The divorce rate among Christians the same as in the general population. Why do half of all Christian marriages break up when the Bible teaches so strongly against divorce? I’m not going to answer that question in this post, nor expound upon my view that divorce is sometimes Biblically justified for circumstances other than adultery, although I will hint at what I mean by that. I will definitely tackle those ginormous issues at a later date, but for now, I want to talk about what God does with our mistakes. Specifically mistakes that result in the creation of human lives.
Sometimes people marry for the wrong reasons. Sometimes they marry the wrong person, either because they are in denial or the person pretends to be someone they’re not. By wrong person, I mean someone who is abusive and narcissistic. Who physically and/or verbally thrashes their spouse and/or emotionally abandons them. It could also be someone with an addiction who refuses to get help. Basically it’s a person with no capacity for introspection, and who blames, criticizes, and continually berates their spouse. They seek to meet only their own needs/wants and they use their spouse as a scapegoat. This kind of person has only self-love and therefore lacks the ability to love their mate. If someone marries this kind of person, they have married the wrong person (disclaimer: it is possible for them to turn into the right person if they have a breakthrough and are humbled to the point of seeking out help and trying to change).
….Going back to the original point, whether people fool themselves or are duped by their spouses, eventually they face the truth. This may not happen until after they have already had children together. So now the question arises, if they married the wrong person (i.e. went with their own feelings instead of following God’s guidance) and ended up divorcing, are the offspring of that union mistakes? And the same can be asked about children born out of wedlock.
Human mistakes beget mistakes, literally. But God doesn’t make mistakes. So what does he do with ours, especially when they result in a human life? I don’t claim to know the mystery of how God determines which souls to put in which bodies, and when he does it (although I believe in the scientific definition of human life beginning at fertilization), but I do know that there is not a single person who comes into existence that he did not plan.
I was born in a marriage where my mother married the wrong person, so she divorced. My mom never would have married my dad if she had been following God, but she wasn’t even a Christian at the time, so that’s a moot point. It would seem then, that by human logic, my life was a mistake. And yet Psalm 139 says this:
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
My mom’s choice of a mate was a mistake but my life was not–it was planned from before the foundations of the world. God works in spite of, and even through our bad decisions. And for those of us who have come to a place of faith in Christ, we have this assurance in every area of life according to Romans 8:28:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
