{"id":1058,"date":"2020-07-22T15:47:58","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T20:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/?page_id=1058"},"modified":"2020-07-23T09:00:58","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T14:00:58","slug":"marriage-mayhem-in-pernambuco","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/cases\/marriage-mayhem-in-pernambuco\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage Mayhem in Pernambuco"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marriage Mayhem in Pernambuco<\/em><\/p>\n

Allan is a frustrated missionary. He had worked, with a small team, as a missionary church-planter for an independent, non-denominational mission agency in the region of Pernambuco. Yet never in his 13 years in Pernambuco had he felt so bewildered.<\/p>\n

Last week Jos\u00e9 Carlos, a respected leader in their latest church start, divorced his wife Ana. When Jos\u00e9 Carlos announced this to the church on Sunday morning, Ana began weeping. Their children did not yet know about the \u2018divorce\u2019 and started to cry as well. Jos\u00e9 Carlos explained that as a single 20-year old, Ana co-signed a significantly large loan for her father. She had long since forgotten about this, assuming her father had paid the loan back. Her father passed away recently but had never repaid the loan, leaving a huge financial burden on Ana\u2019s family. Now, 25 years later, the banks had come to Ana, threatening to take all her possessions.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Carlos claimed that if they didn\u2019t divorce, they would lose their house, cars, savings- everything. However, because of the \u2018divorce,\u2019 their possessions legally reverted to Jos\u00e9 Carlos\u2019 name and became safe from the creditors. Jos\u00e9 Carlos told his children and the church not to worry. This wasn\u2019t what Jesus was talking about when he told his followers not to divorce. His relationship with Ana had not changed. The marriage certificate was merely paper. All they had done was get rid of the paper. Marriage is an issue of the heart. \u201cLook at my heart. God doesn\u2019t care about a silly piece of paper!\u201d<\/p>\n

Allan emailed a friend in America and relayed his frustrations. \u201cChristians should obey the laws of the land. Jos\u00e9 Carlos and Ana are no longer married by the laws of Pernambuco. How can they sleep together, and act no differently than when they were actually \u2018married\u2019? Moreover, they have divorced so Ana is not liable for a loan that she<\/em> co-signed to pay if her dad could not repay. Jos\u00e9 Carlos said that she shouldn\u2019t be liable for what she did at the young age of 20. He said Pernambucan culture dictated Ana must obey her father in such cases and that she could not be held responsible. I worry what this says to our young church (the average age is about 21) about accepting responsibility, our word, and personal integrity. If we lack character, we really have very little.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was not the only current church situation involving marriage. Allan noted, \u201cOur church secretary, Renata, has been living with her American boyfriend for 6 years and has a five year-old son. They moved in together because she got pregnant and decided to raise the child together. Renata then met some members of our church and became a Christian. She now wants to obey the law of Pernambuco and, more important, follow God\u2019s law. She wants to marry her boyfriend, the father of their son. The catch is Shawn, her boyfriend, refuses to get married.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two American missionary women, Jennifer (Allan\u2019s wife) and Cassandra met with Renata to discuss and study Scripture about being God\u2019s woman and a godly wife. They were strong in their opinions and quite direct with her. Renata knows that both of them see her as continuing to \u201clive in sin.\u201d Cassandra has continued to meet with Renata. According to Jennifer, Renata stopped sleeping with her boyfriend, \u201cuntil the marriage thing is cleared up.\u201d They did, however, continue to live together, as this was most convenient financially and for their son.<\/p>\n

Yet, Jos\u00e9 Carlos has now informed Renata that she is married \u201cif she loves Shawn in her heart\u201d and is \u201ccommitted to raising their son together.\u201d He said that this is a common law marriage, and that the marriage certificate \u201cis unnecessary for Pernambucan law or for God.\u201d Allan talked with a local Christian judge who noted that Pernambuco ended common law marriage 45 years earlier. Still, there are constant fights in court over possessions from couples that \u201cshack up\u201d but never register officially. \u201cIf they leave each other, the judge says Pernambucan law does not regard them as ever having being married. I shared this with Jos\u00e9 Carlos. He said that normal cultural practice was most important, not Pernambucan law. I asked Jos\u00e9 Carlos how such a couple could ever divorce if they separate, and he had no response. Renata is thrilled by Jos\u00e9 Carlos\u2019s opinion. She feels justified renewing sexual relations with her \u2018husband\u2019, despite Shawn\u2019s continuing insistence that in his eyes they are not married and he has no intentions of ever registering with the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The present situation troubled Allan deeply. He thought it likely Jos\u00e9 Carlos\u2019 personal life had skewed the advice he had given to Renata. Jody, an American missionary who works with Allan, opted for a neutral stance and deferred to Jos\u00e9 Carlos to decide what is culturally proper. Jody noted that the Bible doesn\u2019t give us specific commands regarding what marriage should look like, whether a ceremony should be civil or religious, or even if a ceremony is necessary at all. All the Bible gives us are marriage \u2018snapshots\u2019 from different times and places. Since this is so, Jody advocated an approach that viewed marriage not as a \u2018biblical\u2019 issue but simply one of culture. When there is no clear command, this means that Scripture is essentially silent regarding what Christians should do. It is like women wearing head coverings in Corinth- purely a cultural issue. Allan also feels that both he and Jody are somewhat hesitant to address the issue, fearing that Jos\u00e9 Carlos might \u2018blow up\u2019 if they offend him in an issue about which he has taken such a public stance. Jos\u00e9 Carlos had lost his temper like this in the past, and the relational strain between him and the missionaries had taken months to repair. Allan added that as the<\/em> significant opinion leader in the church, Jos\u00e9 Carlos could turn the church against the missionaries if there was a falling-out, resulting in division and a possible church split.<\/p>\n

\u201cPernambuco again has huge economic problems because of non-performing loans. So many Pernambucans borrow money and do not pay back as promised. Ps. 37:21 says that the wicked borrow and do not repay. Last year a leader of one local church borrowed an amount equivalent to US $3,000 from the church where Allan is. This leader agreed to pay the loan back in two months. It has been 18 months now, and he is yet to repay anything. The list of local Perambucan believers in serious personal debt is large. I think this issues of marriage and not following through on other commitments rest upon the same spiritual problem of a lack of character and integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI sense a gross cultural compromise. At the foundation of our relationship with Jesus is a commitment \u2018I give my life to you\u2019, similar to a marriage covenant. When leaders teach the commitments pieces of paper represent are not important, but all that matters is how you feel in your heart, then I am concerned with the implications toward our commitments to God. Instead of \u2018for better or for worse, in sickness and in sorrow,\u2019 are we as leaders communicating that we keep commitments as long as it is in our best interest and convenient? Do papers we sign mean nothing if \u2018worse\u2019 happens?\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, Renata discovered she was pregnant. She had begun sleeping with Shawn again after Jos\u00e9 Carlos, and Jody told her that her cohabitation was equivalent to marriage as long as she had a commitment to Shawn in her heart. When Shawn found out, he told her to abort. She said no, that it was a gift from God. Shawn doesn\u2019t consider it a gift from God and is accusing Renata of being a \u2018slut\u2019 and getting pregnant by another man. He is threatening to leave and take their son back to American when his job finishes this summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday,\u201d Allan concluded, \u201cRenata told Shawn that if he were going to call her a slut, then she would \u2018break up\u2019 with him. She told me this in English, and her conversation with Shawn was in English. Even her vocabulary has now changed from \u2018divorce\u2019 to \u2018breaking up\u2019 as if they were never married. Convenient.\u201d<\/p>\n

As if this wasn\u2019t enough, Allan also mentioned a young Christian couple who had been engaged for some time. To the surprise of many, it had become known that they had been sleeping together. When pressed, the couple revealed that they had gone to the civil authorities some time ago and registered their marriage but had kept is secret. The church had nothing to do with this union. The couple was content to skip a church-sponsored ceremony, considering themselves already married. Allan wondered if the church has any role in how Christians think about marriage or whether Christians simply default to whatever culture, civil law, or the couple dictates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marriage Mayhem in Pernambuco Allan is a frustrated missionary. He had worked, with a small team, as a missionary church-planter for an independent, non-denominational mission agency in the region of Pernambuco. Yet never in his 13 years in Pernambuco had he felt so bewildered. Last week Jos\u00e9 Carlos, a respected leader in their latest church […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3578,"featured_media":0,"parent":178,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1058","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1058"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1058\/revisions\/1063"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/gstpathways\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}