April 6, 2022

Genesis 2: 18-22 (NIV)

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the Lord God had formed . . . all the beasts . . . and the birds . . . He brought them to the man to see what he would name them . . . But for Adam no suitable helper was found. . . . Then the Lord God made a woman . . . and he brought her to the man.

Adam . . . was confined to one wife; and, if he had put her away, there was no other for him to marry, which plainly intimated that the bond of marriage was not to be dissolved at pleasure.*

Adam was a busy, productive, single guy with lots of pets. We don’t read of Adam’s having any complaints about his bachelor lifestyle but . . . ignorance is bliss. God knew that Adam would never learn how to pick up after himself if he didn’t have a “suitable helper” so he created one for him. Once again, no complaints recorded from Adam.

But what happened after the honeymoon phase was over? It turns out that the woman wasn’t so perfect – she gave in to Satan’s temptation and broke the only law in their world, then she enticed Adam into breaking the law as well. What was Adam to do? He couldn’t move back in with his parents – for obvious reasons – and he couldn’t send her home to live with her mother, either. He couldn’t very well replace her with a younger, more pliable model. Their only choice was to work it out.

Perhaps more marriages would be saved today if couples determined that their only choice is to work it out. “If it doesn’t work out, we can get a divorce,” is an attitude of failure. So is, “Even if it doesn’t work out, we can’t get a divorce.” Neither option fosters a willingness to do whatever it takes to keep your vows. And maybe fewer marriages would arrive at this malfunction junction if they entered into it with God as the matchmaker. God found a “suitable helper” for Adam – why can’t we trust him to do it for us instead of depending on our emotions and hormones to lead us down the aisle?

Divorce . . . is nothing more than public acknowledgement that someone has broken his or her vows.*