Court, I'm so sorry to derail your thread a bit but there's something I've been wanting to post for days, and since it's still bothering me, I'm just going to go ahead and post. My thoughts are NOT aimed at you at all -- I wish you God's guidance and only His blessings for you
-- but this is something that troubles me more as time goes on.
If a person has been divorced, and, heaven forbid (just saying this as a typical reaction from most Christians I've been around), divorced more than once, they must forever live in loneliness and are never allowed to marry again, as some have interpreted from the Bible. And if that's a person's sincere beliefs that this is the will of God for their life, then I would fully support adhering to that.
But here's where I start to wonder:
If someone else had said, "I've lived with/slept with 2 people... am I able to marry?", I'm guessing that the overwhelming majority response would be to either marry the person they're living with, or to break ties with any current sinful situation, dedicate their lives to God, and keeping going. But the point here is that as long as the person hadn't, gasp, gotten married, they are certainly allowed to consider marriage in the future.
The person who sleeps with 100 different partners will be told the same thing, as will the person who self-services to porn 300,000 times in their lifetime, struggles with homosexual feelings, or anyone else who does anything sexual but yet, here's the kicker, doesn't get married.
However, the instant you marry, everything changes, and if something doesn't work out, you are forever condemned to spend the rest of your life alone.
Am I the only one left scratching my head at this? I'm thinking of a guy I talked to once who was single and knew the Bible probably as well or better than any Bible student, but when asked how many sexual partners he'd had, he said, "I can't remember." He freely admitted that sex was his most problematic area, and would go through bouts of "getting better" and then falling back into it. And he very much considered himself eligible for marriage (in fact, he reasoned that part of his sleeping around was testing for a marriage candidate, even though he also knew it was wrong.)
We had a thread about this a while back in Singles and none of us could really give much of an answer, except to reiterate that all of us had seen this reinforced in churches.
The couple living together for years is celebrated when they finally marry and stop living in sin.
But the divorced person asking if they can remarry? WHAT KIND OF SIN DO YOU THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH, YOU EVIL PAGAN???
Maybe I'm the only one who has seen this in the churches and in Christian circles, but it seems to happen all the time. People who can't remember how many people they've slept with and/or those who have committed sexual sins every which way from Sunday having no hesitation at condemning divorced people over what they are not allowed to do.
And I am certainly NOT saying that anyone in this thread fits into any of these categories at all.
I'm simply asking, why are those who sin every which way with sex allowed to marry at will, while those who are divorced are most often told they no longer have any other options,even if they have only been married to/slept with one person? It doesn't take much of a brain to figure out that a lot of people would start saying to themselves, "Well if marrying and somehow having it fall apart means I have to be alone for the rest of my life, I'll just do whatever I want with whomever I want, because at least that gives me the OPTION to marry someday, unlike a divorce."
I know what some people will say, "Well, if you have a problem with what God says about marriage and divorce, Seoul, take it up with Him!!" And I do, on a regular basis, in my own Bible study and prayer.
If He never wants me to remarry again, I've finally come to be at peace with that (unfortunately, it's taken me 20 years to get there.)
But if He's willing, I know it might be nice to consider remarriage someday in the future. And I do ask Him often why it is that the people who commit their own sins regarding relationships and sex, or the ones who have never been divorced, but regularly look at porn (sometimes on an hourly basis) get to be the ones to tell me what I am and am not allowed to do. (To which I'm sure someone will then say that I'm not being open to God's correction, no matter who it comes from... as they switch from the CC page back to a favorite porn site.
)
