Does God Hate Divorce? 

This question is one that has burned inside me for years. I spent years trying to make my train wreck of a marriage succeed, because I didn't want God to be mad at me.

It took seven long years for me to overcome my fear of God's wrath and to accept that maybe, just maybe, my marriage wasn't working out because God never intended me to marry Mr. Ex in the first place (I knew that from the beginning, but that's a story for another day). The truth is that I woke up one day and decided that I'd rather tick off God than live another day in my Godless marriage. And that's the day I asked Mr. Ex to find himself another place to live.

A few months later, I was on a Christian-based social-networking site and approached by a man from the Midwest. Mr. Midwest began telling me how he was looking for the love of his life. My profile on the site clearly states that I'm not there seeking romance; it was obvious he hadn't done much more than look at my photo before messaging me. But rather than bid him farewell, I decided to set him straight by telling him that I wasn't interested in a serious relationship.

His immediate response was that he DEFINITELY wanted a serious relationship because he didn't want to "catch any diseases." Ahh...yet another guy who thinks the label "serious relationship" is the secret passage required to get down a woman's pants...again, another topic for another day (really, I'm full of them).

I patiently told him that casual dating didn't have to involve sex and that I didn't feel comfortable entering into a relationship until I had officially filed for divorce. It was at that point that he actually read my profile and noticed that I was listed as "separated." And boy did he have a field day from then on.

He promptly informed me that "God HATES divorce" and that if I was a faith-filled Godly woman, I would go back to my husband. I said that "hate" seemed like a strong word, especially coming from a man who had two children out of wedlock. Apparently, he had great elitist pride in the fact that he never married and therefore, was escaping God's wrath. I decided to skip over the obvious and not point out that most forms of Christianity don't advocate premarital sex either. After all, I wasn't there to pick a fight.
I just asked him why he thought God hated divorce. He cited Malachi 2:16 (NKJV). Rather than devote space to the passage here, I'll leave those of you interested to look up the passage yourselves.

Now, taken literally, the passage does say the Lord hates divorce. But Wikipedia poses two different interpretations. One is that Malachi attacks the practice of terminating marriage based on nationality (Ezra promoted divorcing foreign wives in favor of Jewish wives). The other is that in many portions of the Old Testatment, Israel is God's bride. In that context, Malachi's discussion of divorce could be construed as urging readers not to break faith with God by going back to their old ways of paganism and idolatry.

I could have pressed this issue with Mr. Midwest, but I chose not to, because I refuse to battle wits with unarmed people. And truthfully, because I didn't care enough about his opinion to try to change it.

But since we're on the subject, what are your thoughts?