“God hates divorce,” is often cited as the last word from the Bible on the subject by people who turn to the Bible for the last word on any given subject. They wield this passage as a club with which they beat down the already beaten-down.
But I think they’re reading it wrong.
Most of those citing this verse seem unaware that it’s not a direction quotation — that they are actually paraphrasing the prophet Malachi. (The prophets, in general, tend to lay outside of the Psalms/Proverbs/Epistles comfort zone of these folks’ mini-canon.)
Here’s what Malachi 2:16 actually says:
“‘I hate divorce,’ says the Lord God of Israel.”
I would paraphrase that differently, like so:
“‘Divorce sucks,’ says the Lord God of Israel. ‘It sucks big time.'”
The difference between these two paraphrases stems from an emphasis on two different attributes of God.
The former paraphrase emphasizes God’s holiness. Being holy, God hates divorce. So if you are divorced, and therefore not holy, God hates you.
The latter paraphrase emphasizes God’s love. Being loving, God hates that which causes us pain. God hates suffering, therefore God hates divorce, just as God hates hunger, loneliness, war and glioblastoma multiforme.
One reason, I think, that some folks prefer the former version is that the latter brings us too close to the precipice of theodicy. If God hates suffering, and God is all powerful, then …?
This is the biggest and scariest of all the Big Questions. It’s big-and-scary enough to send us scampering back to obviously wrong but comfortingly simple formulas such as bad people suffer, good people prosper. That formula arranges the world in a very tidy fashion without forcing us to grapple with any Big Questions. If you’re suffering through a divorce, this formula says, you must have brought that suffering on yourself.
I know this formula is wrong, but no, I don’t have a tidy answer to the big scary question it evades. Sorry. I think it has something to do with love and free will — with the fact that unconditional love, by definition, cannot involve coercion, even if that means allowing things to unfold in a way that sucks big time.
Just to clarify, I don’t think God’s holiness and God’s love are as irreconcilable as the club-wielding “God hates divorce/you” crowd seems to think. I’ve had the privilege of knowing a few saints who devoted their lives to imitating and demonstrating the love of God. These people also became models of God’s holiness. I’ve also known many pious folk who devoted their lives to imitating and demonstrating the holiness of God. None of those people ever seemed to become a model of God’s love.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In