Am
I a Hypocrite?
October
14, 2022
I have long been
committed to nonviolence the way Jesus taught and lived it. I’m not a passivist
exactly, but neither was Jesus. He didn’t tell us not to resist evil at all.
The word that usually is translated as “resist” when Jesus says do not resist
an evildoer, Matthew 5:39, is actually a military term better translated as
“resist with armed force.”[1]
He did, however, reject all use of violence. He wouldn’t let his followers use
it to save him from arrest and
crucifixion. He told Pilate that his kingdom is not from this world and that if
it were his followers would be fighting to save him, which of course they weren’t.
John 18:36.[2] The
true Christian, I believe, rejects all violence, lives nonviolently, and calls
always for nonviolent solutions to problems. That is, I believe, the only truly
Christian way.
Recently,
however, I found myself brought up a bit short. Jesus rejected violence, and I
say amen. But there’s something else that Jesus rejected that I accept. Jesus,
you see, prohibited divorce. See Mark 10:11-12, Matthew 5:31-32, and Luke
16:18. He said that anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Well,
I’ve been married twice in my life. My first wife died of breast cancer. A
couple of years later I married my current wife who, thank God, is still very much
with us. Here’s the source of my problem. Both of my wives were divorced from
men other than me when I married them. Does it not follow that I am an
adulterer twice over? Words the Gospels quote Jesus as saying leave only one
answer to that question if we take them literally. That answer is yes, Rev. Dr.
Sorenson, you are an adulterer twice over. But here’s the thing. Though I know
Jesus’ words on the subject, I do not consider myself to be an adulterer. I
have been faithful to both of my wives. My first wife and I did “‘til death do
you part.” My current wife and I will do the same.
So what am I to
say about myself? That I am a hypocrite because in one case I say the Christian
must accept what Jesus says and follow it but in another case I say no, you don’t
have to accept and follow that one? Well, I don’t consider myself a hypocrite
any more than I consider myself an adulterer. So is there a difference between
Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence to which I say a Christian must adhere and his
prohibition of divorce and of marrying a divorced woman to which I the
Christian need adhere? I believe that there is, and I will attempt to explain
what that difference is here.
I’ll start with a
question. What is the purpose behind the two Jesus directives at issue here?
The purpose behind his directive against violence seems clear enough. It is, at
the very least, to stop Christians from harming any of God’s people, and all
people are God’s people. Violence inflicted on a person causes harm to that
person. That’s its purpose. You don’t direct violence at a person you don’t
intend to harm. Neither Jesus nor the God he incarnates wants anyone harmed.
Ever. So Jesus said don’t do it. Ever.
It's certainly
less obvious to us, but the purpose of Jesus’ prohibition of divorce was also
to prevent harm. More specifically, it was to prevent harm to women. In Jesus’
world, with only very few exceptions, women were entirely dependent on men for
their welfare their entire lives long. From birth a female person had to depend
on her father to provide for her life needs. That, of course, was true of male
children too, but was different when a girl came of age. At that point in her
life a girl’s father would give her to a man to be the man’s bride. She then
became as dependent on her husband as she had been on her father. Yet her
situation was more precarious than it may seem to us to have been. The Torah
law under which Jews lived provides that a man may divorce his wife essentially
just by telling her that he was divorcing her. See Deuteronomy 24:1-4. Deuteronomy
says the woman then becomes someone else’s wife (which certainly contradicts
Jesus’ directive not to marry a divorced woman, but never mind). But what would
the divorced woman’s situation be if she did not become another man’s wife? Assuming
that she had no living male relatives who would take her back, her situation
would be desperate indeed. She would be forced into abject poverty. She would
probably have to beg to get enough to live on. Her only way to make more money would
probably be to become a prostitute. Both of those alternatives are, of course,
awful. So Jesus said no divorce, and he strengthened that prohibition by
telling men they could not marry a divorced woman.
Now a second
question. Are Jesus’ prohibitions of violence and divorce as necessary to
effect the purpose for which he issued them today as they were in Jesus’ world?
With regard to violence the answer to that question is clearly yes. Violence maims
and kills people today just as it did in Jesus’ time. In fact, given our
contemporary technology for ways of killing people, it is far easier today for
a person, or a group of people like an army, to maim and kill large numbers of
people than it was for anyone to do in Jesus’ world. So, clearly, Jesus’
prohibition of violence is as essential for God’s purpose today as it was in
Jesus’ day if not more so.
The same is not
true today with regard to divorce. Though there is still a glass ceiling and
pay between men and women doing the same work is still unequal, women have a virtually
unlimited world of possibilities for supporting themselves, something women in
Jesus’ time couldn’t even imagine. In addition, divorce law usually provides
for spousal support payments (popularly called alimony) if one of the parties
to a divorce needs temporary support as they become financially independent,
something Torah law does not provide. Divorced women simply aren’t helpless
today the way women were in Jesus’ world.
Moreover, we know,
in a way that ancient world seems not to have, that staying in a bad marriage
is where the real harm often lies. A good marriage enhances life like nothing
else, but a bad one can impair life like nothing else. Marriages can be life
impairing rather than life enhancing in many ways. Two people may simply grow
apart and become distant from each other rather than intimate. One partner may
begin to neglect the other, or make harsh demands on the other. Far too often
even today one of the marriage partners may have entered a traditional
man-woman marriage to conceal a minority sexual orientation of gender identity
only to discover that she or he cannot continue to live a lie. Worst of all,
one spouse may begin to abuse the other emotionally, sexually, or physically. In
such cases, does the greater harm lie in divorce or in the maintenance of a
life-impairing or even life-threatening marriage? The answer seems undeniable
Divorce is by far the better, healthier option. I simply cannot see how Jesus
would disagree with that conclusion today.
So am I a hypocrite
for saying that a Christian must accept Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence but not
his prohibition of divorce? A biblical literalist would say yes. To that person
all that matters would be what the Gospels report Jesus saying (though a great
many biblical literalists do not follow Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence). Yet
two things are undeniable. Everyone who self-identifies as Christian
picks and chooses among the many diverse things the Bible says. We have no
choice about doing so. The Bible simply contradicts itself so often that no one
can truly accept everything in it. We just saw one of those contradictions
between Deuteronomy saying a divorced woman becomes another man’s wife and
Jesus’ prohibition of marrying a divorced woman. The question is not whether a
Christian picks and chooses. It is whether the Christian will be honest about
doing it and able to articulate the criteria by which she makes her choices. I
trust that I have done that here.
The other
undeniable truth is that our world today is radically different in many ways
from the world in which Jesus lived and which he sought to teach. Jesus said
you do not put new wine in old wineskins. See Mark 2:22, Matthew 9:17, and Luke
5:37. The divine truths Jesus taught are still new wine in a world that doesn’t
accept and live by those teachings. We need to put the new wine of Jesus’
gospel of love, justice, and peace into the new wineskin of our contemporary
world. That is what I have tried to do here. So am I a hypocrite? Call me one
if you must, but I do not believe that I am one. I also believe that God will
forgive my hypocrisy if I am. May it be so.
[1]
See Wink, Walter, The Powers That Be, Theology for a New Millennium (Galilee
Doubleday, New York, 1998), Chapter 5, “Jesus’ Third Way.” The translation here
of the word in question is mine not Wink’s, but it is based on Wink’s analysis.
[2] This
passage says the disciples would be fighting to save Jesus from “the Jews.” The
Jews, of course, were not where the threat to him came from. It came from the
Romans. Don’t buy into John’s offensive anti-Judaism. It is un-Christian.
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