Christians and Divorce

Note: This and other posts may cause people to say that I have too much of a vested interest to be objective. The only thing I can say is that I may have a vested interest, but that doesn't make it less true. If truth is measured on a sliding scale of subjectivity, then nothing can ever be true. The fact that I have a vested interest only means that I have struggled with this issue with both my head and my heart.

Many religious people believe that for the past generation, America has been in a moral decline. Whenever conservatives describe this decline, they include the high divorce rate, along with crime and out-of-wedlock births, as prime examples. I believe they are wrong. Dennis Prager tells a story that happened to him when he used to moderate a show called “Religion on the Line.” Each week for two hours the guests were a Protestant minister, Roman Catholic priest and rabbi (different ones each week), as well as representatives of virtually every other faith. One night, the topic was divorce – “What is your religion's view on divorce?” The Protestant minister spoke against divorce and noted that, “people get divorced too quickly.” The priest then said virtually the same thing, and the rabbi agreed. After each spoke, Dennis asked the minister if he knew anyone who had divorced. “Well,” he said, “my brother is getting a divorce right now.” “And do you feel that he is getting divorced too quickly?” Dennis asked. He then explained that his brother and sister-in-law had tried counseling for many years to no avail, and that their home was a deeply troubled one. Dennis then asked the priest if he knew anyone well who had divorced. He responded that his mother had divorced many years ago. “Do you feel that she divorced too quickly?” “Not at all,” he said, adding that the divorce liberated her from a toxic relationship. Dennis then asked the rabbi if he knew anyone well who had divorced. And, sure enough, his parents had divorced many years earlier, and he was convinced that it enabled him and his mother to become happier people because the home was so depressed. This scenario is typical. Whenever people say, “People get divorced too easily,” they mean “other people.”

Of course, many divorced people should have stayed together, just as there are couples who stay together who should get divorced. But social conservatives look foolish when they say that except for adultery and spousal beating (and many reluctantly agree to this because it is not “biblical”), no one should get divorced and that the divorce rate necessarily exemplifies a society in moral decline. It is simply not true. A truly bad marriage is like life imprisonment, and innocent people do not deserve such a punishment. Second, it only takes one person to divorce. Assuming that all divorced people sought their divorce is as untrue as it is unfair. Fifty percent of marriages may end in divorce, but only fifty percent of those wanted the divorce. Third, when there are no children involved, a divorce's cost to society is minimal. Furthermore, I believe it is far better for society to have people marry and divorce than never to marry. When people marry, they tend to mature, and society desperately needs grownups! Fourth, regarding children and divorce, the effects of divorce usually depend on what happens before, during, and after a couple divorces. By far, the worst consequence of divorce is the large number of fathers who voluntarily or involuntarily (because of selfish ex-wives) leave the lives of their children. When both parents stay thoroughly involved in their children's lives, sharing physical as well as legal custody, the adverse effects of divorce can be minimized, and depending on how bad things were prior to the divorce, a child's life can actually improve. Divorce doesn’t screw kids up; screwed up parents screw kids up!

Let me be clear. I believe that most marriages should never come apart; that every good marriage has periods of alienation and anger; that people must ride these tough waves and try to improve their marriage. But I would not lump divorce statistics with crime and out-of-wedlock births as a barometer of social pathology. There are simply too many exceptions to the rule that people get divorced too easily. Like the clergy on Dennis’ show, I feel that almost every divorced person I know (including myself) deserves sympathy more than contempt. Let's vigorously promote good marriages but have no more knee-jerk condemnations of divorce. It is these condemnations, more than divorces themselves, that are made too easily.

PS: I have purposefully left out textual arguments concerning divorce. This post makes a societal point, not a textual one. However, remember my golden rule for interpreting the Bible: Scripture is supposed to make you smarter and kinder. If your understanding of the text makes you stupid and less kind, you are wrong! That principle applies especially to texts like Matthew 19. Be kind and compassionate . . . and smart.

Can You Sin on a Deserted Island?

Some time ago ACU professor, Richard Beck posed the question, “Can you sin on a deserted island?” I became weirdly fascinated with this question. Much of my thought here is borrowed from the discussion on his blog.

Most people I’ve spoken to say yes. Examples I've heard are: You can kill yourself. You can harm the environment. You can lust. You can blaspheme God. But these examples are a little forced. I suppose you can run around cutting down trees and killing monkeys, or commit suicide, or fantasize about someone not on the island, or even scream things at God. But these things don't seem to be typical “sins,” and I can get quite a theological argument going about the ethical meaning of “sinning in your heart.” At what point do thoughts become sins, and what gradation of sin? Further, if you saw this behavior on the island, I doubt your first thought would be, “That is a sin.” You'd probably think that the person went crazy, and thus it weakens any categorization of “sin.”

But now, let's imagine that there are two people on the island. Can you sin with another person? Now we can imagine all kinds of sin: Lies, stealing, violence. The whole point of the question is to make this painfully obvious: Sin is a social event. I think one of the worst mistakes in theology is to consider sin to be only, or even primarily, a God/human issue. The island question is trying to point out that if it is just you and God, your sin repertoire is pretty anemic. But sin categories abound when we find ourselves in human community, when we see sin as a human/human issue. In other words, God's judgment against sin is judgment against human-to-human infractions.

I think this is what Jesus was getting at in the Sermon on the Mount. Before you offer your sacrifice to God, first be reconciled to your brother, then come offer your sacrifice to God. It's also the theme in 1st John - you can't say you love God when you hate your brother. Love your brother first and then you can say you love God with authenticity. If you wander through life thinking there's a rift between you and God, that focus leads to guilt, shame, and religious paranoia. But if we see sin as a human/human rift, then I can focus on reconciliation that I can actually do something about! Before you go to church, ask, “Is my brother offended by me?” Because if he is, what's the point of going to church?

The Healing Power of Laughter?

Humor is powerful. It can heal or it can cut like a razor. One of the best episodes of Seinfeld has Jerry’s dentist, Tim Watley, convert to Judaism and then tell Jewish jokes. This offends Jerry, not as a Jew, but as a comedian. Consider these three jokes (borrowed from Richard Beck’s experimental theology blog):

1. Why was Helen Keller such a bad driver? Answer: Because she was a woman.

2. What is great about having Alzheimer's on Easter? Answer: You can hide the eggs and look for them.

3. What does an Ethiopian chicken look like? Answer: Ethiopian chicken? What’s that?

Good jokes are highly compressed, which demands that the listener fill in a lot of background assumptions, values, and beliefs that make the joke work. If the listener cannot fill in this background he doesn’t “get it” and the joke fails to produce laughter. Last month I was on a flight from Nairobi to London when a woman sitting next to me sneezed. I turned to her and said, “You’re soooo good-lookin.” She laughed, but others sitting near us did not. If you don’t “get” a joke, no amount of explaining makes the joke suddenly funny to you. You can’t explain a joke into being funny. You either get it, or you don’t. This feature of a joke - its demand for you to supply the background information - makes jokes a form of community building. When someone likes our jokes we’ve found a soul mate, a kindred spirit, someone who sees the world the same way we do. People are attracted to people who make them laugh. This is the joy of laughter and humor. But there is a dark side. This feature of jokes also makes them forms of exclusion.

Take the three jokes above. All three are compressed and require you to fill in backgrounds and stereotypes. The Helen Keller joke works only if you share a stereotype about women drivers and know that she was a blind and deaf mute. The Ethiopian chicken joke only works if you know that country has a long history of famine and if you understand certain livestock and agrarian patterns of east African cultures. Those shared stereotypes and knowledge make the jokes work. But what if you didn’t know any of that? Does my explaining this to you make you laugh? No. If you have to have a joke explained to you it only intensifies your feeling of exclusion. Getting it or not getting it immediately marks insiders and outsiders. No amount of explanation will offset the realization that you were “too stupid” to be an “insider.” Also, if a joke is a stereotype then the joke adds salt to the wound. Some of you (women) might have found the Helen Keller joke offensive. Why? Because as a woman, you are excluded by the joke and offended by the negative stereotype that functions as the mechanism of exclusion.

How about the Alzheimer's joke? Is it funny? It all depends on who makes the joke. If a person suffering from Alzheimer's tells the joke then we see the joke as funny, because it is a form of dark humor. An Alzheimer's patient has a right to tell this joke because he is an insider to the world of the joke. If told by an outsider (me), the joke is mean. This is why black comedians can use the “n” word and white comedians cannot. It's a matter of insiders versus outsiders. Jokes are boundaries. Jokes mark off a space of shared attitudes and experiences. A joke is compressed because it functions as a kind of test. Do you share my view of the world? Are you with me? Are you an insider or an outsider? This is why jokes are both wonderful and wounding. They are wonderful when they are shared, but jokes wound when they exclude people and use stereotypes. Jokes become contested when outsiders attempt to enter the space before gaining the consent of the insiders. This is why the ethnicity of a person telling an ethnic joke is vital to understanding the nature and function of the joke. Jokes are complex and morally treacherous (eg: All in the Family). They bring us together and force us apart. Jokes are serious business!

What Does This Mean?

I saw this video in church a month ago. So, what does it mean? What do you think?

Boma Update

I have spent the better part of a week recovering from the trip to the Sudan. This week I will be editing a video that will be disseminated in a number of places. Soon my blog will return to its original purpose: questioning traditional thinking on everything concerning religion, politics, and popular culture. I will continue my involvement with the Boma project. Please check (and bookmark) the Partners in Hope web site (www.partnersonline.org). Under the Ministry tab you will find a blog link, as well as Twitter and Facebook feeds. Please stay involved in this project with me. As things unfold there will be a great need for all kinds of support!! For now, check out some of these pictures from the trip. Take note of the wreckage of a U.N. transport plane that crashed on the muddy airstrip a couple of months ago.

Back Safely!

I just got back into Nairobi tonight (Wed). I feel tired and extremely DIRTY! The Sudan is like nothing I have ever experienced in Africa! Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw and experienced over the past 6 days. It is wild beyond anything I imagined. There is a vibrant community of NGOs and other aid workers (mostly American) operating from Nairobi, Loki, and into southern Sudan. I have met so many other Americans and some Europeans who are working here. The UN World Food Programme has a warehouse in lower Boma. We transported tons of US AID up the 3500 ft climb to our compound in upper Boma. I don't know how we got that truck up that mountain, because it is dishonest to call that rocky trail a road. Owww! Right at the end of the muddy airstrip we saw the burned out remains of a UN plane that crashed a few weeks ago. That's what you want to see when you are coming in to land! I spent 6 long days up on that mountain. What did we do? We had meetings (negotiations) with the area chiefs, we made bricks, helped with construction of the second set of classrooms, conducted a pastor training workshop, trekked to several villages with a 60-pound generator to show "The Jesus movie," and maybe most important - we spent the afternoons sitting under the mango trees drinking tea. And then there's the truck getting stuck in the mud halfway up the mountain. We had to go dig it out. But we won't talk about that right now :( On Saturday the Murle tribe had a strange chest-thumping partnering dance - kind of like an ancient mating ritual. Seeking adventure, I joined in. When someone told me that I may have to take a Sudanese woman home, I ran back to the compound and hid away! We were in an area of the Sudan controlled by SPLA rebels. I managed to befriend their commander, "Chief Lino." It would have been awesome to pop off a few rounds of his AK47. I asked, but he said no. He did offer, however, that any of his soldiers would come to my aid any time. Nice! On Sunday we went for a walk to check out the old airstrip on the far side of the plateau. A few hours later we ran into a de-mining team from the UN who informed us that we had been walking through an area with landmines!! That's too much danger. Good thing we are off that mountain and back in the relative safety of Nairobi, Kenya.

Hello Nairobi

It's just past 9am on Thursday March 12. Yesterday's travel wasn't too rough, though transferring from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 at Heathrow was a sticky mess!! I have never seen so many people packed shoulder to shoulder in my life. I did run into the South African baseball team though. What are the odds? We arrived at Jomo Kinyata Airport in Nairobi at about 10pm last night. When you step off a plane in Africa there are very distinctive sounds and smells that are really familiar to me, and always bring back a flood of memories - both good and bad. Your senses are immediately assaulted with a feeling like "It's still 1975 around here." And then the slowness begins! NO ONE is in a hurry here - ever! But, TIA. (This is Africa) That's part of the charm I suppose.

I have just enjoyed one of those leisurely African breakfasts at a missionary compound called "The Mayfield House." African slowness means you get to sit around and drink lots of coffee and talk. I just met an American woman over breakfast who returned from the Sudan yesterday. Her MAF charter flight had to detour to pick up 5 people who had gunshot wounds from a raid on a tribal village close to where we are going. So, I am scared and excited - but mostly excited!

We'll spend today in Nairobi, and then we leave at 6am on Friday morning for the Sudan. Please keep us in your prayers. The adventure begins :)