Let No Man Put Asunder: Toward an Integrative Perspective on Same-Sex Sexuality (IV)

A few years ago, I was invited to do a presentation for the board of a Christian campground and retreat centre on the topic of “Homosexuality and the Bible.” At the time, I was deep in the throes of writing my doctoral dissertation on this topic, a document I mentioned in an earlier post in this series. Back in those days, I was exploring the theme of hospitality, specifically, as a possible way for churches with a traditional sexual ethic to respond to the LGBTQ+ people in their communities. This Christian camp was seeking to develop policies around how they might respond if LGBTQ+ people wanted to rent property on their facility, and they were hoping my research might inform their efforts.

I prepared the presentation on the assumption that this particular ministry was looking for ways to frame a policy that allowed LGBTQ+ people to rent lots, and that the board members were aware that the tenor of my work was towards including and embracing LGBTQ+ people in Christian community. As the afternoon unfolded, however, it slowly began to dawn on me that this was not the case, that the board was intending to draft a policy that restricted “practicing homosexuals” from rental agreements with their ministry, and they were hoping that my presentation might give them ideas on how to frame these restrictions “biblically.”

They listened politely to my research, and many took careful notes, but towards the end of our time together, as it became clear that my thinking and their intentions were not especially well-aligned, someone in the audience explained to me that they had seen other churches that tried to be “hospitable” in a way I was proposing, only to become full-on-affirming before they were done. He warned his fellow board members of this danger and then made it clear to me that they had no intention of falling into this trap.

The discussion continued around the specific policy proposals they were considering, and how the idea of “hospitality” might relate to it, and, realizing I was losing the crowd, I final said: “Well, whatever your board decides, it should not be more stringent or more restrictive than your policy on renting property to divorcees who have remarried.”

I meant this sincerely, in good faith, assuming that a Christian ministry that was so concerned about being “biblical” when it comes to LGBTQ+ people must surely have a policy on the question of divorce and remarriage, too.

Someone sheepishly explained to me that they didn’t have any policy on the question of divorce.

I was quite startled: “How could you be considering a policy on ‘renting to LGBTQ+ people,’” I asked, “If you don’t have a similar policy on renting to remarried divorcees?”

The same sheepish someone tried to help me see reason: “Well,” he said, “of course we can’t have a policy on renting to divorcees. That would require us to ask all kinds of personal questions about people’s private lives that are inappropriate.”

The irony—and the hypocrisy—of this statement was entirely lost on the room, but I’ve never forgotten it.

I bring it up here, in a series on developing an “integrative perspective” on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ identities because—as with my previous discussion on pacifism and wearing poppies in church—it illustrates another challenging but significant issue that most Christians today have adopted an integrative approach to, despite the fact that the teaching of the Bible on the matter is—to use a phrase that many staunch non-affirmers often use—“crystal clear.”

Jesus made no bones about it, that anyone who divorces their wife “makes her a victim of adultery,” and anyone who marries a divorced woman likewise commits adultery (Matthew 5:32). In Mark 10:11, Jesus sharpens the opposite edge of this teaching, so that it applies similarly to any woman who divorces her husband and marries another man. It is true, of course, that he offers one explicit exception to this rule, that a man who divorces a woman because of “sexual immorality” is not considered to have committed adultery if he choses to remarry. It’s not exactly clear what he means by this (the Greek is somewhat ambiguous), but from the context it sounds like he’s saying that if a woman cheats on her husband and the husband chooses to divorce her as a result, he is free to remarry. (Note that there is nothing in any of Jesus’s teaching that explicitly applies the same principle to women whose husbands cheat on them. In Mark 10, Jesus broadens his teaching about remarried divorcees committing adultery to include women who divorce their husbands, but the “sexual immorality” exception is strikingly absent from that passage. It would make sense, I suppose, to assume that the “sexual immorality” exception applies equally to wives as to husbands, but Jesus never explicitly says that it does.)

There is one other “exception” passage when it comes to divorce and remarriage that most conservative Christians tend to reach for, in addition to the “sexual immorality” exception. In 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 Paul reiterates Jesus’s teaching that husbands and wives are not to divorce (even if one is a believer and the other not), however, he explains, if an unbelieving spouse leaves the believing spouse—if a Christian is married to a non-Christian, that is, and the non-Christian abandons them—the believer is “not bound” to the marriage in that circumstance, and is (presumably) free to remarry.

These two exceptions aside, though, the New Testament is otherwise explicit and clear that (a) divorce is not God’s intention for people, and (b) those who divorce and remarry are, in all other cases, committing adultery.

I remember speaking with a fellow pastor once, who was quite firm in their non-affirming perspective on same-sex marriage, and I asked them if they had ever performed marriages for divorcees.

This pastor indicated that, yes, of course they had.

I then asked if this pastor had taken time to vet the circumstances surrounding each of these divorces, to ensure that they met the conditions for one of the two exceptions—that it was a case of “sexual immorality” or “abandonment” that had led to the person becoming divorced.

This pastor indicated (somewhat sheepishly) that, no, they had never done so.

They did not have a very satisfying answer, when I asked why, in the one case (divorce and remarriage), they seemed so at peace about violating the direct teaching of the New Testament, and in the other case (same-sex marriage) they were adamantly unwilling to budge.

Today I would suggest that the reason most pastors are willing to perform remarriages after divorce, even in cases that do not technically meet the biblical exceptions, is because we have adopted an integrative approach to this issue, one that does not hesitate to say that divorce is not the Creator’s intention for marriage, but also compassionately acknowledges that there will be instances where the circumstances of a marriage may be so fraught, dangerous, painful, abusive or otherwise destructive that divorce is the better of two evils. In such cases—even if they don’t technically meet the explicit criteria for the “exceptions” provided in the Bible—it would be cruel, actually, to add to the pain and harm that the divorcee has suffered, by forbidding them to remarry and confining them to a life of singleness and loneliness as a result of their divorce.

On this issue, an integrative view says something like this: we have no doubt that the Creator’s intent for marriage was that it be a permanent, life-long union of mutual blessing and support, but we also know that human relationships do not always obtain to the Creator’s intent. When they don’t, we do not resort blindly to a strict application of the letter of the law, rather we look for the most compassionate, gracious, and life-affirming way forward, which may include the possibility of remarriage.

If we have adopted an integrative view on the question of divorce and remarriage, we may have some small precedence for having done so. In Matthew 19, when Jesus was asked if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife, he points out that, on the one hand, God’s plan was that no one should ever put apart what he had joined together, but, on the other hand, God knew that human hearts were prone to hardness—cruelty and selfishness and exploitation—and so he directed Moses to permit people to issue their wives a certificate of divorce (in this case, the certificate of divorce would protect the rights of the abandoned woman, by proving her husband had left her and that she was free to remarry). In some ways, Jesus’s statement here is a bit of precedence for the kind of “integrative approach” I am proposing in this series. He clearly states the Creator’s intent for marriage, but he acknowledges that the human heart does not always neatly obtain to the Creator’s intention, and in doing so he suggests that the Torah’s guidance around divorce was Moses’ attempt to integrate these two realities: the Creator’s intent and the world as we experience it.

(Some might reach quickly to the doctrine of sanctification, and the idea that, while it was true that people in Moses’s time had hard hearts which made divorce a necessity, Spirit-filled Christians on this side of the cross should have Spirit-softened hearts, making divorce no longer necessary. To this I would only suggest that none of us have yet attained to the fullness of our sanctification, and so long as we are still this side of Heaven, all of us still have hard places in our hearts that need softening. On an anecdotal level, I would also say that some of the most painful marriages I’ve seen have been so-called “Christian marriages,” between presumably “Spirit-filled Christians.”)

Of course, this is not a series on the question of divorce and remarriage. It is a series on how we can acknowledge the witness of the Scripture when it comes to the question of same-sex sexuality and integrate it wisely with what we know about people’s actual lived experience of being LGBTQ+. As with my precious post on the question of pacifism, though, I think the question of divorce and remarriage is a helpful “test-case” for an integrative approach. It helps us imagine what integration looks like, and it provides us evidence that Christians do it intuitively when it comes to other issues, often without ever realizing we do it.

Some will find the integrative approach unsatisfying, suspect, perhaps even spiritually dangerous. In coming posts, I hope to explain why it is none of these things, and how I see it working in real life. For today though, I would simply say that if we are not prepared to adopt an integrative approach when it comes to same-sex marriage, we had better be prepared not to allow church membership for all remarried divorcees, excepting only those who had been abandoned by unbelieving spouses, or men who had been cheated on by their first wives.

To do otherwise—to refuse to embrace and honor same-sex marriages or LGBTQ+ identities while willingly performing remarriages for divorcees—would make us guilty of that sin which Jesus spoke most vehemently against in his time here on earth: hypocrisy.