Observation: Before entering the Promised Land, Moses gives laws to the Israelites about divorce. I just have to put this out there: as a twenty-first century reader, I find these laws objectionable, to say the least. They make me mad. First, only a man can initiate a divorce, and he can do it for whatever random reason his wife does not "please" him. Second, once the man has divorced the woman, and she gets remarried and divorced again, the first man can't take her back because she's been "defiled." YIKES. I'm not going to sit here and defend this. It may have contributed to the social fabric of the Israelites 3,000 years ago, but I see no indication that God intended for everyone in every culture since then to follow it to the letter. Even by Jesus' time it's clear that at least women were also divorcing their husbands.
One thing I do appreciate is the idea of giving a newlywed couple a year to just be together, without pressing the husband into military service. I wish our own society made life a little easier on newlywed couples.
Application: I'll make no apologies. I read scripture from my own cultural and theological standpoint. Some people will tell you they don't; that they take scripture literally and they just simply believe what the Bible says, period. Nobody really does that. Nobody really does that. We're not robots. We don't live in a vacuum. We bring our baggage to the Bible, every time, even when we swear up and down that we don't (which you shouldn't do if you read the Bible literally because Jesus said), and the Holy Spirit helps us juggle it in order for us to hear what God needs us to hear.
I read the Bible from a Lutheran lens. I put Jesus, my incarnate, crucified and risen Lord, at the center. I'm not sorry for that. I think it's the right way to read the Bible, and it's pretty clear to me that it's what the first Christians (including some who were authors of the Bible) did. The parts of the Bible that show me a God willing to enter into our suffering and offer us love and blessing are the parts I emphasize. The parts that don't are, frankly, less important to me. The Bible is not a democracy. Every verse doesn't get a vote. Jesus is Lord and what he says goes.
When I come across a tough Bible passage like this one--the kind that makes me mad--my bets play is to bring it to Jesus, ask him about it, and figure it out from there. This one's easier, because the Pharisees actually already asked him about this, and he said "Yeah, that's a dumb law; don't do that." Jesus asked his followers to show a higher standard of love for their neighbor than what this law required. His words in themselves give us some heartburn, because this high standard isn't one we can meet. Thankfully, our inability to live up to what Jesus wants is not the end of the story. The story ends when Jesus takes our sinfulness into himself, dies with it, and comes back to embrace us once again. I make no apology to steering the conversation back to that, anytime. That's the Gospel. And if you look for it in the Bible, and in the world around you, you'll find it in unexpected places.
Prayer: Jesus, thank you for expecting so much of me, and for showing us we can do better. Thank you, also, for doing better on our behalf, so that when we fall short--and we always do--we can rest in your grace. Amen.
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