Therapy and Theology

Lysa TerKeurst:
Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Therapy & Theology with my friends Proverbs 31 Ministries' Director of Theological Research, Dr. Joel Muddamalle, and Licensed Professional Counselor, Jim Cress. I'm so excited to be able to have these deep discussions with both of you.

Jim Cress:
Me too.

Lysa TerKeurst:
You've both benefited my life personally, and I couldn't keep it to myself, because I wanted to bring all of this goodness to my friends. So, before we get into our conversation, I want to remind you about the Listener Guide we're making available for each episode of Season Three. We know that these episodes can be a lot to digest, so this is a resource my team created to help you practically apply and continue to think about what you learn. Whether you're listening on the Therapy & Theology podcast or watching us on the Proverbs 31 Ministries YouTube channel, we've linked the free Listener Guide for you in the show notes. Now, in this installment of Therapy & Theology, we're going to start off by talking about this big but. Now, I don't mean physical butt, right?

Jim Cress:
I didn't know where you were going there. OK, now we're getting real.

Lysa TerKeurst:
I'm talking about this big but question, which is, "But doesn't God hate divorce?"

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And so I think the reason I want to start here is because we eventually want to work our way to moving on when your marriage doesn't, because I just don't want to leave us sitting in all of this hard devastation of divorce, and I do want to talk about healing and moving forward and the grief process and then envisioning a new future for yourself. But let's deal with this first. God hates divorce.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. Where does this verse come from?

Lysa TerKeurst:
Malachi 2:16.

Joel Muddamalle:
And how in the world did we get this translation from this verse? Now, I want to do a little bit of translation history. We'll be brief. If you want a more in-depth kind of discussion, we actually discussed this in a previous podcast season: Season Two, Episode Five. But I think it's really important that we understand that the original languages, in the Old Testament, were in Hebrew and some Aramaic, and the New Testament is Koine Greek. The nature of translation requires some level of interpretation, right? I'm Indian; I don't know if y'all know that. I'm Indian.

Jim Cress:
I do now.

Joel Muddamalle:
It's just making sure everybody knows that I'm Indian.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And that's part of what makes you amazing.

Jim Cress:
Remember what you said yesterday? What was it? Indian Standard Time?

Joel Muddamalle:
Indian Standard Time. Yeah. Because I'm late to everything.

Lysa TerKeurst:
I may or may not last weekend have texted Joel and said, "Hey, where can I get butter chicken?"

Joel Muddamalle:
Butter chicken? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Britt's going to make you something.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Oh, great.

Joel Muddamalle:
It's going to be the best. But one of the things early in my marriage that I didn't realize ... My wife is white; I'm Indian. My family's from India; at home we spoke Telugu. My dad speaks Hindi. When Britt came into our family, we would have these jokes, and these jokes were in Telugu.

And so my role in the family, I learned early on through some painful experiences, I'm actually supposed to translate by the way. So, that was Marriage 101 in an intercultural marriage. But here's the challenge. When you have a Telugu joke in a different language, and you have to translate it and interpret it into another language, English, the joke is no longer funny.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And it kind of falls apart.

Joel Muddamalle:
It falls apart.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah.

Joel Muddamalle:
And it's really devastating. So, I say that to just point out, translation is difficult. We're doing the very best that we can, but we have to be aware of certain biases that are present. And I just want to say, you can have a really good intent behind it, but we have to be careful that we don't let our fear of what could be come in the way of what the text actually says. Right?

Lysa TerKeurst:
That's great.

Joel Muddamalle:
So, what happens with the King James Version of the Bible, which I know different people have different feelings about it, but when the King James Version was written, there was a group of translators that were worried, and their worry was that if we translated this verse in Malachi 2:16 in a certain way, it would give license for everybody to just go ahead and go willy-nilly and just get divorced all over the place.
So, what they did was instead of just doing kind of a word-for-word wooden translation, they made an interpretation. And the interpretation that they wrote, I'm reading from Malachi 2:16 in the New King James Version; it says, "For the Lᴏʀᴅ God of Israel says that He hates divorce ..." But here's the challenge: The Hebrew is not clear at all that that is what it's saying. In fact, when we take the Hebrew of Malachi 2:16 —

Lysa TerKeurst:
And it's important to go back to the Hebrew, because that's the original.

Joel Muddamalle:
The original language.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Right. So we're talking by the time King James comes along, I mean, this is —

Joel Muddamalle:
The 1800s, yeah.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Sometimes I think King James, it almost is like, well, was that part of the beginning? No, it came so much later.

Joel Muddamalle:
So much later. Later we're talking about after the Septuagint, after the Greek New Testament, after the Latin Vulgate with Jerome. I mean, we're talking after the Middle Ages. It comes much, much later.

Lysa TerKeurst:
So we're backing it all the way up.

Joel Muddamalle:
We're backing it back to the original. Original manuscript.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Right.

Joel Muddamalle:
And this is a translation challenge. What you do is, you say, "OK, if the Hebrew here is challenging, what's the first commentary on the Hebrew text?" The first commentary of the Hebrew text is actually the Hebrew Bible written in Greek, and that's called the Septuagint.

The Septuagint of Malachi 2:16 actually brings some clarification to what Malachi is getting at. What he's getting at is that God, who's a good Father, who made His children in His image and likeness, His hatred isn't necessarily on the divorce. His hatred is actually connected in the Hebrew structure, and the Greek structure of the verse, toward the one who institutes and executes an unfaithful way of living, that shows hatred against his wife. And in so doing that, he breaks the marriage contract.

So, this is the kind of the interpretation question we have to ask. Where is God's anger, His displeasure, His righteous justice aimed toward? It's not toward divorce. It's actually aimed at the one who causes an unjust divorce and actually is an offender and offends his wife in this situation.

Now, the roles can absolutely be reversed as well. So, when we look at a verse like Malachi 2:16, I think it's really important to note that God's hatred is — or His anger, His displeasure — it's aimed toward actions that image bearers make that actually deface and dishonor the ideal of marriage that God intended, and the first and foremost way that that's done is when we dishonor each other.

Lysa TerKeurst:
I'll never forget when you and I were studying this, and some current texts do give the closer interpretation what you're talking about.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, the CSB, yeah.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And so, I don't know the CSB version, but the version I read, it says, "When a man hates and divorces his wife, he does violence against the one he should protect."

Joel Muddamalle:
That's right.

Jim Cress:
Wow.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And then there may be a little footnote that says, "Thus sayeth the Lord: God hates divorce."

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah.

Lysa TerKeurst:
But I was stunned because I thought, "How many times have I been in conversations where people just have so accepted, "God hates divorce," that it's almost made it feel impossible for a woman, or a man, who's in a marriage that has shifted from just being difficult to absolutely devastation, and that could be sexual devastation, it could be emotional devastation, it could be physical devastation, and so many devastating circumstances that can happen, and they push away keeping themselves safe because they think, "God hates divorce, and if I divorce, God hates me."

Joel Muddamalle:
Me. And that's not at all what that text is saying. In fact, the Hebrew word for hatred, or hate, there is the Hebrew word shana, and that word could be synonymous for an unjust divorce. And that's the word that's actually being used in the Malachi 2 passage. It's also the same word that's being used in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, and in the Exodus passage that we mentioned in the last episode.

And so, it's really important that we realize that God's hatred is toward sin. God's hatred, God's anger, His displeasure is toward actions that you and I make, that image bearers, that humans make, that dishonor the image of God that we have graciously been bestowed.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Jim, how many times has someone come into your office, and they're dealing with some really, really heartbreaking circumstances in their marriage, and yet they kind of just want to push it aside because God hates divorce?

Jim Cress:
Time and time again, that would be more of the standard of Christians who come in, going with just that English, if not the King James Version translation, and they have a belief system, and maybe, said fairly, that was taught from a pulpit, or they were mentored, or someone said, "This is what the Bible says." So basically nay, no divorce, no matter what's going on. I've even heard on the practical level, you can't divorce because of that verse. Now, maybe there's room that you can separate, and stay perpetually separated, for the rest of your life, but that would be more of the norm of what I hear from Christians when they come into my office.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And I'll even say, and I said this out of a genuine commitment, and how seriously I took my vows, but I remember saying, "Divorce is not an option; divorce is not an option." And then decades later, I find myself in a situation that was absolutely no longer safe, sustainable or even honoring of God's intention for marriage, and suddenly divorce had to be an option for me.

Jim Cress:
And let me speak to that as again, in no way am I being pejorative with this statement. I have seen some who have been, and I understand that well-known or high-profile pastors, speakers, leaders have taught that through the years. And again, I get it. And then their adult child got married, even if it was not a sexual betrayal of the contract or covenant, addictions that were unrepented of, verbal or emotional abuse so much that our friend Leslie Vernick does so much work around.

And there have been a number of key pastors, at least through the years, who have then stood up and said, "You know what? When it hits home," and they have permitted [it], especially in some cases [of] their own daughter, to say, "I get it. I don't want to see my kid in this." And they have kind of stepped out of what they taught theologically.

Joel Muddamalle:
Sure.

Jim Cress:
And it went more "practically," and said, "It can often be different." And I have a statement that I use, and I hope it's not inappropriate to you all, or anyone else, but I don't want my theology to ever ignore my reality. In other words, this is what ... But I've seen some key people, and I'm not going to ever sit here and name names. They're very well-known, and their child got divorced, and suddenly they said, "It's just real." And they may not even, say, go back to the Bible, but they're like, "I don't want ... My daughter, she's been held captive there, and I give her my blessing to divorce."

Lysa TerKeurst:
And there's a lot of honorable reasons to say that, to say divorce is not an option, and I get the honorable side of it. And at the same time, I think it's crucial that we get into the theological understanding and the therapeutic wisdom and both work together. I know you've got some more you want to say, Joel, and I want to also get to some of what Paul taught as well.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, I just want to comment on what you said, Jim. Typically I like to say a theology I believe in “lived theology,” right?

Jim Cress:
That's good. Yeah.

Joel Muddamalle:
A lived theology. So, I would say a theology that is unlivable is absolutely unhelpful. And what we're trying to find, what we're finding, is that because of theological dishonesty, and because of weaponization of Scripture and misunderstandings and misinterpretations, we're starting to find a theological framework that is unlivable. And in fact, and this is why I want to get to Paul, in fact, Jesus never lived it. And if Jesus didn't live this theology out, why in the world are we trying to live a theology out that would've been foreign to Jesus?

Jim Cress:
I think you just woke up people [who] were kind of dozed off or not, or something. Jesus never lived it. I know my brain went, "Ooh," when you said that.

Joel Muddamalle:
So I mean, I would just wrap up this kind of conversation; I know we've got some questions that people have submitted, but we started with the Old Testament in the episode before this. We then got to Jesus, which is super important. But the majority of the New Testament written by the apostle Paul ... What is the apostle Paul doing? I read a commentary once, and I thought it was really funny. They say that Paul is just plagiarizing Jesus, that all of Paul's letters are basically Jesus' Sermon on the Mount regurgitated in a lived way for these churches.

Well, Paul's primary text on marriage and divorce is in 1 Corinthians 7, and I think it's really interesting. I'm just going to summarize this, that in 1 Corinthians 7:1-5, Paul deals with emotional obligations that are included in divorce.

What are those emotional obligations? We talked about it in the last episode. We talked about how the ancient rabbis understood that we have an obligation in reciprocity to people together, to emotionally provide stability, love, care, sexual intimacy, all of those things.

So, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:1-5, he handles emotional obligations. Then interestingly, in 1 Corinthians 7:32-35, Paul deals with material obligations. And this connects Paul's understanding of marriage and divorce, not to a Greco-Roman context, which by the way, the Greco-Roman context of divorce was even more wild than the time of Jesus. Now, the Greco-Romans were like, "Hey, not only can just a man get a divorce and a woman can appeal to a court in order to get a certificate of divorce," in the Greco Romans setting, anybody for any reason can get a divorce. All you got to do is leave the house.

And what Paul is saying is, "Wait a minute; we’ve got to think about this differently." We’ve got to take steps, Lysa, like you said, and not leaps. And so I think that's super important, and both Jesus and Paul make room, make allowance, not just for divorce but then for the future of what that person's life could, or ought to look like, and that includes the possibility of remarriage.

Lysa TerKeurst:
I remember you saying a couple of A's to kind of bring it back and land it here. It's in the case of adultery, abandonment, abuse. I can't remember all of them, but I think that those are some good ways to kind of take all of this that we're talking about and put them in some categories to give people real thoughts around it.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, I think, yeah, that's exactly right. Adultery, abandonment, abuse, and those things underneath it, really what those things categorize is a defacing, or dishonoring, of the image of God.

Jim Cress:
Well, wouldn't addiction? I know therapeutically that would come under abandonment, though; it would be if somebody's over there living in addiction, let alone the neurochemical processes of how it wires the brain. And Aristotle [said], "We are what we repeatedly do." I mean, it's more than just, "I'm choosing drink, drug, porn, sex, whatever." There's a sense that they will, at least anecdotally and experientially, they will abandon the marriage, because they won't be present.

Joel Muddamalle:
So this is super important. I'm glad, and I want you to talk more about this, because one of the questions I often get is, "What about addictions?" Because it seems like Paul's pretty clear in 1 Corinthians 7 that abandonment is absolutely a viable option. And what you just said is so important. What do addictions do? They compromise our minds. They compromise our allegiance. It takes us from being outward focused in a healthy way to being primarily inward focused so that everybody else are pawns on a chess board for my life, and I'm willing to sacrifice who I need to get to the end of whatever the win is for me.

So an addiction is actually fleshed out conduit toward a type of abandonment. That abandonment is typically emotional, or it can be physical. It can be sexual, you see? And so these are how these categories actually are interrelated and flow together. And then I go back to what Jesus says. Jesus is like, "Listen, divorce is allowed." Let's leave room for the possibility of true, authentic repentance, but in the presence of a stubborn heart, and I think when we hear stubborn heart, we need to go back to the story of Pharaoh. Pharaoh and the 10 plagues is a story of a stubborn heart. Each of those plagues is actually a gracious act of a good God to lead Pharaoh to repentance.

Jim Cress:
And it sounds like addiction. I'm just reading through the Old Testament in my read-through-the-Bible, and I'm sitting there as I went through that in Exodus, and I'm watching; you have the passage of God hardening Pharaoh's heart. I'm not getting ... Aside to that, I'm just saying there was a sense, it's like, if you didn't know the story, and hadn't watched Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, yeah, I'd sit there and go in, "All right, let my people go." And he would; they're taking off and all that. And go, "OK, he's repented."

I think it's a classic model of addictions, and the next thing you know, it's "Nope, go get them." So it's like, but at first, "Oh, they're changing. He softened his heart." This is Pharaoh with all of his power, and then it takes moments, and he's right back saying, "No, I'm not going to let you do it." That's a classic picture of addictions.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. And even ... We won't get too deep into that, but I do a thing called Theology Talk Tuesday, and somebody asked once, "What is going on with Pharaoh?" Because you mentioned, “Wait a minute; is Pharaoh hardening his own heart or is God hardening Pharaoh's heart?”

The way that the Hebrew is constructed, the first instances of it is that Pharaoh is hardening his own heart. And then the latter half is actually what God is doing: He's hastening or He's allowing or He's just reaffirming what Pharaoh has already committed his own heart to do.

Lysa TerKeurst:
It's almost like turning himself over, turning him over to himself.

Joel Muddamalle:
That's exactly what it is. That's what Paul talks about.

Lysa TerKeurst:
In his sin.

Joel Muddamalle:
It’s "we're going to turn the person over into their own sin so that their flesh might be destroyed, but maybe their soul is going to be saved" outlook.

Lysa TerKeurst:
So, let's go to another big but question. OK? So, I feel like I should sing, "God likes big buts, and I cannot lie," but I won't do that. We're not going to do that.

Joel Muddamalle:
In the intro trailer.

Lysa TerKeurst:
OK, so the next but question is, “But how do I heal?” And then right behind that, “But can I even move forward?” And I think it's like, "Can I heal? What is this going to do to my kids? And is remarriage even permitted in the Bible?"

Joel Muddamalle:
That's a big one.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Is dating and remarriage even permitted?

Jim Cress:
By the way, in my office, because you usually would throw and say, "What about ... what do you see?" So I'm just going to throw this in as a freebie. In my office, do you know that I see, if there is a tight second place, like my friend over here knows that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is now number two behind LeBron.

Joel Muddamalle:
That's right.

Jim Cress:
We ... This sports thing.

Lysa TerKeurst:
All-time sports record.

Jim Cress:
If there is a tight number two, it is, and some days I think it's actually number one on a practical level ... OK, yeah, divorce, [inaudible], whatever, whatever. But can I go on? And the myriads of teachings that have been out there and say, "OK, but even if you divorce for unfaithfulness, you are trapped. You cannot remarry."

Lysa TerKeurst:
Right.

Jim Cress:
Sometimes that's actually the number one question that I see in my office when divorce is being considered. "Can I even have a future?"

Joel Muddamalle:
Which I think that's an important ... that's an honest question, because for me what that question frames is, if I have a scale, and I've got to put these two things on the scale, is the possibility of a life alone by myself acceptable, versus the harm and chaos and the dysfunction of the relationship that I'm in?
And so it's almost like, "Wait, is there even a way out? And if the way out means total loneliness and isolation, is that even worth it?" And for a long time, I think we've had answers that are, again, misunderstandings and misinterpretations from the Bible. But I'm really curious on the healing one, because I think the healing one actually needs to be the first question that needs to be answered. And then we can talk about ... This is my Joel pastoral hat.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah. I agree with you.

Joel Muddamalle:
We've got to heal first before we get to the possibility of remarriage.

Lysa TerKeurst:
100%.

Joel Muddamalle:
Because if your healing is contingent on the possibility of remarriage, Joel with my pastoral hat, it's going to be like, "That's a problem too."

Lysa TerKeurst:
So, I can just speak from experience, and really through Jim's wise counseling, I knew I did not want to be a divorced woman, and I knew that, because the issues that I had faced in the last part of my marriage lasted so long, there was a lot of healing that needed to happen. And I believe that because I was with Jim at the beginning of discovery and through the devastation and through, in my situation, an attempt to reconcile and renew our vows and then devastation again, I had been doing counseling all along, and still when it finally ended, and I knew I was done, and that was a hard place for me to get to, I remember sitting in Jim's office and telling him, "Jim, literally in this moment ..." You said, "Every woman has a breaking point." And I remember it took me forever to get there.

Jim Cress:
Sure.

Lysa TerKeurst:
But when I finally got there, I remember this breaking inside of me. It was almost like a physical feeling. And so, I went and had a session with you, and I remember saying, "Jim, does that breaking now mean that I'm broken forever?" And I remember you saying something like, "Lysa, I don't think that was the moment that you broke. I think that was the moment you healed."

Jim Cress:
Healed. Mm-hmm.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And it was such a profound moment for me. Now, was there a tremendous amount of grief? Absolutely.

Jim Cress:
Of course.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And at that point, it wasn't so much that I was grieving the loss of this person, because I think I had grieved that all along.

Jim Cress:
It's like cancer. A lot of people have said there's a ... loved one was dying of cancer. That's different than someone getting hit in a car wreck, and they die, and it's there. But it's like, I've been grieving all along, and sometimes the death, even the death of a marriage, can be a relief.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah. And I wouldn't say it was necessarily a relief, but I think the greater source of my grief, certainly I grieved losing this person because I built a life with this person —

Jim Cress:
Of course.

Lysa TerKeurst:
But the grief was over I didn't want to be a divorced woman. And the other part of the grief, “What is this going to do to my family?” And the other part of my grief is, “Now I'm 50, and now what does the rest of my life look like?” I loved being a wife. I loved the sense of security and safety and stability of a good marriage. And so, what does this mean? So, my grief was pretty massive, but it was around moving forward, and [wondering] am I going to carry this terrible feeling in my heart forever and ever?
And I remember you giving, again, a lot of wise advice, but you told me one time, “Grief is like a river. You have to get in it, and you have to get in the boat, and let it take you where it needs to go, and that's going to take time.” And I remember asking how much time?

Jim Cress:
That's the number one question. How long?

Lysa TerKeurst:
OK.

Jim Cress:
Remember throughout the Old Testament, "How long, O Lord?" was perpetually being asked, so nothing new here.

Lysa TerKeurst:
All right, so how long?

Jim Cress:
As long as it takes. And Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, many of our viewers and listeners will know that name, who studied grief and the stages of grief, we now know more, and with a hat tip to her and her incredible research and observation, but the idea that grief is often cyclical, and you come back around, and then the grieving in the loss of the nuclear family, meaning mom, dad, there's a divorce. Even if kids are an adult, that it will never be like that again.

Feeling the grief because you're an incredible mom, I know that for a fact. But if my kids are grieving and they're having a hard time, and if they're not ready to move on. Or, just as you've said so well, grieving that you were in that for all those years, and saying, "So it's come to this." How long does it take? If you get in the boat, I use the canoe in the river, and go with it, it might cycle around. But the final part of that is true acceptance and true grief and mental health and spiritual health and relational health is a commitment to reality at all cost. And to say, "Yeah, it's there, but I grieve not as those, amen, who have no hope."

Joel Muddamalle:
That's right.

Lysa TerKeurst:
That's right. Well, part of the grieving process, too, was I remember thinking I stayed in a situation that I probably shouldn't have stayed in for quite as long as I did. And I think there were very noble reasons I stayed, but there were also some unhealthy reasons I stayed.

Jim Cress:
Sure.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And I needed to work on me. I needed to work on what were those healthy tendencies that aided to the good parts of my marriage, but what were those very unhealthy tendencies that kept me attached in a situation that I really needed to probably separate sooner? And so, I remember just thinking, "I have to work on myself." And you wisely said, "Lysa, give yourself a year post-divorce. Just give yourself a year."

Jim Cress:
Well, there's research around that too. At least six months to just get in therapy, process the facts and impact of what went on. You had, we were talking about post-divorce regret. You're speaking right now of what I'm calling post-marital regret. That's different. You said, "Boy, didn't see that coming," which is, "Did I stay in this thing too long?"

You don't need an answer for that. You don't have to have the answer. But it's a contemplative thing of saying, "Hmm, did I stay ..." And we'll get to more about forgiveness, and we've already done that, but to forgive myself, to cancel that debt, and say, "Maybe I did. Maybe I stayed in it too long," and say, "And now I move on."

Lysa TerKeurst:
So, for me, I didn't have any desire to date at all. I couldn't. People would talk to me about it, and I just couldn't even process it. I couldn't even think about it. It was unfathomable to me. And again, this is my experience. This isn't going to be everyone's experience.

Jim Cress:
Sure.

Lysa TerKeurst:
So, I did give it a year, and I realized, "Nope, I need more time." So I gave it six more months. And then we had a therapy session with my kids, and I was trying to figure out: Could I be ready? Could I be healed enough? And then my kids stepped in, and they weren't ready.

And it's not that my kids dictate what I do, but because family is so important to me, I asked myself the question: Could I give six more months? Absolutely. And so, I wound up giving two years before I would even consider the thought of moving on, and moving on for me was so much bigger than just, "Am I ready to go on a date?" Moving on meant, "Have I done the work to where I no longer need another person to help me get through this, but rather I'm freed up to have the ability to want someone, if another person came along?"

Jim Cress:
Oh, that's so well put.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And after two years, I finally reached that place where I felt like I've done this with God, I've done the work emotionally, I've done the work theologically, and now I feel free. It's not that I need someone else, but I feel free to want the right person if they came along.

Jim Cress:
And I reckon to vet the right person one day, if they came along, to trust, but I already know ... I'm cheating. I know the answer. But for you to say, "OK, I want to be able to trust but verify, I want to be able to," when someone shows you who they are, so many things we've talked about, and here's your chance, St. Paul, Philippians 4, to go put into practice. And that practice is very important.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Yes. And I remember, I have to be careful how I say this, because if I get it wrong, it'll sound really awful. But I remember Jim saying one time, "Lysa, back then, in your 20s, your picker was broken." See why I have to be very careful how I would say that. Right?

Jim Cress:
Oh, you do that all the time.

Lysa TerKeurst:
But he also said, "When you know better, you do better." And I think now I'm able to so much more quickly see red flags, or to acknowledge, "This person's wonderful, but this is not what I want." And for the first time, I think, in my adult life, I was able to take a step back and remember, "I have needs, not demands, but I have needs that must be considered, and I can decide what I want and not settle and not choose another person because it's convenient, because I'm lonely. But choose another person because it's right."
So, that leads right over to our other theological question: What does the Bible say about remarriage? Because if you're going to date, you're not dating just to date, or at least that's not my intent.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah.

Jim Cress:
Would it be inappropriate if I do a drumroll here? Because I cannot wait to hear it. What do you have to say here?

Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah. Sure.

Jim Cress:
This is a big one.

Joel Muddamalle:
This is a big one. And I think it's important, Lysa, that I do say that. I remember, when I first started really researching and studying this, that there are different positions on this.

Jim Cress:
That good people, good theologians disagree on.

Joel Muddamalle:
Good people that love Jesus, that we would sit around a table and have coffee and agree on 80% of so much and then 20% say, "You made an interesting ..." This is how I'd say it, "You made an interesting argument. I'm unconvinced." At the end of it. And so I just want to highlight that, that you may be in a situation where you hear somebody, a trusted pastor or a ministry friend, that has a different view on it, and that's OK.

What I would suggest though is that we know the biblical text enough so that we can get back to the primary source, consider what does the Bible say? What does Jesus say? What does the Apostle Paul say? And allow that to be a framework of consideration for us. So, I'm going to give us where I have landed personally, based off of my study of Scripture, and the Jewish kind of Old Testament context. And there are different opinions, like I said.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And I think it's important for us to again say what we often say here on Therapy & Theology. We're not going to tell you what to think, but we're going to give you a lot to think about.

Jim Cress:
Yes, I love that.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And we just want to educate from a biblical standpoint, and from a therapeutic standpoint, educate you so that you can have really good information to process all of this through.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah.

Lysa TerKeurst:
So go ahead.

Joel Muddamalle:
I think in today's modern scholarship, pretty much everybody's going to say, "Yes, divorce is possible. Yes, divorce at times may even be necessary, depending on the situation and circumstance." Now, the question of remarriage becomes a hotly discussed aspect of it. Where I've landed is that it seems really clear, because I want to look at the Scriptures as one cohesive story, as one cohesive telling, and unveiling of God's ideal.

And in light of that, when you look at a passage that we've studied a lot, I mean, Deuteronomy 24:1-4, it speaks of a marriage, a marriage contract, but then it talks about a divorce certificate. This is a very specific certificate that was true for the ancient Israelites.

And I was actually doing some research ... I've got his book with me, Dr. David Instone-Brewer, who is a legendary Old Testament scholar that's done a lot of work in this area. So, I'm building on his research, I'm sourcing and citing it. He makes this observation — this is wild — that in the Ancient Near Eastern world, there was never such a thing as a certificate of divorce for any other nation in that area.

Jim Cress:
Really?

Joel Muddamalle:
This was unique and novel for the Israelites. Why? This is the big question. Why? Because God saw it so important that in a patriarchal society, that women had safety, they had security, and they would have stability in their lives in the worst-case scenario, where there was a death of a marriage.

So what was that certificate of divorce? That certificate of divorce was basically what the husband would write and give to the woman so that in having that, she would get her dowry back; she would have some financial stability. In fact, there's some rabbis that talk about in the Mishnah — we talked about this before — that some husbands would want to have, I think the phrase is, have their cake and eat it at the same time.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Have their cake and eat it too.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. There we go.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Joel always ... This is a thing with Joel; this is a thing. It really is.

Joel Muddamalle:
Mixed metaphors.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Or partial metaphors.

Joel Muddamalle:
Or partial metaphors. And I think ... Actually, I don't think, I know, based off of the Mishnah, that there were men that wanted to have their wife to still be there and live reckless and wild.

Jim Cress:
It sounds like today.

Joel Muddamalle:
I mean, right?

Jim Cress:
Gracious.

Joel Muddamalle:
And so, what the rabbis did to protect the woman was they actually instituted financial penalties upon the man, because the woman would be stuck. If the husband did not write out the certificate of divorce in a very specific way, then it would put her in a place of total victimization, really. I mean, it was bad.
So the rabbis put into place a financial system in order to penalize them. The longer they waited, the more they would have to give back as interest basically on top of the dowry. This is wild.

Jim Cress:
It is.

Joel Muddamalle:
And I have the citation as well. There is a couple instances — I don't even know if I should be saying this on the podcast, but because it's footnoted, I can say it. There are some instances where these dudes were so wild, and they were so stubborn, that the rabbis were like, "We don't know what else we're going to do." So you know what they decided to do? They whipped the men.

Jim Cress:
Well, Nehemiah did that. He took it out and started beating people.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. So literally, the Mishnah says —

Lysa TerKeurst:
We are not endorsing whipping.

Joel Muddamalle:
We're not endorsing that.

Jim Cress:
This is descriptive.

Joel Muddamalle:
I'm just saying ... I'm just saying that this is how serious the ancient context was so that it would put the person in a position to finally honor his wife, because he has dishonored her for so long, that he would give the certificate of divorce.

Now, the same idea of the certificate of divorce, why was this so important for them? Because the certificate of divorce gave the woman the allowance, the opportunity to get married again. This is massive. In that world, in that setting, if the dowry, if the financial stability that she had was not substantial enough, it could be really devastating for her.

Jim Cress:
She'd get that back?

Joel Muddamalle:
She would've gotten that back.

Jim Cress:
That sounds like a modern day ... a bit of a prenup. Doesn't it?

Joel Muddamalle:
Exactly, I mean —

Jim Cress:
It's just interesting the —

Joel Muddamalle:
You said it, not me.

Jim Cress:
Well, I said it sounds like it. Yeah.

Joel Muddamalle:
But yes, that's exactly right. And so, that is taking place, and what it does is it gives the women the freedom. It gives her the opportunity; it makes it a possibility. Now, really important here. It's not like a compulsion; it's not demanded; it's not mandatory. This is an echo of what Jesus and Paul do. It is not a command, but it's an allowance for what is best for that woman in that situation.

There's actually a lot of evidence later on in the Greco-Roman world that many women who went through a divorce like this would actually choose to stay single, because they had more freedom; they had more opportunity. They didn't want to be put back into a situation where they could be a victim again. And so, that takes place as well.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7:39-40, says that the woman who ... remember we talked earlier through material and emotional neglect, where basically their threshold for pain is just too much, that there's unrepentant sin, there's a stubbornness of heart, in those situations; this is what Paul says ... Paul says that, "The woman may remarry to whomever she wishes, only in the Lord."

This is really interesting. Paul is quoting a first-century divorce certificate that said, "You are free to marry any Jewish man you wish." What does Paul do? Instead of saying Jewish man, he inserts a condition, and the condition for the Christian is, "In the Lord." And in a sense, you can get married, but it needs to be a person who loves Jesus, who is a fellow —

Lysa TerKeurst:
Believer.

Joel Muddamalle:
Believer, yeah.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And I would say, and not just checking the Christian box but truly processing their life and living their life through a truth-based belief in Jesus, that they know the Truth and live the Truth, and they process their life and any decisions being made through biblical wisdom.

Joel Muddamalle:
So, what happens here is, and, Lysa, we've talked about this before, and, Jim, a lot of times when it comes to the scriptures, we want policy, not principles. I want A plus B to always equal C. I wish the Bible was like a concordance that I could just open up to be —

Jim Cress:
It's a recipe theology, isn't it?

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the biblical authors and God Himself refuse to do that for us. What they want is to give us principles to help it flesh out in the specific context that we're in. So, I think for this conversation particularly where I would want to end it with, and just reinforce it is, that based off of how I've seen the text, how I think there's strong scriptural evidence: it's present in the Old Testament; the rabbis understood this way. Jesus understood this way, and Paul understood it this way, which is the weight of evidence for me, is that remarriage is absolutely a — and I'm going to use a specific word here — is absolutely a possibility.

Now, that possibility, in my opinion, and, Jim, I know you've got a lot on this, and, Lysa, what is wise? What is healthy? What is appropriate? How has God individually wired you? What is the testimony of witnesses of the people that do life with you?

Jim Cress:
That's so good.

Joel Muddamalle:
We live increasingly in an individualistic society that's thinking about me, myself, and I, and yet the biblical text and the way that the family of God is oriented is we, not me. And so, we have to consider all of these things [based] on, is it not just possible, but in this situation, is it wise? Is it healthy? Is this the way that God has designed and wired me? And what are the steps toward that?

Lysa TerKeurst:
I think that's really crucial, and part of that, really even getting to know the answers of those questions requires solid theological and therapeutic work. And so, that's part of the reason why we want to do these two podcasts: to make sure that you have the biblical wisdom and some of the therapeutic insights for healing and moving forward.

Jim, in the last little bit of our time here, I want to know: How does someone know that they are healed? How do they know? Let's just take a woman for example. How would she know that she's healed enough to even consider going on a date, or looking toward a future relationship?

Jim Cress:
Well, you changed the question right in the middle of it, and I love that. How do I know that I'm healed? I believe this may surprise you. I believe very little in what I call the policy of putting the “ED” at the end of a word. "I am healed." I believe in healing, and levels of healing. How do I know that I've had enough healing? Because to say, "Am I healed?" I don't know. I mean, I really don't believe a lot of us are healed totally until heaven.

Lysa TerKeurst:
That's great.

Jim Cress:
I go back and land where old Joel took us over there, and that is verse 40 of 1 Corinthians 7. And I just love, Paul comes and says, "All right," he's like being a counselor here himself, whereas you said pastoral: "Yet in my judgment [the wife] is happier if she remains as she is [single, not remarried]" (ESV).
And I think, too, that I have the Spirit of God, so I want to take that, and the word I use here is a bridge. I use it all the time. And that is, this marriage ended. We've called that the death of a marriage. Take time to grieve. Just take time, not just that you took time to see if the spouse would change. Take time now for yourself. Keep, as the flight attendants say, putting the oxygen mask on yourself, and remain single, at least for a season, to be able to get to know yourself.

There's one state of being when you are alone, the old spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen said this, that, "When you're alone, do you go to loneliness?" I'm so lonely. And that makes some great codependent love songs, or you to go ... do you go to “solely-tude,” an attitude of being solely by yourself? We know that is solitude.
So, to be with myself, to get to know myself, as though this contract that I've had here terminates and ends. We could go way in the ditch here by talking about all the sports contracts, right? And I'm not trying to, but we use it in the business world all the time. Trust but verify.

So to look and say, "I have a new contract with myself and with God. Take the time to get to know myself and to process that." And what I find as, oh, I wouldn't say a litmus test, but it's interesting data to me, is that for a woman, or a man, but for a woman to get out of a marriage appropriately, work her way through it, and get out, and really soon, which is normally, got to tell you what I see, even with the Christian clients I work with, is within a month or two, already on into dating sites.

I'm not against that at all. But very quickly. They didn't have a moment. Put yourself in therapy. Go work on that. If you can't afford therapy, watch more Therapy & Theology. It was your original vision. Talk to some wise counsel, some good friends, and say, "I need to be alone, to be with myself."
And Blaise Pascal, we've said before, said, all of your problems stem from the inability to sit alone with yourself quietly in a room. So, get to know yourself, do some journaling, and have your own patience, and then back to our picker word, is to get my picker healthier, and healthier than when you were doing that backstage work, and you come out on the front stage.

Trust but verify. "I know this about you." You've got this personal board of directors, not Proverbs 31 and all that, but some key women, and probably many of them say, at least come on now. Or you say, "Here, what do you see?" Me, you have Joel; we're here with you. That idea that everybody can have people like that, and say, "Well, here's what he said. Here's what he did." Trust but verify. I think it just takes time. Take that bridge of being with yourself. And this is going to sound weird. Take the bridge to date yourself. Get to know yourself.

Joel Muddamalle:
So good.

Lysa TerKeurst:
I love what you say about the personal board of directors, because this is true. And I probably have more people on my personal board of directors than most people would. Certainly these two are on it. But I do have some really amazing girlfriends, and we do life. We do everyday life together. We're processing life in the morning. We're processing life after work. We get together, and we play games, and cards, and we just do life together.

And so, when I started going on dates, and it feels weird to say that, but when I started going on dates, if I went on a couple of dates with a person, and I thought, "Maybe I'll keep going on dates with this person," I would say, "We need to have a conversation with my friends." So that my friends could ask this person any question they wanted. And then if I kept going on dates, then I would say, "Hey, we need to get together with my friends." Because my friends know me, maybe even in some ways, maybe a little bit better even than I know myself at times.

Jim Cress:
That's fair. Were you doing this literally?

Lysa TerKeurst:
Yes.

Jim Cress:
Like you say, "Hey, dude, really, it's time now to meet the board."

Lysa TerKeurst:
Yes, absolutely.

Jim Cress:
I know. I know for a fact, but I'm like, "Wow."

Lysa TerKeurst:
Yes.

Jim Cress:
Y'all can do this.

Lysa TerKeurst:
And so, it was important to me, and I mean even flying my friends out of town to meet this person and then flying them out of town to meet someone else when that relationship didn't work out.

Jim Cress:
Which is what every company in America, in the world will do, to come in ... you meet with the board; you meet with the CEOs. You think about this HR thing, and we need our own individual HR thing here and a board and an HR director. Maybe it's somebody outside of us. We do this by the hour in America; churches do this. You're not just going to pop in and be the new pastor. The search committee.

Joel Muddamalle:
Right.

Jim Cress:
It's done everywhere else, and then we get in a relationship like this after a divorce, looking at dating or remarriage, and we go, "Oh." It's like, "No, it's done by the hour."

Lysa TerKeurst:
And is it hard? And is it complicated? And do I feel incredibly weird at times being ... I don't know; I'm 53 years old. Does it feel weird? Yeah, it feels weird, but it is possible. And so, again, no part of this show is trying to tell you what to think or what to do. We just want to give you a lot to think about. So, the last big question, "Lysa, are you dating?" Yep. "Are you going to give us any details?" Nope.

Joel Muddamalle:
Boundaries.

Jim Cress:
Boundaries. We got that. Boom.

Lysa TerKeurst:
Yes indeed. Well, we believe in you, and we're so grateful to bring this time and this information and this wisdom to you, and I hope it really helps.