Listen to this post NOW on Beyond Everything Radio!

This series has explored the high view of marriage, love and sex by comparing it to the very low view held by our modern world. For some, it may seem as though I’m placing some unobtainable, unrealistic standard upon relationships, or that I’m promoting some “pie in the sky” dreamland. I can assure you, that is not the case. I share these principals because I’ve applied them and as a result, our family has been peaceful and enjoyable. We have almost zero drama. We all get along. We go about our days with intension and hope. We gather together and relate rather than react. To us it feels very normal, but against what the world calls “normal” we are abnormal. I wouldn’t offer advice otherwise.

Since normal is so bad, or said another way; we live in the unloving context of untransformed pain. The high view of love, marriage and sex will always transform our pain into a loving act of the will. The problem is that pain is unpleasant…by design. It’s a check engine light to reveal what is broken. Our natural pattern is to move away from pain, to escape it, or try and mask it, burry it, numb it, or resist it. Pain is a wise teacher if we are willing to learn and receive its correction. Most people don’t realize that the pain they experience is actually the pain of resistance. To resist pain…IS PAIN. The experience I’m sharing with you, reveals that our family is not unlike yours, we aren’t lucky, it’s not that we have no pain, but that we have learned to transform it rather than transmit it.

The path to transforming pain is consummation by love and it’s closer and faster than you think.

Alan Watts helped me construct this next consideration: I want you to think about the food chain. A worm is consumed by an insect, but upon closer examination, it’s actually transformed into the insect. The insect, by being consumed is transformed into a bird. The bird into a larger animal and so on. The grass of the field is transformed into you and I, through a pattern of decline, death and renewal. Only life can sustain life. All that lives is transformed into all that lives, our death is transformation into higher life. Many call this the Christoform pattern of all of life. We are free to reject this notion, but none of us are free to avoid this pattern. We all go from order to disorder to reorder…form, deformation, to reform…garden, curse and city… marginalization, crucifixion and resurrection. Theology is life…experienced.

If we want a great marriage, we must endeavor to follow in the footsteps of Christ. The problem is that for most of us, when our relationships begin the deformation or decline phase, we jettison them for something newer or distracting. However, like I’ve said all along, it requires two people to commit to the process of dying to oneself if the marriage is to experience restoration.

So when do we call it quits? When can we know when it’s time for divorce? What OPTIONS are actually available to us?

I talked about the “sklerokardia” or (uncircumcised heart) which is the reason Moses allowed for divorce (Matthew 19:8). In fact many Christians quote this passage as Jesus’ only justification for divorce, interpreting this to say: “Only in the case of adultery is a person allowed to divorce“. That is a very surface level interpretation. We know that the deeper sin of adultery goes beyond the betrayal in the sex act…the betrayal within the heart. At that level, there is no marital relationship that is outside the scope of this betrayal. Every husband and wife has and will continue to betray their beloved within their heart.

We are all idolators and adulterers at heart. Not everyone will betray the marriage in their actions, but we will all betray our marriages in our hearts. This is why the Bible is constantly using marriage as the metaphor of the love relationship between God and humanity, Groom and Bride. I know this vertical/horizontal dimension may not sit well at first, but until we let this sink in, we cannot truly begin our healing journey.

“For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 3:22-24)

A high view of love, marriage and sex begins with a low view of ourselves, but it doesn’t stay there.

Once we see our many violation of our marriage covenant in our spending, dishonesty, our affections, our attention, or in a million different little crimes against love, then we share equal footing whereby we are not surprised by the betrayal of the other… it’s actually expected. Imagine not reacting in shock, dismay, moral superiority or pride…imagine reacting by saying: “You are just like me. Bone of bone. Flesh of my flesh. We are in this journey together.” The love and grace we show for the other, rather than condemnation and shame, is the winch that pulls our beloved incrementally out of their pain patterns. Healing is proximal to the equanimity of the bottom and far from the heart who is offended.

This means when it comes to divorce, we have the following options:

OPTION 1: Do whatever you want…

If you reject this Christoform pattern or high view of love, then you have the most options from which to choose. You are free to do whatever you want, and I’d expect nothing else. Focus on yourself, do what makes you happy now. Stay on the path of pain avoidance or pain distraction and self delusion. Once you become chronically single, or lonely because you remain unknown to yourself and unknowable to anyone else, the pain of this living Hell will catch up with you. When that happens, come back to the law of love and begin your journey with whatever time you have left.

OPTION 2: Do Nothing because divorce is NOT an Option…

If you are a “NOT an OPTION” person, then by a mere act of the will you are committing to either: 1. A life of ongoing transformation and renewal. Or 2. To a living divorce which will feel like a prison because it is. I offer this: If your marriage sucks, staying doesn’t necessarily please God nor honor your vows. Staying, while rejecting love’s restoring power, means you are adopting a morally superior posture which is essentially a form of pride and judgement on others. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). If you’re staying married no matter what, then get all in and see it through. Why deceive yourself?

OPTION 3: Limited Options…

If you subscribe to “LIMITED OPTIONS” for divorce then you may be waiting around for your spouse to actually cheat on you, or like many women have done, conflate pornography with cheating and then use that as justification.

 “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.” (1 Corinthians 7:10-11)

I share this verse for those with good intentions who seek to uphold a biblical framework for marriage and Paul certainly provides one. Paul understands the law of love, and is seeking to help guide his congregation in avoiding the deeper sins within the heart. This example curtails either spouse from feeling free to divorce and remarry. He advocates toward staying married because he knows it is the framework for healing, but Paul himself allows for divorce.

“But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.” (1 Corinthians 7:15)

The unbeliever is not just a person from another religion. The unbeliever “hapistos” is one of no-faith. In other words, this is a person for whom the high view of marriage, love, and sex is not something they actually believe in. This is a person for whom there is no understanding nor commitment to seeing the relationship from within both the vertical and horizontal dimensions. In other words, Paul is saying: “God is not consigning you to a low functioning marriage, He has called you to peace.”

Now let this sink in.

This means God gets it. So much so that Revelations 5:1 describes Jesus as opening the “certificate of divorce” (bilblion) in the cosmic courtroom. If your spouse will not begin the shared responsibility of dying to him or her self, then he or she is not “IN” the marriage, they have essentially already left. If he or she will not respond to your desire to be healed and go deeper together, if they reject the invitation to work through the pain, you are free to let them go, they may remain in their place of isolation, you are not required to stay…but you have the option to if you want to.

Nothing has to happen today except you giving your life away in love. If tomorrow you feel otherwise…so be it.

If you stay, make sure you are committing to a self-emptying lifestyle inspired by the Christoform pattern and self giving love of God. Keep laying it down in sacrificial love and perhaps the other will be transformed. Paul says, this action sanctifies (brings about dedication) the other person:

“For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:14)

If you leave, you are free to do so. However, you are not free to begin another relationship whereby the law of love is not upheld. If you default into the same low level behavior, then you are essentially an adulterer and you violate not only your true self, but that of the other as you resist being transformed by love. There is tremendous infidelity by not learning from a failed marriage.

OPTION 4: Settle or Negotiate

The last option you have is settling. The quagmire of many marriages is when neither spouse wants to live whole heartedly to the law of love, but both are resolved to stay with one another. This is a negotiated friendship, roommate situation, or an experience of punctuated affection. This is what the world calls normal. It’s always an option but remember this is why the world has a low view of marriage.

This marriage tune up series is an invitation to go deeper into love and to be transformed, and utterly consumed by it. The pain of marriage is our resistance to pain, which means we won’t learn how to give ourself away to our beloved and be transformed into something larger. Every marriage can be reestablish into the high view of love, and as we are healed, so we will be able to begin healing the world.

Marriage is a big deal for the entire world.