Divorced Pastors...or Pastor's married to divorcees.

Didn't God divorce Israel for cause?

Concerning Biblical divorce I find the passage in Jeremiah 3:8a to be interesting on many levels.

God says talking to Jeremiah, "I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries..."

It doesn't seem to have disqualified God from being God.

 

What about him? You think a wife walks away from a 40 year marriage for absolutely no reason? Perhaps, but doesn't it at least raise a question? It does for me, and I think for most reasonable people.

 

If Paul meant just polygamy, he would have said polygamy. If he would have meant just divorce he would have said divorce. (I see it as divorce and married another or divorce initiated by the man.) You use the fact that he did not say divorce as a reason to disclaim divorce yet you use different standard to include polygamy.

I feel we have left the vigorous discussion stage and are starting to be argumentative, which is not what I intended.

I myself, wish that all saved people could hold the office of Pastor, Elder and Deacon. (Tho all saved people can and should have a ministry that is just as important as any office of the church) But, I must yield to God and His plan for the structure of His church. I am saying this with all the Christian love that I have and mean no ill will of any sort. Even though we disagree on some doctrines, I rejoice that we have a commonality of professing Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour. My prayers are earnest for you as you seek your walk with God. :thumbs:

 

Not at all. There is no Greek word specifically for "polygamy." There is a Greek word for "divorce." If you want to say "he must not be a polygamist" in the Greek language, you would say "a husband of one wife."

The definition of polygamy is to have more than one wife. That is what Paul is excluding. If divorce was in his mind, he would have used the actual word, not addressed polygamy, like he did.

If you want to yield to God and His plan structure for the Church, quit adding unbiblical prescriptions to it. God said nothing about a divorced man being Pastor, so neither should you.

 

People talk about having high standards. Fine...so long as they are Biblical. If they aren't, they're lower...no matter what man may say. So I still say Havensdad and Pastor Larry and Dr. Bob are right on. Let God be true and His word stand sure.

 

What else did Jesus say in this passage?

 

What have you left out of the passage?

 

If only you could listen to your own advice my friend.

 

The issue between polygamy and divorce will probably never be settled as to the meaning of a qualification for pastor. This thought occurs to me though. When the Lord calls a person to be a pastor, then that person has already passed the qualification test or the Lord would not have called him. So, since every pastor must know in their hearts that the Lord did call them, or they would not be pastors, are there any out there who are divorced?

 

Would you argue that everyone who claims a call from God is indeed accurate? I sure wouldn't. People are easily mislead.

The whole point of qualifications is because a call to pastor is not only between a man and God, but between a man and the church of God. If this mystical call between a man and God was all that was necessary, then Paul would have no reason to Timothy or Titus what the qualifications were for pastors because it wouldn't matter. They would not need to know. The point of the qualification list is so that the church will know what God expects a man should be like before they call him. They do not merely have to take the man's word for it.

 

My ex wife and I have started talking again after being divorced for two years and are aiming at getting remarried somewhere down the line. Would a man that was remarried to his first wife be eligible at some point to be a pastor? I would think that in some ways he would be a better counselor to couples having marriage problems after having gone through a divorce, only to be reconciled with his wife.

 

YES. Divorce, in itself, is not a disqualification. Of course there are other qualifiers that must be met by scripture. Often, divorce is the result of not meeting these qualifiers. Then of course, the calling.

It is the divorce and the remarrying of another that would disqualify but, it would not disqualify a man from ministry. Just the office in the church that require a man to be the husband of one wife (and it doesn't mean one wife at a time.)

 

I think it's a little ironic that you say we should stop playing the blame game and then pinpoint the main question of the text as being "Ïs this man blameless?" How on earth do you establish blamelessness without investigating who is to blame?

I also humbly submit that it is faulty logic to ask:

Is a man whose wife left him unquestionably blameless? I think most reasonable people would wonder, and that is the point. If you wonder about a man, then he is probably not blameless.

You are implying that it is somehow his fault that his wife left him...we don't know that for sure. Your justification for this assumption is the fact that she left him so your accusation and your proof are one and the same...this makes no sense.

That is tantamount to saying:
All pastors are lazy if they are full time and do do not hold a secular job down. How do we know they are lazy? Well like I said they don't hold a secular job down!

How do you justify inadvertently blaming the pastor simply because he is married to the woman? Surely she is responsible for her own actions and decisions? Surely God holds each of us responsible as individuals for our actions? How can we then tie people in to complicity in anothers action simply because as reasonable people we wonder about it? Shouldn't we be thinking the best about others and not the worst. We cannot judge a person's heart or thoughts by what we assume to have happened. It is only their actions that speak to us. Our own minds and hearts according to Jeremiah 17:9 are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, so how can we trust our own thoughts and feelings in judging others?

There is a vast difference between him doing things to make her unhappy and her deciding to divorce him. We all make our spouses unhappy at some stage and vice versa, that doesnt give any of us reason as Christians to divorce the other.The person being divorced cannot be painted with the same brush as the one insisiting on the divorce.

Blameless has nothing to do with my assumptions because if we disqualified people merely on our feeling s or suspicions of wrong-doing none of us would ever qualify to do anything!

 

I wonder if perhaps you didn't read closely. Asking if a man is blameless is not playing the blame game. It is a question that the text demands us to ask.

Bad thinking on your part. I haven't offered any proof. I have merely said that people wonder. And they do. "What happened?"

Again, bad thinking on your part. Bad comparison.

I haven't inadvertently blamed anyone for anything. I have pointed out the reality that a marriage broken apart is a situation that raises questions.

Because wives don't leave husbands in vacuums. It simply isn't that way.

Exactly. So if you think nothing is wrong, you should not trust your own thoughts and feelings. Again, the question has to be asked.

Not true. There are many people of whom there is not even the thought they they are involved in sinful patterns. This is a charade that simply doesn't work.

The point is that a man's home life affects his blamelessness, and most people have questions when a man's wife leaves him. That's simply the way it is and we all know it.

 

This is false. I have actually counseled two friends, where the woman admitted the husband was wonderful, had done nothing wrong, and she was basically just tired being a "goody goody." She wanted to go out, get drunk, and party.

And before you say "This is the exception," I think this is a LARGE percentage of the divorces that happen today, in our "party" society.

 

Without proof, this is mere circumstantial evidence. I think the overwhleming evidence bears out that rarely is there a marital dissolution that is solely the fault of one party. There's no question one may be more or less guilty/innocent. One man claimed this and the wife almost completely bore it out. Another man has claimed this about each of his three divorces. The latter doesn't have the same evidence as the former.

But in most cases, I think people have an instictive knowledge. A young pastor whose wife abandoned him worried about whether or not to make public what his wife had done (abandoned due to spiritual reasons, was adulterous, and involved in drugs). When he spoke to some in his church, they all to a person said "Oh, we knew this all along. We can't believe you didn't see it."

I think that goes for most all the qualifications: what assessment is given by the people who really know the man? Sure, you can find some yahoo who doesn't really know (or care to know) the facts who will stir the pot. But that's typical.