Divorce

Inability to live with a person once loved is revelatory of the human condition, the misunderstanding of genders, relationships with family members and friends, human rigidity, fragility of romance.  A marriage with children when broken becomes for some persons the insane grief.  Divorce redirects relationships, even definitions of values.  When life should be ripening into a magnificent fruit of life, the adult must start over having lost the most magnificent and intimate relationship possible to mankind in nature.  Divorce as defined by God is permitted, but that because some human beings so distort the parable of God in marriage that God must protect his method of communication with us by offering a way out of that which has lost its meaning for a family.  Marriage and the family is the biblical lesson of relationship with God even to identifying with God for mankind through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  (The Holy Spirit is expressive of the mother role in a family.)  The righteous, well directed and loving family becomes a living analogy of God relating to mankind and mankind relating to God.  There is something of the image of God in a bonded family.  The concept develops from the beginning with Adam and Eve and follows through to the Marriage Supper of Jesus Christ relating the Son of God to humankind – a relationship higher than that of angels.  To break a marriage, as God has it, is a sin in the violation of its meaning of loving bond, a factor of great importance for safety and relationship with God.  To break meaning related to the integrity of the Trinity of God requires recognition, repentance and forgiveness of God in the same pattern that any sin is forgiven.  It is interesting that the health of nations is dependent upon the solidarity of their families.

At this writing my own country is deeply troubled by broken families.  Some are not made legal families in that two persons (man and woman) live together without legal identity as married persons. Children begin without the proper direction that the oneness of marriage offers in security and mutual love with loyalty.

Every child needs a father and mother in a sense of unity for meaning related to themselves, their future experience and adjustment to life.  The problems and costs for society, at the time of this writing, are greatly increased by the cavalier way in which marriage is distorted and broken for masses of the population.  Children are found to be abused in greater numbers than known before in our history. The abandonment by some fathers has been well known for decades, but recently abandonment by mothers has also become a problem.  Dysfunctional mothers are increasingly being identified as the agents of sorrow, even death, for their children.  Government agencies are being further developed to rescue abused children.  By the time some are rescued their attitudes are so distorted that it is difficult for the system to find adoptive parents, or proper public facilities to aid them for a normal life future. 

Persons related to family failure, whether they caused it or are victims of it, are less likely to follow the Christian faith in the vital order of that life as scripturally defined.  They feel they are too far from the ideal so they move away from trying.  For many, life doesn’t seem fair.  Relationships are lost, or weakened. Children feel either betrayed or something has been denied them.  They have been robbed.  As a person counseling with men, women and children in family crises, I feel emotionally and spiritually drained on many occasions that these persons, with all the benefits of life given us – that we are capable of doing so much damage to other human beings most of whom dream about solutions.  The great mistake in all this is that solutions are not found so much as they are engaged.  We can utilize that in our better selves to make better lives.  The inability of some persons to accept the depravity (human weakness) of persons, so to adapt, to help lift, to find aid from both man and God to repair lives, to reduce the fault line in us that, not managed – causes family quakes with collateral damage even to society.  Love, acceptance, duty, privilege, understanding, service, sacrifice, mutuality, learning can be gained.  The matter is so important to God and the revelation of himself to us, that he will assist those who accept life discipline.  In the list of God’s priorities the family is near the top of his interests.  It has been said that: the family that prays together stays together.  Alone we may miss self-direction.    In penitence and faith Christ directs us alone/together.