My many years of being a Christian haven’t alleviated something that I’ve never really liked about Jesus:
In his discussion on marriage and divorce, Jesus doesn’t make any room for abused partners to leave their attackers.
You can read Mark 10 or Matthew 19. Jesus is confronted with a question as to what circumstances can justify a man divorcing his wife. Jesus answers by saying that man shouldn’t separate what God has joined (although he seems to make room for divorce when one partner has committed adultery).
I don’t like that the gospels or the subsequent books of the New Testament don’t include a provision for someone who has been abused in their previous marriage to find a better and more loving spouse. Now, it could be true that they don’t necessarily need to come right out and say this. For instance, in 1 Corinthians, Paul says that a believing spouse is free if their unbelieving partner leaves a result of their faith. Jesus didn’t say anything like that, but his apostle makes room for this situation, anyway.
Still, I find it troublesome that we don’t have an explicit condemnation of spousal abuse. We do have examples of apostles condemning the abuse of slaves by their masters, but they don’t say much about the abuse of wives by their husbands.
I guess I just wanted to get that off my chest and see if anyone else has any unspoken anxiety about what they find in the Bible. If so, consider the comments section your place to express yourself.
The Bible gives adultery, as you have mentioned, as cause for divorce and also abandonment. Though an abusive relationship indicates spouses who are usually physically together, I would argue that this is a case of abandonment. Unfortunately a lot of people do not see it this way and I am not saying it cannot be right to stay (situations and frequencies vary), but if we removed the shame and guilt that many of the abused feel, we might be able to help them out of a fearful situation and onto a path of restoration and redemption.
“Still, I find it troublesome that we don’t have an explicit condemnation of spousal abuse.”
The proscription against getting a divorce certificate against your wife was a provision against spousal abuse.
But what about abuse that occurs within marriage?
How do you think traditional middle-eastern societies deal with that?
You can’t expect Jesus to comment on a mindset that wouldn’t exist until thousands of years after he lived in his psyche body.
Do you think this question didn’t come up not all back then? I get that times were different (to understate it), but spousal abuse unfortunately isn’t new.
“I don’t like that the gospels or the subsequent books of the New Testament don’t include a provision for someone who has been abused in their previous marriage to find a better and more loving spouse.”
That’s probably because the early Christians didn’t really practice re-marriage.
I actually think the commands Paul gives to husbands to love their wives like their own bodies is probably aimed at spousal abuse, both the sort that even the ancient world would find disturbing and the more common “patriarch gets to hit people if they don’t do what he says” sort of thing that was probably a standard in many households in the first century.
I agree with you there, but the tension, for me, arises from the absence of divorce as a means of escaping that situation if the spouse doesn’t obey that command.
Well, I think the honest truth is that they didn’t think divorce was the solution. Now, we can be offended by that, which is good, because offense is a sick trip. But I think the more sensible reaction, if we want to kill our buzz, is to check out what, I dunno, a Yemeni nomad family does if a husband is abusive.
What happens to that guy?