When the Words Still Sting

Thoughts on Things Like Divorce, Jesus, and Wrestling With Scripture Honestly

By  LONNIE KING

This will shock some of you out there, even those closest to me, but I have a ‘confession’ to make: 

I still read the Bible. 

Well…more accurately, I still read a Bible app on my iPhone.  I just don’t have the same desire to let everyone know I do it that I once had.  And that’s probably because I don’t have the same goals in reading it today that I used to have.

But this weekend I came back to a passage in Mark’s Gospel that I’ve been over many times. And, I’m back to it not because it comforts me—but because it doesn’t. 

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery…”
(Mark 10:11, NLT)

Jesus said that. Not Paul. Not some obscure Levitical law. Jesus.

And I’m not gonna lie—it stings. It stings because I’ve said that I don’t want to associate with the religion that abusingly attaches itself to Jesus, but I still want to be a follower of Jesus.  But, he seems a little too ‘hard-line’ here.

Especially if you’ve ever been divorced, or close to someone who has. Especially because it seems to reinforce the mindset you know if you grew up in a world where divorce wasn’t just frowned upon—it was treated like a moral failure on par with, I don’t know, robbing a bank or abandoning your kids at the gas station.

🧠 What I Used to Believe

But I decided to come back to it and sit in the discomfort for a while.  And wrestle a little with this Jesus guy.

For a long time, I was taught to treat passages like this as infallible, unbreakable, eternal rules. No nuance. No grace. Just black and white, hard truth from the lips of the Son of God.

But if you stick around long enough—and actually live some life—you start to realize that “black and white” doesn’t hold up so well in the messy, complicated gray of real people and real pain.

👀 What I See Now

I’ve had to revisit this passage. And what I see now isn’t a legal ruling from on high—it’s a response to a specific group of men who were using their privilege and power to discard their wives like outdated furniture.

Jesus wasn’t handing down a blanket moral code. He was pushing back against a culture that treated women like property and marriage like a one-sided transaction.

But then—and this is where it still gets me—Jesus pulls the disciples aside in private and doubles down: divorce and remarriage equals adultery. Period.

No footnotes. No context. Just the kind of statement that used to make me stop reading and quietly say, “Welp… I guess this radical guy is not for me.”

💬 Personal Confession (and a Reality Check)

I know some of you may be this far into this reflection, and are thinking, “Oh shit!  He’s getting a divorce!”

But, no, nothing is further from the truth!

For the record—I’ve never been divorced and I doubt I ever will be. My wife is my best friend, and we’ve been walking through life together long enough to know what we’ve got is something rare and worth protecting. So, she’s stuck with me.

But we’ve got people we love—family, friends—who have been through it. And others who might have to navigate it someday.  So, this isn’t just a theological exercise. It’s real life. It’s real people.

And maybe that’s why it matters so much to me—not just what the Bible says, but how we interpret it when the stakes are personal.

Still, this passage feels like more than just a conversation about marriage. It’s also a lens—a way of exposing how we engage with all of Scripture.

Are we reading it like a rulebook? A relic? A mirror? Something else entirely?

❓ What If This Isn’t for Everyone, Everywhere?

Because here’s the thing: if we say that was only meant for that moment, that culture, that audience… what else wasn’t meant for all time? And if some parts of the Bible don’t carry over, how can we be sure any of it does, and why are we still bothering with the rest of it?

Those questions don’t come from some dark place of rebellion. They come from a very human place. A faithful place, actually. A place of wrestling.

⚖️ Where I Land Now

I’m not in the camp that treats every single word of Scripture as a divine, timeless decree. But I’m also not out here tossing the Bible in the dumpster because it makes me uncomfortable.

I’m not a “Jesus said it, that settles it” guy. But I’m also not “Jesus was just a nice guy with good vibes and a beard” either.

I don’t know where that puts me exactly—except maybe right in the middle of the tension. Somewhere between hardline Jesus and sweetheart Jesus.

Somewhere between “you’re going to hell” and “you’re doing great, sweetie.” Somewhere that feels a little more honest than either extreme.

🎬 Just When I Thought I Was Out…

Sometimes I feel like Michael Corleone in Godfather III—

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

That’s what my relationship with the Bible feels like these days.

I try to look at things through a broader, more culturally informed lens. I want to see the nuance, the history, the human fingerprints all over these ancient texts. And I do.

But the words themselves—these particular words—still have weight. They keep pulling me back in. And so I live in that tension, stuck between reverence and realism.

Between what was written then and what I’m living now…and between offering mindless platitudes and something useful, lasting and real to people who need that.

🪞What If I’m Doing the Same Thing They Are?

Here’s a hard truth I don’t want to skip over: I’m quick to criticize evangelical Christians for twisting the Bible to make it say what they want it to say. I’ve seen them justify abuse, power hoarding, exclusion, and fear—all with a chapter and verse.

But if I’m honest, I have to ask: Am I doing the same thing here?

Do I want to reinterpret this passage—not because it’s culturally necessary, but because I don’t want to believe that Jesus was a hard-line, anti-divorce moralist? Am I bending these words because I can’t reconcile them with the Jesus I hope is true?

I honestly don’t know.

Maybe the reality is, we all come to Scripture looking for affirmation more than transformation. We find what we’re looking for. We highlight what matches our values. We downplay what unsettles us.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s why none of us, no matter how devout we claim to be, really believes every bit of it.

There…I said it.

I’m thinking that maybe the Bible doesn’t carry an inherent worldview as much as it reflects back the one we bring to it. And maybe the way we interpret it says more about us—our fears, our convictions, our hopes—than it does about the text itself.

I don’t have a clean resolution for that. But I know it’s a question worth asking. And I’d rather live with the discomfort of that question than pretend I’m above it or I’m on the right side of it with all the right answers.

I tried to live like that for a while.  It doesn’t work.

🔥 When Faith Looks Like a Fight

Most of the people I grew up around don’t understand that space. Some are suspicious of it. Some think I’ve “gone soft” or “drifted from the truth.”

Hell, several of them would tell you I’ve outright departed the faith and am bound for hell.

Well…aw, hell!

No, but I get it. When you’ve been taught that faith means never questioning, then someone who starts asking hard questions must look like a threat—or a cautionary tale. But from where I stand, the questions didn’t destroy my faith. They refined it. They made it more honest, more compassionate, and frankly, more Christlike.

🙌 So What Do I Still Believe?

Yeah—this passage about divorce still stings. Yeah—that may be because I don’t agree with it.  I think divorce is sometimes inevitable. Sometimes even necessary.

But maybe Jesus did too. And this encounter with hypocritical power-mongers was meant to be a private reprimand for them only and not a hard command for all humanity and all time.

Maybe he wasn’t trying to create a new rule—just trying to disrupt a broken system. Maybe the sting of his words isn’t about punishment, but about pause. Maybe it’s meant to stop the powerful from treating people as disposable. To jolt us into taking covenant and care more seriously.

That sting might still have something holy in it.

Because maybe it’s reminding me that people aren’t disposable. That covenants shouldn’t be taken lightly. That power should never be used to discard someone who’s inconvenient to you now.

Those truths do carry across time.

So no, I don’t think Jesus was laying down universal policy for all cultures in all eras. I don’t think we have to read that passage and determine that those harsh words apply to us today. I think he was calling out the heartless and defending the vulnerable.

Here’s the big theological reason I believe that: because that’s already the worldview I bring to the table…and that’s the kind of Jesus I’m trying to follow—not the one who shames the broken, but the one who sits with them. Even when I am them.

All I know is that it’s feeling grittier than usual this weekend, so…

Grace and grit to you!  — LK