Seagoon, a question

[Leslie]

Thank you for your response Seagoon.  I realize you are a busy man, and this is not intended to waste your time.  Please respond when you can.  I ask my questions from a standpoint of sincerity.  It is good to have you as a member of these boards and I enjoy your posts.  By no means do I make a comparison of barbers with pastors.  

I am not married and my barber is divorced.  When I go get a haircut, our conversations are mostly small talk, but as I said, I've been going there for 20 years and so we talk about family, friends, current events.

She is deeply religious, and like you have mentioned about yourself, she has had a previous worldly life as I suppose most of us have.  The subject came up because she runs the business by herself and lives alone, and some of her customers have asked her why she doesn't re-marry or seek a boyfriend.  

I asked her this only once several years ago, and have not mentioned it again, mainly because I'm not prepared for marriage and didn't want to give any impression I was.   Also I have no knowledge about the circumstances of her divorce.  I do know she follows scriptural teachings closely and lends them much weight and influence in her life.  

I don't even know if it's right for me to be concerned, she seems happy and it is not my business (except that I go for a haircut.)  But at the same time, it is not my personality to reason a purely scriptural (in this regard) guideline in my life.  For her to re-marry or seek companionship, in her mind, would deny her and a new husband the kingdom of God.

I read your essay Seagoon, and it is thoughtful and well written.  If the divorce did not involve marital unfaithfulness, but rather incompatibility, then for her to re-marry would indeed be adultry on her part (as long as her first husband lived?)  And her partner (husband) would be as well?  Is this what Jesus meant?  This is what I'm reading and how I understand it to be scripturally.  Something is not jiving with me here.  It just doesn't seem right somehow.  I know it's a sin to fornicate outside of marriage, but to be in a state of marriage (married) and still scripturally be a fornicator under such circumstances seems unrealistic to me.    

I was just kinda curious about her motivations, and it was 7:30 in the morning, the first time I've ever gone for a haircut that early.  Maybe that's the way she is early in the morning.  When she brought the subject up, and I asked her who told her that, she said the Bible did and showed me.




Les

[Seagoon]

Originally posted by Leslie

I read your essay Seagoon, and it is thoughtful and well written.  If the divorce did not involve marital unfaithfulness, but rather incompatibility, then for her to re-marry would indeed be adultry on her part (as long as her first husband lived?)  And her partner (husband) would be as well?  Is this what Jesus meant?  This is what I'm reading and how I understand it to be scripturally.  Something is not jiving with me here.  It just doesn't seem right somehow.  I know it's a sin to fornicate outside of marriage, but to be in a state of marriage (married) and still scripturally be a fornicator under such circumstances seems unrealistic to me.
Les

Les,

We need to remember that every convert to Christianity has a boatload of former sins that have been paid for in full by Christ and thus forgiven by God. As Psalm 103:12 puts it:
"As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us."

The Bible is full of references to the fact that when we were dead in our sins we  acted according to our old fallen nature (Eph. 2:1-10) in fact the bible says it was not possible for us to really do otherwise, "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be." (Romans 8:7) and while God's common grace ensures that we don't sink to the lowest level possible, all of us are guilty of many transgressions. Paul, for instance, was  a persecutor of the church and a murderer of believers and yet after his conversion he went on to be the greatest of the Apostles.

Not to compare myself to Paul, but I was a drunkard, a drug user, and an extremely profane man prior to my conversion. Now I am still a sinner, but if I committed sins of the same magnitude today, I would be rightly subject to church discipline and suspended or deposed from office for breaking my ordination vows, but if we were to say "a man who grievously sinned prior to conversion cannot be ordained" we would eliminate most who are converted later in life, and many of the giants of the Christian faith such as Paul, Augustine, John Bunyan, and John Newton.

In the same way, your hairdresser cannot be prevented from entering into a new marriage as a believer by the sins she committed prior to her conversion. God, in her conversion, has made it possible for her to have a faithful marriage that honors Him.

Christ in Matthew 19 and Paul in his letter to the Corinthian church are both discussing the rules governing divorce in the covenant community, i.e. under what circumstances may the people of God be divorced and remarried (what constitutes a biblical divorce if you will)     .

Given what you have told me, I would say that your haircutting friend should regard herself as free to marry. If she isn't, then given the requirements of 1 Tim. 3:2-3 I should not be a Pastor as my prior behavior forever disqualified me.

- SEAGOON

[Seagoon]

Originally posted by oboe

So much of what Christ said is dependent on our interpretation.   What exactly does it mean to put Christ above all?   Is it the same for everyone?    Does he really want fathers to abandon their families, sell all their possessions and wind up living out of a car somewhere?

I'd heard that story about the young Muslim woman before - in fact it seems to have all the characteristics of an urban legend.  Seagoon, do you know personally the missionaries involved?

Oboe,

Answering your questions in reverse order: I do personally know the missionaries involved we stayed with them in Philadelphia while they were on Furlough and the story was related to us first-hand by the husband and wife.

Sadly, I suspect that part of the reason that you seem to have heard the story before, is that the practice is not uncommon. The Quran, the Hadith, Sharia law, and cultural custom all mandate the killing of those who apostastise from Islam. Parents will often do this in order to protect the honor of their family (this story gives a recent example of such an honor killing) or sometimes the local muslim community will do it for them. Morocco has seen an upsurge in militant traditional Islam over the past years, and the intimidation, harrassment, and killing of those who convert has accelerated.

Regarding interpretation, I sense we sometimes overplay the idea of interpretation in order to avoid being brought under the requirements of what is being taught. For instance, none of us would tell the traffic cop who caught us speeding and told us the signs we passed clearly said 'Speed Limit 35': "Well officer, that's your interpretation of 'speed limit 35', mine isn't nearly as rigid or binding."

In the case of following Christ, he tells us: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." (Matt. 16:24) This clearly involves self-denial and being willing to suffer persecution for his sake rather than denying him.

Now will that necessarily involve us forsaking family and worldly possessions? Not at all! Most believers are called to serve Him in their vocations and in the midst of their families. In fact, a Christian father who abandons his children rather than providing for them and raising them in the faith is condemned in the strongest possible terms ( 1 Tim 5:8 ) Additionally the problem is not having money but loving it and making an idol of it: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (1 Tim. 6:10) which is clearly what happened with the rich young ruler. Christians are not called to absolute poverty, they are called to be good stewards of what God has given them and remember not to put creation over Creator in importance.

Yes, there are crazy quasi-Christian cults out there that encourage a complete withdrawal from the world (which runs counter to the biblical command for believers to be in but not of the world) and to be alienated and cut off from their relations, but this has more to do with the allowing the leadership to establish complete control over the followers in an unbiblical way that makes them and not Christ the head of the "church." Here are some of the sociological characteristics of cults:

1. Deceptive recruiting practices.
2. Dynamic and authoritarian leadership.
3. Elitism.
4. Cultic vocabulary.
5. Alienation from family and friends.
6. Legalism.
7. Sanction oriented.
8. Anti-intellectual.
9. Thought stopping.
10. No professional clergy.
11. Doctrine in flux/false prophesies.
12. Financial exploitation.
13. Mind control.

Cults tend to minimize the value of scripture, and claim to have new revelations superseding and supplementing the teaching of scripture  (as was the case with both Jim Jones and David Koresh)

- SEAGOON