Continued from last week...
He claims that men may divorce their
wives for any sexual immorality. This includes withholding sex from her husband,
adultery, or having premarital sex. Women are only allowed to divorce their
husbands if they’re abusing her or not taking care to provide for her and their
children. Both genders may also divorce in a case of abandonment. He’s correct
in that the reasons specified are Biblical grounds for divorce, except for
abuse. The Bible does not mention that, but I don’t believe God would want
anyone to stay in an abusive relationship.
As for men being the only ones
allowed to initiate divorce for sexual immorality, I can’t buy into that. God
respects man’s cultural traditions and at the time, men often took more than
one wife even though that’s not what God intended. I believe that’s why divorce
for adultery was not an option for a woman, because men in the Old Testament
often had more than one wife. However, given that in later years, men only have
one wife, that means a man may actually commit adultery and that is grounds for
a wife to file for divorce. By the way, God did not intend for men to have more
than one wife. If He had, He’d have created Adam and Eve and Sue and . . . I
think you get the point.
I also think that given that the
Bible doesn’t tell us everything, God expects us to use our minds and make
decisions based on His word and good sense. This means that if the husband is
consistently not being a good husband, such as the church elder who puts his
family duties on his wife’s shoulders, then that’s emotional abuse and/or
abandonment and she should have the right to file for divorce; once she’s done
everything in her power to change things.
One last thought, I did find
scriptures that admonish husbands to love their wives.
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands love your
wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
The blogger claims that’s about
holiness for the church, but I see more. Christ gave up his life for the
church. How many men would do that for their wives?
Ephesians 5:28 So husbands ought to
love their own wives as they love their own bodies. He who loves his own wife
loves himself.
He quotes this in one of his posts,
but doesn’t go into any details. Men, part of loving your wife is taking care
of her and not hurting her. A man who takes care of his wife the best he can,
will find that she wants to take care of him in return. As my roommate, David
often tells me; in marriage, everything starts with the husband. The wife is a
reflection of how her husband treats her. If he loves her and takes care of her
the best he’s able, she’ll reflect that in how she takes care of the home and
her treatment of him and their children. If he doesn’t, she’ll reflect that as
well as I wrote early on in this post.
Colossians 3:19 Men love your wives
and do not be embittered against them.
Again, men are admonished to love
their wives.
The other blogger does quote these
scriptures, but even then he doesn’t think women should withhold sex or
affection because a husband isn’t meeting his obligations to her. Given that
marriage is in essence a contract between a man and a woman to love, honor, and
cherish one another, I think a woman does have the right to do what she needs
to do to get her husband to fulfill his part of the contract if he consistently
fails to uphold his end. He advises women to submit to their husbands
regardless of what he does and to give her anger and bitterness to the Lord in
the hopes that it will change her husband. A woman can only handle so much
anger and bitterness, even with God’s help before something has to give. Crying
to God only goes so far when a man is unwilling to change. I believe that God
expects us to do everything we can, including talking to our spouse, getting
counseling with or without your spouse if necessary and pray for wisdom and
strength to endure. I also believe that there are limits to what we should have
to endure. I don’t believe God would want us as women to stay in a relationship
that will kill us at an emotional level and eventually could kill us
physically.
As I mentioned earlier, a man who
does not even attempt to meet his wife’s needs will breed bitterness and
rebellion in his own home. He also sets a bad example of what a husband should
be to his children, which perpetuates the problem.
One last thing, I knew a woman once
whose husband expected her to be busy all the time. If she took a break to read
a book, he’d ask her why she wasn’t doing anything. I visited her at home a
couple of times and her home was always orderly and she even told me that she
used to make crab apple jelly from the fruit of the trees in their yard. On one
visit, she and I were talking when her husband walked into the room. He worked
from home and was clearly in the middle of something. He never acknowledged my
presence, even though he walked right by me. I don’t think he even saw me. A
moment later he called her over to help him with something. He didn’t ask her,
he simply said, “Sue*, I need you over here.”
There was no question or, “Pardon me
ladies, but I need my wife’s help for a few minutes.”
It was a command. I didn’t see her
again after that partly because she attended a church that had thrown me out
and I didn’t want to potentially cause problems for her and partly because of
his attitude that day. The next thing I heard about her was that she’d gone
into the hospital and died. I was told that she’d told the nurses she wanted to
go home. It puzzled them as she was due to go home the next day. She died that
night. I believe she didn’t want to go back to the house with her husband, but
rather she wanted to go home to the Lord. Looking back on this, I strongly
suspect that she didn’t trust her husband to truly give her the time she would
have needed to recover from whatever put her in the hospital in the first place.
She was an example of the damage that can be done to a woman when a husband
does not take proper care of his wife. I know her husband remarried, but I
never met his second wife and he has since died as well.
*I changed her name, even though
neither she nor her husband are alive out of respect for her. I truly regret
never seeing her again, but at the time I did what I thought was best.
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