By Sam Amadi
In this sad moment when a woman is alleged to have died from brutal beatings from her husband, it is important to keep clear perspectives about marriage from the Bible.
I take the responsibility to always defend the Bible perspectives because I believe the Bible is the book of truth.
Most things the Bible says about marriage are not said to give men privilege but to protect the rights and dignity of women. Many unbelievers and modernists believe of the Bible quote the verse that says “what God has put together let no man put asunder” to be a restriction on the liberty of women. Nothing is farther from the truth. It is the falsehood of some feminists whose objective is to weaken faith in the word of God. In truth, that verse was addressed to protect women and against men.
To start with all societies in the past (even today) were patriarchal. Men had liberties to throw away their wives as it pleases them for good or bad cause. Initially Moses made it more difficult by saying you have to go through the due process of issuing the woman a formal documentation of divorce. This was an improvement on existing tradition and legal system. Jesus now deepened the protection of the right of women in marriage by stating clearly that marriage is for life. You cannot just push away the woman except the fundamental condition of the covenant had been violated. Even at that, marriage has to be protected from the flaws of human conducts. You should forgive your wife of whatever she did and continue.
Again, the Bible also says “God hates putting away.” This verse is now being used by some women activists for marriage rights to caricature the word of God. This is a sad distortion. In the passage where this verse is recorded, the Bible reprimands husbands who engage in violent behavior. God says that they stand condemned for their violent conducts against their wives. He says abuses and violence against your wife are equivalent to murder and carry a blood stain. This is so because God is a judge and hates the putting away of the wife of covenant. You have to deal justly and respectfully with your wife. It is about dignity and justice.
It is really surprising that any woman will turn this verse upside down to mean a form of captivity for women. There is no where the Bible says a woman whose life is threatened should not run away from the killing husband. The Bible actually warns the unfaithful husband against putting away their wives for mere convenience. You cannot ask to divorce your wife because she does not know how to cook or has not given you a male child etc., these are protections against mistreatment of women.
How did Satan convince some men and women that divine protection is divine bondage? How did they now focus attack on an institution that protects women instead of the evil people they married? This is plainly the work of Satan, the one who works against the truth.
May God be true and all men and women false. It is my privilege to always defend God and his truth from the untruths of those who decide to distort the truth of God.
God forbid that I will bend the truth to come to the same level with my sinful life. I will rather improve my life to come to the truth of the word of God. If it is not working, it is not because the word of God is false or untrue. It is because we are a crooked people who need redemption and reformation.
Dr. Sam Amadi is Coordinator, Abuja School of Social and Political Thought
