A Sad Picture Painted For Us
In recent months, we as a congregation have been working through serving one another and living harmoniously in Christian community is good and right. We are called to build one another up.
I was saddened by an article this week outlining the statistics around divorce since the beginning of the pandemic. We are facing the highest number of applications for divorce in 10 years. More shocking, this has created the opportunity for a new career. A divorce coach.
A coach draws images of winning, celebration, passion and strong motivating words. How does this translate to the setting of relationship breakdown and divorce?
According to a client, traditional counselling and support from her lawyer was not enough. The divorce coach cheered her on to claim independence and to win a life worth celebrating without carrying the weight and consequences of the broken relationship. The half-time rally becomes a moment where the aggrieved have a chance to list all the ways in which they felt wronged and deserve better.
Curtin University Professor, Farida Fozdar suggests that our sense of self-image is driving our fulfilment in relationships and ultimately causing us to seek a separation, “I think the divorce coach phenomenon is kind of part of that broader phenomenon that focuses on the individual and self-work”.
A sad picture; a world where we idolise and elevate our sense of individualist need and fulfilment. Not the image we see in Genesis when God formed a partnership between Adam and Eve (Gen 2:18). Nor the image given to us as we seek fellowship with each other as a community of believers (Acts 2:42-47).
We, as followers of Christ, understand that we are as one. We are to work together. The breakdown of a relationship, be it intimate such as a marriage or plutonic friendship, carries the weight of sin, grief and pain. Such heaviness must be felt in order to bring about reconciliation.
In some cases, it is right and proper that a relationship status changes but, in all things, we are to seek the ways of Christ and encourage others around us to do the same. We are to be disciples who make disciples, celebrating unity and reconciliation first to God and then each other where possible. We do this by encouraging one another (1 Thess. 5:11) and speaking helpfully into another’s needs (Eph 4:29) in their quest to find new and eternal life through our Lord and Saviour, Jesus.
By Linda Thomson
