I'm moderately religious. Episcopalian. Used to be Catholic and my dad is a now-practicing Jew (he wasn't practicing much when I was a kid...not sure why). I go to church most Sundays as much for getting some weekly community time with God as I do for some family connections. But today's Gospel pissed me off. I can't stand this Gospel, and the sermon that came with it was by a happily-married woman who is a deacon, married to the priest who was visiting our parish today.
In case you're not sure which passage I'm talking about, it's from the book of Mark, Chapter 10, Verses 2-12, or 2-16 (and I think that reading 2-16 really shows how incomplete and likely redacted this passage was).
Some Pharisees corner Jesus and ask him if what Moses wrote about a man being allowed to draw up a certificate and divorce his wife was ok in the eyes of God, and Jesus replies saying that God doesn't condone divorce. But...the passage is so clearly edited. Because the very next paragraph afterward, it notes that Jesus was calling children to come and see him because a child who does not know God will not grow up knowing God's love. So...clearly there are some things missing. That transition sucked, and no good storyteller would have jumped from one topic to the next so abruptly.
My nasty ex settled our divorce just about a week and a half ago, and initiating those divorce proceedings was the best thing I've done for my heart and my daughter. That is, best aside from having my daughter. My ex was abusive. Verbally, emotionally, and sometimes physically. He's also a narcissist, so anyone close to him only sees the "great guy" who's charismatic and charming and seems generous (at times). But pay a little more attention, and you'll notice the constant personal jabs putting other people down, and the little comments he makes boasting about this or that, and how he constantly talks about himself and how great he is at whatever. It took me a really long time to notice. Every time he'd go through a bought of abuse toward me there was always a justification, and he'd throw in just enough intermittent reinforcement to keep me hooked. He was stressed about his kids from his first marriage, so he was a dick. His first wife was causing issues calling him names or making threats to take him to court, so he was a dick. He was stressed about work, so he was a dick. He was stressed about having a new baby around, so he was a completely unhelpful dick. He was stressed. He had feelings. He knew I had feelings, but HE mostly had feelings, so mine didn't count as much and I was too sensitive and I was a "snowflake" who "just couldn't handle life." Then one day, there was nothing to be stressed about and he was still an asshole, and that's when I knew I was done. I was tired of being abused, there was absolutely no reason my ex could have been remotely justified for treating me the way he was, and divorce was the only way I could save myself, my child, and have a shot at happiness.
The deacon who gave the sermon today opened her remarks by noting that she and her husband had recently celebrated 45 years of marriage. She went on to note that while she has been spared the chaos and trauma of divorce, her youngest daughter and youngest sister had not been so lucky. Their husbands had been unfaithful, and she saw the tear that their divorces made in their communities. Their divorces caused her daughter to move away to be closer to a community of people she felt supported her, and caused her sister to feel a great loss from severing friendships that she'd had during her marriage in which people felt the need to pick sides. She spoke of divorce as a failure to form meaningful relationships, and noted that God wants us to be in communion with each other and that the way to happiness is through meaningful relationships.
Well...I believe God wants us to be whole, and that we aren't meant to find our wholeness by depending on another person. The Bible is rife with advice to heal our hearts, find strength in God's love, and THEN engage in relationships. What we know about mental health these days points out, also, that:
- We're responsible for our own happiness.
- We're responsible for our own feelings.
- Co-dependence is bad. If you can't find a way to be happy alone, keep trying.
- Life does not happen TO any person. We all play some part in the things that happen in our lives. Whether that's through our direct actions, or our permissiveness, or our lack of strength to speak up and change our circumstances. Personal accountability is key to happiness, success, and healthy personal relationships.
The sermon I heard today totally neglected to point out why divorce is sometimes needed, and what the actual background was in the question Jesus was being asked, and it's messages like the crap I heard today that can be dangerous to women who need to leave abusive relationships. You can read more about the history, and the Jewish law surrounding divorce, and Mosaic law here >> but in short, there were two rabbis at the time touting two different ways of interpreting divorce as Moses wrote it -- Shammai and Hillel. Hillel's interpretation of the divorce law was that a man could cast his wife out for any reason he wanted. She got fat, she didn't cook well, he wanted to fuck the babysitter...whatever. A man could just give his wife a get (notice of divorce) and be done. He'd have to give back her dowry, though, but then he was free. Shammai preached that the only reason a husband could get divorced was if his wife was unfaithful, but even then, God encouraged forgiveness and reconciliation. The real history behind the question was that the Pharisees were poking Jesus to figure out which affiliation he had -- Shammai or Hillel, because it was Hillel's view of divorce that had allowed Herod Antipas ("King Herod") to divorce his wife and pursue his half-brother's wife (Herodias, who also got a divorce from his half-brother, Philip, in order to marry Herod). Real classy guy that Herod. It was those divorces that John the Baptist spoke out against, and that's what got him, Jesus' cousin, killed, near the very spot where these Pharisees were asking Jesus this question about God's view of divorce. So really, it was a politically-loaded question.
Back in the day when these things were written down, and in the time of Jesus, women had very, very few rights. Over the years since Jesus and the time he was preaching, rabbis have realized how few rights women had, have, and how we still continue to have to fight for fair and humane treatment, and they started to change and interpret laws in ways that were more favorable toward women. Plus, the Bible as it is has been proven to be incomplete. It can still be the Word of God, and lack more of the Word of God, because, as we've come to remember and realize, the Bible was put together by councils. They voted on what to put in, and what to exclude. Some of the missing Gospels have been discovered as recently as in the last 20 years, and they've been authenticated. Plus, while the teachings may have come from God, they were still written down by people, eventually, after being passed down through oral traditions for thousands of years, and then translated thousands of times. Have you ever played a game of telephone? Yeah...if a simple line like "Sam went to the store on Tuesday for some milk" can come out the other end of a circle of 10 people as "Some like Pauly Shore on toothpicks wearing silk" then image how convoluted some of the Bible stories from both Testaments might be?
I realize that it might seem as though I'm trying to bend the "Word of God" to ease my own feelings. But I refuse to believe that leaving an abusive marriage was wrong. I refuse to believe that God meant for me to stay in a relationship where my children witnessed their mentally-sick father abuse me and put me down. I refuse to believe that I wasn't meant to save and protect myself.
I hope that other women who are religious, like me, understand that God does not condone mistreatment. Ever. Anywhere. The Universe does not want us to suffer, even though some suffering is a part of life and makes us grow, gives us strength when we embrace it and power through it in a way that seeks to right wrongs and strives for justice. We are not meant to be unhappy. We are meant to find it in ourselves to be whole. Jesus healed people so that they themselves could be whole. Because when we are whole, we can find meaningful relationships with others. When a person who isn't whole tries to join to another person to become whole, that's when pain spreads, and there's nothing wrong with stopping it.
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