Below is a summary of concepts presented in the article, Is It Lawful? If you object to any of the following statements, I encourage you to read this work carefully and then I invite you to challenge me.
The Bible teaches the following concepts:
- The marital covenant is a conditional covenant, not an unconditional one.
- Marital infidelity and what is commonly considered domestic abuse are not necessarily grounds for a woman to depart from or divorce her husband.
- Polygamy, though not God’s ideal and very unhealthy, is not strictly forbidden by God.
- Only one condition (implying a guiding principle) gives a wife freedom from her duty to her husband: abandonment (implying maiming abuse, torture, etc. equivalently).
- A woman who has wrongly divorced her husband should remain unmarried until her husband divorces her or until she is willing to return to him. Apart from this condition any intimate relationship she experiences is adulterous and should be terminated immediately.
- Children not living with their natural father should be sincerely encouraged to live with, honor and obey their father if this is his desire, so long as he has not abandoned (maimed, molested, etc. equivalently) these children.