Does God Really Hate Divorce? with Leslie Vernick (SEEN SERIES)

Silence should never be the price of peace. Today we sit down with speaker, author, counselor, and relationship coach Leslie Vernick to talk about becoming God centered instead of husband centered, the kindness of consequences, and the power of wise community to reduce isolation and strengthen courage. If you’ve wondered whether what you’re living is normal, or if leaders have told you to try harder while you’re shrinking inside, this conversation offers clarity, language, and hope.

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Click here for show notes and to connect with Leslie Vernick.

Chapters

• 0:00 Sanctity Of Marriage Versus Safety
• 0:31 Show Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 1:48 Leslie’s Childhood Trauma And Faith
• 4:35 Wrestling With Boundaries And Forgiveness
• 6:21 From Counseling To Destructive Marriages
• 8:48 Why Marriage Counseling Often Fails
• 10:59 Prioritizing People Over Institutions
• 12:26 Red Flags Of Coercive Control
• 16:15 Healthy Sinner Versus Unhealthy Sinner
• 20:57 Misapplied Teaching And Malachi
• 24:06 First Steps: Honesty And Boundaries
• 27:12 Growing Into Adult Agency

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

And so I think part of our problem in the church is one, is we so value the sanctity of marriage, which we should. I've been married 50 years to the same man this year. So I value the sanctity of marriage. I don't treat it lightly. But we have so prioritized that over the safety and the sanity of the people in that marriage that I think we've in the church today made an idol of keeping the marriage together at all costs at any price, including the mental, spiritual, and physical integrity and health of the people in that marriage.

SPEAKER_01: 0:30

Hi, friend. If you've ever wondered how God's word connects with the messy, broken parts of your story, you're in the right place. Welcome to Beauty in the Brokenness, where we have honest conversations about the Bible, our real life struggles, and the hope God brings for healing. I'm your host, Teresa Whitey, an author, Bible teacher, and trauma-informed life coach, but mostly a friend and fellow struggler. No matter who you are or where you've been, I'm inviting you to encounter the God who is still creating beauty right in the midst of your brokenness. Well, welcome friends. I am so excited to introduce you to my guest today. I'm speaking with Leslie Vernick. Leslie is a popular speaker, an author, and a licensed clinical social worker and a relationship coach. I just have to say personally, I have benefited from Leslie's ministry. I think it is vital and critical for women, especially women in the church today. She has written several books. She is a best-selling author and she is a wife and mom. So, Leslie, would you tell us a little bit more about yourself and the ministry that you do?

SPEAKER_00: 1:48

Yeah, so I was a counselor for licensed counselor for over 45 years. And probably the reason I got into counseling is because of my own trauma story. Of course, we all have, you know, God doesn't waste anything. And so I grew up in an abusive home. My mom was the abuser. She was mentally unstable and had bipolar disorder, of course, as a child. I didn't know that. She left my dad when I was eight. Um, I was the oldest. We had, I had a younger brother and sister. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Chicago, and she was cruel. She was, um, she drank a lot. And so finally, when I was 13, my father got custody of us. And by that time, he had become a Christian, remarried, got his life stable. And by the time I was 14 and had to go live with him, I wasn't real happy about that because I had finally figured out how to work around my mother. I figured out if I didn't go to school, I could stay home all day and clean the house. And then when she would come home for work, she would leave me alone and I could go run the streets and do what I wanted to do. So I was really headed for a bad place. Um, thank God that my father rescued me. But at a 14 years old, I didn't appreciate that. But God did get a hold of my heart later on through the church and had a great experience in the church. I know not everybody does, but I did of loving, godly. It was a tiny little church, and they were, you know, they showed me what a family looked like. They showed me what mothering looked like. It was just a wonderful experience. Um, but my mother came back into our life. Um, I didn't let her attend my wedding. She never got to know my children. She was still scary, she was still dangerous, she was still unsafe. Um, but there was nothing out there as a Christian. Now I'm a Christian. Before I could just hate her and stay away from her, but now I'm a Christian. And there's nothing about boundaries. Cloud and Townsend's book had not been written. And I'm going to school for counseling. And like, do I forgive my mother? Do I put her back into my life? Do I give her access to my children? Is it okay for me to say no? Am I being selfish? And so I had to really wrestle a lot with that personally and figure that out. And so I turned to God's word, and that's where I really began to see God has a lot to say about relationships. And a lot of what we're teaching is off and wrong. And so I began to really work through my own stuff with healing my own hurts and also figuring out how I was going to have a relationship, if any, with my mom and what kind of boundaries I needed to keep myself, my husband, and my kids safe from some of her dysfunction. And so that's where it all began. And so as I began to do some counseling, I figured I'm not the only one who's got this problem. There are lots of women in my counseling practice who don't know how to set boundaries, feel selfish if they do so, feel like, you know, God's word about love means we have to endure all things, meaning we have to put up with dysfunction and sin because that's what the Christian thing is to do. And so as I began to really wrestle with all that, I began to really understand that God was so clear about relationships. Every single one of the Ten Commandments has something to do about protecting community and protecting relationships, our relationship with God and our relationship with one another. And he's that concerned about relationships that he has a lot to say about it. And so I began to really do a deep dive and that began to form my clinical practice. And then when I was working on my book on depression, Teresa, most of my clients were depressed females. And they were all in destructive abusive marriages. And I began to wonder is the best remedy from a Christian perspective to suck it up and take antidepressants and Xanax so that you can have sex with your husband because he abuses you? And is that what God wants? Is that what honors God? And so that took me down a rabbit hole of marriage and the whole works over there, and that's where we are today.

SPEAKER_01: 5:24

Wow. Wow. First of all, thank you for sharing your story. I I appreciate your vulnerability and even just the way that you have expressed things that so many people can relate to. I think, and the questions that you've asked, you know, is this what I'm supposed to do? What does forgiveness even look like? And what are boundaries? And are they okay? And oh, I just I am so excited about this episode because I know there people are on the edge of their seat, like, well, help, help. There's so many women that I feel like have not had maybe wise instruction, wise counsel. And I think unfortunately, and you kind of alluded to this, that the church at large hasn't always been a safe place for women who are in destructive or unhealthy marriages. And what what are some of the common responses you've seen, some of the things that you've seen other people experience when they come to the church and they say, hey, I'm in this relationship and this is happening?

SPEAKER_00: 6:25

Well, actually, women usually don't say that because their husband's sitting right next to them and they know that if they would just actually tell the truth to the counselor or the pastor, they would be in for a devastating carbright home. So that's part of the problem is that marriage counseling is not a safe place to disclose what's really happening. So oftentimes women don't tell the truth. Sometimes they don't even tell the truth to themselves because it's just so ugly. Um, and so they don't have a name for it. They just know that they feel sick inside, they feel confused, they feel scared, they feel objectified, they feel dishonored all the time. Um, and so they have these feelings, but they don't have the word, they would never use the word abuse because he didn't hit them. And so I think women need some vocabulary for what's really happening. We need some descriptors. But oftentimes the church views this. I have a really good example of this. So my mom, um, I referenced her earlier, she later came into my life because she was really, really ill and she needed care. And so I was going to help her. But of course, I had to have some boundaries because she was unsafe for me. Um, but the reason she became ill was because her doctor misdiagnosed her. So she had chronic fatigue, nagging cough, went to the doctor and he gave her an antibiotic for bronchitis. Well, that didn't work. So then she went back to the doctor, she had a wheeze, he gave her an inhaler for asthma. Well, that didn't work. Finally, she had an ambulance ride to the doctor, uh, to the hospital. And truth was, she didn't have bronchitis. She didn't have asthma, she had lung cancer. And so I think this analogy of a lot of marriage counseling is dealing with the common cold of marriage. They're dealing with the bronchitis symptoms, they're dealing with asthma symptoms that are very similar to lung cancer. But an antibiotic that treats bronchitis is totally impotent against lung cancer. And so oftentimes when couples go to marriage counseling and they're describing their symptoms, it sounds like the common cold of marriage problems. You know, this your sinner, he's a sinner, let's figure this out. You need some communications. You need to, you know, go to a retreat and marriage counseling and do this and do that. And that's not going to fix a destructive marriage. And so sometimes we don't have the right diagnosis of what the problem is. And therefore we can't apply the right remedy to fix it. And so I think part of our problem in the church is one, is we so value the sanctity of marriage, which we should. I've been married 50 years to the same man this year. So I value the sanctity of marriage. I don't treat it lightly. But we have so prioritized that over the safety and the sanity of the people in that marriage, that I think we've in the church today made an idol of keeping the marriage together at all costs at any price, including the mental, spiritual, and physical integrity and health of the people in that marriage.

SPEAKER_01: 9:13

Yes. I've I've heard that saying, um, you know, the fish don't know, the water's wet. And I think what you're what that kind of implies is you may be in an unhealthy or a destructive marriage and not even know it. Or maybe you're telling yourself, oh, everybody's marriage is like this, or or this is okay, or this is normal. Um, what are some of the markers? What are what are things that women maybe maybe they feel that you you described it as kind of feeling sick inside? Like, how would somebody even be begin to know, you know what, this is not a safe place for me. I I do need to get help.

SPEAKER_00: 9:52

So I think there's a couple of words that I'm gonna put out there. One is that you feel controlled. Now, this is really hard in a Christian setting because we believe, or at least most of the conservative Christian believes in headship and submission. But headship and submission doesn't mean that as a wife, you get no choices and he gets to decide everything for you. So in normal marriages, you have a say, you have a voice, you can argue, you can give your opinion, you can disagree. When that's not allowed, or that's punished, or you feel silenced, shamed, degraded for arguing back or giving your feedback or not wanting to go along with an idea that he has, um, and that's a pattern in your marriage, he's misusing headship to endorse his own selfishness. And you're misunderstanding submission, which is really you're being coerced, and it's called coercive control, and it's called domestic violence and abusive. And so that's one place where you start to feel controlled, like you don't have your no, you don't have a say, you don't have a voice, you just have to have a happy face and smile and go along with his ideas all of the time in order for there to be peace in your home. So that would be one red flag. A second red flag would be that you feel confused. Like, I thought we agreed that you would call me if you're gonna be late. I never said that. You're trying to control, and you're like, I thought we agreed that we would, you know, both be accountable for how much money we took out of the ATM. And then as soon as you confront him on something, it's a whole different story. He didn't say that, you're misunderstanding, you're making things up. And you start to feel like you're a little cray cray inside because there's a lot of that stuff going on. So that would be another red flag. A third red flag is that you just know he's lying to you. And that happens a lot, that there's deception in big ways, little ways. He's not honest. He said he paid the bill, you found out he didn't pay the bill, you said he didn't take money out here, he said he took didn't take money out of the ATM. You found out that he took money out of the ATM. They may not be big lies, but there are a lot of them. And you're just feeling unsafe that you can't trust what he says. And then another way is that you feel kind of objectified. Like I remember a woman saying to me that she asked her husband, what could she do to make their marriage better? And he said, have more sex and cook better. And that was like, so do your wifely role. It wasn't about how do we talk or how do we communicate better or how do we connect more deeply. It was how do you serve me better? And that was her role as a wife. And she had no other value to him other than her doing her duty. And so you are sort of in the role of a maid, sex object, babysitter, uh, wage earner, if that's what you're doing. And you're not a person to love, you're an object to use. And as long as you are useful, you're valued. And if you're not useful, you're discarded. And that's also a destructive relationship. And I think the last one is if you normally and regularly in your marriage feel diminished, demean, dishonored, you know, the Bible tells us that we are to honor one another. And I remember I was speaking at a conference once at the Southern Baptist Convention, and they asked me, can you dishonor someone and it not be abused? And I would say, not in a regular way. No, you might dishonor someone in a moment of stupidity or sin and apologize. But when you are regularly dishonoring another human being, an image bearer, then you're disrespecting the image of God in them. And you are hurting them, especially if you have power over them, like a husband would for a wife or a man over a woman.

SPEAKER_01: 13:35

Those are some really, really good markers and red flags that people can look for. I I've heard you differentiate between an unhealthy marriage and a destructive marriage. Can you kind of help us understand the difference between those two?

SPEAKER_00: 13:54

Yeah, I actually don't say it that way, but I it would certainly apply an unhealthy sinner and a healthy sinner. Because the truth is we all marry sinners and we're sinners. So there is no marriage without some stress, conflict, hardship, misunderstandings, hurts, all of the above. I've been married 50 years. It happens. Um, and so what's the difference between a marriage that has sinned and you sinned, he sins, and that's what happens, and a marriage that does the same thing in some ways, but becomes destructive. And so the difference between a healthy sinner and an unhealthy sinner is when a healthy sinner recognizes they've done something that's crossed the line, which we're all capable of. We're all capable of an abusive incident. And I share a story of when, you know, growing up in an abusive home, being abused, I was really terrified when I became a new mom. I was afraid that I would be an abusive mom like my mom, even though I was trained. I was a Christian, I was a counselor. I didn't think I would. I thought I might. And in one moment of just sinfulness, I um, in a fit of anger, I yanked my little boy. He was two years old. We were in a dressing room, a public dressing room. I was trying on some new clothes. I'd finally lost my baby weight. And of course, little boys do not like sitting in the dressing room in their stroller for very long. And so he got out of a stroller and began throwing a fit and loud enough that everybody else in the store could hear it. And it embarrassed me. And so I grabbed him by his little arm and pulled him to his feet a little harshly. And he howled as loud as he could, Mom, you broke my arm. And his little elbow was dangling from his socket. And I terrified. So here I was, and I was abused, I abused him in that moment. I took him, put him in his car seat, drove to the emergency room, told the doctors what I did. I didn't lie. I went home, I told my husband what I did. I apologetized to my son. I got the help I needed to never repeat that. And so that's what I would call a healthy sinner. It was a serious sin. And had I continued to do that, I would have permanently harmed my relationship with my child. But I didn't continue to do that. It woke me up and I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't want to be like my mother. I have to get help to make sure I never do this again.

SPEAKER_01: 16:05

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 16:06

Of course he's gonna aggravate me. Of course he's gonna make me mad. And I am responsible to know how to handle that. It's not his fault that I acted that way. So that's a healthy sinner. When they mess up, they fess up. When they mess up, they deal with it. They don't keep repeating it and make excuses for it.

SPEAKER_01: 16:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 16:23

So an unhealthy sinner would blame the child, would say, Well, he was acting up, you know, I couldn't help it, or I was abused, and that's why I do it. They make all kinds of excuses or they completely deny it. I didn't do it, it didn't happen. You're you're he fell. You're imagining things. It's not as bad as you say. And they'll deflect, they'll deny, they'll gaslight. And so that's the difference because you can fix things that you're willing to own, even bad things. Now, some things in a marriage are not repairable. If you shoot somebody in a moment of rage, that's the end. But but some things can be repaired if someone is willing to own them and deal with them and not repeat them. And so that's why in marriage counseling, oftentimes they'll minimize the sin because you're both sinners, but you're very different sinners. One's a healthy sinner and one's an unhealthy sinner. And that unhealthy sinner is not owning their sin, is not dealing with it, is not admitting it, is not repenting of it, is blaming the other person. And that gets very confusing in marriage counseling because the other person isn't a perfect person. And so sometimes they will provoke the other person, or sometimes they will disappoint the other person. And so oftentimes pastors and counselors say, Well, you need to stop making him so angry, or you need to have sex with him more often, or you need to do it the way he wants you to do it. And then he wouldn't treat you that way. In other words, it's her responsibility to make sure he doesn't sin against her, which is insanity.

SPEAKER_01: 17:46

And that is where the destruction comes in. Yeah, because she believes it, she tries. Right. Right. Oh my goodness. So uh you you alluded to this earlier why women don't seek help. Um, is there are there other reasons why, besides the fear of like, oh, if I say something, it's gonna get worse. Are there other reasons why women don't seek help?

SPEAKER_00: 18:10

I think there's a couple. I think there's some wrong teaching in the church about a woman's role and about marriage. So we have made marriage, as I've said before, I think, sort of like in Jesus' day, the Sabbath was like this holy grail that, you know, they had all these rules around the Sabbath, and Jesus was breaking them right and left, and people were just incensed about that. And Jesus said, Hey guys, which one of you wouldn't break the Sabbath to rescue your son or even your animal out of a well that fell into it? You're being ridiculous with all these rules on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for your welfare, not to oppress you. And the same thing in marriage, the marriage was made for our good, for our benefit, for the safety of children that come into a home. It wasn't made so that someone can stay in a relationship and abuse someone without any consequences. And so I think we've made this sacred cow of marriage, and God values the sanctity of marriage, but not more than the safety and the sanity of the people in it. This verse in Malachi, God hates divorce, was actually mistranslated in the King James Version. It was never translated that like that earlier, and it is a hard verse to translate. But what it really says, what does God really hate? Does he hate divorce, or does he hate what causes divorce when a man treats his wife treacherously? That's what God hates, and that's what the rest of the verse says. And so we've taken this phrase that the King James used: God hates divorce when a man treats his wife treacherously. And we've just used the first three words. God hates all divorce for all reasons, and that's not true. That's not true, that's not biblical. And so sometimes God allows divorce, like in Exodus 21, where a slave wife, the lowest on the totem pole of hierarchy of value in the patriarchal culture, a slave wife, a woman who's a slave is lowest on the bottom. And she's married to a man who marries another woman. And it says, and if he neglects her for food, clothing, or sexual intimacy, she may leave as a free woman. So God is saying, hey, if you're neglected in this marriage, you're not taken care of, it's over. You can leave, and you're not even a slave anymore. So God doesn't hate all divorce.

SPEAKER_01: 20:27

So what does it look like for a woman who's right now hearing this, maybe for the first time, like, wait, that's that's an option? I've always been taught God hates divorce. I don't have any options. And she's realizing maybe she's in an emotionally or physically abusive or destructive relationship. What would be a first step for her to take?

SPEAKER_00: 20:51

I think the first step is to be honest with herself. I mean, healthy people live in reality, they live in truth. And the first honesty is this is happening to me. I am being abused, I am being disrespected, discarded, lied to, neglected, completely neglected, and we've ignored that in the church, that we haven't understood that abandonment in scripture is the neglecting of keeping the marriage vows. And adultery in scripture isn't just when a man has sexual intercourse with another woman. Adultery is used as a metaphor throughout scripture for the term unfaithfulness. And so I think if we understand that and we begin to do our own work instead of defaulting our own biblical literacy to someone else telling me what the Bible says, I have to figure this out for myself. I have to read the Bible, I have to look at God's word, I have to pray and ask him. And then understand that as I get stronger and I'm not willing to be an unhealthy sinner myself anymore. I'm willing, I'm gonna be a sinner, but I'm gonna get healthy and I'm gonna learn to speak the truth in love, and I'm gonna learn to have some boundaries, and I'm gonna learn to love my husband well. So this is called the helpmate. But a helpmate biblically isn't an enabler. And that's sort of what churches have fostered is that you just keep loving him and putting up with his sin and forgiving him 70 times seven with no consequences. And that isn't loving anyone. It wouldn't be in child rearing. It would, it wouldn't be loving to let your child kick you because he's angry and you just keep letting him kick you. Loving him would be, hey, you can't do that to me anymore. And you're gonna sit in your room for a while. Now we can't treat our husband like a child, but there are consequences, sometimes permanent consequences for sin. And when we've cut that option off for wives because love covers a multitude of sins and we have to forgive and forbear and use all those scriptural words that make us feel scared and guilty to do those normal, appropriate things, then we don't have any leverage to help our husband wake up. And sometimes good boundaries and strong consequences can help a sinner notice that if I keep doing this, I'm gonna lose everything that's important to me. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 23:04

And you said the first step is to be honest with yourself. And I think that's scary for a lot of people. I think it's frightening, first of all, to admit this is happening. We see ourselves as weak, or we see ourselves as the problem, or it's our fault. Another reason it's scary is because we think, well, if I act on this, it could get worse before it gets better. And and so I think sometimes women stay in a marriage that's not healthy and that's not safe just because it's quote unquote easier. I don't know. Well, what would you say to that woman?

SPEAKER_00: 23:40

I would say, you're not alone. You're not alone. And I think that one of the um faults that we as older women in the church and the church itself has done is not helped women fully move into adulthood. So part of moving into I have three grandchildren, and so part of I was female grandchildren, and I say to them, you know, part of being a grown-up is that you are able to support yourself, that you are able to take care of yourself. That's my job as a mom is to teach you not to need me. That's my job is to teach you not to need me for you to be a fully functioning adult. And so if we think about little girls in church and their little furly dresses, and we say, Oh, what do you want to be when you grow up? And she says, I just want to be a mommy, and we go, Oh, that's so cute. We would never say that for a little boy who's I just want to be a daddy. We wouldn't say that. We would say, Well, that's great, but what else? What else? But we don't say that for little girls. And so there's nothing, there's a noble thing to be a mommy. It's a noble thing to be a daddy. But you also have to be a person, a grown-up adult that's capable of taking care of yourself. And so because we haven't done a good job at teaching our female Christian women to say, I've got to keep up with my degree, I have to finish my college or get some sort of training so that if I find out that my husband is not capable of being a good provider, a good husband, a good father, he's dangerous, he's scary, he's unreliable. I am capable of taking care of us versus I'm stuck because I have no other options. And that's sort of where we've allowed ourselves to be. And I don't think that that's a good thing. So I would say to a woman who's listening and saying, don't shame yourself for it. Just be honest with yourself. Wow. So maybe this is my time. Instead of trying to, so I'm honest with myself. I'm in a destructive marriage. That's step one. Step two is reorienting your priorities. So instead of being a God, instead of being a husband-centered or a marriage-centered woman, you're going to shift into being a God-centered woman because that's idolatry when you've put your husband as your source. He is not your source, he's your husband. God is your source. And so as long as your husband's your source, then you're going to be bending into him, whatever he needs, whatever he wants, whatever he says. When you put God as your source, then you're listening to your true source. You can still serve your husband, but he's not your source. So that if he rejects you or doesn't like you, it's not as devastating as if when he's your source, right? And then you begin to prepare, like, okay, if this marriage doesn't last, because it's looking like he's not going to change, and if I get healthier, I'm going to probably have stronger boundaries against this someday. Then what do I need to do now to begin to prepare myself for the possibility of having to support my kids? And start taking online classes, start going back to college, start figuring out what you are good at, and start working on that instead of pouring all your energy into trying to change him. It's not possible for you to change him. It's only possible for you to work on you.

SPEAKER_01: 27:02

Those are such practical things for women to hear and to put into practice. So I appreciate those thoughts. You do not want to miss the rest of my conversation with Leslie. She's gonna talk about the kindness of consequences, the courage to get stronger, and the power of community, among other things. Thanks for hanging out with me today on Beauty and the Brokenness. To find anything I mentioned on the episode, go to TeresaWiting.com/slash listen, which is where you can find all the show notes. I will have links to Leslie, her ministry, her books, her website, her podcast, all the places that she shows up. As she mentioned, she has a community of women that are ready to help others in this situation. Now you may be listening and thinking, you know, I've had some trauma in my life, maybe marital or maybe not. I want to invite you to consider the Hope Restore Trauma Intensive. I host this intensive with two of my dear friends and therapists, Ann Simmons and Brenda Stewart. What I love about the Hope Restore Trauma Intensive is that we combine clinical practices with biblical truth to create a unique and safe experience. Healing is possible, friend. Click the link in the show notes to learn more. In closing, I want to leave you with this prayer from number six, 24 to 26. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.