In my opinion, God hates divorce. Like you wrote, His clear intent is that couples marry for life. On the other hand, people are sinners, and we make spiritual mistakes, including divorce. If someone divorces and remarries, is that a sin? Christ said it was adultery, but adultery isn’t an unforgiveable sin. Clearly, repentance is called for in such circumstances. How does one show true repentance? By not repeating the sin.
I do disagree about so-called incompatible couples. That is a very poor excuse for divorce, as two God-loving, Christians should be able to make it work. There was a time when most marriages were arranged, and those folks usually made it work and were often happy in the long run. The problem is selfishness, aka sin.
It is a very serious tragedy in the modern church that our divorce rate is nearly indistinguishable from that of unbelievers.
>In my opinion, God hates divorce. Like you wrote, His clear intent is that couples marry for life. On the other hand, people are sinners, and we make spiritual mistakes, including divorce. If someone divorces and remarries, is that a sin? Christ said it was adultery, but adultery isn’t an unforgiveable sin. Clearly, repentance is called for in such circumstances. How does one show true repentance? By not repeating the sin.
Adultery carried the death sentence in Jesus’s day. For most of Church history adultery either resulted in the women being executed by civil authorities or being cast out of the church allowing the man to remarry as she was no longer a Christian. Once a woman cheats on you she’s do it again thus there’s no point of continuing the marriage.
...and thanks to Ronald Reagan and his "no fault divorce" (the other major screw up of his besides Amnesty and getting suckered on "future spending cuts")...we have the society we do today.
Divorce for ANY reason used to be a major stigma.
And yet, sociological studies as well as statistics on prescription use, show women today in the US are unhappier than they have ever been.