Practicing What You Preach

by Vanessa Davis Griggs

  My eyes widened. “You talk to God like that?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, you should hear some of the conversations God and I have. He’ll tell me to do something, I’ll tell Him I’m not qualified and that He really should find someone else preferably more qualified. But He doesn’t seem to listen because He keeps on talking to me about doing it.”

  It was my turn to chuckle. “I never thought of it that way. I talk to God but I never thought about it in the way you just described it. It’s almost like you’re arguing with God.”

  “Not arguing exactly. I like to phrase it as having a healthy debate. A debate, I might add, I always lose. But then, I am going up against God the creator. He knows what I’m going to say before I even say it.”

  “Okay, I’m going to be quiet and let you finish.”

  Marcus proceeded to give me a history lesson as well as a lesson on words. “You believe that divorce is only okay in God’s sight when it comes to sexual immorality,” he said. “Many people believe that. That’s one of the reasons why some women—and yes, there are men as well, although we as a society don’t like to discuss them—who are being physically and emotionally abused and feel stuck in their marriage. There are a lot of women being grossly mistreated, but because they believe divorce is wrong, they stay in the marriage and take it. There are others who have divorced, and God has a special someone out there for them to partner with. But they believe remarrying will cause them to biblically be branded as adulterers.”

  I started to say something again but realized if I kept this up he would never get where he was trying to go.

  “Here’s a little history. In the old days, men had more rights than women. When a man married a woman, the woman’s father gave them a dowry. If the marriage didn’t work out, the dowry was to be returned with the woman. A man could keep the dowry if he thought he was marrying a virgin but it turned out she wasn’t. But he couldn’t lie and say that—marring her name—if that wasn’t the case. Before Moses instituted the act of a certificate of divorcement, all a man had to do was say, ‘I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you,’ three times, and you were divorced. The problem with that was, when the woman wanted to remarry she had nothing to prove she was divorced.

  “So Moses instructed the people that to legally divorce your wife she had to be given, in her hand, a certificate of divorcement or a bill of divorcement, and send her out.”

  Marcus turned to Deuteronomy 24:1 and let me read that scripture for myself.

  “Now, this is important, as it is relevant to the scripture in Matthew five thirty-one where you read that Jesus was being asked about divorce. In Deuteronomy twenty-four one, where it says, ‘When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her,’ that uncleanness cannot be referred to as adultery.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And here’s why. Adultery was punishable by death. You can find that in Deuteronomy twenty-two, verse twenty-two.” He turned to that scripture. “‘If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman.’ Also, in the New Testament, in the book of John, chapter eight, do you remember when those scribes and Pharisees brought unto Jesus a woman caught in the act, caught in the very act, and they brought her to Jesus?”

  “Yeah, I remember that. They caught her in the act, which means she wasn’t by herself, but they only brought her to Jesus,” I said as I looked at him intently.

  “Precisely.” Marcus turned to the book of John, chapter eight, and pointed to the fourth verse as he read it to me. “‘Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?’ Okay, the Pharisees were always trying to trap Jesus. The Law of Moses said that one caught in adultery should be stoned to death. They caught this woman and the man she was with. But instead of carrying out that law, they brought her to Jesus trying to set Jesus up. When Jesus said to them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,’ they all left. That’s because the Law of Moses addressed a lot of other sins and the punishments for those sins as well.

  “People talk about Jesus writing with His finger on the ground. Some wonder what He may have written. I can’t answer that. But what we do know is, everyone who stood accusing this woman must have thought about their own sins and the consequences that should be applied for them to have left without having cast even one stone.”

  “Wow, that’s something, how you were able to tie all of this together.” I was truly impressed.

  “That’s why I wanted to get something to eat before I began. There’s a lot to this, and it can get pretty deep. It may take a little time to peel away all of the underlying layers. But I want you to get at least enough of this to help you understand the history and context.”

  “I’m definitely being schooled here,” I said. “So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where it speaks on divorce—”

  “The Pharisees were trying to trick Jesus, to test Him on His knowledge of the scriptures. They were trying to trap Him. That’s why they misstated the referenced scroll, what we call the Old Testament scriptures, or more accurately, left off part of what the entire scripture said.” He turned to Mark 10:1–12 and read it, then to Luke 16:18.

  “But see,” I said as I looked at Luke 16:18 and read it back to him, “‘Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.’ Then in the book of Mark, chapter ten, verse nine”—I turned back to it—“it clearly states, ‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ And in verses eleven and twelve it speaks again, ‘And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.’ That’s where I keep getting hung up. You put away your wife and marry another, you commit adultery.”

  “There is so much to this, but I’m going to try to go straight to the point to help you get this as quickly and as easily as possible. Let’s address the words ‘put away’ that you saw in these scriptures.” He found a typed page with notes on them. I leaned over to see what he was reading.

  “I love the King James version of the Bible, but I also like to go back to the original word or words in their original language. The word you’ll find in the Old Testament is the Hebrew word shalach,” Marcus said, pronouncing it shaw-lakh. “I have a Strong’s Concordance, and the appropriate Hebrew number for shalach is 7971. They do that because most of us can’t read Hebrew characters.”

  “Okay,” I said. I did understand that most folks can’t read Hebrew, me included.

  “Now the renderings of the word for shalach—”

  “Renderings?”

  “Sorry, definitions,” Marcus said. “It’s that nerdlike thing again, you know.”

  I laughed and felt bad that I’d called him that, but good that he could make me laugh about having said it. “Renderings, definitions, got it! Just call me a nerd-in-training.”

  He shook his head as he smiled. “Shalach: to send away, for, or out, cast (away, out), forsake, leave, let depart, push away, put (away, forth, in, out). Nowhere in these renderings does it say it means divorce. Now here’s what I’ve learned about this Old Testament word. It is used eight hundred and seventy-eight times in the Old Testament, thirteen times relating to intimate relations or marriage. Again, but not divorce. The word shalach in relationships means a separation. The Greek word comparable to shalach found in the New Testament is apoluo.” He pronounced it ap-ol-oo-o. “Apoluo can be found ninety-four times in the New Testament, eighteen of which relate to relationships or marriage.”

  Marcus turned to the book of Jeremiah. “I want to show you where the word shalach would be in the Bible, and I want you to see something.” He pushed the Bible toward me. “Read
Jeremiah three eight.”

  I did. “‘And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce—’”

  “Stop right there,” Marcus said. “See where God is speaking, and He says He had ‘put her away’ and ‘given her a bill of divorce.’ If put away meant divorce, then why follow up with saying ‘and gave her a bill of divorce’? I know, one could argue it’s saying divorce, then gave her a certificate, but it’s really saying there was a period of separation and if that didn’t work, if they didn’t reconcile, a divorce was given. Is any of what I’m saying making any sense?” he asked.

  “Yeah, some.” I didn’t want him to think I was slow, but when it came to things of God, I wasn’t looking for someone to bamboozle me with sleight of hand and fast or double talk. Not that Marcus was doing that. He was actually making this quite plain.

  “Okay, let’s look at it this way. You get married, and according to the law back then, contrary to what you see sort of happened with even some of our most respected Bible figures—think Kings David and Solomon—you were only supposed to have one wife at a time. We know this to be the case in America right now. If you marry one woman and you marry another woman without having gotten a divorce, it’s called bigamy. And those who marry several women are called polygamists. In America, that’s a crime.”

  “I got that. I’m with you on that.”

  “Good. In biblical days, they were to marry one person and only one at a time. If a man sent his wife away, which was something men could easily do at will for almost no reason, and he had not done the legal thing applicable at the time, which was divorce her, he was still considered to be married to her,” Marcus said. He readjusted his body.

  “Just like it is today here in America.”

  “Right. And if you were legally married and you had sex with someone else while you were still married, then that was called committing adultery.”

  I smiled. “Again, as it is today.”

  He nodded. “But back then, if you committed adultery, there was no getting a divorce because of it. You know, like, ‘I want a divorce on the grounds of adultery.’ There was: you get stoned to death for having committed adultery. And dead people don’t get divorced, and dead people don’t remarry. But if you were separated from your spouse and either spouse married another during this time of separation, put away, without a legal divorce, it was not a legal marriage and adultery was being committed. The Bible says that because of the hardness of the people’s hearts, which meant the men were taking advantage of the women and God didn’t like that, steps were taken.”

  “Okay, I think this is starting to make sense,” I said.

  “When the Pharisees asked Jesus this, they were trying to trap Him. Think about it. If you understand the law, you can see where the Pharisees were trying to show that Jesus didn’t know the Old Testament like a rabbi—a teacher—would. Jesus knew that to put away his wife meant they were separated while they either worked things out or were deciding what they would do next. And while they were separated, they were not allowed to marry another.”

  Marcus closed the Bible and placed it on the table. “When you’re divorced, you are legally no longer married. But to put away is not the same as divorce. There are lawful requirements that must be taken for divorce. Now, if while they are separated and either is trying to sexually be with another, then that constitutes adultery. And the penalty for adultery back in that day was to be stoned to death. Death was and still is a legal release from marriage. If your spouse dies, you are no longer married. No divorce papers are necessary. If you divorce them, technically, that’s considered a death, as it becomes the loss of the marital union. Until death do us part—death by dying, death by divorce.”

  The more Marcus talked about the Bible and those things associated with it, the more I wanted to hear. But I knew he was probably tired. This was a lot of information. He must have read my thoughts.

  “I suppose I should give you a break, huh?” he said.

  I flashed him a warm smile. “This really is quite interesting.”

  He looked at his watch. “I suppose I should go now. I hope I didn’t confuse you more than I helped,” he said.

  “No. It was enlightening when you consider there was more going on in those scriptures about divorce than I ever knew. And to see how Jesus knew when people were trying to trap Him, and the way He handled them. I knew the Pharisees and Sadducees were after Jesus, but I didn’t know to what extent they really had gone to get Him, even before He was led to the cross.”

  “History and context,” Marcus said. “History and context along with guidance from the Holy Spirit. I am forever in awe of God. I told Him when He was first trying to show me this that I was the wrong person for Him to be coming to. If you only knew how strongly I felt about this divorce thing before God sat me down and showed me all of this, you would know that I would be the very person arguing that what I just said to you right now on divorce is just wrong.”

  “Like me,” I said. “All I knew was what I saw Jesus saying in red. And there wasn’t anything anyone could say to me to make me see things any differently. But you have presented a compelling case, Mr. Peeples.”

  “I’m not trying to give people a license to get a divorce. But there are so many people who felt as I did about divorce. If they’ve gotten a divorce, they’re hurting because they feel they will be in sin if they ever want to partner with anyone else in life until that previous spouse dies and frees them. Waiting on someone to die just so you can be free? How sad is that? I don’t believe that’s how God wants us to live.”

  Marcus opened the Bible once more. “But even in Mark ten, verses six through eight, it tells us, ‘But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.’ God never intended for us to be alone. In fact, in Genesis, God said everything He created was good, with the exception of man being alone.”

  Marcus closed the Bible again. “Some of us picked the wrong people to begin with. We should have prayed more about God’s desire for our lives. Some of us chose what seemed to be the right person, but they may have changed after the fact. Regardless, God is a God of forgiveness, He’s a God of healing, and yes, He’s a God of restoration. That’s why there was the putting away, the separation time allowed. God can restore. And many know this personally.” Marcus gathered up his materials and put them back in his briefcase.

  I walked him to the door. He had come over as promised and shown me things I never knew when it came to what the Bible has to say about divorce. Yes, there were other questions I still had when it came to this subject. But there was yet one more question I was burning to ask him.

  “Are you still looking for restoration of your marriage?” I asked as calmly and unpretentiously as I could.

  He smiled. “I am no longer in a marriage. Legally, my marriage is dead. I no longer have a wife. She is my ex-wife. Look, I know how you feel when it comes to me. I won’t hound you anymore. The ball is in your court now. All I ask is that you pray about this, and that you allow the Holy Spirit to be your guide. Pray and let God guide your heart.”

  He leaned down, gave me a quick peck on my cheek, smiled, and left.

  Chapter 21

  Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

  —Ephesians 4:26

  It was now Tuesday, and Marcus hadn’t heard from Melissa. He figured she had a lot swirling around inside her head since their talk on Saturday. If she was anything like him, she likely wanted to talk to someone else to see what their thoughts were on what he’d had to say. Particularly if she hadn’t bought into it entirely—not that he was selling anything. Marcus knew this was all in God’s hands now. He of all people knew the scripture that spoke on how one plants, one waters, but God gives the increase.

/>   Sasha stopped by his house that night.

  “Marcus, how are you?” she said as she waltzed inside. Although it was late October, she was wearing a satin nightie-looking top. Classy, but like a halter top.

  “Hello,” Marcus said. “And where are you coming from?” he asked.

  She went to the kitchen area and sat on the bar stool at the counter. “Please don’t start with me. Not tonight.”

  “I wasn’t starting anything with you. I was just asking—” He stopped, realizing it was useless to have this type of a discussion with Sasha. “Where’s Aaliyah?”

  Sasha took a deep breath and released a loud, long, and purposeful sigh. “Could you please just concentrate on me for just one minute before we move on to your daughter? I’ve had a rough day, Marcus. I need a friend right now, not an adversary.”

  “I’m not your adversary, Sasha. I’ve never been, and you know that.” Marcus sat on a bar stool, skipping the one next to her, opting to keep one seat between them.

  “So what happened with you that caused your day to be so rough?” Marcus asked.

  She turned away. “Oh, you don’t really care.”

  Marcus buttoned his lips, silently counting to three. He spoke with slightly more of a lift in his voice. “I really want to know.”

  She turned back to him. “Really? Or are you just trying to humor me? You know I can tell when you’re not being honest, Marcus. You’re not good at twisting the truth.”

  “Yes, I really want to hear it.”

  She smiled then leaned over, grabbed a banana from where it hung, and started peeling it. “I really don’t care much for bananas.” She bit it. “I know you say they’re good for us, but—”

  “Sasha, are you going to tell me what happened?”