“For I hate divorce!” says the LORD, the God of Israel. “To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty,” says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. “So guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife.”

-Malachi 2:16, NLT

“The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the LORD Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

-Malachi 2:16, NIV

This has taken me years to get to this point. If you had asked me about divorce when I was in seminary and still married to my first wife, I probably would have parroted the hatred of divorce line so often delivered in evangelical Christian circles.

What I’ve grown to hate is how pastors either give into or create pressure to say that “I hate divorce!”

People take this from a misinterpretation and mistranslation–arguably–of Malachi 2:16 where some translations have God voicing such hatred of divorce. What is lost is the context of divorce being used to commit adultery.

For some of us–faithful spouses–divorce is a God-given mercy!

Divorce sets us free from someone who is living in open defiance of God’s will while abusing us on multiple levels. It is life-saving! 

Talking about hating divorce is like talking about hating amputation surgery:

Yes, God intends for us to have both arms. However, when one arm threatens to kill us, it becomes necessary to cut it off. So, it would make sense that one can be thankful for the amputation surgery because it preserved life and a future that would not exist without such a procedure.

I wished more pastors would talk about the lives being preserved through divorce than hating divorce.

A more positive position towards biblical divorce would go a long way to fight unbiblical divorce prejudice. Hating divorce is a short distance from hating on divorced people.

Of course, I recognize the fear of enabling unbiblical divorces. However, if they want to avoid divorces in their churches, pastors can always go back to better biblical teaching and talk about preventing cheating as that is the context of the Malachi 2:16 verse after all!