First published in the Baptist Times - OUTSIDE EDGE column - 13 August 2010
Someone from church phoned to tell me they found my way of praying offensive, and ended the conversation with, “And your theology is wrong!”
My theology is based on being wrong. Every time I think I’ve got it right, God goes and does something I don’t understand at all and I have to go back to the drawing board.
If I had to put a label on my theology it would be ‘disposable.’ Or, hopefully, ‘at the disposal of God.’ I envy people who are certain of their theology and can quote soundbite answers to the most complex questions, vindicated by biblical chapter and verse. But I also have a sneaking suspicion that’s not always how it works.
Take divorce. The Bible’s teaching, from OT to NT, is unequivocal.
“I hate divorce,” says the God of Israel (Malachi 2:16)
“A wife must not separate from her husband… and a husband must not divorce his wife,’ ( 1 Corinthians 7)
“What God has joined, let no one separate,” says Jesus (Matthew 19:5-6)
Clear as day. But ….
Doubts began to occur about some ‘perfect’ marriages: one or both partners seemed to care more about appearing the perfect couple than about the spirit. When someone pretends, they become divorced from their own real identity, so how could they be whole, individually or in partnership? Could a couple be apparently successfully, faithfully, happily married - and yet be divorced in spirit? Would they stand before God and say proudly, ‘We’ve been married for 30 (or 40 or 50) years, and never a cross word,’ and hear God reply sadly, ‘I hate divorce’?
Further doubts occurred when friends began getting divorced. Many of them concurred totally with God. They hated divorce. They intended to stay married for life. They were willing to do the give-and-take, forgiveness and repentance, falling out of love and praying to be shoved back in again, that marriage takes. But their partner left them. And on some occasions it seemed that God enabled the separation.
One friend’s husband, who was violent but said he would never go, packed his bags and left the day after she prayed, ‘Oh God, make him leave me alone.’ One, whose husband insulted her and ridiculed her faith, prayed for strength to be a good witness to her unbelieving partner, but felt God physically pushing him away; he too left suddenly, when he had no intention of going.
Recently another friend phoned: his wife had told him to go; she didn’t love him. His own and the children’s pleading had no effect. Confusingly, when he prayed, he heard God say, ‘It’s for your protection.’
All of them found their relationship with God changed. Their theology failed, became confused - then became more wondering. Was the God who ordained that, ‘no man must separate what God has joined,’ saying that God can, and does, on occasion?
They were reminded that Christian marriage involves three, not two partners, of whom God is the primary one. Looking back, they could see signs of divorce - ‘that violent dismembering of the one flesh of marriage’ as The Message translates Malachi - occurring in tiny, subtle, life-denying steps away from God by one or both partners who never quite turned back again.
They wondered whether the God who hates divorce hates even more the pretence that things are fine. And whether the one who fed hungry crowds when they were exhausted and faint from trying to follow him, recognised when they had reached their human limits of loneliness and lack of nurturing and told them just to stop striving.
Since being divorced, all have felt the need - and the invitation - to be more closely married to God.
In the world, and sadly also in church, they feel failures, second-class citizens and Christians, rejected partners, torn halves of a previous wholeness. But when God looks at the married and the divorced, I think he may draw the dividing line in a different place from us. Who is married to him, in their married, single, widowed or divorced status? And who has become divorced from him and not even noticed?
But then again, my theology could be wrong.
Clare Nonhebel’s new book ‘Finding Oasis’ publ. Authentic Media is now on sale in bookshops and online
