A friend of mine, has shared a Facebook post seeking to address the question “is pornography a basis for divorce.” It’s a question that has generated a lot of discussion with over 100 comments on his Facebook page and he seems to have attracted attention probably from beyond his circle of friends. So, I thought it might be worth a deeper look.
Starting questions
Now, whenever I get involved in answering a question. I tend to start with two preliminary questions. The first is “Why an I responding? Why am I answering?” Now that can be as obvious as “because someone asked me.” However, even then, that doesn’t mean I need to or should give an answer. If you ask me how to repair a boiler or the prognosis for a medical condition, then I’ll refer you to someone else. If you ask me my opinion on the eternal condition of Prince Andrew or Peter Mandelson’s souls I’ll probably tell you that this really isn’t my business. To use New Testament language, “What is this between me and you?”
So, in this particular context, the answer is that as a pastor I’m likely to get asked the question because people come to me with messy marriage situations. Further, exactly because of that, several years ago, I sat down to prepare a paper to help our church elders at the time think through the issues of divorce and re-marriage. You can read that paper here.
The second question though is “who is asking and why?” In this case I would suggest that there are potentially three categories of people asking the question and getting involved in the debate. First, there are those who see it primarily as a hypothetical issue. They may just see it as an interesting intellectual exercise or they may be concerned that if we get the answer wrong we will drift into one of two dangers depending on their outlook, either harsh legalism or ethical laxity. Secondly there are those who are asking because they are in a marriage and their spouse has been using pornography. They may be asking “could I get a divorce” or even “should I get a divorce”. Now, there’s a whole lot more to talk about with them pastorally but there is something to talk about there.
In the other category are those who are using pornography or considering using it and are wanting to know if that is a sin, serious enough to merit divorce. They may even be wanting me to support them in arguing that no it doesn’t mean divorce, that their spouse is in the wrong. Sadly in terms of the comments in response to Mike’s post (to be clear this was not Mike’s position at all), I observed far too many men (and it was men), arguing that this was an example of feminism gone mad, that there are women who withhold sex and who want any excuse to get out of their marriage. This is a horrific take. Marriage is not about serving my needs, it’s certainly not about just being the means by which I get access to sex. I fear that this attitude has been a consequence of purity culture. Further, the responsibility for self-control and godliness rests with the person tempted to pornography (or any other example of sin). It is horrific to see Christian men seeking to blame and demean women. So the answer to those wanting to know if they can get away with using porn, married or unmarried is simply,” let’s not get into the divorce question now, the priority is that you need to deal with your porn habit.”
What does the Bible say?
Now, for the spouse who is asking whether or not their partner’s pornography habit is a ground for divorce, in a pastoral context, I would be wanting to talk to both husband and wife together and there will be a lot of other questions to work through first. I want to get back to some of those questions later but what we would be working towards is a place where we have enough context to start answering the question and I would start by looking at God’s Word. The starting point for such an enquiry is often Matthew 19:1-12. Some Pharisees come to Jesus and ask him if divorce is lawful, for any reason. This reflected a big debate between leading rabbis. Did Moses permit divorce for a wide range of reasons or when he talked about finding “something displeasing” in your wife, did he mean something restricted, specifically around sexual immorality. Jesus’ responds by pointing them back to Genesis 2, marriage is a coming together of a man and woman to make “one flesh.” God joins them together and so no human being has the authority or ability to split them apart again.
The Pharisees respond by saying “Hold on, Moses commanded us to get divorce papers.” This is a reference to Deuteronomy 24:1-4 where Moses explains what to do if there are multiple examples of divorce. It’s there that we find the reference to “something displeasing”. Jesus’ response is that they have misunderstood Moses. You see, Deuteronomy 24 is not an instruction about how to get divorced and remarried. It’s about how to clean up the mess when men are divorcing their wives. Jesus explains that Moses isn’t making commands for divorce, he is making allowances for and then regulating their hard hearts.
I would suggest that Jesus, in effect isn’t interested in what “displeasing” and “indecent” mean 1in Deuteronomy 24:1 because Moses wasn’t. He wasn’t saying “if your wife is displeasing, this is how to divorce her.” He was acknowledging that men would divorce with that excuse. However, that is really to approach the question from the wrong perspective. What we really need to be asking is “What does God say about marriage.” So, Jesus redirects us back to the beginning and God’s intention before hard hearts became the norm for marriage to be this lifelong covenant that united two into one.
Jesus then goes on to say:
“9 I tell you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery.’[d]”
Note that even at this point he is emphasising that divorce isn’t possible, so the person who remarries is in effect an adulterer. Now, the disciples see this as quite an impossible burden. They think it’s best not to get married (v10). Jesus acknowledges it is hard but that this is a gift to some. That is worth its own unpacking but suffice it to say here that as believers, we find Jesus demands more of us because we have the Holy Spirit.
However, the focus has been on the exception clause that Jesus includes. He says that divorce does not lead to an adulterous second marriage if there has been sexual immorality. The word here is “porneia.” It is important to note this because some people assume that the exception clause is “has there been adultery.” Instead, Jesus goes for something different and there is intention behind it. He is making it clear that we are not in the “for anything that displeases” category. This is not about men and their subjective values, it is about something specific. The point about porneia is that it is about unfaithfulness. It is about looking outside of the marriage for something that is meant to be within the marriage.
There are a couple of further things to help us here. First, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul deals with the issue of divorce and says that a believer should continue to stay in the marriage to an unbeliever unless the unbeliever, themselves deserts the marriage. Then the believer is set free. The unbeliever has chosen to abandon, to break their covenant vows, they have broken, indeed killed the marriage In Exodus 21, abandonment can be seen in terms of neglect, failing to provides food, clothing and intimacy for a wife obtained through war if another wife is taken.
The sense I get is that you have a choice, you can either keep your wedding vows by looking to give what you are meant to into your marriage or you can seek to satisfy your own needs and look outside of the marriage for that, often creating real or imaginary surrogates for our spouses.
I note that a few people in the debate have picked up on 1 Corithians 6:12-20 to suggest that this proves porn isn’t grounds for divorce because it doesn’t go as far as actual sexual intercourse and so isn’t as bad. The verses in question say:
12 ‘Everything is permissible for me,’ but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible for me,’ but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 ‘Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food,’ and God will do away with both of them. However, the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 God raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. 15 Don’t you know that your bodies are a part of Christ’s body? So should I take a part of Christ’s body and make it part of a prostitute? Absolutely not! 16 Don’t you know that anyone joined to a prostitute is one body with her? For Scripture says, The two will become one flesh.[c] 17 But anyone joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
18 Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin[d] a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. 19 Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.[e]
This is where it’s important that we don’t misapply a Bible passage by misunderstanding and misusing it against its purpose. 1 Corinthians 6 has nothing to say about whether physical fornication is better or worse than other aspects of sexual immorality. It simply points out that someone having sex with a prostitute becomes one flesh with her and you are either united to that which is holy or that which is unholy (note within the context of faithful marriage, Paul in 1 Corinthians will insist that the holy makes the unclean holy. This probably also helps us avoid the presumption that someone is automatically married through one moment of sexual intercourse). Paul also notes the level of proximity of the sin, it’s not something out and over there that I can distance myself from there is a level of in, I’m intimately engaged. What Paul wants us to learn from this is not to find more and more ways of neatly defining sin to get us off the hook, “at least I didn’t …” but rather to grasp the seriousness of sin and flee from it, to resist temptation.
Incidentally, the presumption in Scripture seems to be that it is the woman who is at risk and meant to be protected. Whilst, of course it can be the wife who is unfaithful or mistreats her husband, I can’t help be struck by how so many of those commenting on the question at hand seemed to be quick to make men the victim in the situation and insist that this is about feminists who let down their husbands by withholding from meeting their needs and then look for an easy way out. What a reverse of the Biblical call to husbands to love their wives as “Chrisr loved the church.” What happened to life laying down, sacrificial love?
The other clue we have is from Matthew 5 where Jesus teaches that adultery is committed in the mind and heart, not just in the physical act. Again, I’ve heard people say “oh but then if pornography is grounds for divorce, what about lust and if so, nobody stands a chance. Well then, aren’t we in the same place as the disciples saying “It’s better for no one to get married. Yes, the bar is set high for Jesus. The solution is not to attempt to set the bar lower again so we can step over it. The response is to recognise that God’s Word convicts us of our sin and shows how incapable we are in our own strength of perfect obedience to the Lord.
A legal note
It is worth noting that in legal terms, there are three grounds for divorce. The first is adultery. The second is unreasonable behaviour. Now, the reality is that people may use the second when they know the first to be so but are unable to prove it. However, regardless of how we feel about it, pornography isn’t generally speaking considered legally a grounds for divorce on its own in either category.
The third category is the no-fault divorce. When these were brought in, many Christians were hostile to the idea seeing it as an easy way out and so an attack of marriage. I’m sure it can be that. However, no-fault can be a way of moving quickly through divorce and avoiding further opportunity for an unfaithful or abusive partner to cause further hurt by delay and denial. It may also help when it is difficult to prove exactly what has been going on. Finally it may prove useful if the state’s view of what counts doesn’t match up with God’s view on what is acceptable.
What’s the advice
In my experience, it is unusual for someone to come in and say “my husband has been visiting some dodgy sites, can I divorce him?” Rather, the end decision tends to come in the context of a lot of pain and distress. So, where someone to come to me and ask the question, I’d start by asking a few more questions to get a better picture of all that is happening.
Then at this stage, we would talk about grace and what they have faith for. There is grace to stay in the worst of marriages and there are many who have found this grace but it is not an easy road to travel. But God also provides grace for the one who doesn’t think they can keep going in the face of unfaithfulness. So what do you have faith for? What can you keep on going with? What aspect of grace do they need?
Conclusion
So, our first aim is to work at protecting and preserving the marriage. However, sometimes we will find that someone has killed the marriage. Pornography may have been the weapon they used to kill it. Now, the question is whether or not there is hope of resurrection.
We cannot simply use specific criteria and try to mechanistically work out if someone has crossed the line. Instead we are looking at the rounded picture of whether there has been covenant faithfulness. It is certainly possible that pornography has amounted to unfaithfulness.
The crucial issue is whether or a person’s heart concern is to love their spouse and restore the relationship or to justify themselves. Remember the law of God offers a heart check not a check list.
Faithroots 