Don Francisco
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Why Are Christian Divorce Rates So High
Pam sat at home and thumbed through the marriage workbook that she had been given during a premarital counseling session at church. She was horrified. Shaken and in tears she called her fiance and cried, "Mike, I cannot do this! Maybe we shouldn't get married! There are exact roles for me in here - but it's not me at all!"

We should have the very best marriages. But, statistically, Christians have the highest divorce rates in the United States. We have higher divorce rates than all other religions including atheists. Ministers have higher divorce rates than any other profession.

Most Christian leaders blame people within the Christian Body for this embarrassing gap. Well, there is a saying, "The proof is in the pudding". Our pudding is sour because our recipe is wrong. Atheists have better pudding. It's time to take a second look at our recipe and stop trying to blame the poor people who are trying to eat the pudding.

In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of "family ministries". These ministries have exact teachings for everything from family roles to how to put on your socks in the morning. Churches have become bent on forming cookie cutter families that fit the mold. There are multitudes of heavy teachings on "Biblical order", and submission, and roles, and blood covenant, and duty, and death to self, and being the perfect wife and husband.... etc, etc, etc. The church has become legalistic concerning roles in marriage, and also concerning divorce issues. The attempt to control families and keep marriages together by legalism is cultish and is backfiring terribly. This is the reason that we have the highest divorce rate.

Leaders need to grasp the Biblical truth that the law kills, but the Spirit brings life. Leaders have been heaping dump trucks of man made doctrines which violate the core relationships of couples and families. We have placed laws over love. Marriages should be based on and grounded in love. We know love is the greatest, yet the church does not take love seriously. We have called love wishy washy and undependable even though the Bible says that love never fails.

The Bible says that the Law failed. Yet the basis of most Christian marriages is law rather than love. Dishing out prefab roles in the name of Christianity is destructive to marriages because every person and every marriage relationship is unique.

We have changed the original enlightened Biblical message of equality in marriage to one of hierarchy and false submission. Thus we have separated two who God intended to be one. God's idea of oneness does not mean the front end and the back end of a jackass. But that's exactly what our recipe calls for. The promotion of hierarchy in marriage also causes us to have high statistics of domestic abuse and it causes many divorces.

In order for our divorce statistics to go down, the first thing we need to do is to begin to change our focus from laws to love. Nearly every unhappy Christian husband or wife I have talked to has made the mistake of comparing their spouse to the cookie cutter expectations of prefab roles. These people are many times married to brilliant and unique individuals, yet they are missing the very things that make their spouses wonderful. When husbands or wives begin to force each other into these roles, it causes a weakening of their personhoods, the death of the very things we should be nurturing in each other.

We need to talk more about what it takes to encourage people to grow to be unique individuals, rather than religious slaves. We need to talk about the fact that abuse in any form is not acceptable. We need to make people realize that marriages are breakable! A bowl made of plastic is unbreakable, and therefore may be kicked around. A fine porcelain bowl is breakable. Therefore, it is treated with care and respect.

Sadly, as divorce rates continue to rise, the church gets more condemning. The language of legalism intensifies. But we have concocted an impossible recipe for marriage. We need to consider that it is the weight of our doctrines that is causing the increase of Christian divorces.

If you find that certain doctrines are creating tensions in your marriage, then how good can those doctrines be? God's Word tells us to love each other, and to express that love by celebrating, serving, and encouraging each other. That is enough to revolutionize all of our relationships and to set marriages back on a course of success.