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It’s often been said that nobody shoots their wounded like Christians. In no area is that more true than divorce. Yup, I can personally vouch for that. I could’ve easily cranked out a seminary paper on the biblical doctrine of grace before my legal divorce and ecclesiastical annulment, but this understanding was theoretical. It wasn’t until I experienced the juxtaposition between grace and judgment over the exact same body of facts that I understood the difference. Grace was curious, empathetic, gentle, and restorative. Judgment was presumptuous, cruel, harsh, and devastating.
That experience was illuminating if painful. It taught me to default to a gracious posture toward those going through the painful process of divorce. In most situations, they’re dealing with significant hurt, frustration, sadness, disappointment, rejection, uncertainty, desperation, and hopelessness. If our aim as Jesus followers is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, then this is a good time to lean into “comfort the afflicted.” Why Christian culture fails to grasp this I don’t know. The Way of Jesus isn’t to kick people while they’re down, but to help them up.
Divorce is usually a tragic necessity. At the same time, I’m certainly not implying a carte blanche acceptance of all divorce among Christians. It’s supposed to be a sacred union for life and not all marital schisms have legitimate cause. Divorce does happen because people are being selfish, YOLO brats who want to shed family responsibilities, upgrade to a newer model year, or don’t want to take care of a dying spouse. There’s a tension here. My take is that we should, as a general principle, default to overt graciousness toward divorce yet know that’s not an absolute rule.
In terms of the underlying theology, Scripture is authoritative but not exhaustive. The New Testament explicitly concedes two reasons for divorce, but it doesn’t answer all of our pastoral questions for every cultural–historical context. That includes important ethical matters like divorce. This is why God gave us minds to reason. I only filed for divorce after becoming convinced the “5As” of 1) Adultery, 2) Abandonment, 3) Abuse, 4) Addiction, and 5) Abdication (of essential marital responsibilities) are valid grounds for ending a Christian marriage.
The original beatniks were a demographic reflection of their times when it came to divorce. No doubt they also weren’t keen on exploring the theological idiosyncrasies of Christian marriage and divorce through the lens of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. But what they do offer us is something more than Christian culture’s top-down mercy with pious condescension. The Beat Generation points us to beatitudes-inspired vision of bottom-up solidarity with the beaten down. That’s a solid model for Beatnik Christianity to follow regarding divorce.
