It has never ceased to amaze me the senseless rejection of common sense that the US Press and some academics engage in. A magazine cover story (Time Magazine) read, "What Divorce Does to Kids." That was the title. The caption read: "New research says the long-term damage is worse than you thought. Should unhappy parents stay hitched?" It seems to me the Magazine is saying that in the past there was an assumption that kids were not that affected by divorce, or, if they were hit hard by their parent's splitting up they could in the end "get over it."
Well, time does not heal all wounds and you don't just get over divorce. Now, if we are to take Jesus' words with any degree of seriousness, it can be nothing other than a violent act. "The man shall leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will be become one flesh" (NIV). One flesh! Yet there are those who propagate a notion that divorce can be managed.
One million new children every year, to quote statistics from the magazine article, get caught up in the divorce of their parents. In 1980 we hit that mark and we have hit it every year since. We are now well over 20 million kids in 20 years who have had their lives wrecked by divorce. He said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them."
God I hope that this church would not, like the disciples, stand in the way of that.