Does Divorce Shatter the Image of Christ and the Church as John Piper Suggests?

Will Your Divorce Destroy the Image of Christ and the Church? John Piper’s Strange Views on How to Treat People Who Are Going Through Divorce

Several years ago, retired pastor John Piper, known for his controversial views on divorce and remarriage, shared a 3-minute video addressing the question, “How to Respond to Christian Friends Who Choose Divorce.” His perspective stands in stark contrast to what many compassionate and supportive pastors might offer in similar situations. Piper openly acknowledges his stance as “crazy” and unusual, noting that even pastors at his own church do not share his views. You can watch the video here: [link]. 

As you listen to the 3-minute video, notice the advice Piper gives to the friends of a divorcing couple—

1.  Piper tells friends to “pursue” the divorcing couple. (Track them down and lecture them.)

In this brief YouTube talk, Piper urges Christians to confront couples considering divorce, emphasizing the need to “pursue” them. By this, he means friends and acquaintances should actively seek out the couple to admonish them. Notably, Piper does not encourage empathy or concern for the emotional turmoil the couple might be experiencing. The grief, fear, sadness, anger, despair, betrayal, and anxiety that often accompany such situations are absent from his focus. This omission isn’t incidental. It reflects a consistent theme in Piper’s pastoral guidance. In his official 1986 position paper on divorce for Bethlehem Baptist Church, Piper warns against displaying tenderness like Jesus, cautioning that such care might be mistaken for compromise.

Piper focuses on condemnation, berating your friends who are in marital crisis. But I would suggest that in reality, Christians are called – like the Good Samaritan — to minister to the injured person with compassion, mercy, and love. They should attend to the real wounds. 

A friend’s relationship with the divorcing couple matters. If the couple counts the friend as a confidante, then hounding and lecturing them is out of line. Struggling individuals will come to their intimate friends and tell the story. And those friends show wisdom by listening to the story without interrupting, and by expressing sadness over the pain caused by bad behavior. We are called to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

So, if you are going through a life-saving divorce, and someone criticizes you, tracks you down and pressures you to stay, you are not required to listen or obey. If you care about your friendship with them, you can listen politely and tell them you will consider their viewpoint. But in the end, it’s not their life, their safety, or their sanity. Basically, it’s none of their business. This divorce is hurting you more than it hurts them. They have no skin in the game. God doesn’t hold them responsible for your decisions. 

2.   Piper tells bystanders to “plead with tears in their eyes,” begging the person in crisis not to “shatter the image of Christ and the Church.”

There’s so much wrong with this recommendation, it’s tough to know where to start.

First, can you envision someone coming up to a woman or man, perhaps in the church foyer, breaking into hysterical tears, and berating them for destroying the image of Christ and the Church?

Christians rarely give up easy on marriage, especially if they’ve been brought up in the church, love the Lord, and know that marriage requires patience and forgiveness. It’s arrogant and insulting to assume they are divorcing because they are quitters, or are ignorant of God’s Word, or don’t care about the sanctity of marriage. Or that they just don’t care about how divorce will affect their children.

And the desperate spouse who is trying to escape a pattern of physical abuse, emotional abuse, criminal behavior, severe addictions, or infidelity is not likely to say, “Thank you for that lecture, I had no idea my divorce would bother you this much. I guess I’ll stay married.” And even if they do waiver in the face of this pressure, it will likely be temporary. Shaming a person who is already hurting is nothing short of cruel and mean and it doesn’t solve the problem: Their marriage is still not safe.

Second, is the image of Jesus Christ and his Church so fragile that it will be damaged if a Christian files for divorce? What sort of weird theology is that? And what does it even mean? There are many big sins out there: molesting children, murder, rape, or genocide. Does divorce have some magical power that hurts God more?

I would suggest—

Jesus is more powerful
than life and death,
wind and waves, disease
and all powers in heaven and earth.
Your divorce can’t destroy him.

In fact, the Bible tells us that God himself is a divorcee and the Bible not only allows divorce for multiple reasons, it also commands divorce in three passages.

Third, this statement “divorce shatters the image of Christ and the Church” diverts attention from the real problem: the destructive sinful behavior in the marriage: the violence, malice, addictions, adultery, and indifference. It is a diversion, a gaslighting tactic called sin-leveling, that makes Jesus the real victim, and dismisses your injuries as trivial.

Another way of minimizing and excusing bad behavior, especially toward women, is to tell abused wives they are expecting too much from their husband—that even kind behavior is too much to expect.  For example, they might say, “Stop making an idol out of your husband. He isn’t going to be perfect and he isn’t supposed to meet your every need. Only Jesus can do that.” Messages like this tell an abused wife she cannot expect to be loved or treated with respect, though Ephesians 5:25-30 tells husbands six times they must love their wives. These messages also demand that the wife minimize and silence the pain she experiences, and tell her to “take it,” accept her husband’s sin with an air of piety and martyrdom.

“Sin-leveling” turns the tables and makes you the bad guy, so now the pastor or Christian friend does not have to look at the behavior of your spouse or your pain. Instead of showing care, they can minimize your injuries and say: “The hurt done to you is nothing compared to what you are doing to Christ and the Church by divorcing.”

Dangerously, Piper makes a person who wants to speak out or escape an abuser, into an “Enemy of God.” Once a person has been identified as the Enemy or a traitor by the pastor, other church members feel righteous about abusing them, gossiping, shunning, and banning them.

Yet, when Piper and his wife went through marriage problems, he wanted support and understanding. Sadly he doesn’t offer that to others.

Also, when John Piper’s son Barnabas Piper went through a divorce and remarriage, John Piper not only attended the wedding but sat in the front row and applauded. 

3. Piper tells friends to say, “We’ll work with you,” and offer money, counseling, and rebukes.

Part of Piper’s suggestion is kind and caring. If the couple is open to counseling but merely lacks the money, offering financial help is a compassionate offer.

But friends shouldn’t assume you haven’t tried counseling.

Like many of us, you probably went to a lot of counseling and it didn’t help. Friends should not expect you to prove it. Friends are not the Holy Spirit and they don’t know what happens behind closed doors. Nor is a betrayed spouse likely to tell the worst things, especially if there was felony behavior (physical violence to body or property, child porn, incest/pedophilia, etc.)

People at church are not entitled to receive a blow-by-blow description of everything that’s happened in your marriage so they can evaluate it. 

4.  Piper’s church excommunicates divorcing people.

Granted, if a spouse poses a danger to their ex or their children or others, excommunication might be the right thing. For example, if a person is hanging out in the parking lot after service to intimidate or stalk their ex-spouse; or if they go out of their way to tell verifiable lies about the other party in public, then a restraining order and prohibition from attending might be in order.

However, if a church excommunicates godly spouses just to punish divorce, then leaders are abusing power. Jesus, Paul and the Law of Moses allowed for divorce.  Read the story of an abused wife, Natalie Hoffman, who was excommunicated from Bethlehem Baptist Church where John Piper was once pastor.

5.  Piper laments other Bible scholars have made divorce easier

John Piper holds the “permanence view” or “unconditional marriage” view of marriage, meaning divorce is not allowed for any reason. He admits this is a view few pastors share. He’s right: according to LifeWay Research, probably fewer than 1 in 4 Protestant pastors agree with him.

He even admits that other pastors at his former church disagree with him (he’s retired now). Piper posted a position paper online (“Divorce & Remarriage: A Position Paper,” 1986, updated in 1989), showing his exegesis of a few select Bible passages on divorce and remarriage. But his study of the topic breaks many rules about interpreting the Bible.

In this paper, he doesn’t look at all biblical passages about divorce; he doesn’t talk about the cultural and religious background of Judaism at the time of Jesus; he doesn’t look at justifiable divorce in the Old Testament; he doesn’t explain the history behind the post-Exilic divorce prohibitions, or Jewish marriage and divorce practices. He doesn’t mention God divorcing his own people; and he doesn’t compare the similarities in Jesus’ responses when faced by hostile and cunning religious leaders of his day. He doesn’t even mention Jesus’ cousin was arrested and executed for criticizing the king’s divorce. Piper does not do a good job as a Bible expositor.

Compare his work with the paper by Dr. Justin & Lindsay A Holcomb (Justin is part of the conservative organization Gospel Coalition, founded by John Piper, but does a better job at biblical research.) He has an excellent podcast on the topic and why abuse is a biblical reason for divorce: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/may-web-only/domestic-violence-bible-divorce-abuse.html)

6. Piper is strident about his position, striking fear into the hearts of abuse victims who don’t know him. 
However, in his position paper (p. 2, link above), he includes a caveat acknowledging that he might not be correct… Imagine how many abuse victims have stayed in bondage to a cruel spouse and sacrificed their well-being for Piper’s opinions. 

No one goes into marriage hoping it will fail

No couple goes into marriage wanting it to be a disaster. Most Christians are hopeful, prayerful, and optimistic that God will give them the strength, courage, and good character required for a marriage that last until death-do-us-part. Few people would imagine infidelity, abuse, neglect, etc., would destroy the vows and the trust that underpins them. Yet it happens. And it happens a lot. Nearly half of divorces are for serious reasons. 

What Would Jesus Do?

Divorce is the sad result of hard-hearted refusal to do what one promised in their vows: faithfulness and love. It is also a lack of decency, of refusing to “do unto others as you would have done to you.” We have a choice: To care for the victims or to blame and torment them.

The Gospels show us what Jesus would do. He modeled kindness and care for people in pain. He didn’t kick people when they were down. Jesus is the perfect image of God, and we can be confident we are doing the right thing when we imitate him.

The Bible allows divorce for a pattern of infidelity, sexual immorality, physical abuse, verbal/emotional abuse, and neglect that comes from addictions.

For more on this topic, read the blog post about Myth 19, goes further to debunk the belief that divorce “shatters the image of Christ and the Church.” Read The Life-Saving Divorce, Chapter 6, for a full explanation of the biblical grounds for divorce. 

BONUS:
Just for fun, here’s another laughable tweet John Piper has posted publicly. Don’t forget that in the Old Testament, King Saul was the RIGHT king, the hand-selected king, the God-ORDAINED king… at first.

But King Saul’s own lies and deceit caused God to reject and replace him. The same goes for a spouse who sin, betrays, and cheats.

Your spouse may have been a person who behaved with integrity at the beginning of your marriage. Your decision to marry them was likely bathed with prayer and blessed by your church. But having their name on a wedding certificate isn’t a magical spell that prevents them from taking the wrong path and sinning repeatedly and deliberately. And we’re not talking about the run-of-the-mill sins such as being in a bad mood and snapping at someone or another sin that causes little or no injury. We’re talking about the marriage-endangering sins that do damage to the safety, love, and respect in the marriage.