance!

Do you have a holy discontent?  Or has your spiritual life stagnated?  Either way, please come and be inspired to grow in the likeness of Christ!

First, divorce causes a lot of pain and guilt for everyone involved.  I have heard David Gravelly (a local divorce lawyer) say that the best divorce is terrible, and it only gets worse from there.  Second, culturally we have tried to salve the pain caused by divorce by minimalizing it.  From no fault divorce laws to sitcoms that treat divorce like its just a small hiccup that you have to get over in order to move on with your life after your relationship has lost its passion, the cultural megaphone proclaims that divorce is no big deal.  In reality, divorce is not only a big deal morally, but it causes untold pain for everyone involved no matter how far gone the marriage was in the first place.  Finally, I know many many Christians who have been through divorces whether before they came to faith or after.  Reading these texts can make them feel like they are unforgivable.  More than that, if they have remarried or desire to remarry, they don’t know how to handle Jesus’ words without feeling eternally guilty.  To add on to these cultural grapplings with divorce, most Christian denominations have either handled divorce with kid gloves or boxing gloves.  They either affirm unconditionally anyone who has gone through the pain of divorce without confrontation for their own sinfulness, or they treat them as if they have, in fact, committed the unforgivable sin.  I want to try and walk between these to positions by confronting divorce with what I believe is the truth, but provide hope and comfort from the Gospel.  If, therefore, you are divorced and while reading this you find something hard to swallow, I would encourage you to finish reading the whole article.

It is my desire that we will begin to think more consciously about divorce, and I think the place to start is with Jesus Himself.  Like I said, yesterday we read Matthew 5:31-32, where He says, “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”  Now, in order to understand this text, we need to look at two things.  First, we need to look at the background of what Jesus is saying.  Second, we need to read everything Jesus has said about divorce.

So, what is the background of Jesus’ statement here on divorce?  Well, Jesus is entering into what was a cultural, moral, and religious debate in his day.  While divorce is mentioned in the Old Testament law, it is only dealt with casuistically.  In other words, the Law only deals with situations that arise from divorce, it doesn’t talk deal with the particulars of divorce itself.  It doesn’t answer the questions of what are permissible grounds for divorce, who gets the kids, etc..  So, Bible scholars were left to infer the answers to these questions from the scattered references to divorce.

In Jesus’ day, the Bible scholars (i.e. the scribes and Pharisees) were working hard on figuring out what permissible grounds for divorce were.  Two schools had emerged.  The first school, the school of the rabbi Shammai said that divorce was only permissible if one party had committed an act of marital infidelity.  The other school, that of Rabbi Hillel, allowed divorce if your wife spilled a dish or even if you found a prettier woman.  While these might seem like widely divergent opinions, Jesus’ response to them shows that they come from the same starting point.  They are asking the wrong question, namely, “when is it ok for me to get a divorce?”

By even asking this question, they show that they have missed the point of the Old Testament laws on divorce.  What they don’t realize is that these laws were not set in place so that people could feel justified for getting a divorce under certain circumstances.  Rather, they were set up to protect women.  In the Ancient Near East, marriage was a woman’s social security.  If her husband cast her away, she would be defenseless and helpless.  She would have no economic means of providing for or protecting herself.  Thus, the Old Testament forces men who have lost pleasure in their wives to provide a certificate of divorce, so that the woman would be able to find a new husband.  In fact, the Scripture that Jesus appeals to here in Matthew, Deuteronomy 24, is set in place not only to provide a certificate of divorce for a woman who has been cast away, but to keep a man from putting his wife on the back burner while he tries to find a new one.  Read the chapter, and you’ll find that it actually prohibits a woman from returning to a previous husband if she’s remarried after her first husband casts her away.  Ironically, some churches today actually encourage this for remarried people!  Anyway, the point is, the Old Testament laws on divorce were written to provide social protection for women, especially in the context of marriage and divorce.  The Pharisees fundamentally misunderstood these passages when they tried to use them as means to divine when divorce was permissible.

That’s the background to what Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel.  Let’s look now at all that Matthew records of Jesus’ teaching on divorce.  In Matthew 5, Jesus simply says that if a man divorces his wife he makes her an adulteress.  If he marries a divorcee, he’s an adulterer.  The exception to both of these is in the case of sexual immorality.  That seems pretty straight forward.  It also seems pretty damning for anyone who is either divorced, married to a divorced person, or both.

Jesus speaks much more fully about his perspective on divorce in Matthew 19:1-12.  In this chapter, the Pharisees ask Jesus if a man can divorce his wife for any cause (referring to the above discussion between the schools of Hillel and Shammai).  Jesus responds by pointing not to the texts on divorce, but to the creation narrative itself!  In other words, they are asking about divorce, and Jesus tells them to consider the meaning of marriage first.  He says that marriage is built into the way human beings are designed.  We were not created as a group of individuals, but Adam and Eve were created as an integrated unit.  In fact, you could look at Adam and Eve and say “they are one.”  Jesus says that every married couple enters into the same relationship that Adam and Eve had.  Since Adam and Eve’s unity in marriage was a work of God in creation, every married couple should view their unity with their spouse as part of God’s work in their lives.  Thus, to undo the marriage relationship is to undo something that God has done!

More than that, the word used in Genesis to describe the unity between Adam and Eve is ‘achad.  That is the same word used in the Deuteronomy 6:4 that says “Hear oh Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.”  Do you see the implications of this?  That Adam and Eve are one is a reflection of the unity of God.  We cannot fully understand this until we read the New Testament and find out that God the Father and Jesus are one.  They are, in fact, ‘achad.  Thus, to be married is to proclaim the Father’s love for the Son, and vice versa, to the world.  Likewise, to get divorced is to proclaim a falsehood about God.  That He is not one.

As if that weren’t enough, Paul writes in Ephesians and Colossians about marriage, comparing it this time not to the love between the Father and the Son, but to the love between Jesus and His Church!  Thus, our marriages proclaim something about who Jesus is.  Now, this truth does not allow non-divorced people treat divorcees with contempt.  Why?  Because, how I treat my wife says something about how Jesus loves His bride.  So, if I get mad at her and fly off the handle, if I’m unfaithful to her, if I treat her contemptuously and talk down to her, I am blaspheming the name of Jesus.  While divorce proclaims to the world that Jesus isn’t faithful to His bride, every sin I sin against my wife says something false about Jesus.  So, I cannot criticize a divorced person until I love my wife perfectly as Christ has loved the church.  So, Jesus teaching on divorce should cause us not to try and justify ourselves, but rather to appeal to God’s mercy.

An appeal to God’s mercy, though, must always be made with an eye towards repentance .  What then does repentance look like for the divorced person?  I think it looks different in every case.  In some cases, it might mean endeavoring to reconcile with your spouse and restore your marriage (this is probably true in more cases than we’d like to admit).  The reality is that many marriages are too far gone to be recovered.  Some churches teach that a marriage can never be ended, and so a divorced person’s only hope for repentance is to return to their ex no matter what the cost.  I do not think the Bible teaches that divorce isn’t real.  That it’s real is exactly why it is so terrible.  In other words, I still believe that divorce ends a marriage.  I think repentance in these cases means that you take ownership of your own sin in the marriage and in the divorce and seek forgiveness.  This might be severely painful for some people.  The reality is that no marriage consists of only one sinner.  That means everyone has something they can seek forgiveness for.  What few people will tell you about divorce is that if you continue to blame your divorce solely on your ex, even if you take some small amount of blame but put most of it on their plate, you will not be able to forgive them, and you’ll most likely be consumed by bitterness towards them.  Only if we know ourselves to be the chief of sinners can we conjure up the grace to forgive another person.

I would also like to say briefly that I cannot conceive of a situation where I would actually counsel a person to get a divorce.  I can think of lots of situations where I would counsel separation.  If a person is engaged in destructive behavior, like abuse or addiction, love doesn’t refuse to confront them.  In one of these cases, love might kick them to the curb so that they can see their sin and repent.  Love would also hope against hope for reconciliation, and leave the possibility open (only at the recommendation of wise and godly counsel) for the marriage to be repaired.  While I think divorce might be excusable in the case of infidelity, I still probably wouldn’t counsel it, because, I’m unfaithful to Jesus every day, and He never divorces me.

So, in summary, it seems that Jesus takes divorce very seriously.  In fact, it seems that the only out Jesus gives for married people is in the case of ‘sexual immorality’ in the Greek ‘porneia’.  This Greek word, in my opinion, refers to unfaithfulness.  So, Jesus only excuses divorce in the case of marital unfaithfulness.  What does Jesus think about the divorced person then?  I would have to say He thinks the same thing about the divorced person that he does about the angry person, the lustful person, or the dishonest person.  He loves them and longs for them to come to Him to receive mercy for their sin.  What that means is that the divorced person is not beyond the reach of God’s grace.  More specifically, your divorce itself is not beyond God’s grace.  The point of Jesus’ teaching, in my opinion, is first and foremost to stop the divorced person from committing the work of self-justification for their divorce, and instead to appeal to God’s mercy.

C.S. Lewis crushing beer cans with his mind.

Saint Anthony apparently lost his keys at one point in time.  He prayed and the Lord revealed to him where they were.  Saint Joseph had trouble selling their house in Nazareth until he stood on his head in his front yard and it sold automatically.  Today, if you lose your keys or can’t sell your house, there is a saint whom you can invoke to solve your dilemma.  Never mind that the powers these saints have incurred have little or nothing to do with their actual history!  In much the same fashion, one of my favorite saints (I’m using the term now in a Protestant sense) is often invoked quite inappropriately.  It’s ironic that one of the sharpest Christian minds of the 20th Century is so often evoked to justify fuzzy theological, biblical or moral thinking.  I’m speaking of C.S. Lewis.

When Lewis was 16 years old, he came under the tutelage of W.T. Kirkpatrick, or ‘The Great Knock’ as he was affectionately known.  Lewis tells of his first acquaintance with The Great Knock.  After a long train ride, Lewis commented that the countryside was not as rugged as he had expected it.  The Great Knock immediately began to question him on what he considered ‘rugged’ and what rational grounding he had for expecting the countryside to be more rugged here than elsewhere.  For three years, Lewis’ mind was shaped under this unflagging rationalist.  It is no surprise that the man’s mind was razor-sharp when it came to logical thinking.  Even still, I have heard Lewis quoted to justify lax thinking in terms of redemption, hell, the authority of the Scriptures, and any number of indispensable Christian doctrines!  I think Lewis himself would be aghast at how frequently his fans invoke his name to dismiss intense theological reasoning.

There are, I think, several reasons for this, of which I will only name two.  First, Lewis is blocked into this lot because of his most famous endeavor, namely, Mere Christianity.  This book, written to help Britains for whom the memory of Christianity had almost entirely faded rationally engage with the Christian faith.  Lewis outlines in his introduction what his task is in his book.  He posits that what Christians hold in common is much greater than what separates us into different denominations and factions.  Many people infer from this that Lewis doesn’t think what separates Christians should even be considered.  These things can only divide, therefore, they should be ignored.  I think this is a serious misreading of Lewis.  In that same preface, he states,

“I hope no reader will suppose that ‘mere’ Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of existing communions–as if a man could adopt it in prefernce to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else.  It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms.  If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted.  But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals.  The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in.  For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable.” (emphasis mine)

In other words, while each Christian must accept the lowest common denominator, no Christian should settle for it. Mere Christianity is a robust faith,but it should still not be enough to satisfy us.

Further proving my point Lewis said something similar in a talk he to Welsh clergymen and youth workers on defending the faith.  He said that in defending the faith, it is important to define what faith we are defending.  He said first, it must match up with Mere Christianity.  Secondly, it should be (since this was a group of Anglicans) Anglican.  He said,

“This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests but as honest men.  There is a danger here of the clergy developing a special professional conscience which obscures the very plain moral issue.  Men who have passed beyond these boundary lines in either direction are apt to protest that they have come by their unorthodox opinions honestly. In defence of those opinions they are prepared to suffer obloqy and to forfeit professional advancement.  They thus come to feel like martyrs.  But this simply misses the point which so gravely scandalizes the layman.  We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing your ministry after you have come to hold them.  We always knew that a man who makes his living as a paid agent of the Conservative Party may honestly change his views and honestly become a Communist.  What we deny is that he can honestly continue to be a Conservative agent and to receive money from one party while he supports the policy of another.”

So you see, Lewis took denominational boundaries seriously enough to say that pastors whose theology differs from their denomination should abdicate their positions.

I said before that I thought there were at least two reasons Lewis’ name is invoked as the patron saint of fuzzy thinking.  The second reason is that Lewis was very humble about his knowledge of theology.  Although Lewis was a genius of a man and exceedingly expert in his own field, namely Medieval Literature,  he knew that he was not a theologian or a pastor.  Thus, he left serious thinking on the issues that separate Christians to those whose professional existence centered on those things, such as pastors, theologians, and church historians.  In Mere Christianity Lewis says, “The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.  Theories as to how it did this are another matter.  A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christian are agreed on is that it does work.”  Many people have inferred from this that different theories on how we are saved are irrelevant.  I would say that they are relevant as often as I sin against God’s Law and need to be saved from it’s guilt and power!  That being said, again it seems that Lewis’ goal has been forgotten.  Lewis is simply trying to hold forth those things that every Christian church holds.  To say that Lewis thought deep thinking about minute points of doctrine were a waste of time misses the point.  Later on in Mere Christianity, Lewis says this:

Very well then, atheism is too simple.  And I will tell you another view that is also too simple. It is the view I call Christianity-and-water, the view which simply says there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right–leaving out all the difficult and terrible doctrines about sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption.  Both these are boys’ philosophies…

Very often, however, this silly procedure is adopted by people who are not silly, but who, consciously or unconsciously, want to destroy Christianity.  Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable for a child of six and make that the object of their attack.  When you try to explain the Christian doctrine as it is really held by an instructed adult, they then complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is all too complicated and that if there really were a God they are sure He would have made ‘religion’ simple, because simplicity is so beautiful, etc.  You must be on your guard against these people for they will change their ground every minute and only waste your time.  Notice, too, their idea of God ‘making religion simple’; as if ‘religion’ were something God invented, and not His statement to us of certain quite unalterable facts about His own nature.

So, according to the man, people who demand a watered down Christianity that never struggles with difficult doctrines are either intentionally or unintentionally bent on the destruction of Christianity! Imagine if the poor man could see his followers now, using his works to undo all that he spent his life trying to defend! So, please, bury St Francis in your yard, pray to Joseph when you lose your keys, but don’t invoke Jacky boy when you’re too lazy or to soft to think through what you believe!

Pains, infirmities, loss of sleep, the failure of sight and hearing

(Letters of John Newton)

“Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone.” Psalm 71:9

I am drawing nearer and nearer to the season which the Psalmist either expected or felt. Many reasons teach the aged believer the need of this prayer. As his graces are still imperfect, so his powers are feelingly upon the decline. It was but little he could do at his best–and now less and less.

He feels other props and comforts dropping off apace. When he was young he had warm spirits and pleasing prospects; but now what a change of the friends in which he once delighted! In some he has found inconstancy–they have forsaken and forgotten him; and others have been successively taken away by death. They have fallen like the leaves in autumn–and now he stands almost a naked trunk. If any yet remain, he is expecting to lose them likewise–unless he is first taken from them.

Old age abates, and gradually destroys, the relish of such earthly comforts as might be otherwise enjoyed. Pains, infirmities, loss of sleep, the failure of sight and hearing, and all the senses–are harbingers, like Job’s messengers, arriving in close succession to tell him that death is upon his progress, and not far distant!

If youth has no security against death–then old age has no possibility of escaping the grim monster. But though friends fail, cisterns burst, gourds wither, strength declines, and death advances–if God does not forsake me–then all is well.

“Even to your old age and gray hairs–I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you!” Isaiah 46:4

Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question-now far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.

All the same, the New Testament, without going into details gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers of parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one’s work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no ‘swank’ or ‘side’, no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience-properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from v to husbands. Thirdly, it is going to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls ‘busybodies.’

If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression.  We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, ‘advanced’, but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old fashioned-perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic.  Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing.  That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine.  We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself.  You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: every on is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest.  That is why we do not get much further: and that is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are fighting for Christianity.