The Ruined Snail

My parents divorced when I was 34. I was not surprised. Things had been extraordinarily dysfunctional for a long time. I tried to help for years, but unless people want to change, they just won’t. I have had to figure out how to interact with them as separate individuals. Things have normalized to some degree, but it will always be a little weird. My mother has since remarried and is very happy. Her husband is a good man who treats her very well. My father is in a better place in his life now, after six years. He talks about getting remarried some day.

Mark 10:1-16
"Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them. 2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"3 "What did Moses command you?" he replied. 4 They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away." 5 "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. 6 "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'   7'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,   8 and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."  10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11 He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."  13 People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."  16 And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them." 

When I was a kid, I played in my backyard a lot, especially with bugs and other creatures I would find. One time I came upon two snails in the process of mating. Snails are hermaphroditic, they have both male and female sexual organs. When they mate, snails put out these long tendrils that look a lot like tiny roots and literally lace themselves together. In my sadistic boyhood manner, I pulled them apart. I tore them from each other, breaking  the bonds they had so intricately woven. In doing so, I destroyed them both.

God hates divorce, he says so in Malachi 2. God hates division, he hates separation, walls, and exclusion, and therefore he hates divorce as the pinnacle of division. It was not his intention for man and woman, once joined, to be ripped apart. It destroys them both. Divorce also has a tremendous impact on children. The damage done depends on the age of the child and the circumstances involved, both before and after. Adolescence is the worst possible time for parents to divorce. The broad consensus is that adolescent children will be irrevocably altered, in mostly negative ways, by divorce.  Children derive a good deal of their worldview and identity from their parents, and divorce disrupts these things in a massive way.

Jesus didn’t like the disciples acting like his minders and gatekeepers. It says he was indignant, but the Greek word means a combination of anger and grief. He was angry and grieved because the disciples weren’t letting those kids through. I like to think it was because the disciples still weren’t getting the idea, but I think Jesus was also angry and grieved because no one, then or today, takes kids and their feelings very seriously. Even parents, sometimes.