Through the prophet Malachi, Jehovah God said to ancient Israel: “I hate
divorce” (2:16, NASB). The Lord hates divorce because he loves people and
divorce is devastating to humankind.
Man did not live one day upon this earth apart from the environment of a
home. In fact, the very foundation of society is the home. Marriage is that
divine union between a man and a woman who love one another, and who have
welded their lives together “so long as they both shall live.” It is the cement
that holds society together.
Moreover, it is this very societal cohesiveness that facilitates the
spread of the redemptive gospel of Jesus Christ. When the family structure
disintegrates, a significant factor in the growth of Christian faith is
missing, and the gospel of God is hindered. Those who encourage capricious,
unauthorized divorce undermine the cause for which the Savior died.
Divorce, generally speaking, is a tremendous evil. In fact, it is so bad
that Jesus Christ allows it (together with a subsequent remarriage) on one basis
only—that of fornication (Matthew 5:32; 19:9). Subsequent unions following
divorce—for all parties other than the innocent victim of a marriage breached
by fornication—constitute adulterous relationships.
The divorce problem has reached alarming proportions. In 1970 there were
4.3 million divorced people in America. By 1994 that number had more than quadrupled
to a staggering 17.4 million. According to the Journal of Marriage and
the Family, the fairly recent phenomenon of “no-fault” divorce has
significantly accelerated the plague of American divorce. The United States now
leads the world in marriage break-ups.
In a recently published book, Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to
Believe in Marriage in Post-Modern Society, author Glenn T. Stanton has
compiled a massive amount of evidence which reveals the shocking effect that
divorce is having in this country.
This book is a survey of the most authoritative social science research
published over the course of the last century. It demonstrates how first-time,
life-long, monogamous marriage significantly improves the lives of adults,
their children and the nation at large.
Consider some of the following factors:
- Alcoholism is much more likely to be a problem
among those who have been divorced than those who have not. Those divorced
only once have almost twice the rate of alcoholism as those who have never
been divorced. Folks divorced more than once are almost three times as
likely to have drinking problems.
- The suicide rate is almost three times higher
among the divorced than among life-long spouses.
- The National Institute of Mental Health
advises that the divorced are about four times as likely to have problems
with depression as are the never-divorced.
- Studies have shown that the prevalence of
suffering from any psychiatric disorder over a lifetime was significantly
lower for those in stable marriages.
- Statistical data have revealed that children
of divorced parents are much more likely to drop out of school than
children from one-time-married couples.
- Children from broken homes are much more
likely to have a difficult time obtaining and maintaining steady
employment.
- The children of divorced parents are more likely
to become “teen parents,” producing out-of-wedlock babies, than the
children of life-long married parents.
- The offspring of divorced parents are twenty
to thirty percent more likely to have health problems, or to be
injury-prone than youngsters whose original parents are still together.
- The children of divorced parents are three
times more likely to have emotional or behavioral problems than they will
have if their biological parents stay together.
The evidence is all too clear. The Creator knew what he was doing when
he gave strict regulations for the preservation of the original family. In view
of this, Christian parents will make every effort possible to keep their
marriages intact. Moreover, they will instruct their children in the concept of
the permanency of marriage as designed by God.
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