CHAPTER 38

WHAT I THINK ABOUT MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

NEW THOUGHT makes every man his own pope, and it is therefore a risk for any one individual to assume to voice the New Thought belief in regard to marriage and divorce. I therefore will content myself with giving my personal ideas, with which a majority of New Thought people will doubtless agree.

We believe that sex is divine, inherent in every organism and in every atom in all creation; that it is, and always was, and ever will be expressed in many ways, according to the stage of development of the individual; that its expression — not its character — changes with the evolution of the individual.

The expression of sex in human history is an open book — to him who can see through things. What forms sex expression will take in the future is a matter of pure speculation and prophecy.

New Thought affirms evolution, and it therefore takes the future of conventional marriage on trust, knowing the fit evolves and persists.

What Jesus said about there being no marriage in heaven indicates that he believed marriage law a makeshift that eventually would be outgrown. It looks as if he considered such regulation a necessity as long as the "hardness of heart" of unevolved humanity made it necessary to protect children and mothers by legal process.

Man and woman must devote themselves to the little ones as long as they are little. Otherwise society must assume the burden. So the members of society instituted marriage to compel fathers to provide for their wives and children. As long as we have unequal distribution of wealth we shall need marriage laws to keep fathers in the treadmill. When we get equal distribution of work and wealth, as we surely will in time, there will be no economic treadmill, and no need of a law to compel fathers and mothers to stay married. Likewise there will be no squalid homes to drive men to drink and vagrancy, and women to desertion and suicide.

The lack of money is the root of fifty per cent of family jars and consequent divorce.

False standards of living based on the idea that to be happy and great one must spend more wealth than his neighbor, is the root of the other fifty per cent of family evils and divorces.

Look deep, and you will find every divorce a hybrid from both these roots.

The New Thought ideal of human beings as "members one of another," all equal heirs to all riches, human and divine, is destined to express itself in equal distribution of wealth, education, and opportunity to every man, woman, and child. With no poverty to pinch the body and starve the soul, and no false standards of living to drive us ambition- mad, love will find itself free to express its abiding ideal.

It is love that keeps people married. In the absence of love it is either duty or economic necessity that binds a man and woman together after love has flown.

The secret of a happy marriage is eternal courtship. Love grows in courting; it dies of neglect.

At present we are too busy to love, so we separate and each runs away after his own little god of cheap things — money, position, excitement. By and by, after the separation is complete in truth, we record it publicly in a "bill of divorcement."

Give us rest from running after false gods and we'll have time to work out our deepest abiding ideal of marriage. Until we know how to choose a mate and cherish marriage, we must register our failures honestly in a "bill of divorcement" and give both parties a clean slate and a new trial.

Divorce is matrimonial bankruptcy: a life-saving necessity at times, but never a credit mark.

To make divorce difficult is to maintain a matrimonial debtor's prison, wherein nobody gets anywhere and the children, with society, foot the bills.

Blessed is divorce when it is inevitable, and honest.

A thousand times blessed the marriage that grows in depth and height with the years.

Who would choose the former if he had sense enough to work out the latter? Nobody.

Therefore, oh, society, be forgiving even to seventy times seven divorces, until we learn how to realize our ideal of love and marriage.

When Jesus was accused of breaking the Sabbath he said, "Man is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man."

So New Thought affirms in regard to all laws and institutions, including that of marriage.

Why should man need law to make him cherish a wife, and both of them cherish the child? Only because his heart is hard and his reasoning crooked; or because economic conditions are stronger than his desire and power.

Why does the church insist on the sacredness of the marriage service? Because it believes in the hardness of heart of all men and women. And because it considers the family as an institution that must be maintained at the expense of its individuals: man was made for marriage, says the church.

Marriage was made for the protection of women and children as the wards of men, says New Thought; give women the ballot and equality of earning power with men, and the marriage institution will be evolved and continued for the protection of children.

The church clings to tradition. It doesn't realize that people as a whole are more intelligent and more gentle and considerate than they were when marriage laws were made.

New Thought affirms the right intent of every human being, and the right of every individual to make or break marriage according to the dictates of his own conscience; in other words, according to the urge within him of that Spirit which works its good will in and through every soul, but does not lead all souls alike, nor mayhap any two souls alike, even under similar conditions.

The old church thought says marriage is made by God.

The New Thought says true marriage and true divorce are both made by God in that Heaven which is within the individual; and that upon proper application the church advertises the marriage with its blessing, and the state records it. Also the church advertises the divorce with anathema, while the state records it as legal.

New Thought likewise says obey the law of your land, for "the powers that be are ordained of God" — as long as they last.

We note that God, speaking through the people, changes his laws to meet new conditions evoluted; works in and through the most advanced thinkers of each and every age to free the people by law.

Also we note that the conservatives and ecclesiastics of every age cling to traditions and splutter against change.

So, in a nutshell, New Thought as I see it stands for:

1. The true marriage of love between man and woman.

2. The consummation of marriage by legal ceremony and public record.

3. The cherishing of marriage in eternal courtship, with oneness of ideal, and devotion to mutual high purpose.

4. The separation in truth of man and woman when God in his heaven within either, or both, severs the bond of love between them.

5. The granting of absolute divorce upon application of either party, on the one ground of incompatibility.

6. The granting of such applications for divorce as soon as the court is assured of proper custody, care, and support of minor children.

7. The living up to marriage laws and divorce laws to the letter as long as they both exist; not because man is really married or truly divorced by a judge's signature, but because society has a right to know these vital truths about the individual that it may govern itself accordingly; and the individual owes it to his own character and soul to live in honest co-operation with society.

The laws of marriage and divorce are man-made for man's convenience. He used to own his women, and if they didn't toe his chalk line he turned them out to beg their living or starve in disgrace and rags. To make their hold on women more secure the men had a "gentlemen's agreement" that no other man could take in or marry a woman thus turned out to grass — like any used-up horse. Disobedient women were "put away" in this fashion, turned out to grass and disgrace like this two thousand years ago. It was the "custom." It was the "law." A piously vindictive man could thus insure himself the righteous satisfaction of getting up some morning to find his "put away" wife on his front door step dead of starvation and exposure; a case of "God's wrath" visited upon the "sinning one."

When Jesus came he told these sanctimonious old Pharisees that it was a crime to "put away” a woman like this for any cause, without giving her "a bill of divorcement," that would free her to be married to and supported by some other man who might want her. Without such a bill of divorcement no "respectable" man could or would marry her and she was forced into adultery or prostitution to keep soul and body together. Read the text carefully in light of the customs of those days and you will see that nowhere did Jesus even hint that there was any wrong in a man putting his wife away, or a woman leaving her husband, or either one marrying again; but only that it was a mean and wrong act for a man to "put away" a woman without freeing her to marry again, by giving her a "bill of divorcement."

Yes, Jesus said, "But every one that putteth away his wife saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress; and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away committeth adultery." (Matthew 5: 31, 32.) This is equivalent to saying that if a man marries a woman who is legally "put away" for fornication neither he nor she commits adultery. Which is precisely Jesus' meaning. A fornicator in the Bible sense is a "flirt" whose desire goes out after a man to whom she is not married; such a one is a fornicator whether or not she has had "guilty" relations. Study your Webster's Unabridged.

What Jesus said amounted to this: If your wife wants another man, divorce her; so that she will not need to commit adultery in order to get him — loose her legally and let her go. Study the derivations of the word adultery: the same as adulterate — when a woman carries two men in her sex life she is an "adulteress"; so, if you are the husband of such a woman you are enjoined to put her legally away. But for no cause are you to put away your wife as long as she is "true" to you!

But did you notice that nowhere did Jesus even hint that your wife is not free to leave you at any time or for any cause, nor does he anywhere call her adulteress if she goes to another man after you free her by law.

Why does Jesus talk to men only, on this subject? Because the men owned the women and were responsible. No woman could get support or good name except as a legal wife, no woman could leave a man except at terrible cost to herself. But men could and did cast off wives on the flimsiest pretexts. So Jesus commanded them not to put away a wife unless she wanted to go, and to make his putting away a legal one: otherwise the husband was worse than an adulterer, he was a maker of adulterers.

Jesus was talking to those who forcibly put away wives, not to either husbands or wives who leave of their own accord and do it legally.

A marriage certificate and a bill of divorce are merely legal papers recording certain truths in the lives of two persons. The truths themselves are the important things, and these are locked in the hearts and minds of the persons concerned until such time as they choose to advertise them to the world in the legal way, by a marriage certificate and ceremony, or a divorce certificate and ceremony.

A marriage certificate announces a tie, and warns others to respect that tie. This saves everybody the possibility of misunderstanding and misdirected effort to win another already won.

A divorce bill announces the severance of a tie, and leaves both parties free to seek and be sought in marriage.

Honesty requires that these vital facts of life be advertised by a legal process that leaves no doubt.

The man or woman who seeks to hide from the public his marriage or his divorce is a crook and a cheat, and his crookedness is cheating himself first, last, and all the time, and worst of all.

And the man or woman who is divorced in truth, and yet refuses a "bill of divorcement" to the other party is contemptible as well as crooked; except in those cases where divorce is withheld for a time to compel reasonable terms of support for minor children. I have my opinion of a woman who refuses divorce to a man in order to bleed him for alimony.

Oh, no, that would not multiply divorces. It would prevent them. It is the tie of ownership that binds in marriage, and anything that binds makes a sore spot. Leave man and wife free to rest themselves from the yoke when it isn't needed, and they'll pull without making galled spots. We don't fret ourselves against ties that we know we can untie at will. We don't mind pulling together on essentials if we are free to play our way between times.

Looking backward over history; looking around at the homes and lives of my acquaintances and intimates; reviewing my individual experiences and spying carefully within at the ideas, emotions, instincts, and intuitions aroused by stimuli both outward and soul-ward; I conclude that the real monogamic marriage is the soul-convicted ideal, and the constant quest of every woman at least, enlightened or not, Christian or barbarian, "good" or "bad," Methodist, atheist, or Mormon. A true companionship for all time if not for eternity is, I believe, the deep-down longing and quest of every soul; as sure, and as unprovable as immortality itself. The true marriage once found, marriage laws are fulfilled and -not needed. No one who has approximated the true marriage doubts this, or tries to explain it. He knows as he knows conversion and God. And he knows others cannot yet know nor understand.

The Life Urge, the divine call of sex, is stronger than civilization itself; stronger than right or wrong or law. It is the basic truth of creation.

There was that famous New England bishop who led the van against divorce a few years ago. Oh, folks must get married and stay married and increase and multiply and replenish whether or no. But the good bishop had to hush his harangue and help his own beloved niece to get a divorce. Perhaps he has learned by experience that divorces, too, are made by God. Sometimes, at least.

Which reminds me of a clever saying of Ella Wheeler Wilcox', that one divorce in a lifetime might be a misfortune, but any more would be a bad habit!

And William says that there are worse and more disgraceful things than divorce—chronic family jars for instance.

Out of my own experience of one unsuitable marriage, and a divorce followed by a suitable marriage that has now stood the test of fifteen years; plus an unusually wide observation of other marriages, happy and unhappy, I am led to the conclusion that in order to demonstrate a happy marriage one should begin with the parents of the contracting parties.

The foundation of a happy marriage is a reverent respect for the other person's wishes. The chief obstacle to a happy marriage is the woman's desire to reform the man, or the man's desire to reform the woman, or both. If children are brought up from the beginning to respect the wishes and desires and idiosyncrasies of others they will not enter marriage with the idea of making over each other.

So the first requisite of a happy marriage is to pick out the right person — one whom you can thoroughly respect without making him over; one whose ideals and purposes in life agree with yours, and whose "ways" do not antagonize you.

Between husband and wife there should be first of all in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, absolute liberty; in all things, that love which covers the multitude of shortcomings.

HYPOCRITES AND DIVORCE >

< HOW TO TEACH YOUR CHILDREN THE VALUE OF MONEY (Continued)

Index

Custom Search