"Failed Marriage" label issues - Divorce Minister
Divorce = “Failed Marriage”
Is a marriage that ends other than in divorce thereby “successful?”
I may be speaking from my own baggage or sensitivities on this. Plenty of divorced individuals seem to have no problem with this word selection.
However, I do not like the word choice when “failed marriage” is used interchangeably for a marriage ending in divorce.
The term “failed” suggests to me that I somehow was not up to the task of being married. It implies a deficiency in me as I am the one who bears the history of a “failed marriage” by virtue of being divorced. This strikes me as unjust and inaccurate.
I consider such a label as a subtle blame-shift.
Calling a divorce a “failed marriage” strikes me as leaning towards suggesting shared responsibility in the end of my marriage. I do not like that as such is biblically false. For example, there’s no shared responsibility implied when God instructs the Jewish people to end marriages via the death penalty for the adulterous partner (see Deut. 22:22, Lev. 20:10).
Language matters.
It shapes the discourse and can reinforce unbiblical prejudices towards the divorced. I see this terminology serving such a nefarious end:
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- It obscures the reality that marriages can end via the unilateral choices of one party (see here). The ending of those marriages may have NOTHING to do with quality of the marriage and/or the spouse left behind other than they married a quitter.
- As already mentioned, it spreads blame across both parties for the marriage ending, which may be completely unjust (as in the case of an adultery victim getting divorced).
- It implies a divorced person is less “successful” or skilled at being married than anyone who remains married. This is not necessarily the case.
- Such a label reinforces the dangerous idea that divorce is worse than anything in a marriage–including contemptuous abuse–as staying married is “better” than having “failed.”
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Also,
Are we comfortable saying God had a “failed marriage” (to Israel)?
If not, then I suggest we stop using this term to refer to all divorces.
God divorced Israel over adultery (see Jer. 3:8 and Is 50:1), and I can assure you plenty of faithful Christian spouses exist out there whose marriages ended via the adulterous choices of their former spouses. It is not right to imply deficiencies in these people simply because they ended being divorced after the fact of their partners’ wicked sins.
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*A version of this post ran previously.
