Someting Against Divorce

• • BONE FROM BONE
    
    Divorce is the growing sickness of our age, threatening the very existence of the home. Approximately one in every three marriages ends in divorce, and evidence suggests the toll is rising. The sharp upward rise began in 1969, when 639,000 couples broke the record set in 1946 with the dissolution of many hasty wartime marriages. Since 1969, the divorce rate has steadily increased more than the marriage rate and the population growth. Commenting on the current attitude toward divorce, lawyer Max Lichtenberg says, "Marriage is no longer viewed as something made in heaven. It's a legal contract."
    
    This "worldly" view toward marriage is tragic and totally anti-biblical. Jesus pointedly said of the marriage relationship: So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate (Matthew 19:6). Jesus tells us that marriage is a union, not a contract.
    
    The special nature of marriage was further illustrated when God created woman. Note that the females of all other species were created independently of the male. However, when God created woman He drew flesh from the man's flesh and bone from his bone. Man is incomplete without woman because she is part of him. Woman is incomplete without man because he is part of her. In marriage, a union of the two is formed, and they become one flesh. A broken union is a rift in God's creation. Adam said of Eve: This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man (Genesis 2:23).