Category Archives: citizenship

citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, morality, Substantive Due Process

Was Maynard v Hill An Abusive SCOTUS Ruling? Is it Really Relevant Today?

by Standerinfamilycourt

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate….Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.    –  Matthew 19:6,8

And He said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.”   Then He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.”
– Matthew 22: 20-22

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
–  Declaration of Independence, 1776

This will be a long but important read.   Take it in manageable settings as necessary, but “standerinfamilycourt” worked hard to make the content very worthwhile to those who hope to see unilateral “no-fault” divorce abolished in our lifetime, and no longer a part of our grandchildren’s adult reality as citizens.    A special callout and thanks is in order to Matthew Johnston and Jeff Morgan for providing much of the expertise and content for this blog post.   My assessment, however, of these materials is independent, and these two gentlemen may not agree with “standerfamilycourt’s” take on every point discussed here.   I trust they will agree with much of it.

U.S. history is littered with ill-conceived and ideological Supreme Court decisions that have unjustly been applied for many decades afterward as controlling precedent, under the principle of stare decisis in a way that singles out entire groups of citizens for wholesale denial of their fundamental rights, often in defense of the Sexual Revolution.    Typically this happens because the original faulty decision itself denied due process to one of the parties.     The 1888 case, Maynard v. Hill, is in my view, one of those really bad decisions.   It  laid down two highly erroneous principles that eventually made the marriage contract unenforceable in the United States once the political climate ripened for toxic, Marxist legislation, in effect outlawing the permanent wedded union (as Jesus defined holy matrimony), almost a century before enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws in most U.S. states drove more nails into the marriage coffin.   Maynard v Hill is one of the key cases that has been relied upon by various state Supreme Courts to rebuff any and all 1st and 14th Amendment challenges to nonconsensual “no-fault” laws, as enacted since then.  This came despite the fact that many top constitutional attorneys today see these laws as unconstitutional in many different aspects.

First, this case unjustifiably removed the critical protection of Article 1 Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution from the marriage contract based on a very questionable rationale, to be discussed in depth below.

Next, this case asserted the superiority of the state’s claim of “publc policy” over the marriage relationship, above the private nature of the marriage contract between husband and wife, whereas any such claimed authority can only be traced back to a usurpation, from God’s perspective, by the 16th century Reformers who insisted that the state regulate holy matrimony.   This was authority that Christ told us God reserved to Himself, according to His law.   The state’s delegated role from the hand of God is to recognize and defend rightful marriages, not deign to create nor terminate them, according to Jesus’ pronouncement in Matthew 19:6 and 8.

Finally, the majority Justices upheld the actions of a territorial legislature (where there was not yet a state constitution), while operating under authority delegated to them by the U.S. Congress. This, while denying the accused, but possibly blameless, wife in another state her right to basic notice and procedural due process.   This legislature unilaterally divorced her from her husband in absentia, at his adulterous request which was not based on any legitimate grounds.   Indeed, at the time, there were no laws even defining grounds for divorce in the new territory.  This Supreme Court held valid a special law specifically passed to “dissolve” her marriage, despite the fact that in doing so, the territorial legislature deprived her of liberty and property without allowing her any opportunity for representation, or even serving her notice that they were taking this action.   She found out a few years later, according to the complaint in the case eventually brought by her heirs.

This case was brought by the Ohio covenant children of David and Lydia Maynard after both of their parents’ deaths, in an estate dispute over land that had been granted in Oregon territory (at the time of the ruling, the land had since become part of Washington state) to David after he abandoned Lydia under false pretenses in Ohio, and took up with another woman on his way out west.    The land grant apparently had strings attached, such that twice as much land was granted to a married couple, which then had to be cultivated for a period of time within a certain time window.    Shortly after securing both pieces of land based on his marriage to Lydia, he then requested his divorce be granted by the legislature.   David had grown extremely influential as a founder of Seattle, and had held considerable sway with the legislature by the time he made his request.   The divorce  was granted  upon his request, with documents external to the SCOTUS opinion showing that David accused his wife of adultery in his petition, and submitted hearsay letters from friends claiming to know individuals who had allegedly witnessed Mrs. Maynard in clandestine activities or compromising situations back in Ohio.    However, because he could not legalize his adulterous union with his mistress within the time window for perfecting the land claim, the Territory revoked the grant of the portion of the land that had been granted to David based on his marriage to Lydia.   In other words, Mr. Maynard’s attempted bait-and-switch scheme failed, and he suffered his just reward as a consequence.   It was the validity of the special legislative divorce, and of the land grant revocation, that the couple’s adult children were challenging, in part arguing that Article 1 Section 10 prevented the legislature of Oregon Territory from impairing the marital contract between David and Lydia by granting the divorce-in-absentia via special law aimed at that particular marriage, and without any notice to one of the parties being so assailed.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
( – Article 1 Section 10,  U.S. Constitution)

Since the facts of the case state that the legislature of Oregon Territory was operating under the temporary authority delegation by an act of the U.S. Congress in the absence of a state constitution…

“The act of congress creating the territory of Oregon and establishing a government for it, passed on the 14th of August, 1848, vested the legislative power and authority of the territory in an assembly consisting of two boards, a council and a house of representatives. 9 St. c. 177, 4. It declared that the legislative power of the territory should ‘extend to all rightful subjects of legislation not inconsistent with the constitution and laws of the United States,’

…it seems reasonable that Congress should not have been deemed to be able to delegate authority to a territory that they did not at least possess themselves, either to pass special laws which defeated the separation-of-powers already integral to the U.S. Constitution (Article 3), or to carve out a relatively untested exception to the Contracts Clause.   Yet, the authority to pass a special law granting a legislative divorce was justified by the majority, by relying on the history of U.S. states and territories who did not yet have a constitution who were following the English tradition of Parliament granting legislative divorces, and also upon the fact that various states were slow to transition from legislative divorces via special laws to a judicial procedure, in some cases even after a state constitution establishing separation-of-powers was ratified.   It seems natural, given that divorces were so rare in the 18th and 19th centuries, that change in this area would not have been a burning priority.    Eventually, however, many states constructed or amended their constitutions to require that divorces only be granted by a judicial process, a fact which the opinion acknowledges but dismisses on a very weak rationale, claiming that the historical reliance on legislative divorces justified the practice where there was not yet a state constitution, while completely ignoring the due process concerns that likely led to those provisions being adopted in various state constitutions.

With regard to the due process owed to Lydia Maynard, the 14th Amendment was not ratified until 1868, some 13 years after this legislative divorce was granted, but this was still 20 years prior to this landmark decision upholding the validity of the divorce-in-absentia for estate purposes.    The court completely failed to apply the provisions of the 5th Amendment, ratified along with the Bill of Rights in 1791, to secure Mrs. Maynard’s right to the most basic procedural due process,  including notice of the proceeding, which should have been more than justified by the fact that the territorial legislature was operating under delegated authority from the U.S. Congress.

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
(- 5th Amendment, U.S. Constitution)

 

Quoting from the majority opinion:

“The facts alleged in the bill of complaint, that no cause existed for the divorce, and that it was obtained without the knowledge of the wife cannot affect the validity of the act.   Knowledge or ignorance of parties of intended legislation does not affect its validity if within the competency of the legislature.”

That unduly harsh statement may be true where public notice is posted for the intended enactment of general laws, but how could such a judicial statement have overridden anyone’s basic rights to due process with regard to notice and representation under the U.S.  Constitution?   They call these things fundamental rights for a reason!  It would have been enlightening to read the dissenting opinions of Stanley Matthews and Horace Gray, but unfortunately, this blogger was unable to locate the text for those dissents online without a subscription service.

With regard to barring the application of Article 1 Section 10 to the marriage contract, the majority opinion quotes this isolated statement  by Chief Justice John Marshall in Dartmouth College v Woodward (decided 1819), as follows:

“As was said by Chief Justice MARSHALL in the Dartmouth College Case, not by way of judgment, but in answer to objections urged to positions taken: ‘The provision of the constitution never has been understood to embrace other contracts than those which respect property or some object of value, and confer rights which may be asserted in a court of justice. It never has been understood to restrict the general right of the legislature to legislate on the subject of divorce.’ “

John Marshall, of course, was one of the nation’s founding statesmen who participated in the historic constitutional convention process,  himself becoming a delegate in 1788 to the state convention that had been formed to ratify it, so he should certainly have been an excellent authority on the original intent of Article 1, Section 10.    However, was the 1888 Supreme Court majority accurate in their presumption that Marshall was inclusively referring to unprovoked (unilateral) divorce, where the petitioner was actually creating the contractual breach he was seeking “relief” from, when the former Chief Justice made the statement upon which the 1888 court (very selectively) relied  to support their interpretation of the founders’ intent?   Or… was Marshall simply stating that Article 1 Section 10 was not intended to impair the authority of the legislature to regulate divorce on a fault-basis that is consistent with the innocent party’s fundamental rights, including property and causeless government non-interference with family sovereignty?

One historical source indicates that Article 1 Section 10 was actually added to the final draft after no discussion had taken place in the Constitutional Convention:

” [The post-Convention drafting committee] made at least one important change to what the Convention had agreed to;  {Rufus} King [of Massachusetts] wanted to prevent states from interfering in contracts.  Although the Convention never took up the matter, his language was now inserted, creating the contract clause.[24]:243

In light of this, it is at least possible that Marshall’s statement, delivered 30 years after ratification, was not coming from firsthand debate or interactions with the drafters or Rufus King, even though he had been a part of the larger ratification process.    There is at least some historical evidence that John Marshall did know King personally and continued to correspond with him in the years following ratification.

Chief Justice Marshall authored the majority opinion for Dartmouth College v Woodward, directly referring to the relevance to marriage contracts as follows:

“…it has been argued that the word “contract,” in its broadest sense, would comprehend the political relations between the government and its citizens, would extend to offices held within a State, for State purposes, and to many of those laws concerning civil institutions, which must change with circumstances and be modified by ordinary legislation, which deeply concern the public, and which, to preserve good government, the public judgment must control. That even marriage is a contract, and its obligations are affected by the laws respecting divorces. That the clause in the Constitution, if construed in its greatest latitude,would prohibit these laws. Taken in its broad, unlimited sense, the clause would be an unprofitable and vexatious interference with the internal concerns of a State, would unnecessarily and unwisely embarrass its legislation, and render immutable those civil institutions, which are established for purposes of internal government, and which, to subserve those purposes, ought to vary with varying circumstances.  That, as the framers of the Constitution could never have intended to insert in that instrument a provision so unnecessary, so mischievous, and so repugnant to its general spirit, the term “contract” must be understood in a more limited sense.  That it must be understood as intended to guard against a power of at least doubtful utility, the abuse of which had been extensively felt, and to restrain the legislature in future from violating the right to property. That, anterior to the formation of the Constitution, a course of legislation had prevailed in many, if not in all, of the States, which weakened the confidence of man in man, and embarrassed all transactions between individuals, by dispensing with a faithful performance of engagements….Those acts enable some tribunals not to impair a marriage contract, but to liberate one of the parties, because it has been broken by the other.When any State legislature shall pass an act annulling all marriage contracts, or allowing either party to annul it, without the consent of the other, it will be time enough to inquire, whether such an act be constitutional

It is important to note that neither the legislative act, nor the SCOTUS opinion refers to the charge of adultery that other sources indicate David Maynard tried to register with the legislature.  Marshall continues thusly at a later juncture in his opinion…

“Could a law, compelling a specific performance, by giving a new remedy, be justly deemed an excess of legislative power? Thus far the contract of marriage has been considered with reference to general laws regulating divorces upon breaches of that contract.  (Note: for the benefit of the innocent party is strongly implied here.)... But if the argument means to assert that the legislative power to dissolve such a contract, without any breach on either side, against the wishes of the parties, and without any judicial inquiry to ascertain a breach, I certainly am not prepared to admit such a power, or that its exercise would not entrench upon the prohibition of the Constitution. If, under the faith of existing laws, a contract of marriage be duly solemnized, or a marriage settlement be made (and marriage is always in law a valuable consideration for a contract), it is not easy to perceive why a dissolution of its obligations, without any default or assent of the parties, may not as well fall within the prohibition as any other contract for a valuable consideration.  A man has just as good a right to his wife as to the property acquired under a marriage contract. He has a legal right to her society and her fortune, and to divest such right, without his default and against his will, would be as flagrant a violation of the principles of justice as the confiscation of his own estate.”  
(Presumably, Marshall would have held the same true of David Maynard’s similarly-situated original wife.)

Marshall goes on in Dartmouth College v Woodward to confirm his personal uncertainty, even with his own superior and contemporary proximity to the founders, vis-à-vis the 1888 court, about the intent of Article 1 Section 10 to exclude or include the marriage contract:

“It is more than possible that the preservation of rights of this description was not particularly in the view of the framers of the Constitution when the clause under consideration was introduced into that instrument. It is probable that interferences of more frequent occurrence, to which the temptation was stronger, and of which the mischief was more extensive, constituted the great motive for imposing this restriction on the State legislatures. But although a particular and a rare case may not, in itself, be of sufficient magnitude to induce a rule, yet it must be governed by the rule, when established, unless some plain and strong reason for excluding it can be given. It is not enough to say that this particular case was not in the mind of the convention when the article was framed, nor of the American people when it was adopted. It is necessary to go further and to say that, had this particular case been suggested, the language would have been so varied as to exclude it, or it would have been made a special exception. The case, being within the words of the rule, must be within its operation likewise, unless there be something in the literal construction so obviously absurd or mischievous or repugnant to the general spirit of the instrument as to justify those who expound the Constitution in making it an exception.”

In light of the full context of what Chief Justice Marshall stated in that majority opinion, would it really be unreasonable to conclude that Justice Stephen Field was guilty of taking the portion of Marshall’s statement which he selectively quoted, materially out of context?     After all, for the Maynards, there was no general law in Oregon Territory regarding divorces, which is why a special law had to be custom-crafted under stealth, one that impaired the marriage contract which had been broken by the party requesting the divorce, not the “other” whom Marshall specifically pointed to the need to protect.     The Chief Justice indicated he was still fine with the parties themselves agreeing to annul their own contract by mutual consent (except that the matter was not yet legally “ripe” before his court), but in this 1853 Maynard instance, the party who was back home presumably honoring that marriage contract was deprived of notice of her husband’s hurried request to annul it legislatively.     Had Justice Field shown true deference to stare decisis, he would have addressed these highly relevant points raised by Marshall, some of which had now indeed become ripe for review with the case before the 1888 court.    Instead, it appears he stood Marshall’s very specific contrary guidance on its head by ignoring the portion that did not suit the court majority, for purely ideological reasons, under their conception of “public policy”.

The majority in Maynard went on to cite language in an earlier decision,  Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 How. 402, where the question arose whether a reduction of the per diem compensation to certain canal commissioners below that originally provided when they took office, was an impairment of a contract with them within the constitutional prohibition; the court, holding that it was not such an impairment, said: ‘The contracts designed to be protected by the tenth section of the first article of that instrument are contracts by which perfect rights, certain, definite, fixed private rights of property, are vested. ‘It is also to be observed that, while marriage is often termed by text writers and in decisions of courts as a civil contract, generally to indicate that it must be founded upon the agreement of the parties, and does not require any religious ceremony for its solemnization, it is something more than a mere contract.”

Hold the phone!   Obviously, if it is a “given” that Object A is a recognized member of Group B, and a constitutional principle applies to all members of Group B, then it won’t do to claim that a particular constitutional principle naming Group B shouldn’t apply to Object A just because Object A has some additional qualities.   This is known as basic subset mathematics.

Further, the court used a circular argument which failed to take into account that the only element that would cause the marital estate vesting not to be “fixed” by the inherent indissolubility of the marriage bond is some sort of fault-basis, or barring that, their own failure to uphold the rule of law on behalf of the innocent spouse.    They were, in effect, arguing that the possibility that someone might unlawfully abandon their marriage (or, indeed, that a rogue territorial legislature might violate the Constitution by enacting a special law without legal notice against that innocent spouse)  “unvests” and “unperfects” the property rights that were conferred at the publicly-witnessed lawful wedding…(“I herewith plight thee my troth.”)

The majority in Maynard also had a considerable amount to say about “public policy”, most of it flawed and leaning too much toward social expediency, at the longterm expense of societal integrity.    This should sound very familiar to the readers of this blog, since it has been quoted ad nauseum by self-interested attorneys, jurists and legislators alike ever since–as if it came down from the mountain on stone tablets.    For example:

“…when the validity of acts dissolving the bonds of matrimony is assailed; the legitimacy of many children, the peace of many families, and the settlement of many estates depending upon its being sustained. ”

and…

“Many causes may arise, physical, moral, and intellectual, such as the contracting by one of the parties of an incurable disease like leprosy, or confirmed insanity, or hopeless idiocy, or a conviction of a felony, which would render the continuance of the marriage relation intolerable to the other party, and productive of no possible benefit to society.When the object of the relation has been thus defeated, and no jurisdiction is vested in the judicial tribunals to grant a divorce, it is not perceived that any principle should prevent the legislature itself from interfering, and putting an end to the relation in the interest of the parties as well as of society. If the act declaring the divorce should attempt to interfere with the rights of property vested in either party, a different question would be presented.”

Apparently, these Maynard Justices saw “public policy” as more of a concern as respects the fundamental rights of the subsequent family rather than of due process sustaining the fundamental rights of the original covenant family….“love the one you’re with”.    Evidently, the choice of an illicit relationship by the party seeking to morally and financially abandon their family joins all of these other selfish reasons why honoring marriage vows would be “productive of no possible benefit to society”, and “intolerable to the petitioning party.”    And in fact, the furtive act declaring the divorce did inevitably interfere with the rights of property vested in the innocent wife, if not in Oregon Territory, then back home in Ohio, whether that distant legislature intended this or not.

The intrusion on property rights from state interference without due cause upon the marriage contract is even more egregious in today’s society due to this malodorous precedent, with not only equity in homes and businesses at stake, but also employment-derived retirement assets as a “gray divorce” couple is at or near retirement age, or perhaps already retired.   Because of concealed dissipation to finance an extramarital affair in the period before the guilty party files for unilateral “no-fault” divorce, unequal IRA and 401K balances will be a growing problem that didn’t exist back when most states took marital fault into strong consideration in dividing assets.  In effect, many of today’s “family courts” are actually rewarding adulterous spouses for breaking up their own marriage, and transferring considerable wealth from earner to rival paramour, all while blaming the “Respondent” for choosing not to file their own petition – a clear religious freedom violation.    And wouldn’t you know it?  Quite ironically, there are divorce case precedents where solely for the purposes of dividing marital assets, the marriage contract is indeed deemed in a certain amount of doublespeak to be an “economic partnership”, by golly  –  MVR v TMR,  New York (1982) 115 Misc 2d 674

The last thing to re-examine in assessing this Maynard case for validity in the current marriage debate is whether, in light of ratification of the U.S. Constitution which was specifically drafted to address the many flaws in English Parliamentary law,  was the English parliamentary legal history–even continuing in the colonies as it did–still a reasonable basis upon which to hold the continued practice of legislative enactment of special laws constitutional?    After all, the Maynard majority acknowledged that several states had by that time incorporated specific prohibitions against special laws to grant divorces  into their constitutions and pointed those cases toward the judiciary for a reason: to assure constitutional separation of powers, protection of constitutional due process, and individual fundamental rights.   This trend therefore was far from something unknown to the majority, since they explicitly ceded this fact.   More likely, this constitutional advance in the various states was ideologically objectionable to them.   In the 1848 Ohio Supreme Court case, Bingham-v-Miller-1848 (1), we read concerning the general constitutionality of legislative divorces:

“The constitution confers no such power.  The legislature is not sovereign; nor are all of the departments of government combined.  The people, only, are sovereign.  Nor can the matter be helped by implication, for the [Ohio] constitution in express terms declares that ‘all powers not hereby delegated, remain with the people…The constitution confers no power to grant divorces; from whence then can the legislature derive it?   Not, like the British parliament, from sovereignty, because the legislature does not possess it; not from the constitution, because it does not confer it…

“The British Parliament is clothed, according to their notions, with sovereign power, and may do what they like;  many if not all the legislatures of the colonies, and the old states, possessed and exercised both legislative and judicial power… Our legislature is clothed with the simple power to enact laws, and do some other things expressly authorized by the constitution.  Beyond this, the legislature has no power at all.   To grant a divorce is not to enact a law at all;  an expression of the will of the lawmaking power that a marriage is dissolved is no law at all.   It is a decree, an order, a judgment but not a law …”

Surely, back in 1819, Justice Marshall would have been acutely aware of from whence our Declaration of Independence explicitly states that the people’s sovereignty over fundamental rights emanates, and this was clearly not the British Parliament (to mildly understate it).    On this basis alone, we can safely bet that legislative divorces and special laws would have been repugnant to Marshall’s  experience as a Constitutional founder, though he was reportedly a deist and didn’t have the strong Christian worldview of many of his peers.   And curiously, the majority opinion in Maynard cited several state-level cases in support of their conclusion from a variety of eastern and midwestern states including Pennsylvania, New York and Indiana but, very curiously, did not mention Bingham at all.   Perhaps the dissenting opinion did, given its very high relevance.

One thing we learn from this case is that denial of fundamental due process has always been an essential element of easy, sleazy divorce, even back in the late 19th century when Marxist elements were beginning to emerge and influence the policy-making elites.   Marshall’s voice, on the other hand, called back from the purer days in U.S. history before some of our intellectual elites began to succumb to Marxist ideologies – it would be interesting to note the extent the two dissenting Justices had vainly attempted to echo him.

All of this matters a great deal today, because anyone who looks at contemporary unilateral “no-fault” grounds for divorce, which prevail without mutual consent in 48 states as of this writing,  along with their their surrounding, implementing statutes, cannot help but notice that in reducing the judiciary function to an administrative, ministerial role, where there is to be no finding of marital fault in most states for any aspect of unravelling a family,  these laws amount to nothing more than the outlawed special laws of yesterday in blanket form,  implemented by running them through specialized courts for appearance sake, in order to masquerade as general laws that non-substantively purport to require a judicial function.    Yet, we all know that judges feel compelled by the law to accept the assertions in the petition and rule against the “Respondent” 100% of the time without regard to whether the allegation of “irreconcilable differences”, “irretrievable breakdown”, “insupportability”, etc. is factually true.   In an increasing number of these cases,  the pair has been successfully married for decades and suddenly became “irreconcilable” or “insupportable” according to the legal fiction.   In other cases, we have statistics that at least 5% of supposedly “irreconcilable” couples reconcile with each other, even after subsequent marriages to others.

One of the things the Bingham v Miller jurists did was try to manage the chaos resulting from overturning a law of this nature after decades of unlawful practice,  something the Maynard jurists openly declared that they lacked the fear of God and moral courage to do.

” To deny this long-exercised power, and declare all the consequences resulting from it void, is pregnant with fearful consequences. If it affected only the rights of property, we should not hesitate; but second marriages have been contracted, and children born, and it would bastardize all these, although born under the sanction of apparent wedlock, authorized by an act of the legislature before they were born, and in consequence of which the relation was formed which gave them birth. On account of these children, and for them only, we hesitate. “
– Justice Read, Ohio, 1848

We will be in substantially the same place with the rightful overturn or repeal of unilateral “no-fault” divorce and its effects, except that we will no longer have the legal label of “illegitimate” or “bastard” to contend with, since from about 1987,  U.S. law no longer makes much distinction in the rights of children born in wedlock or out– in a government that has quite clearly lost the moral ability to even define or implement “wedlock”.   Perversely, this will probably prove to be a silver lining for winding down today’s multiple remarriage mess.  The Ohio court stated it had no issue with the property effects reverting back to the status they were prior to imposition of each unlawful dissolution, but only had an issue with the legal and social status of the children of the subsequent union(s).    Although the case text doesn’t explicitly say this, the commentary on it states that the court held those subsequent unions to be  “valid” for the sake of the children.    Today we would ask, “which one(s)?”  However, by Bingham’s own legal theory, it is a serious question whether this Ohio court actually possessed the constitutional authority to do so en masse without actually rehearing any of the cases based on grounds, but it does not appear that this case was appealed any higher.    There was no way to declare all the marriages “valid” out of compassion without setting up a situation of concurrent, Muslim or Mormon style polygamy, in a moral space currently dominated by consecutive polygamy.   Something like this will be the aftermath of correcting the almost unspeakable separation-of-powers evil brought about by unilateral “no-fault” grounds statutes.  Theoretically, only the first marriage will be valid following such an event, but there are complexities even with that.

To conclude, we go back to the error of the Maynard court, and ask an interesting question:

Had the court made the right call on the issue of legislative divorces and special laws under the Article 10 theory that the Bingham court correctly laid out 40 years earlier,  would it have been strictly necessary to address the merits of the contract argument of Article 1 Section 10 applying to marriage, or would it have been wiser to declare that argument “moot” and thereby avoid setting a questionable legal precedent with regard to contracts, one that even John Marshall was uncertain of?   

Both questions had to be addressed once the wrong call was made concerning legislative divorces.   That fatal event turned into a blowtorch on the sustainability of “no-fault” flames, coming as it did at the SCOTUS level.  The Bingham court in Ohio importantly said this about the contract issue:

“Some eminent jurists have denied the power to the legislature, upon the ground that it is a law impairing the obligation of contracts, and therefore prohibited to the states by the constitution of the United States. We do not chose to place it upon this ground, because we believe that clause was inserted in the constitution for no such object, but as appliable to contracts of a wholly different nature.   And besides, I believe it not only consistent with the theory of our government, but that our happiness, interest, and safety require us to deny to the general government any possible power not expressly granted, or clearly conferred. It is to the state where we have the control, that we must look for the protection of our dearest rights; and I would be the last to surrender up any right to the general government, and especially so dear a one as that of our domestic relations. This is a matter of our own, and we will keep it so.”

It is clear that there was considerable difference of opinion on the applicability of Article 1 Section 10 to the marriage contract among “eminent jurists” long after Marshall.    Aside from the purism of the legal theory expressed in Bingham, this purism may actually become directly relevant to the constitutional wind-down of the blanket form of legislative divorces we are saddled with today.    For example, in the all-too-common case of someone thrice-“married”, but the law under which they or their civil spouse’s divorce (and therefore, their subsequent civil union) is suddenly declared void by SCOTUS, whose contractual rights prevail?   Aren’t the contract rights of the first spouse just as enforceable under Article 1 Section 10 as the third-and-current civil  spouse?    Perhaps not for marriages contracted after enactment of unilateral “no-fault” laws rendered the civil contract undertaken on the wedding day to be “at-will”, effectively mooting the contract argument that once existed for pretty much anyone under age 65 or so who didn’t first marry fairly young.

It’s fine to say that you can’t “unscramble eggs” or “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube”,  as we frequently hear with regard to biblically-illicit subsequent marriages, but if unilateral “no-fault” divorce and its parental and property effects are ultimately overturned on an Article 10 / Article 3 argument and separation-of-powers, millions of “marriages”, and probably the bulk of all currently-legal U.S. marriages under prevailing trends, will be voided.    If SIFC were a betting individual, the money would be on the current Justices rejecting the contract argument, not only out of stare decisis, but out  of pure practicality and widespread mootness, to considerably cut down on the enormous and inevitable chaos of conflicting claims.   There are purists among us who say that legislative repeal of unilateral divorce laws needs to take us back to 1969 (1958 for Oklahoma) based on this separation-of-powers constitutional principle, and not allow for even mutual petition “no-fault” grounds.   While that may wind up being the reality in a court result, this will be very unpopular to get through any legislatures where repeal rather than voiding would allow for a more orderly wind-down of divorce-on-demand.

Is what SIFC has just described too remote a possibility for concern? Don’t bet on that!     Legal challenges to pending unilateral “no-fault” divorce petitions have to-date been brought before county circuit judges in several states requesting a summary dismissal of the “no-fault” petition on Article 10 / Article 3 grounds, alleging that the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction to rubber-stamp divorces based on blanket legislative mandates that neither require nor permit a genuine judicial discretion.    When that summary judgment is typically denied by the “family court” judge, this then opens up a legal route of Federal challenge outside the usual self-interested state appellate system, and cuts costs for a pro-se challenger down to manageable levels, at least until success is achieved at the first Federal level where the judge’s immunity is successfully challenged because of the lack of subject matter jurisdiction.   At this point, the state AG and organizations like the ACLU will fiercely seek to defend existing laws and entrenched financial interests, probably hoping to empty their opponent’s purse before they prevail up the legal chain to SCOTUS.     This sort of Federal appeal is also available to those whose wrongful divorce has already been finalized against their will,  and for a few years thereafter, even following an unsuccessful state constitutional challenge on 1st and 14th Amendment grounds.   These circumstances increase the possibility that constitutional challenges can be brought in numerous states (hence, Federal circuits) by people who might have deep enough pockets to sustain them, and thereby increase the likelihood that SCOTUS will see a “Federal question”,  and ultimately agree to hear a case all nine justices would probably much rather not hear.   It is also possible that as these cases gather traction in the lower Federal courts, there will be a huge push to amend state constitutions to remove the defect being challenged, by carving out a specific delegation which allows the “family courts” to carry on as usual, much easier to do (and much harder to organize effective opposition to),  on the individual state level –when the other side has control of the money, the media and the popular culture.

Clearly there needs to be a strategic and proactive discussion among the movers and shakers in the marriage permanence movement about how the aftermath of successful constitutional challenge on this basis might be optimally managed, and what sort of strategic alliances need to be cultivated ahead of such a successful development, to have a chance of preventing unilateral “no-fault” divorce from reinventing itself on state constitutions, if so overturned.

(    For comic relief, juicy details and more of the humanistic, anti-family academic mindset concerning this case, SIFC recommends Steven H. Hobbs’ “Love on the Oregon Trail:  What the Story of Maynard v Hill Teaches Us About Marriage and Democratic Self-Governance” – 2003).

“By Me kings reign, and princes decree righteousness…”
– Proverbs 8:15
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!
Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

“Standerinfamilycourt” Responds to Dr. Hilary Towers and Author Leila Miller

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Our response to this article,
Are the Church’s Teachings on Sexuality Still ‘Good News’ for the Divorced?
…which is (in part) about Protestant covenant marriage “standers” and their example to Roman Catholic divorcees.

There’s much to say here.  Bottom line: Jesus told us in Matt. 19:8 that all “divorce” is a man-made fabrication “from the beginning”,  a violation of the created order (Gen. 2:21-24; Matt. 19:4-6), and the only “marriage” God recognizes is both complementarian and life-long indissoluble by any acts or paper of men.   He and Paul both go on to say that dying in the ongoing state of adultery – that is, “remarriage” after man-legalized abandonment of a God-joined spouse, sends people to hell (Matt. 5:27-32; Luke 16:15-31; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21).
The only people, therefore, who are actually “divorced” are the subsequent spouses who were never married in God’s eyes to begin with. True God-joined spouses are only immorally abandoned, according to the word of God, because only D-E-A-T-H ever dissolves those marriages.   Jesus mentions NO religious test for this that is recorded within the four canonized gospels, nor do any of the Apostles reference such.    Bluntly, all Christ-followers should vehemently object to Roman Catholic doctrine that waters down this truth via the papal contrivance of “nullity”, which today amounts to little more than revival of the vile medieval practice of selling indulgences.   

By the “church” the obvious reference in this article is to the RCC, who since the 12th century has progressively watered down this hard truth with “annulment” (extra paper), a practice which is now almost universal in this country.  The Protestant church, on the other hand, watered it down by ignoring / reinterpreting / obfuscating the scriptures, fraudulently handing jurisdiction over to the civil state by the Reformers, and by casting inexcusable doubt on the Apostles and early church fathers who unanimously confirmed the hard truth for 400 years–until history’s last “Donald Trump” came along (namely, the Emperor Constantine).

Under the concurrent polygamist, Constantine, the church took its first Leftist turn, in gratitude for being delivered from Roman persecution.

We saw this wicked cycle being played out again at the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, where in addition to the longstanding violation of Matt. 19:6, the largest evangelical denomination in the U.S. is now paving the way for sanctioned violation of Matt. 19:4, rather than repent of BOTH forms of marriage desecration, and rather than patiently endure the resulting persecution of staying true to biblical sexual ethics.    Possibly the recent spectacle of human street torches on the big screen in the movie “The Apostle Paul” didn’t bode well, but there also seems to be increasing evidence of dirty money making its way into both the RCC and the SBC. The objective of the outside financial largesse, of course, is to complete the decades-long orchestrated political extinction of the biblical family.

“Irregular circumstances” need to be repented of by severance.   This is a euphemistic canonical term for immoral life choices that Jesus and Paul both repeatedly tell us destroy the souls of those involved.   Jesus couldn’t have been more clear that this is ongoing adultery in every case where there is a living, estranged spouse on either side.    We can all empathize with the desire to lessen the stigma and trauma for the children of such illicit unions, but we must never lose sight of the betrayed children of covenant, and must never favor the illicit children over the covenant children (and covenant generations).    God never did this.   Jesus was graphically clear in Luke 16 when describing the eternal fate of such “married” people.     We presume that then, as now,  there were non-covenant children involved — just as there are children made in God’s image today being raised in sodomous unions.

In fact, while it’s great that this article highlights and praises the “standers” who endeavor to live chaste lives following man’s divorce, it’s also true that the only pure motivation for standing that goes the distance is the consuming and enduring desire to keep family members and our one-flesh mates (as well as their legalized adultery partners) out of hell by leaving the door wide open to their physical repentance.   Any church that recognizes “irregular circumstances” and gives that any other treatment than what was prescribed by Paul in 1 Cor. 5 is directly stoking the demand for the rising, overwhelming incidence of divorce.   We don’t need family flowcharts, we need on-our-face repentance in the holy fear of God!

The authors write:

“Protestants have a term for those spouses who remain true to a wayward spouse even in the wake of what may be a necessary separation and/or civil divorce: “standers.” Absent clear and enthusiastic support for this approach (both from within the Church and without), it simply does not occur to many faithful U.S. Catholics that ‘standing’ might be the most compassionate option for the abandoned spouse and his or her children.”       (We standers certainly believe that the Apostle Paul would agree.)

This is an excellent observation, with a couple of caveats.  First, most standers who are true Christ-followers do not consider civil divorce “necessary” under any circumstances, because they know it is of no effect in the kingdom of God.   The obvious exception is, of course, divorce out of a “marriage” that Jesus repeatedly called ongoing adulterous (non-widowed “remarriage”) — a union which God is always precluded from participating in at all.    This differs not one whit from a sodomous, legalized union for all the same reasons.   Disciples in covenant marriages should endeavor not to participate in the civil system, and should be willing to endure whatever hardships necessary, rather than disobey 1 Cor. 6:1-8.

If the authors are under the impression that standers are ever civil divorce initiators, they are only fractionally correct. There are a handful of these who went from prodigal to stander after learning the truth, and then repenting (by leaving adulterous subsequent relationships, legalized or not).  Separation without civil involvement may indeed be necessary for original marriages — and this is consistent with the instructions of the Apostle in 1 Cor. 7:10-11, not to divorce, and if divorced, to remain celibate until reconciled.

Secondly, local Protestant churches typically consider standers “pariahs” and a threat to the “unity” of the church.  Some false shepherds will even carry out “church discipline” on vocal standers (instead of on the legalized adulterers whose souls are actually on the line).    Of course, one does not necessarily need to have an estranged marriage to be a stander in the larger sense.  

Thankfully, God is raising up a growing handful of Protestant pastors, with and without congregations, in an encouraging variety of evangelical denominations, who are coming into the biblical truth in the last few years, Berean-style, through deep study of original language scripture manuscripts and the writings of the ante-Nicene “church fathers“ (whereas their faithless peers would prefer to discard this valuable historic evidence in order to please and appease the religious humanists filling their pews)–and these true shepherds are coming into the unpopular truth by the wooing of the Holy Spirit.    These men have determined to suffer the economic consequences and the censure entailed in refusing to do adulterous weddings, in attending marriage permanence retreats to encourage standers, in writing truthful books, and in preaching the truth without fear of the temporal consequences.   SIFC and the angels in heaven can’t sing their praises loudly enough!

SIFC believes it was Dr. Towers who recently suggested that the effects of the standers’ movement on their children should be studied when there is a large enough sample size.   Amen!  At present, SIFC blogs anecdotally on this topic quite frequently.   We would all hope that unilateral divorce will be abolished nationwide, well before sample size  “n” can occur and before longitudinal results would ever become available.   SIFC has historical doubts that the Lord will tarry that long in these Days of Noah, but absolutely applauds Dr. Towers’ desire to see this topic studied.   Let’s be thankful that the Lord has orchestrated that Catholics and Protestants work together to turn the moral tide in church culture before it’s apocalyptically too  late for our country.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
But He does according to His will in the host of heaven
And among the inhabitants of earth;
And no one can ward off His hand
Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
– Daniel 4:35

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Substantive Due Process

Dear Texas Lawmakers: A Guest Blog

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– by Kristi  Davis

Dear Members of the Texas State Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues:

I came before you in March of 2017 to testify for HB93 for the repeal of no-fault divorce laws in Texas. My testimony can be viewed online on your website.

Now I would like to present to you an analogy to help bring better understanding of what you are allowing when you have allowed no-fault divorce to continue in our state.

You received your privilege of representing people of our state when those people exercised their privilege to vote and voted for you. You chose to run; they chose to vote. The result is the seat you are now sitting in. All this took place because there are rules in place to create a healthy environment for us to “do government”.

So please imagine this chaotic scenario:

What would you think if one of your constituents walked into the Capitol Building one day and declared that you were no longer their choice for office and must be removed?  This person is not just any constituent; this person voted for you.

And what would you think if they had the erroneous right and ability to remove you simply by making a subjective statement on how they no longer like this relationship you are now in, as voter and representative?

Imagine they could simply file a complaint at the information desk which would guarantee the issue be brought up on the House floor in front of everyone. There really is no need to discuss the issue on the floor, after all, because they need no reason for your removal.  And you will have no opportunity to object to their statement because your side of the story need not be heard. How can you defend yourself, really, when you have not been accused of doing any wrong? The situation has nothing to do with your work performance, anyway. It all comes down to their whims and singular feelings about your relationship. They no longer want you in your seat. That is all that is needed.

What if you wanted to keep your seat? After all, this one voter does not represent your whole constituency; others are involved!
I regret to tell you, the rules were changed years ago that allow one voter, any one voter, to remove you at any time for no reason other than their feelings, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Once the voter objects, your job is gone and your career is over. The entire process can be completed in as little as two months’ time, because we wouldn’t want to inconvenience the public with the legal bill to defend your job.

Please remember: this voter also has access to everything you own and all your private information. They can walk into your office at any time and take your computer, read your emails, force your aides to speak against you, even take over your office and lock your door! They can force your aides to become their aides and work for their campaign to elect someone else in your place. You cannot stop it. But then again, why would you? Even though they voluntarily entered this relationship and chose to vote, you wouldn’t want to force someone to stay enslaved in this voter/representative relationship, would you?

This process could take place at any time, with any representative, as many times as a person would choose, ad nauseum.

Representatives could be shuffled in and out of office the whole session long. I know that making laws is why you are in office, that’s your job, but it’s ok if your job never gets done due to these personal whims of one person. Sure, the whole of the public would pay the price, but aren’t this individual’s desires more important? The courts say this is in the best interest of all your constituents, though years of research would say they are exactly wrong.

Would you think this public policy is not such a great one and needs to be amended or removed?

What would you do if the media folks showed up and opposed your efforts to change these policies? They would make a handsome living off broadcasting these voter objections at the Capitol, after all. But they would not say that out loud; instead, they will tell you that you are being selfish and old-fashioned. They would say that the law is now in the eye of the beholder, subject to redefinition by anyone living under it. Would you be “ok” with that?

Chaos.

Can you imagine this sort of logic applied to every area of law? If it can happen to the most fundamental and important of relationships- family ties, human beings- why not apply to it to everything else, because everything else is less important?
This matter could not be more serious.

Where do we draw the line? Where do you draw the line?
You may think my analogy sounds impossible, but that is what people of 50 years ago thought of the idea of a society where people dissolve marriage and family with the click of a button, literally.
If you do not stop this nonsense here, this analogy that sounds impossible today could be the way of life tomorrow. You are in the position to draw the line.

Let’s reestablish a healthy environment to “do family”; support healthy family relationships by requiring contested divorce cases to be brought for real reasons and every case to be heard thoroughly by a judge. If doing what is in the best interest of the children is really valued at all in this legislature, I implore you to leave hypocrisy behind and protect family by repealing unilateral divorce.

Most sincerely,
Kristi Davis
Texas Citizen
3-Time (Generational) Divorce  Sufferer under No-Fault Divorce in Texas

(    SIFC:   Kristi Davis testified on March 8, 2017 before this Texas Legislative Committee where at least three committee members actually derive income, either directly or indirectly, from unilateral divorce laws.   She has recently launched a blog page called  Healing and Repealing for Strong Family Trees – www.healingandrepealing.com  )

 

 

citizenship, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Fiery Furnace : Covenant Standing and Our Adult Children

5 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short. – Romans 12:12

For many of us who obey biblical instruction to stand for the wholeness of our families, to treat an involuntary or our own sinfully-initiated civil divorce as a chaste separation of the indissoluble, no matter how long it takes, no matter what pseudo-authority an immoral civil law system attempts to exert over us, no matter what we suffer at church as a consequence of this biblical obedience,  we yet find ourselves in a very long journey that increases the number and sharpness of the rocky shoals we must now figure out how to navigate.   As the journey lengthens, we often lose the support of others after a long season, based on circumstances we can’t control.  We’re hard-pressed, even so, to point to a single hero of the bible who didn’t also experience this, but it seems really hard when it’s us;  when it’s our kids inflicting some of the cultural persecution and suffering their own mortification over our convictions.

Along with the long road comes the intensifying spiritual warfare, because what we are daring to do is shake the very beams and timbers of the world’s oldest and most powerful satanic stronghold. We are generally a pretty strong lot, if our motives for doing this are what they should be. We can’t be “taken out” permanently by our own covetings and lusts, even if our foot might slip on occasion, and we can’t be shamed out of it, even by close friends or disgruntled family members, if our worst terror is that our prodigal spouse faces an eternity in hell if they die before repenting, or that our children and grandchildren might be deceived into emulating him or her some day.   We bear up, some of us, through intense economic hardship, lonely illnesses, the slander and accusation of others in the body of Christ, whose own carnal choices make our contrasting choice seem threatening. When satan knows, after years and sometimes decades of trying, he can’t get to us any other way, he often doubles back around on efforts to get to us through our children. There are several forms this can take, and though “standerinfamilycourt” has blogged on this before by way of personal tales, this post will try to take a look at how this commonly develops, share some things that might be helpful to think about, and finally share some encouraging outcomes.

Catholic author, Leila Miller has written a highly-praised book called Primal Loss, in which she asks a set of questions to seventy adult children of divorce about their feelings and experiences, which she captures in the book.    Most were accounts of parents who, for the most part, remarried and would never have considered standing for the indissolubility of the only marriage God recognized as such.    The parents largely went along with the culture, and had no godly input to do otherwise.   The kids mostly say their adult life has suffered in various ways.

These accounts captured in Primal Loss make a good contrast against which our own choice to obey God’s commandment throughout unwanted marital estrangement can be compared to the emotional impact on our adult children of our not doing so, for a little balance and perspective.   The whole premise of Miller’s book was the grievous temporal emotional impact on the adult life of these casualties of the popular divorce culture, especially where society expected them not to contradict the conventional wisdom about their “resiliency”.   Her premise is true enough:  our culture deeply frowns on adult children of divorce speaking up about how the selfishness of man’s divorce has impacted them as adults, and this expectation is no different for children of standers from the perspective of virtually everyone around them, except us standers.   One of the most repeated (and striking themes) as stated by many of the adult children in this book is how much they truly resent having to explain to their own children Nana and Papaw’s estrangement.

“standerinfamilycourt” has two adult children of the covenant marriage.   Both were young adults when the marital issues first surfaced. Both were raised all their lives in an evangelical home, where they were not even allowed (by their prodigal parent) to spend the night in a home where there was a biblically-adulterous “marriage”, even if the offending couple was part of our church. Both are now happily married, attending church regularly with their young families, and teaching their own children marriage permanence. Both stood firmly, along with their respective spouses, with this covenant marriage stander for nearly a decade leading up to the unilateral civil divorce action, and for at least a couple of years until a prodigal husband legalized his adultery, almost a dozen years into their ordeal.   SIFC is well aware that many standers have a very different personal situation with regard to their children’s ability or willingness to support their stand.

All this said, SIFC has been violently thrown out of the house of each of these adult children at least once in the past 3 or 4 years, for a reason directly related to pressures from the covenant marriage stand, and has been threatened with never seeing the grandchildren again if it continued, and if SIFC didn’t quit the “cult”.

What are some of these pressures that we wish we could spare our kids (and their kids), which inevitably result from the only choice we can righteously make before God?

(1) The adulterous prodigal and their new spouse are relentlessly pouring on the emotional pressure to validate their “marriage”.
This is an all-consuming, driving force among those who know their relationship is invalid and immoral in God’s eyes.    In fact, the more they knew this before they entered into pseudo-marriage, the more intense the effort becomes to gain acceptance.    Cards, bribes, invitations and pleas will proliferate.  Scripture will be twisted to call into question the kids’ “unwillingness to ‘forgive’ ” or their “failure to honor their mother and father”,  or their “disrespect for the authority of civil government”.    They will be pointedly reminded that their own current church would recognize this new “marriage” (too often true enough).

If those measures don’t succeed, the grandchildren will often be contacted behind the backs of their parents.    The child’s conscientious spouse, who never asked for any of this ongoing conflict, will start to fear for their own marriage due to the household turmoil all this lobbying causes over an extended period of time.    If not properly navigated, the adulterers eventually “win” from the simple grind of wearing down family members, and they know they can easily deflect the blame at the same time, preferably onto the stander.    The problem is not their immoral betrayal of their own flesh and blood progeny, it’s that irksome covenant marriage stand, and an “ex”-spouse who is “deliberately prolonging the pain” for all, by “using the kids”, instead of “getting help” or “moving on”.

(2) The children were not raised with the idea of marriage indissolubility, and they support the adulterous union because that’s what peace with our culture dictates.    It usually takes two firmly-convicted parents to raise up children who would fit into the first description discussed above.    Given the apostasy of most churches and the widespread legalized immorality in most extended families and friends’ families, this stands to reason.    Beyond this is the fact that many abandoned spouses come genuinely to Christ only as a consequence of the marital rupture, and did not raise their children with biblical marriage concepts.    In this latter case, the kids come to associate the stander’s sudden “fundamentalism” with all the prevailing lies of the culture about following Christ.

This really puts the stander in a serious pressure-cooker, and can result in much greater actual isolation from children and grandchildren than the first group of circumstances.    These standers often find themselves suffering in silence as their grandchildren are exposed to one or more normalized immoral relationships that they know imperil two generations of souls.    They also suffer much humiliation in these circumstances.    They  suffer almost irresistible fear and a sense of helplessness to do anything about it, even to the extent of fearing to wear their wedding ring in front of the family.    To them, I offer an encouragement from the recent film, “I Can Only Imagine: The Bart Millard Story”.    Bart’s mother left her abusive covenant husband for good cause, and formed a series of immoral relationships soon after.  Bart’s dad, long  before he came to Christ toward the end of his life, never took off his wedding ring.   He, too, was a stander even as a pagan.   Even as a drunk, he was having one of the most important silent influences a man could have on his son’s future life.

(3) The adult children have their peers to appease (and you’re embarrassing them; putting them on the spot).   They go to work, to dinner parties, they’re on facebook and at soccer practice and scouts.   It’s sharply painful to them to be asked how their mom or dad is doing.   Social media exposure makes this circumstance particularly painful for both the stander and the children who feel “trapped” between their parents, in front of their friends, no less.     It’s not uncommon for adult children of standers to “unfriend” one or both parents because of this, particularly if there is any activism involved on the stander’s part, or bragadocious posts on the prodigal’s part – both circumstances being very common.    They dread being asked by these friends if they (like us) think that they or their divorced-and-remarried parents / aunts / uncles / siblings are living in sin.    Even the most faithful of born-again adult children may not be very comfortable with thinking about these matters in eternal, heaven-or-hell terms.    Their focus tends to cling tightly to how people are made to feel in all of the swirling circumstances.   This concern often extends to what they fear your grandchildren might let slip to their own young friends, because so many of those children’s parents are divorced and remarried, as SIFC’s daughter once protested.

(4)  There’s a ninety-five percent chance they are not comfortable with talk of hell, nor of remarriage adultery sending people to hell, especially by the millions.   The very thought that it could be true is even more terrifying to them.    God bless the Francis Chans and David Pawsons of the evangelical world who are now setting the example that’s giving us permission once again to talk about hell, after a decades-long church taboo against it!    In the meantime, we’ve been up to our eyebrows in toxic Calvinism and toxic Lutheranism, with extrabiblical statements like: “He died for our past, present and future sins”, or “God looks at our sins, no matter how bad, through the shed blood of His Son, and He has thrown them as far away as the east is from the west.”  (Presumably, without any repentance required other than “in our hearts”).    Our kids are tempted to presume that just because a couple came together in “remarriage”, and a sovereign God didn’t stop it, He must have “joined them”.     Most contemporary evangelical pastors look right past Matthew 19:4-6, 8 (and related passages) to presume that God “provided for” divorce, and that all civil marriages other than homosexual or incestuous ones are morally interchangeable.    Against that backdrop, linking Luke 16:18 with 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 seems almost sacrilegious.   However, we need to be mindful that Jesus and Paul each made that linkage twice.
Empathetically, can we blame an adult child for feeling intense alarm and strong denial at someone / anyone saying out loud that a parent they always thought was “saved”, who may have even baptized them, is now headed to hell just for choosing the same serial monogamy that everyone around them chooses?

Let’s face it, if we didn’t know there was a biblical hell-penalty for dying in unrepented remarriage adultery, we might still stand celibate out of our first love for Jesus, but we’d have far less company in doing so.   Furthermore, we’d be unloving not to give our blessing to the remarriage of our born-again one-flesh partner, knowing that the “loss of rewards” the Calvinists like to say they will reap in eternity makes their happiness in this life all the more important to them.    We’d be downright cruel to keep calling it adultery, even though Jesus repeatedly did.    It would be harsh on our children and grandchildren not to do whatever we could to ease the intense stress they are already under, if there were no risk of hell for children and grandchildren who go along with the immoral culture and who someday emulate it.    But the biblical fact is what it is, so we “soldier on”.    Jesus never promised us bloodless spiritual warfare.

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.   For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;  and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.   –  Matthew 10:34-36

Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.   Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.   But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.  – Matthew 24:11-13

The Apostles instead promised us we’d be surrounded and outnumbered by desperately wicked people in the last days.   There is no way a serious stand can impact our children and grandchildren for the good unless the taboo against talking frankly about hell is gone from us.   If we give place to the taboo out of fear of man, satan wins.    

(5) Their spouse isn’t onboard, including the spouse’s parents or siblings.   Perhaps your child’s in-laws are living in the sin of remarriage adultery themselves, or some of their other children or other relatives are.  Perhaps they are a clergy family in a church where adulterous weddings are routine (or denominationally mandated), and “blended” families are typically the most productive members of the congregation.    Or perhaps your child married an unbeliever, either equally or unequally-yoked. Perhaps you are a serious threat to your son-in-law, or daughter-in-law, because they actually have a living, estranged spouse.    Whatever the reason, expect your adult child to be impossibly-torn in such circumstances, and always make your own choices that protect the sanctity and irreplaceability of their marriage, unless that marriage is biblically-adulterous.

(6) You were once the prodigal, now repented and standing, but your kids still don’t trust you.     I am talking here to the one who divorced a faithful, godly spouse to “marry” someone else you were attracted to, rather than stay and persevere through the issues in your God-joined marriage.   The Lord has brought you back from the Far Country, given you godly sorrow over what you’ve done, but your kids are applauding your spouse’s new relationship(s) because they don’t want to see the other parent hurt again, and aren’t ready yet to buy in to your repentance.   You don’t understand how they’re not persuaded by the years you’ve chastely waited for the Lord to put your family back together since the day of your genuine repentance.  From their perspective, the years they thought they could count on their intact family before it got disrupted by your change of mind (and heart) still speak louder than anything that’s happening now.    That’s a really hard place to be, but not beyond the Lord’s touch.

So, what do we DO as standers with all of this?
To be honest, it seems easier to talk about what we don’t do, first.

– However tempting, and however much legal or informal alienation has developed, we don’t “write them off”.    This is especially crucial for men to understand, in their God-assigned role as the patriarch of the family.   God did not let Eli off the hook when he sinfully abdicated his role as the moral shaper of his adult sons.    Giving in to this abdication urge is an affront to God’s design for the family, even in the extreme situation of legal restraining orders, and even in the second generation.   Whose authority trumps here, God’s or “Caesar’s”?    Be bold, and ask God to bring the children / grandchildren to you, and to remove that restraining order, in Jesus’ holy name!

– Don’t lose sight of the fact that the baseline battle is for souls, not circumstances.

– Don’t forget that the battle is ultimately the Lord’s, but He still needs kingdom soldiers (in their full armor) to carry out spiritual warfare.

– Don’t be the “cobbler whose own kids (and grandkids) went without shoes”.   (This is for the street preachers, etc. out there who think it’s OK to not expect wholeness for their covenant family, as long as they’re “doing something for the kingdom of God”.)

– Never lose sight that NO prodigal mate “divorces” ONLY their covenant spouse, they also “divorce” their entire covenant family, spiritually and practically, especially if they then enter into legalized adultery.

– Don’t be so presumptuous as to give GOD a time limit.   His singular will IS for ALL your covenant family to be whole in this life and to make it to heaven.   Yes, we know it doesn’t always happen that way, but Abraham wasn’t lauded in Romans 4 for comparing himself to others.      

  • DO be so bold as to stare satan down after a discouraging incident with the kids.    You’re a King’s kid, and it’s your birthright, as well as your calling to do so.   Balance that with the other piece of advice given to “King’s kids” (Luke 6:35) by Jesus Himself.   Imagine if God treated us like we treat Him, or if He was intimidated from coming after us in spiritual warfare out of His weariness or fearfulness!
  • DO ask the Lord for special Spirit-revelation about the specific people causing the conflict, and pray for a unique opportunity to be a blessing to them.   Follow through when it turns up.
  • DO prayerfully ask the Lord to pour His peace over the conflicts your kids are experiencing, and a hedge of protection over their marriage, that they would feel His presence and instruction navigating these difficult conflicts.
  • DO accurately walk in your Kingdom marital status 24/7/365, shutting out all resulting intimidation as “noise”.    Paul never once spoke of “divorced” people in 1 Corinthians 7, nor did he actually speak generically of “single” people (despite the bad translations).    If Paul believed one single word of what Jesus told him, which led to his instructions in Romans 7:2-3 and 1 Cor. 7:11 or 39,  why in the world would he?   Paul spoke of the widowed and the never married (“virgins” – parthenos), and the married.    When he spoke of the unmarried (agamois – / agamos: without a[nother] wedding), he was usually speaking of widowers like himself.   To Paul, there were no “divorced” people, only legally estranged, married people.
  • DO pray about wearing your wedding ring and using your married name without apology.    Yes, it’s probably going to threaten your counterfeit replacement and irk your one-flesh spouse.   But who is it who is guilty of the covetousness, theft and falsehood?   Certainly not you!
  • DO remember how loudly your celibate stand is already speaking to everyone around you.   This is for when you’ve shared a deep, essential truth (such as ongoing adulterers going to hell without exception), and you feel the need to “lay low” until the kids or grandkids come to you again.
  • DO ask the Lord to raise up supernatural barriers to exposing your grandchildren to the legal-but-adulterous (and legal-but-sodomous) unions in their lives, the best of which would be firm conviction in their parents about how morally damaging the exposure is.   Yes, SIFC’s prodigal was spot-on all those years ago, and the kids have never forgotten it (to his current chagrin).
  • DO use bible stories (open bible) to straightforwardly communicate unpopular truths to the grandkids in an age-appropriate way, and pray with them.   This is not a guarantee that you won’t incur flak or passing wrath as consequence of doing so (including from your spouse when it gets back to them).   It is best to do so as a response to a conversation the grandkids initiated, and it’s best to make this an occasional, infrequent occurrence rather than a constant one.  You are NOT out of line, and your ARE under God’s covering.   If your spouse reprimands you, treat it as another (rare) opportunity to emphasize souls, eternal destinations, and the impact of the example we set before our children and exposed grandchildren.
  • DO ask the Lord before fully taking onboard their perspectives about the “damage” you are “causing” their children, your grandchildren.   In 2016, my daughter claimed that my reading the John 6 account of Herod, Herodias and John the Baptist to the two elementary-aged granddaughters caused the older one to “wail in despair” about her Papaw going to hell “if she didn’t pray for him”.    I had led this granddaughter to the Lord two years earlier, and knew she was comfortable with prayer.    If there had really been such a “damaging” reaction, it would have been far more likely come from the younger one.   We had prayed together with our arms around each other that day, and they had come to me.
  • DO be purposeful about spiritual disciplines, including prayer in the Spirit, fasting, devotions, scripture memory.   We don’t operate in this kind of realm apart from spiritual warfare, and we don’t “dabble” very safely in it, either.    Do them enough that the odds are your kids and grandkids will frequently “catch you” at them.
  • DO understand “standing” to include standing firm (holding our ground, occupying our God-assigned space).    Try a word search in biblegateway.com on the word “stand”, and see how consistently this concept is associated with the word “stand”.                                                                                                                                         Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
    –     Ephesians 6:13-15

Early on the morning of  “Boxing Day”, December 26, four months ago, SIFC was thrown out of our daughter’s house and sent home early on an 11-hour northerly journey in hazardous weather as a result of answering a question her husband had asked the Christmas night before.    The culprit?   On the surface, it was radical feminism, but on the inside, it was the Holy Spirit challenging her ideologies that are in conflict with the kingdom of God, and which if not repented, are quite likely to seriously threaten her own marriage down the road.    The question posed by her husband was not even directly on marriage, but it was on politics.   In retrospect, after the explosion that occurred at her house in August, 2016,  SIFC should have demurred from engaging, since both granddaughters, ages 7 and 9, were again in the room, and because the topic area, involving a Trump administration nomination, was highly likely to drift into marriage ethics, were I to give a frank, honest answer about this morally  unsuitable nominee.    (SIFC is only a lukewarm Trump fan for morality and character reasons, and these kids both detest him for defeating Hillary.)    Unavoidably, the conversation did drift into marriage permanence and the immoral living conditions of the nominee, who was also not pro-life, as I recall.   Because my views were “polluting” and “confusing” her daughters by opening them up politically to “abuse” in their mother’s estimation, it was urgent that I be out of their house forthwith, our daughter declared (to the utter shock and dismay of her husband).    Day older, day wiser.   It was I who had played into that demonic trap, for the Holy Spirit did attempt to warn me.   I spent the drive home pleading the blood of Jesus over their marriage, after thanking them sincerely for including me in their Christmas.

There was never any apology (except from me for not having the discernment to tactfully change the subject from politics), but by early March, our daughter was texting me about the younger granddaughter’s April birthday party, and the older one’s starring role in the annual school musical, scheduled ten days after that birthday.  It appears that I had correctly discerned the demonic nature of that December setup, and correctly responded to the harsh treatment that resulted.  A week ago I returned from spending a week in their home, this time without conflict, even though our granddaughters were bringing me their bibles and asking for bible stories, and even though they again asked me about Papaw, wanting more prayer for him.   I had stared satan down, had shouted to him on the way back that he cannot have any part of my covenant family, in Jesus’ name, and I didn’t have to worry about creating conflict by wearing my wedding rings because the whole extended family knows they never come off.    After all that had happened, I got to be the one that was there for them, doing practical things to ease stresses currently in their home, that for once, I have nothing to do with contributing to.   Strangely, the other set of grandparents, who live only an hour away, weren’t even there or in touch, as far as I know.

Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.
– Deuteronomy 31:6

 

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7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Heads Up, Alabama – Here Comes a Liberal, Anti-Family Trojan Horse!

2 Comments

Wedding Cake Pulverized
by Standerinfamilycourt

On January 17, 2018, Texas MassResistance (an offshoot of a Massachusetts-based pro-family organization that does aggressive battle with the comprehensive LGBT political agenda)  posted an article to their Facebook page from AL.com,

Alabama Senate Passes Bill to Eliminate Marriage Licenses

with the following Facebook comments:

“It’s sad to see a state opt out of licensing marriage, but the truth is real marriage as a legal construct essentially ceased to exist with the legalization of gay marriage. It’s like removing the legal distinction between real money and play money. Real money means nothing once play money becomes legal tender– and everyone is made poorer– even counterfeiters– same story on gay marriage.

“Gays kid themselves if they think they their marriages are of the same substance as marriage prior to gay marriage. Put a drop of fine wine from a wine bottle into a bottle of sewer water and you still have a bottle of wine and a bottle of sewer water, but put a drop of sewer water into a bottle of fine wine and you have two bottles of sewer water. Things of higher value are diminished or destroyed altogether when mixed with things of lower value. Alabama’s move to eliminate marriage licenses recognizes that reality– MR-T”

With a few days’ delay, we noticed a re-post of this on the Facebook wall by a friend of our blog page who lives in Texas, and we commented to MassResistance on their page as follows:

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:
“There are two conscionable alternatives to dealing with civil law that no longer coincides with God’s law in any respect:

(1) pastors opt out of participating in the civil system as an agent for the state (example: the 2014 First Things Marriage Pledge)
(2) what Alabama is seeking to do

“Although some 800+ pastors from a wide variety of denominations had signed the Marriage Pledge by two months after Obergefell, nearly 3 years later, few have had the moral courage to make good on it. We have a pretty good idea why not — wrong motives, and the sudden delayed realization of what that might do to the ability of heterosexuals to do what God forbids and get a state “dissolution” decree.
So, that leaves Option 2.

“We humbly remind that God’s definition of marriage (Matt.19:4-6) has TWO non-negotiable elements, not just one – as the tone of this post strongly implies. Those elements are: (1) complementarity, and (2) indissolubility.   Hence, the adulteration of that wine bottle started to take place 48 years ago, not in 2015, two generations later.
Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s”. He told us that Holy Matrimony does not happen except by God’s hand.  It’s therefore quite suspect that the Reformation humanists, Martin Luther in particular, saw fit to hand over to the state that which belonged to God in the first place. Count on God not to allow this issue to dissipate until His full definition of marriage is honored, and pastors from coast to coast repent of whining about sodomy-as-“marriage” while carefully preserving consecutive polygamy-as-holy-matrimony.

“It will be interesting to see, if this progresses to become law, how they continue to issue ‘dissolutions’. It’s probably pretty simple to substitute their affidavits for marriage certificates when it comes to finding another unilateral home invasion warrant, but how will they handle the gory details?  Option 1 would have denied them the piece of paper usable as such a “warrant” in a substantial number of cases.”

MassResistance gave a very gracious response to our comment, which we will leave the readers to reference on their own.

Of course, Alabama is the infamous state of dethroned State Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, who was removed from the bench in 2016 on ethics charges because he issued an administrative order to lower court judges stating, “until further decision by the Alabama Supreme Court, the existing orders of the Alabama Supreme Court that Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary to the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment or the Alabama Marriage Protection Act remain in full force and effect….”   citing the fundamental right of these judges to conscience protections and free religious exercise in declining to issue civil marriage licenses to homosexuals.   (Presumably, these same judges had no serious compunctions or religious conscience issues with issuing civil marriage licenses to would-be legalized adulterers in the years since 1975 enactment of Alabama’s unilateral divorce laws.   Moore is himself “married” to a civilly-“divorced” woman.)    Apparently, for all the smoke-blowing that ensued to remove Moore, his successor on the bench has not reversed the 2016 administrative order after almost two years, the lingering effect being as stated in the AL.com article:

“Under current law, Alabama probate judges are not required to issue marriage licenses and some, at least initially, declined to issue licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court ruling.

“Albritton’s bill would take away any discretion by probate judges. The only requirement to make a marriage official would be to submit the documents to the probate judge.”

Take away the discretion of judges….does this sound familiar?   It should indeed!    This is exactly how brutal totalitarianism came to be injected into “family court” processes and procedures to implement unilateral divorce, without raising a whimper of public protest even though the 1st and 14th amendment protections were being stripped from millions of Americans in the process.    Legislating immorality has always been a stealth process — and in the past five decades, it has come to work flawlessly…intractably.

The gay “marriages” taking place in Alabama in this long interim have  only been enabled where LGBT-sympathetic judges are willing to issue the civil marriage licenses to same-sex couples.    Several counties are reportedly not issuing them at all.

SB13’s sponsor, Greg Albritton appears to be a liberal Republican, according to a 2016 voting scorecard published by the American Conservative Union, where he scored 58%,  the lowest of all of his GOP peers, and equaling the score of the highest scoring Democrat in the Alabama Senate.    His bill passed a fast-tracked and astounding floor vote of 19-1 in mid-January, and the ACLU published their analysis stating that they do not consider it a threat to liberal interests, so they are not taking a position on it.    This is a strong, red flag that the measure is not expected to be supportive of biblical, traditional families, since it is not drawing ACLU opposition.  The full text of SB13 (about 9 pages) can be read here.

At first blush, it should seem like a dream-come-true that the state might be giving back to God the authority over the holy ordinance that He never delegated to fallible, carnal men in civil government….

“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [human] separate”…..He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. ”
– Matthew 19:6, 8

However, there is an ominous poison-pill:   it will no longer be necessary to have vows or a public ceremony should these bills become law.

Jesus pointed back to the first wedding in the Garden for the essentials of God-joined holy matrimony….

And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his FATHER and MOTHER and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.  The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.  The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

– Matthew 19:4-5;  Genesis 2:21-24

Elements present in the Garden wedding between Adam and Eve:   eligible partners without prior, estranged spouses still living, consent, vows, witnesses (Jesus and the serpent),  and God’s supernatural, instantaneous act of (Greek : sunexuezen) joining.

Elements absent in the Garden wedding:  civil paper and a human officiant.

We all know that the unholy 16th century transaction between church and state authority was a foul fruit of the humanistic Reformers, principally, of Martin Luther who sought access to that which God expressly forbid through Jesus Christ, namely, divorce via a man-made declaration of “dissolution”, rather than the physical death of a spouse.    What appears on the surface to be a “taking back” of authority from civil government is actually a mirage in the case of these bills.    The texts of these bills SB13 and (pending) HB162 both explicitly provide that there will be no change to the statute with regard to divorce or child “welfare” provisions.     Unless there is civil paper of some sort, no unilateral divorces nor totalitarian interference with parental rights would be possible.   Hence, a more controlled piece of paper on the front-end, is being swapped for a piece of civil paper with far fewer controls, but effecting all the same state intrusion into the sanctity of the home. The uber-liberal take on this makes for some interesting reading, as well.

In the absence of a requirement for a witnessed ceremony, documentation of consent, and vows,  the effect is that common law marriages are being given the same legal status as holy matrimony unions.    In other words, a second category of legalized, adulterous unions is being created that essentially legalizes fornication as well as adultery.     Absorbed into the longstanding moral vacuum of the contemporary church, the effect on marital stability will be devastating to family structure over time, in the same way that rampant “remarriage” has been.      To be sure, pastors will still require the traditional ceremony for the weddings they do, and will continue their evil practice of performing the same over the already married-for-life.    But equally sure is the fact that in addition to the legalized adulterers whom they now welcome into their congregations (no questions asked), they will be welcoming a new group of folks likewise not married in God’s eyes – those who have made no vows before Him.   As an added bonus, pastors will be relieved of the offense to conscience from signing civil marriage licenses that reflect an immoral civil standard.

STATUS , at this writing
Alabama Overview

The enacted result, should it come to pass:

– Win for the judges who no longer have a conscience conflict with their jobs (but still should, if they call themselves Christ-followers).
–  Win for the pastors whose threat of being sued by LGBT activists is significantly reduced, with the added bonus of avoiding any “heat” from their congregations for implementing something so controversial and “judgmental” as the Marriage Pledge.
– Win for the abusive Catholic dioceses that nationally grant 90% of marriage annulment petitions, the vast bulk of which claim “defective” original consent.
– Win for the heinous state bar association who have always looted the system since the enactment of unilateral divorce, and have purchased increasing political power with the confiscated proceeds, but who will now up their ante from the resulting increase in social and moral chaos.
–  Win for the homosexuals who seek to adopt, traffic in, and corrupt children, while gaining government and employer benefits.
–  Win for the LGBT activists (such as Tamra Metz and Masha Gessen) who openly admit the movement’s ultimate objective to destroy the institution of holy matrimony and traditional families.
–  Win for the shallow veneer of preserving religious liberty (until we stop and consider the denied religious liberty of the non-offending, non-filing spouse whose 1st amendment rights have traditionally been ignored by the system.)

Win-win for everybody, right?    Not exactly…major loss for covenant spouses, their children and grandchildren, and for God-defined holy matrimony, as well as for the already downward-spiraling sexual morality within the church.   A church full of papered-over adulterers, including behind the pulpit, is hardly ready to resume any authority over marriage the state gives back at this time.

WeRegret

Once again, the biblical covenant family is being thrown under the bus with the blind approval of all of all the above “winning” parties, and will now actually be in worse shape than their counterparts in neighboring states (until the easy-peasy-sleazy virus spreads to those states as well).    From the 1970’s until now, marriage seems to be becoming the ever more ridiculous, rambling  “house that Jack built”.

While MassResistance’s comments show they are less than enthused with this legal innovation,  where is the voice of the churches, or of Alabama’s family policy council?     To their credit, the Alabama Policy Institute has been at least tracking and timely-reporting on the bills during January (albeit, with exceptional brevity for such an impactful change – scroll all the way to the bottom of link)….but they do not appear to be taking a position, nor publicly recognizing the serious back-door dismantling threat to the institution of marriage itself.   Would that API would have at least reported who the one dissenting Senator was, and why Sen. Phillip Williams [R], who holds an 88% lifetime score with the American Conservative Union,  dissented.     Unfortunately, neither does the press do this.   It is clear that this legislation is all about facilitating sodomous “marriages” and protecting judges, and not about what’s best for the integrity of families or (ultimately) society.

Quoting Masha Gessen (2012):

“It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. … (F)ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there – because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.

“The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out 30 years ago….”

As is fairly typical for state FPC’s and changes to marriage laws (other than those ushering in gay “marriage”), no blogs or articles have been devoted to this topic since the September, 2017 introduction of the Senate bill.   General press coverage, on the other hand, has been favorable both on the Right and Left, with no significant criticisms and only vaguely- expressed concerns (“waving the white flag on marriage”, etc.), despite the radical social impact which legally and morally equating common law and God-joined marriages will undoubtedly bring, absent any coinciding reform of unilateral divorce laws.

The better solution?   Continue to regulate marriages per existing law, while pastors with the requisite moral authority, discipleship and courage opt-out of acting as an agent for states whose marriage contract does not reflect the vows being exchanged in the sanctuary.    Take the heat for the sake of the kingdom of God, pastors and judges!

The best solution?    Remove “irreconcilable differences” (and its equivalents) as a “ground” for divorce if there is no mutual petition for marriage dissolution, and divide assets and child welfare based on proven marital fault, thereby drying up both the demand for “marriage” between homosexuals, and the perverse, lucrative financial incentives that drive the legal machine.     (We have asked MassResistance -Texas whether they plan to support the re-election of Rep. Matt Krause, and support 2019 continued repeal efforts in Texas, but they declined to respond to this question.)

Prayer warriors, we have our work cut out for us.   Please start by praying that HB162 fails in the Alabama House of Representatives.   In the ten days leading up to Valentine’s Day,  look for a series of daily posts to Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional reflecting concrete ways the church can rapidly improve her witness to the world concerning rebuilding  a “culture of marriage”.   We believe these steps would prepare the church morally for the responsibility of taking marriage back from the state and reversing the 500 year old  Lutheran curse.

The infamous Trojan Horse allowed the Greeks to get in and out of the city with their treasure.    After they were out, the whole city burned to the ground.

Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people.
– Proverbs 14:34

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citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Does Abolishing “No-Fault” Have Parallels to Abolishing the Slave Trade?

Amazing-Grace-movie-posterby Standerinfamilycourt

Do not rob the poor because he is poor,
Or crush the afflicted at the gate;
For the Lord will plead their case
And take the life of those who rob them.
– Proverbs 22:22-23

Do not err, my brethren. Those that corrupt families shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And if those that corrupt mere human families are condemned to death, how much more shall those suffer everlasting punishment who endeavor to corrupt the Church of Christ, for which the Lord Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, endured the cross, and submitted to death! Whosoever, ‘being waxen fat,’ and ‘become gross,’ sets at nought His doctrine, shall go into Hell. In like manner, every one that has received from God the power of distinguishing, and yet follows an unskillful shepherd, and receives a false opinion for the truth, shall be punished.”
–  St. Ignatius of Antioch, “Epistle To The Ephesians,” c. 105 A.D.

This blogger can still recall reading  Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin to our children many years ago, while absolutely sobbing at the scene where two slave families were about to be cruelly pulled apart in a commercial transaction and sent to different plantations, with absolutely no respect for the God-joined holy one-flesh bond of matrimony between the two covenant husband and wife entities, and their God-ordained bond with their covenant children.

” ‘Mas’r aint to blame, Chloe, and he’ll take care of you and the poor’ … Here he turned to the rough trundle bed full of little woolly heads, and broke fairly down.  He leaned over the back of the chair, and covered his face with his large hands.   Sobs, heavy, hoarse and loud, shook the chair, and great tears fell through his fingers on the floor: just such tears, sir, as you dropped into the coffin where lay your first-born son;  such tears, woman, as you shed when you heard the cries of your dying babe.   For, sir, he was a man, and you are but another man.   And, woman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in life’s great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow!

” ‘And now, ‘ said Eliza, as she stood the door, ‘I saw my husband only this afternoon, and I little knew then what was to come.  They have pushed him to the very last standing place, and he told me, to-day, that he was going to run away.  Do try, if you can, to get word to him.  Tell him how I went, and why I went; and tell him I’m going to try and find Canada.  You must give my love to him, and tell him, if I never see him again,’ — she turned away, and stood with her back to them for a moment, and then added, in a husky voice, ‘tell him to be as good as he can, and try and meet me in the kingdom of heaven.’  “

Centuries of this cruelty not only offended God, but had severe consequences on the nations involved, such that the regime eventually confronted God’s hand of long-awaited justice in abolishing that offense against humanity.   More importantly, because of a small band of godly saints who were faithful and long-suffering to carry out their Holy Spirit assignments, retaining their resolve and their trust in Him in the face of overwhelming opposition, God’s more severe judgment on at least one nation (and probably two nations) was averted.

“Christian” accommodation of so-called “no-fault” unilateral divorce has taken Christ’s church in the western world into the deep pit of serial polygamy in just two generations.   And what, exactly, do we mean by “serial polygamy” in this comparison?     Quite simply, it is using man’s immoral civil laws to reject the spouse God joined us to, in order to “marry” another while the rejected spouse lives  – something that Jesus called ongoing adultery at least five separate times in canonized scripture.     There are many excuses offered up for this, and there are even more numerous luminary “men of God” who will tell you it’s okay under “God’s grace” based on some man-contrived excuse.      However,  God repeatedly said, in Old Testament and in New Testament times. it is not okay, nor is it without horrible consequences for families, church and nation.

Those harsh, inevitable generational consequences don’t “sift” through the humanistic web of excuses in order to selectively apply themselves according to the Westminster Confession-sanctioned “exceptions”.   Those consequences ultimately come from the hand of God, as thistles and thorns in the Garden; from the One who entertains none of the human excuses.    He is the One whose hand individually creates each one-flesh union as an inseverable entity, Who then covenants unconditionally with that individual entity, then declares that they will never be two again in this life.    This universal indissolubility of holy matrimony is why Jesus called all non-widowed remarriage adultery — the original parties are still married in God’s eyes, and anyone else subsequently posing as “married to” either of the two original covenant spouses are bearing false witness to the world while they are  defiling their vessels.   Pastors who perform “weddings” where there is an estranged, living spouse on either side are therefore violating the Third Commandment by misusing the name of the Lord to attribute to Him a vain act.

Though only one spouse wants out of the  holy matrimony covenant of their youth, a scene similar to the slave sale in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is played out in “family courts” across the land on a daily basis, forcibly pulling covenant spouses from each other, and  children from one of their parents (and it’s usually the most responsible and moral of the two, due to the perverse financial incentives involved), while attempting also to tear and sever the God-joined one-flesh entity created by His hand.   Both spouses and their children are literally reduced to being treated as the chattel property of the prevailing legal regime, with an inexcusable motive to illicitly accrue profit to various parties who are external to the victimized families.

Near the start of SIFC’s post-decree journey through a constitutional appeals case,  amidst outreach efforts to others in the marriage permanence movement,  the establishment of social media pages to advocate for the full repeal of unilateral divorce and to urge profound moral reform in the church, there was also the very influential opportunity to read another book, Amazing Grace by author Eric Metaxas.   This is the story of British Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, who became an unusually strong, spirit-led Christ-follower in the days shortly after being elected to the House of Commons.     Thanks to the author’s vivid capture of the details of Wilberforce’s spiritual awakening, we see the arduous journey which followed to build a movement, in the name of the Lord, that ran counter to both the entrenched church and equally-entrenched legal system interests,  and like today,  this threatened some extremely powerful, wealthy economic interests in both institutions.

Metaxas makes it possible to see the strong parallels of the story of this journey to abolish the slave trade with the struggle we are currently in, to abolish all the church and legal system trappings, along with the special economic interests that are adverse to the kingdom of God, and adverse to the God-established “kingdom” and constitutional rights of covenant families.    This book not only deeply inspired this blogger, but in a very real sense, it provided strong insight into the nature of the battle that lay ahead.   This book is a really good read for everyone in the marriage permanence movement, and our blog post about it will hopefully be an interesting, thought-provoking introduction.

( FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC note:   At the present time, author Eric Metaxas adheres to his Eastern Orthodox upbringing which teaches that holy matrimony is dissoluble under some circumstances including adultery.    He aligned strongly with Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections and with the political forces of social conservatives who consider unilateral divorce to be an undesirable thing, but not necessarily the central moral issue of the day, nor an intrinsic religious freedom violation.    He most likely would be surprised to read of his contribution to the marriage permanence movement through the book he has written.   He is in a covenant marriage himself, by true biblical standards. )

There were many prevailing obstacles to justice in America and England in the late 18th century that are remarkably similar to roadblocks the “stander” community, and others who advocate the abolition of the vile practice of serial polygamy, must successfully confront today, and must skillfully navigate through.    As with Wilberforce and the broad coalition he helped to form,  skill wasn’t everything, because he “battled not against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities and dark forces in the spiritual realm“,   just as the apostle Paul warned in Ephesians 6.    God’s hand, and awaiting God’s timing were also necessary, so this abomination was very much “prayed down” and “fasted down”,  while the visible events were unfolding by God’s hand in the circumstantial realm over a long period of time.    The encouragement that SIFC would like to leave with readers is the historical evidence that evil, seemingly impossible “mountains” are indeed picked up and thrown into the sea by the hand of God, in response to the faithful prayers, and advocacy efforts of His saints; efforts taking many forms but working together in key ways orchestrated by Him.

So, what all was going on back then to misappropriate the word of God so as to prop up the immoral slave trade?  How did it resemble the backdrop to today’s moral slide of the church and society so that it broadly institutionalized the sin of marrying another while having a living, estranged true spouse, following man’s divorce (that which Jesus clearly and consistently called ongoing adultery)?     Let’s take a look:

  1. Entrenched religious beliefs prevailed that had no true scriptural basis.   England had been a mix of Druid and Catholic rituals for centuries before the Reformation, with Catholicism gaining the upper hand by medieval times.    By the time Wilberforce came of age, it had been about 250 years since Henry VIII had established the Church of England, which retained many characteristics of the Roman Catholic church, despite key doctrinal differences, coming to be known as “High Church” because elaborate liturgy was retained from Roman Catholic liturgy, where the congregation was able to continue worshiping  rather passively rather than pursue true discipleship.    One of the key doctrinal differences between the Church of England and the Rome Church, of course, was the profound disagreement over marriage, both its indissolubility as a sacrament (or not) and the propriety of civil jurisdiction rather than church jurisdiction over it.     Born, as the new Protestant doctrine was, out of a mix of the lusts of Henry and the humanism of Erasmus,  in this particular instance, rightly-divided scripture was still on the side of the Catholics.    However, it was the Anglicans who happened to be and remain in power by 1648 and beyond.   

That said, adherence to Catholicism was still strong in Britain, including belief that priests can absolve sin without the actual cessation of that sin.   Salvation is believed to be imparted by repeated communion rather than a taking up of one’s cross to follow Christ.   Because of the belief that only nuptials between two baptized partners are to be considered “sacramental”, and hence indissoluble,  it is likely that slave marriages were considered dissoluble as best benefitted the trade.

Meanwhile the Westminster Confession of Faith was drafted and ratified in the British Parliament in 1648 just a little more than 100 years after Henry formed the Church of England.   Many aspects of the WCOF were an extrabiblical overreaction to various heresies of Roman Catholicism, while other aspects were appropriate responses to genuine errors in RCC doctrine or to abusive practices that arose in the 300 years just prior, resulting in biblically-supported truth mixed with biblically-unsupported heresy in the total doctrines of the WCOF.

For example, Chapter 3 affirms the Reformed doctrine of predestination: that God foreordained who would be among the elect (and therefore saved), while he passed by those who would be damned for their sins. The confession states that from eternity God did “freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass”.
By God’s decree, “some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.”
As with the Catholics, this doctrine did not promote much soul-care for the Negro slaves, and is biblically unsupported, since there is a distinction between God’s fore-knowledge and fore-ordination.

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.  – 2 Peter 3:9

Chapter 17 presents the doctrine of the “perseverance of the saints”, which holds that it is impossible for those effectually called to “fall away” from the state of grace or, in other words, lose their salvation.  This doctrine, in effect, allowed for the powerful to oppress the helpless, without concern that God would ever hold them accountable, since Jesus  was claimed to have died for their future sins.    As has become the case today, it is popular “wisdom” to claim that people have no hope of living a holy life, so the purpose of grace is to attribute Christ’s righteousness to a passive worshiper who may continue on in their transgressions.     In proper context, the term “perseverance of the saints” (referred to several times in the book of Revelation),  actually means quite the opposite of what is declared in the WCOF.    Scripture repeatedly shows that this perseverance means bearing up under persecution without becoming apostate in response.    Just as the WCOF has the effect of deadening the conscience to proclaiming Christ’s standards for lifelong marital faithfulness as being “too high” to realistically attain in the 21st century,  the Confession had the effect of deadening the conscience of those involved in the slave trade to the sanctity of all human families.

“Now the parable is this: the seed is the word of God.  Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, SO THAT THEY WILL NOT BELIEVE AND BE SAVED.   Those on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root;  THEY BELIEVE FOR A LITTLE WHILE, AND IN TIME OF TEMPTATION THEY FALL AWAY.   The seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity.   But the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with  perseverance.”    –  Luke 8:11-15

Finally, the pivotal Chapter 24 covers Reformed teaching on marriage and divorce. Marriage is to be heterosexual and monogamous (if consecutively so). The purpose of marriage is to provide for the mutual help of husband and wife, the birth of legitimate children, the growth of the church, and preventing “uncleanness”,  according to the confession.   The confession discourages interfaith marriage with non-Christians, Roman Catholics, or “other idolaters”.   In addition, godly persons should not be “unequally yoked” in marriage to “notoriously wicked” persons.  Incestuous marriage, defined according to biblical guidelines, is also prohibited.  (Heretical parts V and VI hold that the only grounds for divorce are “adultery or willful abandonment by a spouse.” )     Jesus and the prophet Malachi, however, held that men are delegated NO authority to dissolve an unconditional covenant to which God remains a party, nor to sever the one-flesh entity God’s hand created.   Only physical death does that, according to the apostle, Paul.   Hence, any discussion about “grounds” in the WCOF becomes utterly moot before the unchanging marriage  law of God, and Henry, self-proclaimed as the first Head of the Church of England, is exposed as the wicked serial polygamist he actually was all along when measured against the biblical standard.

While great atrocities were involved in capturing slaves and transporting them across the ocean, after which they were often cruelly warehoused and their diseases masked until sold, it is clear that slave traders who forced apart one-flesh spouses, and “family court” judges who do so have much in common.  This is true both morally, and in the consequences to society, as well as to the eventual fate of the whole nation due to the resulting corruption of the progeny of those impacted.

The 2007 film version of Amazing Grace  opens with a narrative graphic which reads, “by the late 18th century over eleven million African men, women and children had been taken from Africa to be used as slaves in the West Indies and American colonies …   The slave trade was considered acceptable by all but a few.     Of these, even fewer were brave enough to speak against it.”

By comparison, between 1970 and 2015 (roughly one-tenth of the elapsed time since the commencement of that trade up to Wilberforce’s day), more than three times as many U.S. families had been forcibly “dissolved” in the “family courts” of the 50 states.   Likewise, all but a few of the Christian citizens of these states considered this practice morally acceptable (and fully effectual in God’s eyes despite much scripture to the contrary).    A small but increasing number of these few began to  develop the courage of conviction to suffer the immense social and economic costs of speaking against it.   

2.  The church was profoundly corrupt and slowly dying.    A church that is founded on heresy, expressly in order to facilitate (and propagate forward) sexual sin, as the Church of England indeed was, is doomed and dying from the outset, unless true revival comes along to rescue it.     So is today’s “mega-church” established for much the same purpose, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those living in open defiance of God’s laws which they disagree with, while having a cover of what in those days was called piety, and in our day would be called “evangelicalism”.   In far too many of these mega-churches, “church discipline” is called out on the wrong party, such as the repenting prodigal who would leave an adulterous, legalized union to return to his or her covenant family,  and far too many churches are led by men and women who are themselves living in legalized adultery with someone else’s God-joined, one-flesh partner rather than with their own.    The scriptures forbidding even this are re-interpreted to “permit” the abomination of consecutive polygamy in the clergy, rendering any protest against LGBTQ(xyz) excesses, instantly hypocritical.    Hence, the literal “husband of one [living] wife”, understood perfectly and consistently practiced by “less-sophisticated” saints for centuries,  of late becomes “one-woman man” (until tomorrow, at least)  in our contemporary bibles.   God’s amazing sense of humor used adultery matchmaker Ashley Madison to debunk that notion a couple of years ago.   How many of those “one woman man” pastors were removed as a result?

But  as it turns out, revival did come and rescue the corrupt Church of England during Wilberforce’s life, and as it happened, God through various circumstances brought several key people into his life while he was still a boy.    Though he was born and raised in the northern province of York, family hardship brought him to live by the age of ten with a wealthy, aristocratic aunt and uncle in Wimbledon, near London, who were close to George Whitefield and other figures of the first Great Awakening.    Author Metaxas describes the conditions in the English church of Wilberforce’s young manhood thusly:

“One’s ‘spirituality’ was confined to one’s rented pew.    One attended one’s church and one stood and one kneeled and one sat at the proper times and did what was required of one, but to scratch beneath this highly lacquered surface was to venture well beyond the pale and invite stares and whispers and certain banishment.   Wilberforce was from the beginning as serious as he was charming and fun-loving, and his sensitive and intellectual nature was now, at Wimbledon, for the first time fed something far more satisfying than the niceties – the thin gruel and weak tea of High Church Anglicanism.”

So then, what historical forces reduced Christ’s English bride to such a debased state, some 200 years after the Reformation?    Unfortunately, the sad answer seems to be — the Reformation itself.    We’ve already visited the  heretical elements of this church’s creed adopted in that same Parliament 100 years earlier than Wilberforce’s day, which formed a rotten foundation upon which those “rented pews” actually sat.

My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.  For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say,  “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man,  “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?   Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?   But you have dishonored the poor man.  Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court?   Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called?
–  James 2:1-7

While today’s spiritual deadness is clearly driven by the pursuit of sexual immorality that has gained the near-universal complicity of contemporary church leadership,  the spiritual deadness of that day was driven by the bloody, mutual, church leader-led violence between Protestants and Catholics which had given Jesus a truly bad name, and had turned people off to religion altogether, creating this ritualistic veneer that was not allowed to go too deep.     The violence, in turn, was driven by the clergy’s thirst for retaining (or gaining) power over the population, causing religious opponents on both sides to be martyred, and causing a series of wars between the “saints”.      (In “standerinfamilycourt’s”  happier days with evangelical friends and intact covenant family, the oft-played board game “Risk” was jokingly dubbed “Evangel” due to the conflict between Christ’s way of building the kingdom of God versus the counterfeit that had taken hold as an evil fruit of the Reformation where Protestants returned Catholic violence and persecution in-kind. )     Of course, all sinful departure from Christ’s methods, be it sexual or be it violent power-grabs “in the name of Jesus”, leads to a hardening of hearts, we are warned, and this leads to falling away (apostasy), notwithstanding Chapter 17 of the WCOF.    Certainly, Christian-on-Christian violence must have had a devastating and dehumanizing effect on British society in Wilberforce’s day.     Are there not “rented pews” today in the evangelical church?    Is a fee not paid today by the legalized adulterers in the post-unilateral divorce world to occupy seats as an illicit pair or “blended family” that faithful 1 Corinthians 5 church governance would have otherwise denied them unless they severed those faux ties?   Paul, after all, said “do not even eat with such….I have decided to turn [him / them] over to satan, that [his / their] soul(s) may be saved in the day of the Lord.”

Britain formally sat under a false state religion, as she still does today.   By failing to maintain her sexual purity, hence her sovereign biblical family structure,  America and other western nations today also sit under a state religion that is not formally acknowledged but is nevertheless very real in asserting its antichrist power over all of society.    That state religion is secular humanism.    And secular humanism just loves to play “dress up” these days in Baptist, Pentecostal and mainline “Christian” garb–and even Catholic frocks, of late, in the form of Chapter 8 of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia.

3.  A tiny (deemed) “cult” slowly became instrumental in moving the culture.    The evangelical aunt and uncle who took Wilberforce in as a boy was (providentially) childless, which made the young man the sole heir to their homes and fortune when they “graduated to heaven”.    This put great financial assets into his hands, as well as influential and powerful friends of godly character into his life.  He was best friends from university days with William Pitt, his agnostic contemporary who eventually became Prime Minister.      Wilberforce came to faith, and received Spirit-led discipleship as a young MP  under the direct influence of Whitefield, the Wesleys, and ex-slave trader, the Rev. John Newton.    All true disciples of Jesus come to understand that every scrap of time, treasure and talent that God pours into a life ultimately belongs to Him, loaned, as it were, for the purpose of building up the kingdom of God.    As did the three biblical slaves with the varying number of “talents” given by their master, we will one day give an account for our stewardship of these resources.   Instead of suppressing truth to those under our care for ill-gotten gain, and appeasing the ungodly resource-holders to build our own vast empire (without the slightest regard for these souls), we are expected to invest what we already have been given into helping deliver as many souls as possible safely into the doors of the great banquet hall where the wedding supper of the Lamb is to be held.    Wilberforce understood this, as did the other Spirit-led instigators of the First Great Awakening and the abolition movement.

It wasn’t long before Wilberforce felt led to sell his inherited properties and use the proceeds to establish a highly visible home church community, known as the Clapham fellowship,  on his friends’ adjoining properties, where true discipleship under the ministry of a community chaplain was fostered in the suburbs of London.    It also wasn’t long before the entrenched interests were derisively labeling the community of believers Wilberforce led, a “cult”.    Why was Wiberforce’s  physical community of believers so influential ?    “Standerinfamilycourt” believes it is because he established a very visible spiritual organism within that compound-based community, much like the 1st – 4th century church, where everyone could see the Christ-centered life walked out again.    Some 300 years before the internet could make the same sort of thing visible online, and draw like-minded but geographically dispersed people together for conferences,  this visibility from such a community was very important to influencing culture, by example.

(FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC note:The tiny Spirit-led wing of the body of Christ in that day was dubbed “Methodism”, which was an ecclesiastical slur.    We all know what eventually happened to “Methodism” in our day, following the Second Great Awakening,  and what in our day has even happened to Pentecostalism, as it followed “Methodism” in becoming the “Church of Thyratira” in the late 20th century, who today labels the interfaith community of covenant marriage standers–which is largely virtual due to the commonplace shunning of outspoken members by conventional church bodies, having its own pastors and lay leaders therefore, a “cult”.)

4.  The oppressed victims of the system were utterly dehumanized.   In the book, pages 96-100 detailed the inhumane conditions in which hundreds of captured slaves were chained together and packed into the lower airless holds of a slave ship with inadequate sanitary provisions, little food and no potable water.    These conditions culminated in the deplorable tale of the insurance fraud that was carried out on the high sea in 1781 aboard a Jamaica-bound slave ship named the Zong.   It was routine for any human dying aboard a ship to be buried in the ocean, whether a slave or not.  However, in this instance so many slaves were becoming ill that more than 100 live slaves were thrown overboard in order that insurance proceeds would replace the lost revenue from the slaves that had expired due to inhumane conditions.    The public exposure from the foiling of that fraud in English court the next year turned out to be a small amount of good out of a massively tragic crime against humanity.     A Cambridge protégé of Wilberforce’s, a young man named Thomas Clarkson, served as the “cub reporter” in documenting facts and evidence against the slave trade:

“He climbed aboard slave ships and measured the spaces allotted for the slaves; he purchased the ghastliest instruments of restraint and torture, from manacles and shackles to thumbscrews and branding irons.  There was a device to pry open the mouths of slaves who refused to eat. ”
(Page 116).

AG_Metaxas_Photo2.jpeg

It is unfortunate that the opportunities to expose in great detail the atrocities that routinely go on in “family courts” across the land are few and extremely costly.    Nevertheless, there are a few of us with either  the financial means or  time and pro se determination to resist the system,  allowing our case to go to trial for that very purpose.     Most county courthouses will not allow non-lawyers to take cell phones past a security checkpoint, yet in trial we will use the time (sometimes days) sitting in court to take notes on other cases we may observe, and some of us will go to the expense of obtaining the electronic transcript from our own case.     In the book, “Stolen Vows” by Judy Parejko (2001),  the author chronicles the abuses she observed as a court-appointed mediator.    Other authors such as Stephen Baskerville have written powerful books and articles exposing details of the corruption under which families are legally shredded.   In two blog pieces we shared in 2014 from The Public Discourse, a mother relates how she was stripped of her children for the noxious purpose of awarding custody to her homosexual husband and his same-sex partner.     Similarly, another article in the publication tracked the commonly-occurring instances of children being stripped from a blameless father who didn’t want the divorce and custody given to the mother whose live-in boyfriend committed violence and molestation of the children, in a cruel mockery of their “best interest”.    The dehumanization is well-captured in this crass excerpt from an appellate opinion handed down in an early constitutional challenge of the “no-fault” law:

“The state’s inherent sovereign power includes the so called ‘police power’ right to interfere with vested property rights whenever reasonably necessary to the protection of the health, safety, morals, and general well being of the people.  The constitutional question, on principle, therefore, would seem to be, not whether a vested right is impaired by a marital law change, but whether such a change reasonably could be believed to be sufficiently necessary to the public welfare as to justify the impairment.”
Walton v Walton, California (1970-1972)  28 Cal. App.3d 108

5. Massive economic interests were also deeply entrenched.    Although King George III was a devout Christian and had genuine concerns about the slave trade, the Crown had substantial revenue interests in the sugar plantations of the British West Indies, as did the Church of England herself.      Powerful members of Parliament had personal revenue interests either in the plantations or in profits from the slave trade or related maritime industries.   Port towns like Liverpool and Bristol were heavily dependent on the trade, much like some of the state capitol cities that would suffer economically today from a likely much-smaller government complex that would result from ceasing the societally-corrosive practice of forcing families apart without provable just cause.     In addition to this, it should sound quite familiar that the atrocities, as soon as documentation of horrifying details began to be publicly exposed, would be propped up (as an argument against doing the right thing and abolishing them) by playing one jurisdiction off against a neighboring jurisdiction.   It was argued that abolishing the slave trade in Britain would be a boon to the slave trade in France.    Ignored was the fact that a powerful moral example would be advanced (with accompanying publicity) by repeal in one or two states to start, and that societal,  as well as fiscal benefits– in the contemporary instance, would be reaped by the repenting jurisdiction(s).    The difficult but successful solution for Wilberforce’s allies was to relentlessly work the issue in both Britain and France.

Similarly,  the unilateral divorce industry amounts to more than $100 billion a year, directly benefitting members of the Bar, and a vast army of court mediators, social workers, mental health professionals, book-sellers, and even ministries.    This financial boon for a few, at the expense of society as a whole, comes at a cost of $200+ billion a year in transferred social costs to all taxpayers,  state and Federal.  These well-heeled political interests virtually own the press and have the means to  easily flood the media with emotional pleas for “abuse victims” whom, they moan, will be “trapped in abusive marriages”  if they should ever be forced to prove with tangible evidence that their marriage is abusive.     These misleading articles largely go unrebutted, due to entrenched interests even within the “faith, family and freedom” ministries and family policy councils in various states across the land.  The vast majority of these ministries decline to become involved in the repeal of unilateral divorce or the defense of its religious free exercise victims, either in prioritization of funding or in their public media output, even when there is a repeal bill active in their state legislature.    For example,  the family policy group, Texas Values (affiliated with James Dobson’s organization, Family Policy Alliance)  sent their president to testify before a 2017 legislative committee that they supported repeal, but not one written word was publicly released to refute the barrage of negative press against HB93 in that state.    All of the financial resources instead went toward battling issues like transgender bathroom bills, remarkably seen as more of a threat than the laws that directly order the literal shredding of families.     Although this reluctance to publicly advocate for the repeal of unilateral divorce laws may have varying factors based on the political climate and carefully-built political relationships in each state, the common issue seems to be a fear that large donors could be offended by marriage permanence efforts meaningfully impacting heterosexual family policy, as well as the false belief that there is likely not enough funding available through millions of small, passionate donors to offset such feared losses–despite the million or so new families decimated each year by forced divorce who would love to donate regularly to an organization showing true commitment to engaging their cause in a meaningful way.

Just imagine if the abolitionist movement had consisted of donation-based provincial councils tasked primarily with all the issues of managing the evil fallouts of the slave trade on society, who deemed abolition too unreachable a goal, so that they busied themselves with promoting legislation to increase the size of the slave berths aboard the ships, install more porta-potties, only allow slave traders to take people who didn’t have minor children in the hut,  et cetera– and doing so while reporting in to a Church of England board (who at the end of the day was financially-invested in preserving the trade).    If one can imagine this, our description seems quite analogous to the apparent relationship between some of these state FPC’s and Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization.

(FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC note:  As of the date of this writing, “standerinfamilycourt” has met two of the executive directors of state family policy councils face-to-face, and has hopes of meeting several more in the coming months and years to learn as much as possible about their constraints, to be of service where mutually beneficial, and to encourage them to diversify their donor base to include those in our movement, so that they can act more boldly in the marriage permanence realm.)

6.  God put together quite a colorful and diversely-tasked team.
When the Most High hears the cry of the afflicted and establishes His timeline for deliverance, everyone involved can count on divine appointments taking place.    He started assembling the abolition team when its most visible “champion” was just a small boy.   He began by tapping famous figures of the first Great Awakening in Britain, leading some slave traders to repentance and restitution, and surrounding those with born-again relatives in Wilberforce’s extended family.   To these, He added Christian attorneys, writers, artisans, poets, former slaves and doctors.  Wives of aristocrats opened their homes to bring these co-laborers together and make strategic introductions across an overseas network and even across social classes.  Each of these called individuals providentially contributed their gifts to the overall effort,  some prominently and some in the background.    Much like some in the marriage permanence movement who today create striking memes that drive home a point in social media, even the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood was tapped into service to create the iconic badge-like image “Am I Not A Man and a Brother?”  that found its way onto all sorts of popular items that were sold at the time.

In a very similar way,  the Lord has been bringing together 21st century artists, writers, bible scholars, linguists, in-place and displaced pastors, seminary professors, legal students, researchers, meeting organizers, videographers, conservative thought leaders and lecturers, courthouse monitors, conference hosts, legislators, constitutional attorneys and family policy directors to carry out a diverse range of divine assignments,  coordinated by the hand of God to one day topple the “Jericho Wall” of unilateral divorce.    Many of these groups of the like-minded would not interact with or even be aware of other groups if He also didn’t divinely provide individuals to form a bridge between them, yet He’s using some individuals to facilitate that very necessary function as well.    Instead of stately mansions where figures are invited and introductions are made, He is using technology and alternative media platforms to bring diverse co-laborers together.

7.  Reeking, shameless hypocrisy was the order of the day in the established church.     We have already described above, the profound moral decay in the Church of England, and the reasons behind it.    Here we will focus on some of what it took to break through that in the famous scene from the movie that was based on the book.    The majority of the power holders in the British Parliament were at least nominal members of the Church of England, while the handful of actual Christ followers who were influenced by the leadership of John Newton, the Wesley brothers, and George Whitefield formed house churches  such as the community at Clapham, which also had some wealthy and influential members in addition to Wilberforce.    They lived by godly example,  using large amounts of their wealth for the public good,  and maintaining sexual purity in their relationships, which really stood out in society, while they maintained warm friendships with the “lukewarm”, those who derisively called them “Methodists” and accused them of being a “cult”.     At an opportune time, Wilberforce and his Clapham peers arranged the famous boat tour of the harbor, complete with stringed quartet, wine and appetizers and full ballroom regalia.    This grand party was soon assaulted with the pungency of that which they would have much preferred to remain insulated from, as the party barge Reliant suddenly pulled up beside a slave ship called the Madagascar that evening.    No longer could the British ruling class and their consorts feign ignorance of the dehumanization and shipboard death that was taking place, literally under their noses.     This event, occurring in the middle of the 20-year abolition battle, required the development of quite a few well-networked allies of the cause in high and low rank in order to pull such a scene off.

Two events occurred in 2017 that could prove significant, and might be somewhat analogous to that unsavory boat party.     Repeal bills to redefine “no-fault” divorce back to its originally-intended (or at least, publicly-advertised) contours were introduced in two southwest states.    Partial repeal attempts had occurred in Michigan in 2006 and Iowa in 2013 but without much publicity that wasn’t rabidly oppositional.     What made the 2017 effort a bit different is that instead of a family policy ministry sponsoring the bills, one was introduced by an actual constitutional attorney-turned-legislator, and he brought a parade of constitutional attorneys to the committee podium who testified to the constitutional violations that riddle current law, which suitably-framed the testimony of the family victims of unilateral divorce who also testified.    This time, the hours of this testimony have been captured and posted to you-tube, through the efforts of local marriage permanence activists.     This is a bit remarkable because the family-shredding industry has been accustomed to a thick shroud of darkness whenever their empire is threatened.     Also remarkable is that every one of the churches in both states were so occupied with “rebuilding a culture of marriage” in their congregations, that none of them saw any worthwhile involvement in seeing that either bill to end the forced divorces of their members might come to an embarrassing Republican-dominated floor vote, letting them both die for this session.

Then in August, the Southern Baptist-allied Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood introduced The Nashville Statement, a manifesto taking dead aim at all the incarnations of homosexual practice, while odiferously looking the other way at prevalence of clergy-condoned (and clergy-practiced) serial polygamy that has destroyed the family structure in the evangelical church, hiding the destruction behind an adulterous thin veneer through which mass shootings, child-trafficking and transsexualism is all-too-prone to puncture.    There have been earlier manifesto campaigns in recent years, but this one was quite ill-timed, driven primarily by visceral reaction to the bathroom bills, but while unresolved memories were still fresh before the American public of the infamous serial polygamist, Kim Davis’ tone-deaf declaration in 2015 that she would “lose her soul” if she dared insult the holiness of God by issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals.   That had been an event which had suddenly reduced  the Leftist press to quoting scripture on major network newscasts.   Though the Who’s Who of the evangelical and Catholic worlds vigorously endorsed and signed the 2017 manifesto (which brazenly declared condoning homosexual practice as profoundly inconsistent with following Christ),  the CBMW has received scathing and voluminous public criticism as well as negative press coverage from both the scornful Left and the God-fearing Right.     (From this blogger, “standerinfamilycourt”, the celebrated and learned seminarians on the board of CBMW received a book called “One Flesh” by Joe Fogel, and a frank, admonishing letter.)

Meanwhile, in the Roman Catholic Church, which has been so historically important to all moral reform of family laws, the release of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia was causing deep despair and bewilderment among Christ-following Catholics over the Pope’s bid to liberalize clergy practices toward remarriage adulterers in those congregations, by liberalizing even further the vile practice of “annulment” and to allow those civilly “married” to the covenant spouses of others to take communion — a direct affront to Paul’s admonition about receiving the body and blood of Christ in an unworthy manner,  and of his further admonition that no unrepentant adulterer will inherit the kingdom of God.    The hypocrisy involved with Amoris was the preposterous chorus of Vatican “assurance” that changing church “practice” was not tantamount to changing church “doctrine”.      Since the only ministry with a national voice to publicly support the two unilateral divorce repeal bills was the Catholic-founded Ruth Institute,  we can only hope that this unfortunate and significant turn of events cements the desire for close alliance with our like-minded “cult” of evangelicals in the marriage permanence movement.

8.  Prayer and fasting was just as important as activism, if not more so.  The great John Wesley wrote Wilberforce twice, the first time near the start of his abolition journey, and also a few days before Wesley passed away.    Wesley wanted to be certain that Wilberforce understood that he battled not against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities; dark forces in the heavenly realm.     He put Wilberforce on prophetic notice that there will be demonic opposition at every turn, but urged him to persevere.    Much of the reason that abolition took as long as it did once the organized campaign was underway can be attributed to intervening events and demonic distractions, but still the battle was the Lord’s.

The current battle seems to boil down to an unrelenting conflict between the choice to surgically-excise the disease itself or manage the symptoms to reduce human suffering and impacts on society.    There is a widespread assumption that the disease itself is inoperable, and an almost irresistable temptation to hold to a form of godliness but deny His power.    These are strongholds which  the Lord will use the fasters and the faithful prayers in our movement to pull down supernaturally.

9.  Bringing (and keeping) a diverse coalition together was a key role that Wilberforce played as a leader in the movement.    As described earlier, God Himself started the process of bringing the abolitionist movement figures together two or three decades ahead of Wilberforce signing on, but He appointed key individuals (including Wilberforce) to build it to “critical mass” and keep it together over the arduous period of time needed to sustain a successful effort.     He seemed to provide a clear focal point to the various constituencies (which included Quakers, Anglicans, “Methodists”, just to use the diverse religious interests as an example) to what God wanted, and this took a lot of integrity, often very unpopular integrity.     At the end of the day, Wilberforce had the humility to overcome his own discouragement at setbacks to pull it off without backing down.    He had a thick skin, which is a quality almost as rare as focus and integrity, but indispensable because of the need to also manage the criticism or reluctance of insiders.

At the present time, if there is a Wilberforce-like individual to galvanize the factions and constituencies in the movement, it’s likely that this person is still developing and emerging.   Those who presently have the insight to visualize how the like-minded groups can and should be working together are obscure and seem not well-placed at this time.    There are bridges to build between the traditional Catholic leaders, who have a national voice but presently insufficient political power, and the small body of enlightened evangelicals in the movement who part company with the “reformed” evangelicals on the moral validity of non-widowed remarriage.   There are traditional differences to manage over side issues like the authority of the Pope and the validity or morality of “annulment” versus the evangelical principle of sola scriptura where scripture plainly forbids both doctrines.   Many of the national voices for divorce reform would prefer to focus on households with minor children, while setting aside the issue of ongoing 1st and 14th amendment violations against grandparent marriages which full repeal would rectify, and they have differences with those in the movement who consider divorce-remarriages immoral (as Jesus plainly did) due to valid, temporal concern for the children born of legalized adultery.

State legislators are emerging with a courageous vision for repeal, but perhaps are not yet well-enough connected with those who can lend them effective support, especially in the area of getting churches onboard with outright repeal efforts.    Far too few churches of any type are involved on the state level, and a great many erroneously believe that God “instituted” or “provided for” divorce.    The majority of “standers” and those who have repented of adulterous “marriages” are estranged from their churches, either by their own choice not to sit under deceived leadership, or because they’ve been formally or informally shunned for being perceived as a
“sower of disunity”.   In response, many such individuals in the movement do not consider contemporary church structure (what they derisively call the “pulpit / pew hireling model”) to be biblically or morally valid.

Many in the movement also do not think political activity of any type is of God.    State family policy groups tend to be underfunded and perhaps in need of diversifying their support.    The politically-connected national voices are sympathetic to repeal, but constantly get distracted by the symptoms of the disease, particularly each new emerging horror from rabid, militant homosexualism.    Other allied groups are the Parents’ Rights groups who want legal relief from these onerous laws, but aren’t necessarily in the repeal camp, and the divorced-and-remarried activists sympathetic to repeal efforts who are somehow finding the grace to work with the celibate “standers” who do not consider those subsequent civil-only unions biblically valid.   We each need to faithfully keep doing our perceived, assigned roles and keep praying to God for the break-through that pulls all of it together effectively.     Even a celibate, faithful stander who is not engaged in any other activity at all, except to serve others, makes a very loud statement to this culture, if they are consistent and are doing it out of a godly motivation.   

10.  It took decades of unrelenting effort and dedication to prevail.   As witnessed by a quote from the book,

“The line between courageous faith and foolish idealism is, almost by definition, on angstrom wide.    Wilberforce was quite right that a flame had been kindled and would not go out until it had done its work, but he had no idea that it would be twenty torturous years in the burning before its work was done.   And if the ‘work’ in question was not the abolition of the slave trade but the abolition of slavery itself, the flame would continue burning for another forty-five years.”
(Page 122)

…abolition of such a profoundly immoral institution was carried out on many battlefronts and required decades to bring about.    

By comparison, the dastardly and covert political events that stripped U.S. families of their most basic fundamental rights to liberty, property, free religious exercise, free association, right to jury trial when civilly accused, both procedural and substantive due process, and equal protection under the law, occurred less than 50 years ago.    The hope is that technology and God’s hand will accelerate the formidable process of overthrowing the regime, and that incremental reform efforts will fall by the wayside as time-wasters.    In the past ten years, there have been full or partial repeal efforts in at least four states, including Michigan, Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma.   The early efforts were abandoned, but hopefully the latter efforts will persist and gain support as various groups gain insight in how best to work together.    Only God could pull off the task of full repeal in all 50 states, but that’s no excuse not to work toward it in faith, with our eyes firmly fixed on the Almighty.   If a few states repeal, momentum can certainly be gained, but opposition can be expected to grow more fiercely as well.    As with ending the slave trade, the renewed moral authority of a chastened and repented collective church is going to be crucial, and there are many tactical steps the organized church could take to hasten the political process.    (This last topic will be covered in a future post.)

Recalling the wicked false analogy drawn by the LGBT movement to justify their immoral, totalitarian political aims by (invalidly)  comparing their vision to the U.S. civil rights movement, “standerinfamilycourt” has made these parallels with much fear and trembling before the Lord, trusting that this particular analogy is utterly valid, and is actually like-for-like.    May God’s will be done for our covenant families and for our morally-ravaged nation.

Your kingdom [must] come.   Your will [must] be done on earth as it is in heaven.   – Matthew 6:10

(FB profile 7xtjw SIFC: translation of this famous portion of the Lord’s Prayer is from Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s  The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken (2013), which is the only contemporary English language translation on the market today that is not based on the relatively incomplete Alexandrian manuscripts,  sexually-licentious 1880’s transcription work of Westcott and Hort [the “Standard” bibles], and tainted subsequent bible translation committees, often staffed with universalists and homosexuals.)

 

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

 

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Divorce, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare

SIFC Weighs in on Contra Mundum Swagger: Following Christ in a Divorce Culture

CMS_Shannonby Standerinfamilycourt

Our politics, culture and churches are falling apart , and the root cause of this decay is divorce and remarriage….I want to demonstrate that our obedience on this issue is a fundamental reason for the havoc we are witnessing in our culture and that our obedience to Christ on this issue will also be a fundamental reason for the victory and restoration of our families, churches, culture and politics.    –   Author,  Jack Shannon

This is a blunt book about God’s displeasure with the altars to Baal and with the Asherah poles that have been built up in our contemporary evangelical churches during the last four decades, and which are now under rapid construction in the last few years even in the Roman Catholic church under the “guidance” of Amoris Laetitia.   (The mere fact that schism over this idolatrous altar-renovation work remains a threat to the RCC is, in SIFC’s view, a profound credit to the faithful discipleship of a remnant few in that church).

Written by the millennial son of a man who demonstrated what it was to stand for a difficult marriage and see it turned around,  this book will also be a satisfying read for those who are shaking their heads at the hype over the tuck-tail Benedict Option (by Catholic convert, Rod Dreher).    Equally commendable to his “stander”-father’s strong, unselfish discipleship is the fact that Jack came through both military service and a Reformed seminary with godly convictions fully intact, and in fact, gave a compelling, bold  defense of the no-excuses indissolubility of holy matrimony in this 2016 presentation to a gathering of graduate students  and faculty of St. Andrews College.   Jack remains a never-married man, but has been engaged to be married in the past.   Contra Mundum Swagger appears largely  based on that 2016 thesis but has evolved a bit in the year since he presented it.

For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit;  to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,  and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues.

–  1 Cor. 12: 8 -10

It is evident which of the functional gifts of the Spirit is in operation in this book, given that the author prepares his audience for the “tone” of the book (page xv of the Introduction).   Most to whom this particular gift is distributed wish they could send it back and choose another that will get them in less trouble.  

Fortunately, truth-telling, outspoken prophets like Hosea, Malachi, Ezekiel, etc. didn’t face a bunch of denominational scrutiny which some today are tempted to argue should therefore discredit the entire message.  It’s OK to  respectfully disagree with some of the critics, while also disagreeing with the denominational bias and eschatology first mentioned in the last few pages of the last chapter.  But such is the author’s privilege,  since what we believe about the latter is hardly a heaven-or-hell matter (as contrasted with the core central truth of this book). The marriage permanence  community seems to abound with church-wounded people who will insist (without conclusive  scriptural  support, we’ll add) that pastor-led congregations are not a valid model for the New Testament Church. Once again, what we believe about this is not a heaven-or-hell matter, therefore objections  that the organized church cannot or should not be an important part of the solution are in our view deceitful, counter-productive, and emotionally biased.

On the contrary, most of us read this book as a stern warning that the Lord is returning as prophesied, regardless of our morals, readiness or level of respect. It’s a clear message that God does reach a tipping point,  time is running out and it’s either genuine worship and revival or it’s destruction.

A few nuggets from various chapters in the book:

(Concerning the abuse of grace, individually and as a national body of believers – page 40) :

When people refuse to repent their sins or willingly decide to worship in an unlawful way after being illuminated by the truth, they are bringing severer judgments on themselves for violating the Spirit of grace than if they were merely violating the Law of Moses.  Notice that the punishment for unrepentant sin is harsher in the New Covenant.   Let me say that again: punishments are harsher in the New Covenant.

(When true Christ-followers are accused of “obsessing” over the immorality of remarriage adultery  while “ignoring” other forms of sin –  page 43):

Other sins like lying and stealing may be happening in the church, but they are not defended or condoned by church leadership.   We don’t get together and have ceremonies celebrating masturbation, lust, theft, murder or bearing false witness.  But we do when it comes to the adultery of divorce and remarriage.”

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC Observation:  Lust, theft and bearing false witness are all intrinsic to the adultery of divorce and remarriage, the last time we checked.

(Concerning the “sanctified” nihilism and defeatism that settles in at the church over abortion and gay marriage which directly results from failing to recognize or, even worse, remaining unwilling to remove the log in our own eye – page 82:)

But as it is, we point to things that aren’t really the main sins or are not as egregious as the adultery we affirm in divorce and remarriage.  Instead we say we need to think more covenantally or be louder with our condemnation of abortion or homosexuality, or we formulate things like the Benedict Option where we learn how to give up our dominion mandate.   We tell ourselves that this isn’t really our home and that maybe if persecution came, we’d be the better for it.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC Note:  Dr. Michael Brown is a key example of an influential church leader who has publicly admitted many times that the “log” is there, but he doggedly refuses to believe that it actually needs to be removed.

(Concerning evangelical cluelessness about why believers are coming under persecution rather than prevailing over the Sexual Revolution – page 136:)

Much of the evangelical world simply makes no connection between personal and cultural destruction and the sin in their lives and in their churches.   They just think they are righteous, like Job, and are experiencing similar loss, when in reality they are not blameless servants.   They are guilty as Ham, Achan and Ahab were.  

From our perspective, the only thing we would have preferred to see more scholarly clarity around, is whether the “traditional view”  of marriage (as attributed  to the Early Church Fathers; that is, the idea that several of them seemed to hold, that one may civilly divorce due to adultery, so long as they don’t remarry while their “ex” spouse is still living) is really supported by honest original language translations of the original texts of their writings, as these Church Fathers are paraphrasing Jesus, who used the term “apoluo” – literally “from-loosing” – in both Mattl 5:32 and Matt.19:9, and “porneia”  (“unchastity / prostitution” sometimes misconstrued as generic “adultery”), but we don’t really know if the various Church Fathers made the same word choices as Jesus.   If they did,
I don’t think what Jesus said in Matt. 19:6,8 (referring to Gen. 2:21-24) actually supports this “traditional view” at all, and the quoted accounts of several ante-Nicene leaders have them appear to be contradicting Jesus in this,  if the language translation of the koine Greek to contemporary English  is as accurate as it is widely presumed to be.    If we took an honest look at the original texts of these ante-Nicene writings (much the way we are actually compelled to do with scripture texts),  is it not possible that “putting away” (apoluo) did not necessarily anticipate civil action but rather reflected what Paul was prescribing in 1 Cor. 7:10-11, especially given what he had just said in 1 Cor. 6:1-8 ?

The seemingly weak exegesis on page 26 of  Deuteronomy 24:1-4 also contributes to the lack of clarity about “the traditional view”, and about whether the author is promoting it as being biblically supported.   It seems at least as likely that the defilement of the dismissed wife was a condition that defiled her both before and after her first marriage (such as consanguinity, a long term disease of ceremonial uncleanness, pagan citizenship, etc.) as that it would be a sexual defilement which, if occurring in the first union – betrothal or post-consummation, was more accurately  the topic of Deuteronomy 22, and was therefore a capital offense rather than a divorceable one — at least while Moses lived.   It would hardly make sense for Jesus to forbid living in a state of lifelong unforgiveness and irreconciliation toward our one-flesh or anyone else under the New Covenant,  while retaining some “defilement”-based prohibition of that reconciliation.    As it stands, this book can legitimately be construed as promoting a “traditional view” that may not accurately reflect the majority of Church Fathers at all, because the book didn’t do the needed deep dive into those assumptions, despite devoting a chapter to those quotes.   That said, we still doubt that the author’s intent was to promote the “traditional view”,  but merely to describe it.

By contrast, it seems to this blogger that Jesus was not only saying that civil divorce of an original covenant pair was immoral, He was actually saying that marriage “dissolution” by any act of men was impossible.  Since several of the ante-Nicene church leaders developed culturally-biased views over time, including ascetiscm, it seems that relying on what they said more than relying on what Christ said can lead to considerable confusion.  Paul, on the other hand, strictly forbids believers to bring each other before a pagan judge (1 Cor. 6:1-8). This would be consistent with the findings of scholars Jones and Tarwater (2005) as they exhaustively concluded that there is not a biblical instance where God ever abandoned or invalidated an unconditional covenant to which He was a party.  And God never “divorced” Israel, but suspended a conditional covenant while awaiting her repentance.  Absent this small bit of clarity about the shortcomings of the “traditional view”, SIFC’s rating would have been five stars instead of four.

Even so, this book accomplishes all that we would expect from a truly outstanding book on this topic:

  • Recognizing the difference between a root and its fowl fruit; correctly diagnosing the vain imagination that God-joined holy matrimony is  “dissoluble” as the root to cultural decay of every other type.
  • Calling out church leadership and false doctrine for their massive role in creating the mess and demanding that they repent, as did the prophets of old; notably, Ezra.
  • Accurately likening the corrupt system of institutionalized adultery in the church to the crass idolatry that certainly  it is.
  • Frankly acknowledging the financial dimensions of this idolatry.
  • Getting the historical context and the hermeneutics right.
  •  Not shying away from the biblical warning that to die in any ongoing state of sin will result in the lake of fire, no matter the civil legality of it.
  • Denouncing the abusive annulment of holy matrimony.
  • Setting a biblically-correct definition of “mercy”, “grace” and “love” that considers eternity, not just feelings and emotions.
  • Calling upon anyone who is “married” to the estranged spouse of a living person to exit those unions regardless of the years of entanglement and regardless of children born into the unlawful union.
  • Denouncing any believer who goes along with this immorality among friends and family members and who acquiesce to  it without strongly warning the sinners of the hellbound consequences.
  • Astutely diagnosing the troubled “psychology” within the contemporary church:  loss of the mind of Christ.
  • Accurately warning that true revival, when it arrives, is going to look scandalous to most, as the resulting repentance is going to cause the divorce rate in the church to literally skyrocket.
  • Very appropriately weaving in a strong theology of covenant, which in fact is woven throughout the bible, which both begins and ends with a wedding.
  • Recognizing that changing the laws and the political system isn’t impossible, but it’s highly unlikely until the church deeply repents, regains moral authority, and becomes actively involved in the process.

 

Some parting thoughts:   Is it more appropriate for the church or for the state to have jurisdiction over marriage?   Is it ever appropriate for the church to assume authority over divorce –  either prior to believers taking their case to court  or in lieu of ?    Is the  contemporary church in so much moral decay that they’ve forfeited any “competence” they may have once had ?     Jesus said, render unto Caesar the things that belong to Caesar and render unto God the things that belong to God.     God created marriage, and man created the “dissolution” of marriage.   As such, Caesar never had any legitimate jurisdiction over what should have been kept in the church with the exits securely bolted.    The Protestant Reformers were eager to hand over to the civil state that which church leaders no longer wanted authority over.    The only actual reason to do so was an intrinsic rebellion against God’s law that man has no authority to  dissolve holy matrimony.    None of this happened because believers were obeying God in the middle ages,  but because they wanted an avenue for disobedience that would appear as legitimized.     Taking marriage back into the church (with exit doors bolted) and boycotting the civil system altogether will seem as “dominionist” to some in the marriage permanence movement.

The Roman Catholic fringe of the movement is having a very vigorous debate over this “competence” issue right now, while many of the Protestants in the movement question the legitimacy of any large centralized church organization as biblically-supported.    We need to determine whether the goal is for the church to have a role in meaningfully reforming civil family laws, in which case, size and centralized resources would be an advantage, or if the goal is to simply entice people away from the immoral civil system and back toward God’s law, then smaller, decentralized local church bodies with impeccable moral and disciplinary standards will do.  True revival and repentance may help define the heart of God on this.    SIFC proposes that it would not be out of the question for both approaches to coexist for a time and to leverage off each other.

When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.    –  Proverbs 16:7

May the Lord orchestrate the wide distribution of this book, and may He multiply its kingdom impact, in Jesus’ name.

 

7 Times Around The Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

 

www.standerinfamilycourt. com

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Church Discipline, citizenship, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Prayer, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

NDOP 2017 Is In The Books (Yawn!)

NDOP_EOby Standerinfamilycourt

The word of God is a seamless garment, and men who deny its law deny its eschatology also, and are deprived of God’s power.   It is not surprising, therefore, that this is an era of impotence in the church.   That impotence will no more be cured by frantic and earnest prayer meetings than was the problem of Baal’s prophets by their shouts, “O Baal, hear us (1 Kings 18:26).   True faith mean law-obedience, and obedience spells power and blessing.   Deuteronomy 28 tells us precisely, and for all time, how prayers are answered and a people blessed.   –  Rousas John Rushdoony (2002), as quoted by Jack Shannon, author of Contra Mundum Swagger (2017), pages 136-7.

Shannon goes on to say, “Rushdoony is absolutely justified in taking a swipe at prayer meetings.   He’s exactly right.  You can pray for reformation and revival as earnestly and frantically as you want, but as long as you continue to disobey the law of Christ….and disregard all call to repent of your adulterous marriages, the Church will continue to be powerless.”

From Malachi, chapter 2, just ahead of the far more famous passage dealing with the sanctity and indissolubility of holy matrimony is this description of unlawful marriage which causes God to reject the false worship offered in any and all attempts to appease Him, short of actually repenting…..

For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. 8 But as for you, you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by the instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi,” says the Lord of hosts. 9 “So I also have made you despised and abased before all the people, just as you are not keeping My ways but are showing partiality in the instruction

10 “Do we not all have one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously each against his brother so as to profane the covenant of our fathers? 11 Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord which He loves and has married the daughter of a foreign god. 12 As for the man who does this, may the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob everyone who awakes and answers, or who presents an offering to the Lord of hosts.

And while U.S. Christendom prayed Thursday, the National-Symbol-for-Violence-and-Treachery -Toward-One’s-Own-Family held a Rose Garden Ceremony, complete with persecuted nuns,  to sign an Executive Order promising to uphold the religious freedom of those who voted for him.      Incredibly, the Chief of the Executive Branch ordered his troops not to enforce a Federal statute (which several successors of Eisenhower and LBJ had never enforced anyway, even  Obama) which forbids tax-exempt religious organizations from engaging in political activity.     Common conservative consensus on this one is that Trump tossed his supplicants a religious freedom bone, but one outspoken seminarian quipped that Trump-daughter Ivanka stripped every particle of meat residue off before she would allow Daddy to toss it out there.    (The ACLU concurred, announcing the same day that they wouldn’t bother to sue.)

That morning, Christian radio stations across the land conducted their usual interviews with twangy-voiced female guests who served as the organizational spokespersons of the year to tell us all about this year’s theme (“For Your Great Name’s Sake”), merchandizing,  and where to go pray that Roe and Obergefell would be overturned (but not unilateral divorce nor Amoris Laetitia), that Obamacare would be repealed, that boys would return to being content to use the boy’s room and if they remain confused about how God made them, that coercive governments would stop interfering with truth therapy.   Later in the day, Joyce Meyer came on in their station time slots as usual, as did Ron Deal, the “blended family” guru.     There was no evangelical  thanksgiving to be heard over the fact that God’s hand was moving, after 50 long years, behind two states who are actively  in the process of seeking repeal of the immoral “family” laws that are the root cause of these existential threats to the survival of our nation.   Prayers went up for revival to break out across the land,  from folks who would be the last people to recognize it as such if God did so move.

How life-giving would have been the public recognition by church leadership  that in 2017, God Most-High was giving off many signs to the pure-hearted watchful ones that indeed repentance and revival is truly what He wants for our nation, rather than the far more probable destruction that is the alternative ?

We heard, as usual, about the rich history in the U.S. of national calls to prayer on the eves of other great national threats, and how God indeed heard and delivered.    We heard about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and even Ulysses S. Grant — all men who were lifelong faithful to their less-than-perfect covenant wives.    We heard about their rightful humility on behalf of the nation before the throne of the Almighty, but left unmentioned Thursday, was the very significant fact that they didn’t have to leave their offering at the altar first and go be reconciled with covenant wives and children, flesh-of-their-flesh and bone-of-their-bones – nor the fact that many of the national spokes-folk would have been far better served by doing so.    Our forefathers didn’t need a slick marketing campaign to engage people nor to substitute emotional ginning-up for actual integrity.

We treat our constitutional freedom of religious expression as something God both gave us and actually owes us.    We call it an “inalienable right” .     But is it, actually?   Are Christ-followers actually owed anything in this life by the Creator of All Heaven and Earth?     Quoting  Contra Mundum Swagger again, page 136:

“Much of the evangelical world simply makes no connection between personal and cultural destruction, and the sin in their lives and in their churches.    They just think they are righteous like Job, and are experiencing similar loss, when in reality they are not blameless servants.   They are guilty as Ham, Achan and Ahab were.   When men are obedient to the law of God, blessings are manifest.  When men are disobedient to the law, curses are. “

We bible-toting, church-attending evangelicals cannot believe how long God is taking to deliver us from Islam and homofacism, and we’re still deeply concerned that Donald Trump might not.   Ham was too cowardly to confront obvious sin in his father so he left it to his brothers.    Achan was greedy and covetous, proving that he loved baubles and trappings far more than he loved God.    Ahab was a lifelong idolator.    All three of them paid for misappropriating God-given privilege and blessing to their own self-indulgence with the cutting off of their generations of progeny — just as we are collectively doing as a nation!    How many pastors, how many religious freedom champions  do we know who are all of these things and worse?     Were we not bestowed our religious freedom for a strong kingdom purpose that transcends our own personal interest?    What happens when we not only violate that purpose but institutionalize an immoral way of life in our churches and choose leaders whose lives epitomize that immorality?

In the natural, it appears for all the world that God answered the fervent prayers of 2017 that very day.    After all, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal Obamacare that day, along with its coerced mandate for abortifacients and its financial penalties for noncompliance.   Will that event result in the recovery of our nation’s integrity, since the fervent and effectual prayers of the righteous avail much (James 5:16)?  What if, instead of another twangy-voiced spokeswoman who prospers temporally from being “married” to another  woman’s God-joined covenant husband, the national spokesman for NDOP 2018 is the prophet Ezra ?

…But at the evening offering I arose from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn, and I fell on my knees and stretched out my hands to the Lord my God; and I said,

“O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, for our iniquities have risen above our heads and our guilt has grown even to the heavens.   Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt, and on account of our iniquities we, our kings and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity and to plunder and to open shame, as it is this day.   But now for a brief moment grace has been shown from the Lord our God, to leave us an escaped remnant and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our bondage. 9 For we are slaves; yet in our bondage our God has not forsaken us, but has extended lovingkindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us reviving to raise up the house of our God, to restore its ruins and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem.

“Now, our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken Your commandments,  which You have commanded by Your servants the prophets, saying, ‘The land which you are entering to possess is an unclean land with the uncleanness of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations which have filled it from end to end and with their impurity.   So now do not give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters to your sons, and never seek their peace or their prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it as an inheritance to your sons forever.’ After all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and our great guilt, since You our God have requited us less than our iniquities deserve, and have given us an escaped remnant as this,  shall we again break Your commandments and intermarry with the peoples who commit these abominations? Would You not be angry with us to the point of destruction, until there is no remnant nor any who escape?   O Lord God of Israel, You are righteous, for we have been left an escaped remnant, as it is this day; behold, we are before You in our guilt, for no one can stand before You because of this.”   —  Ezra, Chapter 9

Instead, when it comes to restoring our 1st Amendment privileges, we may wind up with the “prophet” Hanson in how we sound to the One to Whom we are appealing:

 

HansonNDOP  (MMMBop by  pop group, Hanson, 1997)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Knickers (and Facts) in A Twist over Repeal of Texlahoma “No-Fault”

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TheDunlapsby Standerinfamilycourt

It has been an exciting spring legislative session in the southwest this year, as young lawmakers in Texas and Oklahoma have introduced common-sense bills curbing non-consenting unilateral divorce, and as both bills have recently made it out of their committees fairly intact.    The liberal press has been shrieking and howling its disapproval, especially in Oklahoma, where the measure also ends the perverse economic incentives from unilateral divorce by restoring stiff marital fault penalties to property division.

As is so typical of liberal grandstanding and industry lobbying, we’re hearing not of the millions of fathers whose fundamental right to protect and raise their children is being severed though they’ve done nothing objectively wrong,  nor of the adulterers sailing off with the unconscionable award of the innocent spouse’s retirement funds after a decades-long union which is suddenly deemed “irretrievable” by the court.   Instead we are hearing about the classic “abused poor woman” who will now find it harder to get a divorce because she might now have to actually prove the abuse with (gasp) evidence thereof.    As one of the expert witnesses giving testimony in Texas accurately pointed out to committee members on March 8, lawmakers cannot legislate to the extreme case (13:00),  as the liberals would like, but must do what’s best for society as a whole.

Rep. Travis Dunlap is a young lawmaker from Bartlesville, OK who was elected to the state house from his trade as a piano tuner.    Though he does not have the constitutional law background that his Texas counterpart has, he probably drafted the more effective of the two pieces of legislation in actually rolling back the abusive “no-fault” regime.    According to media accounts,  the original HB1277 drafted by Dunlap made it impossible for a court in Oklahoma to grant a divorce for “incompatibility” (the equivalent of “irreconcilable differences”) if the couple met one of three criteria:

– married for more than 10 years, or
– had a living child under age 18, or
–  a partner involved objects to the divorce.

A committee modification allows petitioners who fall into one of those categories to have a divorce granted by the court for “incompatibility”, but they must first go through an educational program about the impact of divorce.   Previously, petitioners only had to do that if they had a child under age 18, and the educational program was focused on the impact of divorce on children.    While this does not seem a particularly helpful modification from the standpoint of constitutional protections,  this bill has a very important strength that the Texas bill lacks:  it restores marital fault to the property settlement that results, as follows,

  “However, where the court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that one spouse caused the dissolution of marriage by committing at least one of the grounds for divorce, other than incompatibility, listed in Section 101 of this title, the court shall award only one-quarter (1/4) of the marital property to that spouse and the other spouse shall retain the remaining three-quarters (3/4) of the marital property…….

“Upon granting a decree of dissolution of marriage, annulmentof a marriage, or legal separation, where the court finds by apreponderance of the evidence that one spouse caused thedissolution, annulment or separation by committing at least one of the grounds for divorce, other than incompatibility, listed in Section 101 of this title, the court shall order that party to paythe other party’s expenses, including attorney fees.”

Perverse and unjust economic incentives play such an enormous role in the abusiveness of existing family laws,  and so drives the egregious behavior of the divorce industry “professionals” who have far more interest in shredding families than defending them, that no reform is likely to be sustainable without addressing this, as the Oklahoma bill has nicely done.    As a direct consequence, Rep. Dunlap has predictably drawn the venom of the state Bar and the unrelenting scorn of Oklahoma’s leftists in the press.    The committee vote was 7-5 on February 27, to refer the bill on for a floor vote which must occur by the May 26 end of the Oklahoma 56th legislative session.   The Senate sponsor of the bill is Sen. Josh Brecheen of Coalgate, Oklahoma.   Unlike Texas, Oklahoma does not have a strong family policy council any longer,  and videos of the committee testimony do not seem to be available.      One recent article says this, “Dunlap, who represents District 10, said he now does not expect the bill to see a vote in the House but is interested in continuing his efforts. ”     We hope and pray that Rep. Dunlap  does just that.

Rep. Matt Krause’s Texas bill was the subject of an earlier blog post.   That bill, which simply eliminates no-fault grounds where there is not a mutual-consent petition has been favorably referred by a 4-3 committee vote on April 12, and must somehow achieve a floor vote by the May 29 end of the legislative session.     This bill does not address several onerous provisions that would remain unchanged in the Texas Statute which could effectively still result in a contested dissolution being granted to an offending spouse over the moral objections of the non-offending spouse, including this provision:

Sec. 6.006. LIVING APART. The court may grant a divorce in favor of either spouse if the spouses have lived apart without cohabitation for at least three years.

Often, the innocent original spouse who does not believe in marriage dissolution because of scriptures such as Matthew 19:6 and 8, Romans 7:2-3 and 1 Cor. 7:10-11 and 39,  has non-cohabitation forced on them by the offending spouse, and has little or no control over this circumstance, especially if the offending spouse is in an adulterous relationship or has a history of physical abuse of household members.    This should therefore not be left under the sole control of the offending party if unilateral divorce is to be eradicated, and constitutional protections balanced.    We should also  note that the [unchanged] “cruelty” ground  contains this phrase which still refers to “insupportability” but does not objectively or measurably define “cruel treatment” :

The court may grant a divorce in favor of one spouse if the other spouse is guilty of cruel treatment toward the complaining spouse of a nature that renders further living together insupportable 

(Apparently, rogue  attorneys and “abused poor women” can restore “insupportability” simply by alleging cruel treatment under sec. 6.005, which this bill still does not, for all purposes, make them actually prove under its ongoing vague definition — how novel!)

In the unlikely event that Texas HB93  achieves a floor vote by the end of the session, there’s no question that there will be some back doors left wide open to unilateral divorce, but the period of time required will be lengthened.    If it dies  in the 85th session  without being voted on, we hope it will be re-introduced next session with some of these issues further addressed.

We covered a list of practical actions Texas and Oklahoma citizens can take to support these bills in the last blog on this topic, but let’s run through a few briefly again:

(1) Call the state capitol and ask for a floor vote:
Joe Straus
Speaker of the House (Texas)
(512) 463-1000
(512) 463-0675 Fax

Charles McCall
Speaker of the House (Oklahoma)
(405) 557-7412

(2) Engage your church and pastor – ask for a few minutes to talk to the congregation about the religious freedom and due process issues with the so-called “no-fault” system and how it has led to every other kind of  immorality, from same-sex attraction to the high abortion and suicide rates.    Explain that citizen engagement is needed at the grass roots to counter the overwhelming divorce industry lobby and liberal press.   If they sent busloads of the faithful to the state capitol 2 or 3 years ago to combat gay “marriage”,  challenge them on why this isn’t every bit as weighty a matter to the church’s families.

(3) Call Texas Values and ask what they are doing to support HB93. (Unfortunately, we’re not aware of a functioning family policy council in Oklahoma at this time).

(4) Sign a petition if you get a chance.   The Ruth Institute has one for Texas that can be found here.

(5) No matter which state you call home, please take time to call and write to encourage Reps. Krause and Dunlap.     Pray for them, and let them know it.

NeverGiveUp

Divorce Reform, Repenting Prodigals and Covenant Marriage “Standers”
While there is broad agreement in the marriage permanence community that repealing unilateral divorce is best for the future of our nation, many of us have either already been unjustly divorced and seen our spouse remarry adulterously  (by biblical standards, that is – since we, their true spouse in God’s eyes, are still alive), or others of us have come to biblical conviction that we had wrongfully “married” someone else’s divorced spouse, and needed to exit that union to be right with God.    So, though meaningful reform of the unilateral family-shredding machine remains a long shot with plenty of deep-pocketed, well-connected opposition,  we should look at where such reforms leave our wandering spouses who need to exit those immoral, civil-only  unions and rebuild their covenant families.    The subsequent divorce rate is significantly higher for legalized adultery resulting from the divorce culture, and it escalates with each round of serial polygamy under easy divorce laws.    Just how hard will divorce reform make repentance from remarriage adultery under the two bills being considered ?    Here’s an analysis for each:

Oklahoma, under HB1277:   Mutual-consent petitions continue to permit no-fault grounds, but if the adulterous union produced a minor child or has lasted at least 10 years, an education class must be attended before dissolution can be granted.     It is likely that a repenting prodigal exiting the adulterous remarriage will leave 75% of the marital assets with their ex-spouse unless that spouse has committed a serious, provable offense against the marriage.     Assets can be replaced, but souls certainly cannot.    Even so, assets brought in from the “dissolved” covenant marriage (very importantly including retirement accounts) are not considered part of the marital assets of the subsequent faux marriage and would not be forfeited by decree, however the repenting spouse would also likely have to absorb all the legal costs of getting free of their legalized adultery.     Waiting period:  180 days.

Texas, under HB93:  Mutual-consent petitions permit insupportability grounds but if the subsequent spouse does not consent and the repenting prodigal separates in order to end the practice of adultery (as he / she must do regardless), then after one year the now-abandoned spouse may file a fault-based petition which will be granted upon evidence, or they may agree to a mutual-consent petition sooner, and if HB65 also passes, the waiting period will be 180 days.   Alternatively, if the repenting spouse moves back in with their covenant spouse,  grounds of adultery are then available to the now-abandoned subsequent spouse.  If the non-covenant still declines to file a grounds-based petition, the repenting prodigal may file after 3 years of continuous separation on the basis of non-cohabitation.    Assets would be divided on the same basis as current law but this  would not include any assets brought from the prior covenant marriage.

“Standerinfamilycourt” always encourages mutual petitions rather than dragging anyone into a pagan court (1 Cor. 6:1-8)  in the process of repenting of an adulterous remarriage, as a growing number are doing these days upon learning the biblical truth on the matter.     If prayer doesn’t produce a consenting, mutual petition, repenting prodigals can always take comfort in the biblical fact that no state has dissolved the marriage of their youth in God’s eyes, nor was the subsequent “remarriage” ever considered valid in His courtroom.    They are free to resume their union without the state’s blessing and are not actually in sin if they do so.   The Lord will then sort out the legal matters in His own way.

‘So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate’….He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.“     Matt. 19:6, 8

And Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”   Matt. 12:17

(SIFC:  Would like to give a shout-out and thanks to Bai MacFarlane of Mary’s Advocates, who has established contact with Rep. Krause’s office and has provided some of the not-yet-posted details needed to complete this post.)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Church Discipline, citizenship, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Moody Radio Responds to “Standerinfamilycourt” (Sort Of)

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MBIby Standerinfamilycourt

On March 26, SIFC sent a letter in response to the Moody Bible Institute’s pleas to donate to meet an 8% shortfall in their semi-annual fundraising goals.   SIFC pointed out that it was unconscionable for a growing number of us to fund a considerable portion of their programming because it encourages people to remain in, rather than repent of, their sin of “marrying” someone else’s covenant spouse under the nation’s immoral divorce laws.  The hope was that they would seriously consider the eternal consequences of this policy and practice, that the Holy Spirit would convict somehow.   They were kind enough to respond,  and not to send a canned form letter, but the content of that response was better left unsaid.    I share it with our readers now:

April 3, 2017

Dear [“Standerinfamilycourt”],

Thank you for listening to Moody Radio, for your past financial and prayer support, and for taking time to write expressing your concerns about Family Life Ministries feature FamilyLife Blended with Ron Deal.  

I can understand your concern for any programming content that would “sanction legalized adultery”.   I will be standing right beside you on that.  However I fail to see where the content in the programs you listed are sanctioning adultery.

May I take your thoughts a little further on the topic, beyond the thought that divorce led to the creation of a blended family?   Ron Deal at FamilyLife could give you more specific information, but we are learning that many people who come to Christ later in life are from broken homes.  We receive emails nearly every week, mainly from Christian women, that their spouse has divorced / left them, some recently.   We also know of Christians who are widows or widowers who remarry.   In fact, several years after my grandfather died, my 82 year old grandmother remarried a wonderful widower.

Most churches do not address the unique issues that are present in these Blended Families.  We believe that the feature and FamilyLife Ministries is helping these marriages and families not only to survive but possibly thrive by providing helpful information not available anywhere else.

[“Standerinfamilycourt”],  I’m sorry that I don’t have the audio to send you, but here is the script of one of the first FamilyLife Blended features.

What would you do if your fiancé told you she was pregnant and it wasn’t your child?   I heard about one man that found himself in that very situation.   He was distraught, he was hurt, and he chose to walk away.   I mean, after all, the responsibilities were not his.  But then the Spirit of God let Joseph know that there was something bigger going on.   And Joseph chose love.  This Christmas as you remember our dear Savior’s birth, let’s also remember and encourage the step-parents and adoptive parents who, like Joseph, didn’t have responsibility or obligation, but they chose to love anyway.

I hope this information may shed a little more light on the reasons that we broadcast the FamilyLife Blended feature on Moody Radio.

Again, we appreciate you listening to Moody Radio, and appreciated your financial and prayer support through the years.   If you feel the Lord directing you to support another ministry, we understand and pray that He will multiply the impact of your gifts to that organization.   We do hope you will continue to pray for us as we seek to minister to as many people as possible and help them take their next step in their relationship with Jesus.

Blessings!

Dan Craig
Manager of Programming


SIFC had to go back to the original March 26  letter / blog to make sure we remembered to  mention that Moody Radio was leading millions of people toward hell as adulterers with this programming, but then again, Mr. Craig admitted that he didn’t  “see how the programming content was sanctioning adultery”.

[translation:  we don’t consider remarriage following civil dissolution of a consummated marriage to be adultery, even though Jesus repeatedly said it was, as did Paul.  But just in case, we’re going to obfuscate the issue by jumping topics to widowhood and betrothal].

A zinger of a rebuttal could certainly be had, if only it were profitable to the kingdom of God to do so:

Dear Mr. Craig,

A sincere thank you for responding, and doing so with your personal thoughts.

Since most churches do not address the unique issues that are present in LGBT families, would you therefore recommend that Moody promote programming by a comparable sodomy “pastor”?

….Most churches do not address the unique issues that are present in these Gay Families.  We believe that the feature and GayFamilyLife Ministries is helping these homosexual marriages and LGBT families not only to survive but possibly thrive by providing helpful information not available anywhere else.    (Right!)

And then there’s the emotional bit about Mary’s Joseph….with the acute dissimilarities swept conveniently under the rug.    Taking the analogy a bit further, had Joseph indeed put Mary away privily, being a just man, would it have been adultery for another man, for whom the “responsibilities were not his”,  who (correctly) perceived from the Spirit of God that “there was something bigger going on” to have come along and married this forsaken unwed mother?  Or  would that have been holy matrimony in God’s eyes?    Yes, but not for the reasons fancied by Mr. Craig.    Mary was not yet made irrevocably one-flesh with Joseph, unlike the sort of “bride” that Ron Deal has the unbiblical audacity compare her to.

Taking Ron  Deal’s analogy even further, Mary would be “divorced” (that is she would have been given a Hebrew get, a bill of divorcement), but that’s not the kind of “divorce” Jesus was referring to on all three instances / occasions where Matthew (in Hebrew text) , then Luke (in Greek text) quoted Him as saying,

“whosoever marries one who has been put away from a husband commits [enters into the ongoing state of]  adultery. “

Had another man married Mary and raised Jesus, it would not have been adultery according to the laws of the kingdom of God, because she would not have been impeded by an unsevered, undissolved one-flesh bond with Joseph whether or not there was any of man’s paper involved.    Jesus was referring to exactly the sort of otherwise-godly, unsullied and innocent third party man (and still calling him an adulterer) that Mr. Deal would like us to believe is exempt from the clear, repetitive commandment of Christ, so long as he’s doing it out of apparent compassion.    But let’s not forget the  five-ton elephant in the room — that it’s not strictly necessary for a man to marry an unwed mother (even if the one Mr. Deal has in mind isn’t exactly unwed) to show her the love of Christ or meet her essential life needs for a season.   Boaz, after all, married a widow.  True love always considers its impact on everyone’s eternal destination who is involved in the picture.

Yours truly,

“Standerinfamilycourt”

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC is pondering at this moment whether another attempt to enlighten Mr. Craig by return response is likely to be fruitful or merely be casting pearls before swine.    Who knows whether he is among the 40-50% of the contemporary evangelical church who is living in this sin himself, or among the even larger percentage who has a loved one who is perishing in this immoral state.    It seems likely to further offend him personally to tell him that adulterous homes are not supposed to “survive and (possibly) thrive”,  but are to instead repent the same way one repents of any hellbound sin, by severance and forsaking and (possibly) reconciliation with the covenant spouse(s).      After all, he saw fit to ignore the most forceful points in the first letter and pretend that he didn’t see them.   He never responded at all to our serious inquiry about why Moody is not at least covering the unilateral divorce repeal efforts in Texas and Oklahoma.   Lastly, longtime listeners to Moody know that the MBI of today is steeped in Calvinism, where you hear at least implied umpteen times a day that Jesus died for regenerated persons’  past, present and future sins.   The corrosive, lethal mix of Calvinism and legalized adultery have stripped the church of nearly all of its supernatural power in the last five decades.    Between  the days of Luther / Calvin and the stroke of Ronald Reagan’s pen in 1969, most of the Spirit-led Protestant  church didn’t succumb to it, even though it’s been out there since the 16th century Reformation.

It would be good to at least let him know that those of us in the biblical marriage permanence movement are indeed praying for Moody Bible Institute and Moody Radio.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!