Divorce is a bad thing. God hates it. I get that and I agree. But even as a witness, I thought the divorce-only-by-adultry rule was misused. Here is how I came to disagree:
My parents have been miserable ever since I can remember. My dad is a closed book, clueless, emotionless, inactive for about 30 years. My mom is a talker, social and fun, but resentful and bitter at my dad. I can't imagine two people more ill-suited to fulfill each other's needs. She's kicked him out a few times, but always takes him back because everyone says she has to, not because she thinks they stand a chance at being happy together. I grew up watching my mother waste her life away being unhappy.
So I was very careful picking my JW husband. I made him promise he wouldn't "drift away from the truth" after we married because I would NOT live my mother's life. Funny, maybe if he had "drifted away" we might still be married. Anyway, through the years as things got worse, every time my mother would say, "He's so much like your daddy," I would die a little inside. I knew I was trapped, just like she was.
It's not that I was looking for an easy way out. I never took my marriage lightly and planned to lie in the bed I had made forever. But my mom . . . she was a good person in a loveless marriage and they were both MISERABLE.
Her two options were . . .
1. Obey God's "rules" and spend the rest of her life in this system angry, hopeless, desperate for love and affection, and terribly unhappy, bestowing upon her children all the detrimental consequences of growing up in an unhappy home and never learning what love is supposed to be. Crying herself to sleep and dragging her unthankful children to the meetings and in service with no familial support and no encouragement.
or
2. Cut her losses, climb the emotional mountain of recovery, teach her children they cannot let someone else take away their happiness, maybe fall in love again and have the marriage she always dreamed of.
She choose #1, the "right" choice, for a witness. I wished many times they'd just sign the papers and get it over with. It may be a sin but God can forgive sins.
I began to see the divorce-only-by-adultry scriptures in a different light. Shouldn't it be viewed as a common sense principle instead of a hard and fast rule? You know, like don't be lazy, drink moderately, women should wear a head covering, don't divorce on a whim.
Did the Bible writers really mean to imply such a hard and fast rule that one should live their entire lives in misery instead of break it?
What about cases of abuse? Sure, you can leave him, but you must either go back to him or live celibate the rest of your life or until he has sex with someone else. How is that fair?
Would God really want someone miserable and unloved instead of divorcing? Especially since the majority of marriages take place at the beginning of adult life, when one still has so much changing and growing to do.
I think if God can forgive murder then he can understand the need for a second chance.
What do you think?