Just another weblog
Here’s a lengthy essay I wrote on this topic: link.
For the tl;dr crowd, here’s the conclusion: both the Old and New Testaments provide certain grounds for a valid divorce, which includes the option of remarriage. Divorce outside of these grounds is forbidden to Christians, and Christians are always encouraged to maintain the marriage.
I welcome comments! Corrections, agreements, disagreements, what-about-this observations, etc.
Dr. Michael Brown has issued a call to test contemporary prophets, saying that recent prophecies about the COVID-19 pandemic form a perfect test case. Dr. Brown suggests that we can wait until mid-April and see if what two particular prophets predict comes to pass, and then we’ll know whether they (and prophecy in general) are legitimate.
Ordinarily I would agree with Dr. Brown that this is an interesting test case, but why wait? Why not test the prophets with what they’ve said already? Here is a sampling of items I found on the subject of this pandemic. The following is not an exhaustive list; there’s a lot of content out there on this subject, so material is not lacking.
On Sunday morning, Brenda told four-year-old Nellie that we’re going to church today. Nellie asked, “Is that Reeve’s place, or the place where they turn the lights off?”
Now, I thought that was funny. Reeve is the one-year-old son of the leaders of our small group, and we meet at the leaders’ house — Reeve’s house! The place “where they turn the lights off” is the building where we have our Sunday meetings, and yes, the vibe involves very dim lighting.
I like it, though, that she thinks of each of these meetings as “church”. To her, church isn’t a building you go to, it’s a group of people you meet with. That’s pretty good ecclesiology; the four-year-old can teach this forty-six-year-old a thing or two.