We live in a culture that wants things fast and wants them cheap. Recently I received a spam offering a legal “no fault” divorce kit. For $27.95 you can end it all very cheaply, way too cheap!

    Every few years a survey comes out with the similar results: 80% of the people who divorce are more unhappy 1 year after their divorce is finalized than they were 1 year before it was finalized. If that is anywhere near the truth, and my work with people going through divorce suggests it is, $27.95 is way too cheap!

    For years TV and pop psyche suggested that children were better off with divorced parents than with parents who didn’t get along but stayed together. But the decade of the nineties—with its problems with gangs, with the reemergence of rampant teen drug use, and with the senseless violence among our young—has reminded us the of the high cost of unstable families. It takes years for children to get over their parents’ divorce. Some never do. Most children are much better off with unhappy parents staying together than they are with happy parents who are divorced. It’s not the popular notion, it’s just the truth. That makes $2,795.00 or $27,950.00 for a divorce way too cheap!

It’s not the popular notion, it’s just the truth.

    Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to bash single parents. There are times when there are no options: abandonment, addiction, adultery, and abuse are issues of grave concern. But clearly we have damaged our culture, and our children’s future, when divorce becomes routine and our pledges to each other and to God are so easily broken. Everyone is hurt when we are way too cheap!

    As believers, we are called to marry only those who share our faith (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1; 1 Corinthians 7:39), to love each other sacrificially (Ephesians 5:21), to treat each other with honor, to live with each other in sexual joy and purity (Hebrews 13:4; 1 Corinthians 7:1-7; Proverbs 5), and to keep our covenant with God and the person with whom we made it (Malachi 2:13-16; Matthew 19:1-9). For some, that kind of commitment seems too high. To me it seems like an awfully good bargain in a world of STD’s, thousands of dollars in legal fees, loneliness, a deep sense of failure, and the carnage of children’s emotions divorce brings. It’s divorce at any price that’s way too cheap!

    To believe in the power of the Holy Spirit is to believe that God is able to enter into the human heart and change, empower, redeem, and enable it to do what he called us to do. That is true especially if that heart is our own. Character, courage, sacrifice, faithfulness, integrity, honesty, and dignity are not gained quickly or cheaply. But paying the price to develop these traits may just be the greatest bargain you will ever find. God wants to bless you with something valuable, don’t settle for what is way too cheap!