I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Mark 10-11.

    Jesus’ teaching about divorce and remarriage contains a lot on proper sexual behavior. The first and most important thing is what it teaches us about marriage. Marriage is for the rest of your life. In Jesus’ day there were two schools of teaching on divorce. One taught that a man could divorce his wife for any reason he chose, even just because he did not want to be married to her anymore. The other school taught that a man could only divorce his wife for serious reasons, such as infidelity. The “trap” in the question was that most people followed the first school. Jesus not only sided with the less popular school on this subject, He stated that if a man divorced his wife and got remarried he was committing adultery (and the same for the woman). I want to note that what Paul says on the subject is consistent with what Jesus says here: if your spouse leaves you, you are no longer bound. But Jesus does more than give His position on the issue of divorce, He gives us the basis for His teaching on the subject.
    Jesus’ teaching on divorce is based on something which is relevant to modern society’s take on human sexuality. Jesus tells us that because God created mankind as male and female a man leaves his parents and is joined to his wife. Jesus teaches us that marriage happens when God unites a man and a woman together, so that they are no longer two individuals. So, as far as the followers of Christ are concerned, marriage is between a man and a woman and divorce is not an option. What those outside of the Church chose to do is entirely up to them. One of the failures of the modern Church has been its failure to remain faithful to Jesus’ teaching on divorce. Once the Church started to make exception for the hardness of human hearts, it lost its ability to stand firm on other teachings. Jesus’ teaching here also gives us an understanding about “gender identity”. Perhaps the biggest mistake which Christians who remain faithful to Christ’s teaching on this subject make is to conflate “gender identity” with “gender role”. For that matter, society in general makes this mistake. I generally avoid talking about this subject because there are people in our society genuinely struggling with their identity. The loving thing is to work with them to show them God’s love and how He designed them to be the way that they are. This does not mean that every person who is biologically male was intended to fill the role which our society assigns to men, nor every biological female the role society assigns to women. However, God has a role He intended for each of us to fulfill and He assigned us a biological gender for the purpose of filling it. Generally, those struggling with gender identity need help dealing with abuse they experienced. Sometimes that abuse resulted from their unwillingness to accept the role which society assigned to them because of their biological gender. In all cases, we need to approach their situation with God’s love and make sure that we operate with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Whatever issues the person is struggling with, they will not be helped by us pretending that they are not the biological gender which God made them.