I enjoyed considering what Christ taught about marriage and divorce this week. There were only two places where the Old Testament mentioned marriage and so that was all the Jews in Christ’s day had to base their practices off of. The first was in Genesis where it says man should cleave unto his wife (Genesis 2:22-24) and the second was where the law is given in Deuteronomy concerning writing a bill of divorcement for a wife who is deemed “unclean” (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). There were two schools of thought at the time of Christ on the issue. The first, Shammai conservatively believed that only unlawful sexual transgressions constituted good enough reasons to annul a marriage, but is ambiguous what exactly was inappropriate enough. The second, Hillel, argued that anything from arguing to failure to keep house were grounds for divorce. This conflict was why the Pharisees thought they might be able to trap Jesus with their question about divorce (Mark 10:2).
Just as we talk about in class, Christ’s response to those who ask tempting questions is always to point them back to the law they claim to know so well, and Christ does this here by asking them, “what did Moses command?” (Mark 10:3). The Savior’s question forced the Pharisees to admit that Moses only “suffered” the people to write the divorcement because of the hardness of their hearts. After this encounter the disciples were seeking clarification from Jesus and they came to the conclusion that it is better not to marry if there is such a high risk of damnation involved if you have a divorce. Jesus says that "all men cannot receive this saying.” It is hard for me to feel that it is simply better for some people to become eunuchs if marriage would be hard for them, but maybe some point later I'll have a better understanding of what Jesus meant. I guess I just know that I would have a really hard time being alone for my whole life.
An article that I read on the subject this week said that "because many members of the Church cannot live the ideal, the Church cannot enforce the celestial standard. The innocent and victimized must be protected. Even so, it is with some sorrow and perhaps even shame that we must admit that the modern Church has not surpassed the days of Moses and still has a long way to go to reach the Christian ideal." I find this statement both comforting and troubling. It’s comforting that there is mercy for all of God’s children, but I also wonder why Christ would say something that we don’t practice. This is something confusing for me that I hope to learn more about in the future, however, I do mostly agree.
Just as we talk about in class, Christ’s response to those who ask tempting questions is always to point them back to the law they claim to know so well, and Christ does this here by asking them, “what did Moses command?” (Mark 10:3). The Savior’s question forced the Pharisees to admit that Moses only “suffered” the people to write the divorcement because of the hardness of their hearts. After this encounter the disciples were seeking clarification from Jesus and they came to the conclusion that it is better not to marry if there is such a high risk of damnation involved if you have a divorce. Jesus says that "all men cannot receive this saying.” It is hard for me to feel that it is simply better for some people to become eunuchs if marriage would be hard for them, but maybe some point later I'll have a better understanding of what Jesus meant. I guess I just know that I would have a really hard time being alone for my whole life.
An article that I read on the subject this week said that "because many members of the Church cannot live the ideal, the Church cannot enforce the celestial standard. The innocent and victimized must be protected. Even so, it is with some sorrow and perhaps even shame that we must admit that the modern Church has not surpassed the days of Moses and still has a long way to go to reach the Christian ideal." I find this statement both comforting and troubling. It’s comforting that there is mercy for all of God’s children, but I also wonder why Christ would say something that we don’t practice. This is something confusing for me that I hope to learn more about in the future, however, I do mostly agree.