Thinking about South Carolina’s governor Mark Sanford got me thinking about Chapter 19 of the Gospel According to Matthew. With the news that Jenny Sanford is effectively separating from her husband, I note that Jesus never contemplated that she might have the right to divorce him.
Some came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
Mr. Sanford, who says he is a very religious man, can only divorce his wife if she was unfaithful to him, but Jesus says nothing about a wife being able to divorce her husband when he flies off to Argentina to have sexual relations with his lover. This is a very convenient arrangement for the man.
If I may be permitted a George Carlin quote, “You know how we got such a great deal? We made it up!”
Don’t tell that to The Family.
That Matthew verse has been quoted over the centuries to expected effect….why else, in so many Mediterranean cultures, Christian and Muslim, it’s generally ignored when a man takes a mistress, but women usually get killed (many times with no criminal prosecution for the husband/murdered) if they take a lover?
The earlier Carlin quote hits the nail on the head….
You may enjoy this article: Governor Sanford ‘very focused on himself’
I have not heard ONE good word about him since this started. (I live in SC) People here are of the mind that it is better to have him, beholden to the State & having to listen to what the people say, than to have Andre Bauer. (resource: conversations at the diner, overheard in line at stores)
This is a very convenient reading of the text in isolation of its social context – had you excerpted the next verse it would have been a little more clear.
A woman certainly had a right to leave her husband in the same way that a child has a right to leave their parents, and to similar effect save government intervention – starvation, exploitation and death. The disciples objected to Jesus’ teaching here because it removed the threat of divorce as a weapon that men could us to get their wives to “act right” – if they no longer had that threat then they’d actually have to deal honestly with their wives, something to which they were apparently unaccustomed.
Far from being a convenient arrangement for a man, this was actually putting men in check. As always, context is key.