divorce

83:7.1In the early evo­lu­tion of the mar­i­tal mores, mar­riage was a loose union which could be ter­mi­nated at will, and the chil­dren al­ways fol­lowed the mother; the mother-child bond is in­stinc­tive and has func­tioned re­gard­less of the de­vel­op­men­tal stage of the mores.

83:7.2Among prim­i­tive peo­ples only about one half the mar­riages proved sat­is­fac­tory. The most fre­quent cause for sep­a­ra­tion was bar­ren­ness, which was al­ways blamed on the wife; and child­less wives were be­lieved to be­come snakes in the spirit world. Un­der the more prim­i­tive mores, di­vorce was had at the op­tion of the man alone, and these stan­dards have per­sisted to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury among some peo­ples.

83:7.3As the mores evolved, cer­tain tribes de­vel­oped two forms of mar­riage: the or­di­nary, which per­mit­ted di­vorce, and the priest mar­riage, which did not al­low for sep­a­ra­tion. The in­au­gu­ra­tion of wife pur­chase and wife dowry, by in­tro­duc­ing a prop­erty penalty for mar­riage fail­ure, did much to lessen sep­a­ra­tion. And, in­deed, many mod­ern unions are sta­bi­lized by this an­cient prop­erty fac­tor.

83:7.4The so­cial pres­sure of com­mu­nity stand­ing and prop­erty priv­i­leges has al­ways been po­tent in the main­te­nance of the mar­riage taboos and mores. Down through the ages mar­riage has made steady prog­ress and stands on ad­vanced ground in the mod­ern world, not­with­stand­ing that it is threat­en­ingly as­sailed by wide­spread dis­sat­is­fac­tion among those peo­ples where in­di­vid­ual choice—a new lib­erty—fig­ures most largely. While these up­heavals of ad­just­ment ap­pear among the more pro­gres­sive races as a re­sult of sud­denly ac­cel­er­ated so­cial evo­lu­tion, among the less ad­vanced peo­ples mar­riage con­tin­ues to thrive and slowly im­prove un­der the guid­ance of the older mores.

83:7.5The new and sud­den sub­sti­tu­tion of the more ideal but ex­tremely in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic love mo­tive in mar­riage for the older and long-es­tab­lished prop­erty mo­tive, has un­avoid­ably caused the mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion to be­come tem­porar­ily un­sta­ble. Man’s mar­riage mo­tives have al­ways far tran­scended ac­tual mar­riage morals, and in the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies the Oc­ci­den­tal ideal of mar­riage has sud­denly far out­run the self-cen­tered and but par­tially con­trolled sex im­pulses of the races. The pres­ence of large num­bers of un­mar­ried per­sons in any so­ci­ety in­di­cates the tem­po­rary break­down or the tran­si­tion of the mores.

83:7.6The real test of mar­riage, all down through the ages, has been that con­tin­u­ous in­ti­macy which is in­es­cap­able in all fam­ily life. Two pam­pered and spoiled youths, ed­u­cated to ex­pect ev­ery in­dul­gence and full grat­i­fi­ca­tion of van­ity and ego, can hardly hope to make a great suc­cess of mar­riage and home build­ing—a life­long part­ner­ship of self-ef­face­ment, com­pro­mise, de­vo­tion, and un­selfish ded­i­ca­tion to child cul­ture.

83:7.7The high de­gree of imag­i­na­tion and fan­tas­tic ro­mance en­ter­ing into court­ship is largely re­spon­si­ble for the in­creas­ing di­vorce ten­den­cies among mod­ern Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples, all of which is fur­ther com­pli­cated by woman’s greater per­sonal free­dom and in­creased eco­nomic lib­erty. Easy di­vorce, when the re­sult of lack of self-con­trol or fail­ure of nor­mal per­son­al­ity ad­just­ment, only leads di­rectly back to those crude so­ci­etal stages from which man has emerged so re­cently and as the re­sult of so much per­sonal an­guish and racial suf­fer­ing.

83:7.8But just so long as so­ci­ety fails to prop­erly ed­u­cate chil­dren and youths, so long as the so­cial or­der fails to pro­vide ad­e­quate pre­mar­i­tal train­ing, and so long as un­wise and im­ma­ture youth­ful ide­al­ism is to be the ar­biter of the en­trance upon mar­riage, just so long will di­vorce re­main preva­lent. And in so far as the so­cial group falls short of pro­vid­ing mar­riage prepa­ra­tion for youths, to that ex­tent must di­vorce func­tion as the so­cial safety valve which pre­vents still worse sit­u­a­tions dur­ing the ages of the rapid growth of the evolv­ing mores.

83:7.9The an­cients seem to have re­garded mar­riage just about as se­ri­ously as some pres­ent-day peo­ple do. And it does not ap­pear that many of the hasty and un­suc­cess­ful mar­riages of mod­ern times are much of an im­prove­ment over the an­cient prac­tices of qual­i­fy­ing young men and women for mat­ing. The great in­con­sis­tency of mod­ern so­ci­ety is to ex­alt love and to ide­al­ize mar­riage while dis­ap­prov­ing of the fullest ex­am­i­na­tion of both.

111:4.10Ideas may take ori­gin in the stim­uli of the outer world, but ide­als are born only in the cre­ative realms of the in­ner world. To­day the na­tions of the world are di­rected by men who have a super­abun­dance of ideas, but they are pov­erty-stricken in ide­als. That is the ex­pla­na­tion of pov­erty, di­vorce, war, and racial ha­treds.

167:5.2That night, in Jeri­cho, the un­friendly Phar­isees sought to en­trap the Mas­ter by in­duc­ing him to dis­cuss mar­riage and di­vorce, as did their fel­lows one time in Gal­i­lee, but Je­sus art­fully avoided their ef­forts to bring him into con­flict with their laws con­cern­ing di­vorce. As the pub­li­can and the Phar­isee il­lus­trated good and bad re­li­gion, their di­vorce prac­tices served to con­trast the bet­ter mar­riage laws of the Jew­ish code with the dis­grace­ful lax­ity of the Phar­i­saic in­ter­pre­ta­tions of these Mo­saic di­vorce statutes. The Phar­isee judged him­self by the low­est stan­dard; the pub­li­can squared him­self by the high­est ideal. De­vo­tion, to the Phar­isee, was a means of in­duc­ing self-righ­teous in­ac­tiv­ity and the as­sur­ance of false spir­i­tual se­cu­rity; de­vo­tion, to the pub­li­can, was a means of stir­ring up his soul to the re­al­iza­tion of the need for re­pen­tance, con­fes­sion, and the ac­cep­tance, by faith, of mer­ci­ful for­give­ness. The Phar­isee sought jus­tice; the pub­li­can sought mercy. The law of the uni­verse is: Ask and you shall re­ceive; seek and you shall find.

167:5.3Though Je­sus re­fused to be drawn into a con­tro­versy with the Phar­isees con­cern­ing di­vorce, he did pro­claim a pos­i­tive teach­ing of the high­est ide­als re­gard­ing mar­riage. He ex­alted mar­riage as the most ideal and high­est of all hu­man re­la­tion­ships. Like­wise, he in­ti­mated strong dis­ap­proval of the lax and un­fair di­vorce prac­tices of the Je­ru­sa­lem Jews, who at that time per­mit­ted a man to di­vorce his wife for the most tri­fling of rea­sons, such as be­ing a poor cook, a faulty house­keeper, or for no bet­ter rea­son than that he had be­come en­am­ored of a bet­ter-look­ing woman.

167:5.4The Phar­isees had even gone so far as to teach that di­vorce of this easy va­ri­ety was a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion granted the Jew­ish peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly the Phar­isees. And so, while Je­sus re­fused to make pro­nounce­ments deal­ing with mar­riage and di­vorce, he did most bit­terly de­nounce these shame­ful flout­ings of the mar­riage re­la­tion­ship and pointed out their in­jus­tice to women and chil­dren. He never sanc­tioned any di­vorce prac­tice which gave man any ad­van­tage over woman; the Mas­ter coun­te­nanced only those teach­ings which ac­corded women equal­ity with men.

162:3.5Je­sus, look­ing over the crowd, saw her hus­band stand­ing be­hind the oth­ers. He knew what sort of man he was and per­ceived that he was a party to the de­spi­ca­ble trans­ac­tion. Je­sus first walked around to near where this de­gen­er­ate hus­band stood and wrote upon the sand a few words which caused him to de­part in haste. Then he came back be­fore the woman and wrote again upon the ground for the ben­e­fit of her would-be ac­cusers; and when they read his words, they, too, went away, one by one. And when the Mas­ter had writ­ten in the sand the third time, the woman’s com­pan­ion in evil took his de­par­ture, so that, when the Mas­ter raised him­self up from this writ­ing, he be­held the woman stand­ing alone be­fore him. Je­sus said: “Woman, where are your ac­cusers? did no man re­main to stone you?” And the woman, lift­ing up her eyes, an­swered, “No man, Lord.” And then said Je­sus: “I know about you; nei­ther do I con­demn you. Go your way in peace.” And this woman, Hildana, for­sook her wicked hus­band and joined her­self to the dis­ci­ples of the king­dom.

83:8.4It is also un­for­tu­nate that cer­tain groups of mor­tals have con­ceived of mar­riage as be­ing con­sum­mated by di­vine ac­tion. Such be­liefs lead di­rectly to the con­cept of the in­dis­sol­u­bil­ity of the mar­i­tal state re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances or wishes of the con­tract­ing par­ties. But the very fact of mar­riage dis­so­lu­tion it­self in­di­cates that De­ity is not a con­join­ing party to such unions. If God has once joined any two things or per­sons to­gether, they will re­main thus joined un­til such a time as the di­vine will de­crees their sep­a­ra­tion. But, re­gard­ing mar­riage, which is a hu­man in­sti­tu­tion, who shall pre­sume to sit in judg­ment, to say which mar­riages are unions that might be ap­proved by the uni­verse super­vi­sors in con­trast with those which are purely hu­man in na­ture and ori­gin?

140:8.14The fam­ily oc­cu­pied the very cen­ter of Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life—here and here­after. He based his teach­ings about God on the fam­ily, while he sought to cor­rect the Jew­ish ten­dency to over­honor an­ces­tors. He ex­alted fam­ily life as the high­est hu­man duty but made it plain that fam­ily re­la­tion­ships must not in­ter­fere with re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that the fam­ily is a tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tion; that it does not sur­vive death. Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to give up his fam­ily when the fam­ily ran counter to the Fa­ther’s will. He taught the new and larger broth­er­hood of man—the sons of God. In Je­sus’ time di­vorce prac­tices were lax in Pales­tine and through­out the Ro­man Em­pire. He re­peat­edly re­fused to lay down laws re­gard­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, but many of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers had strong opin­ions on di­vorce and did not hes­i­tate to at­trib­ute them to him. All of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers held to these more strin­gent and ad­vanced ideas about di­vorce ex­cept John Mark.

72:3.8Mar­riage and di­vorce laws are uni­form through­out the na­tion. Mar­riage be­fore twenty—the age of civil en­fran­chise­ment—is not per­mit­ted. Per­mis­sion to marry is only granted af­ter one year’s no­tice of in­ten­tion, and af­ter both bride and groom pre­sent cer­tifi­cates show­ing that they have been duly in­structed in the pa­ren­tal schools re­gard­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of mar­ried life.

72:3.9Di­vorce reg­u­la­tions are some­what lax, but de­crees of sep­a­ra­tion, is­sued by the pa­ren­tal courts, may not be had un­til one year af­ter ap­pli­ca­tion there­for has been re­corded, and the year on this planet is con­sid­er­ably longer than on Uran­tia. Not­with­stand­ing their easy di­vorce laws, the pres­ent rate of di­vorces is only one tenth that of the civ­i­lized races of Uran­tia.

82:3.15These prim­i­tive trial mar­riages were en­tirely free from all sem­blance of li­cense; they were sim­ply sin­cere tests of fe­cun­dity. The con­tract­ing in­di­vid­u­als mar­ried per­ma­nently just as soon as fer­til­ity was es­tab­lished. When mod­ern cou­ples marry with the thought of con­ve­nient di­vorce in the back­ground of their minds if they are not wholly pleased with their mar­ried life, they are in re­al­ity en­ter­ing upon a form of trial mar­riage and one that is far be­neath the sta­tus of the hon­est ad­ven­tures of their less civ­i­lized an­ces­tors.

140:6.6Je­sus was minded to go on dis­cussing the other com­mand­ments when James Zeb­e­dee in­ter­rupted him, ask­ing: “Mas­ter, what shall we teach the peo­ple re­gard­ing di­vorce­ment? Shall we al­low a man to di­vorce his wife as Moses has di­rected?” And when Je­sus heard this ques­tion, he said: “I have not come to leg­is­late but to en­lighten. I have come not to re­form the king­doms of this world but rather to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven. It is not the will of the Fa­ther that I should yield to the temp­ta­tion to teach you rules of gov­ern­ment, trade, or so­cial be­hav­ior, which, while they might be good for to­day, would be far from suit­able for the so­ci­ety of an­other age. I am on earth solely to com­fort the minds, lib­er­ate the spir­its, and save the souls of men. But I will say, con­cern­ing this ques­tion of di­vorce­ment, that, while Moses looked with fa­vor upon such things, it was not so in the days of Adam and in the Gar­den.”

83:8.9Twen­ti­eth-cen­tury mar­riages stand high in com­par­i­son with those of past ages, not­with­stand­ing that the home in­sti­tu­tion is now un­der­go­ing a se­ri­ous test­ing be­cause of the prob­lems so sud­denly thrust upon the so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion by the pre­cip­i­tate aug­men­ta­tion of woman’s lib­er­ties, rights so long de­nied her in the tardy evo­lu­tion of the mores of past gen­er­a­tions.