Do they really love you?

[Ms. Jack]

I am 68 years old; to this day, I can see in my mind's eye the night that my dad... my biological father... in a drunken rage, chased my mom with a butcher knife, causing her to grab up my sister and me out of bed and to flee out into the night...I can still feel the cool night air on my face as we ran down our long driveway, around the corner... hear my mom's sobs as she pounded on old widow Harrisburger's door... dear Mrs. Harrisburger taking us in... talking and calming my mother... my mom filed for divorce. Tell me, Hoops, did my mother sin in doing so?

I really feel for you Garden Girl, because I was the victim of abuse as well. When I was about 7 or 8, my mother used to go over to a neighbor's house and drink with them. A lot. One day she came home in a drunken rage and beat me with a wooden spoon. It was quite the beating, starting pretty innocently by slapping my hands, but then she began hitting me in the chest and ribs. When she reeled her arm back and slapped me across the face with the spoon, I was in shock. When she did it again, I went into a panic and curled up defensively on the kitchen floor with my hands over my head, earthquake-position. She got down and kept hitting my hands and head and beating my back with the wooden spoon in her fist like she was trying to stab me, screaming at me the whole time. I don't even remember how it ended.

When my father found out and saw the dark bruises on my face and chest and body, he was incensed. They got into a big fight wherein he threatened to divorce her over it. She left the house and did not return for several days; I think Dad kept me home from school for a few days so that they wouldn't have to explain the marks on my face to the teachers. I don't know why my father stayed with my mother after that. It certainly wasn't out of any sense of Christian duty, since they weren't Christians at the time, but for some reason he did.

In September of last year, my mother passed away from pancreatic cancer, nearly two decades having passed since the night she came home and beat her eldest daughter black and blue. She was a changed woman. When the pastor asked at my mother's funeral if anyone wanted to share any stories about my mother, dozens of people raised their hands to talk about what a wonderful person she was and how much joy she had brought to their lives and how kind she had been, and the pastor said he had never seen so many people eagerly volunteer to talk about the deceased. I was one of them. I lost my best friend in September.

Abuse in a marriage is a difficult situation. The Bible says God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). The only possible sanctions that the Bible gives for divorce are sexual immorality (Matthew 5:32, 19:9) and abandonment by an unbelieving spouse (1 Cor. 7:15) -- and as Hoops has shown, some people contest even that. It never lists abuse as grounds for divorce. It does say that husbands must love their wives (Eph. 5:25-33, Col. 3:19, 1 Peter 3:7). Personally, if my husband became abusive, I think I would file for a legal separation and try to get him to improve his behavior. I wouldn't be opposed to calling the authorities if he made threats on my life. If we had been separated for some time and his behavior still had not improved, only then would I consider a divorce, and it would be with much grief and an extremely heavy heart. I do keep in mind that Jesus did not preach legalism and the point that I take from scripture is that marriage is a very serious commitment and everything that can be done to save a marriage should be done.

Did your mother sin, Garden Girl? I don't know. I sincerely hope she exhausted all her options in trying to improve and save her relationship with your father before she filed for divorce. If she did, then I have a hard time condemning her.

I told the story about my mother though because I believe in God's power to change people. My father could have left my mother after what she did to me, and there isn't a single person who would have blamed him for protecting his children from an abusive spouse, but he didn't. And she became a better woman and a good mother because of it.

Was your father past saving? You probably know the answer to that question much better than I.

BTW, there was an interesting related thread in the archives at TheologyWeb, started by a woman who was dealing with an abusive husband but could not find biblical justification for leaving him, here. If you want to watch non-LDS Christians hash the issue out.

[Hoops22]

You took apart a complete sentence, added to it, to make it appear that I said something other than I did. You know it.

Is different than:

They have to different meanings and your intent was quiet clear, deceptive, and further denying it YOU sir are a liar.

I joined your "i don't care" phrase with "what the bible says". Any simple reading would see that.

But I don't see how you get two different meanings? If I had left off "about divorce", you have a point. I didn't. You don't.

Your constant barking of "liar, liar" just doesn't hold up. You were caught showing your true thoughts about the Bible and you don't like being caught. That's no my fault.

[Hoops22]

You're right... you can't get around divorce being a sin, if assume that there is absolutely no way there was anything lost or mistranslated regarding divorce.

I do believe in the Bible, so far as it is translated correctly.

Ah, the old lds default position. I don't like what the bible says so it must have been mistranslated.

And how dare you mock someone's feelings!

I didn't. I simply asked if the poster had any additional support for his position other than his feelings.

Do you think God has no feelings?

Rhetorical, I'm assuming.

What kind of God do you worship that doesn't care whether a women suffers at the hands of her husband or not?

I'm unfamiliar with this god

A chauvinistic and cruel God?

and this one.

That's not the God I know.

The God I know calls divorce a sin.

[Hoops22]

This conversation kinda puts a new spin on the "accessing grace" position, don't you think?