Hello,
“Pastor, will I go to hell if I get a divorce?”
I picked up the phone in my office as it rang a couple of days ago. On the other end of the line was a
woman whose voice I did not recognize, but by the tone I could tell that she
was distressed. She said that she
lived in the neighborhood and had never come to my church, but she needed
someone to talk to about the turns in the road that she had encountered in her
life.
Her husband, she said, had been unfaithful a number of times, had
run-ins with the law, and had had a habit of verbal abuse with her. It had become too much for her and they
had separated some time ago.
Meantime, she had begun to date someone else, and therein was the focus
of her emotional strife. The other
day she had picked up her Bible and was reading Matthew when she stumbled upon
Jesus words on divorce, and she was terrified. (Matthew 5:32).
“What should I do pastor?
Will I go to hell if I get a divorce?”
In my three decades of being a pastor, I have heard this sort of
question many times, the byproduct of “Christian” teaching that portrays God as
some sort of tyrannical teacher who seems to delight in failing students. From far too many preachers people have
heard that Christianity is a lifetime entrance exam for heaven, an exam where
failure leads to ….well….hell.
It seems to me, however, that such an image of God is a misrepresentation
of the Biblical witness. The God
that I have come to see in the Bible is not a God who snickers as he pulls out his red pencil and circles the
errors of our lives and enjoying putting a large “F” on our lives. Quite to the contrary, the Bible tells
of a God who so determined to hold us within his loving grasp that he has taken
the possibility of failure out of our hands. He has put away his red pencil that tallies the errors of
our lives, and he has taken out his only son whose red blood blots out the convicting
power of our errors and failures.
Life is messy. Life is
complicated. It always has been. And to those who thought the messiness
and complications of life could be fixed by abiding by rules and regulation,
Jesus said, not so. Jesus did not
come to add to the pain of divorce by threats of hell and terrorizing people
with fear when the choices they are left with provide no perfect answer but a
choice between many imperfect answers.
Jesus came to bring hope…hope that is found in forgiveness…forgiveness
that supersedes the deeds of our lives.
“At this church,” I told her, “we believe that Jesus did not come to
send us to hell for the pain that we bring to ourselves and others, he came to
make sure that those things don’t send us to hell.”
“What should I do about this other man that I am seeing? Should I stop seeing him until I get a
divorce?”
“We believe that God wanted to wipe away the pain of confusion about his
love for us. That is why he
sent Jesus, the embodiment of God’s love for us and the cornerstone on which a
solid relationship with God can be built.
It seems to me, likewise, you will want to eliminate confusion in order
to build solid relationships,” I told her.
It is clear to me that the one who sent
his son to endure the pain of the cross takes seriously the pain that we
inflict on ourselves and others. So
seriously does he take the pain of divorce, abuse, anger, obsessive control,
and everything else that takes its aim on us and our relationships that God has
taken his aim on those things, robbing them of their power to ruin our lives,
their power to tear us away from God, and their power to make our lives hell…or
send us to hell.
2 Corinthians 5.17:
So if anyone is in Christ, there is
a new creation: everything old has passed
away; see, everything has become new!,
“What time are your worship services,” she asked me.
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
p.s. – Our worship services are 8:15 and 10:45.
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