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Is Divorce Allowed In Stelle? Question:
I was wondering. I’m getting the message here in
Stelle that divorce is strongly discouraged; however, in certain
circumstances, it may be permissible. However, from reading the Bible, I get
the impression that it is definitely a no-no under any circumstances. Is
there an inconsistency there? Richard:
Well, there has always been room for divorce. If a person is subjected to
extreme cruelty by their spouse or there’s just
nothing happening between them, there has always been room for annulment. Question:
Christ says that any man who divorces his wife and goes with another is
committing adultery. Richard: He was
concerned with the individual who is trying to make a marriage and then is
lusting after somebody else, and finally, because of his lust, says, “I’ve
had enough of this,” or just runs away; disappears or goes someplace else and
you never find him again so he can be with another person, is really doing a
disservice to everyone concerned, and it’s just not fair and it’s not right. Whether you go to hell for it is something else
again. I think that’s an ecclesiastical interpretation, which serves to force
people who are kind of childish for a long time to
do what the state wanted them to do. But then again, most people didn’t live much past twenty-eight or thirty years old,
and most people could stand fourteen years of marriage because they got
married at about fourteen. But when you start
talking about thirty or forty years, maybe it’s not for the greatest good of
all concerned. But I don’t know that for a
certainty. Every culture, in every age, has its own unique ways of looking at
things, and we seem to be in a different mode at the
present time than what has been going on for quite a long time. But there have been much more lucid era than ours in the
Christian world. About two centuries ago, things were a heck of a lot worse
than they are today, as far as morality is concerned, or the honoring of
marriage and things of that sort.
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