Randy and Paula White Divorce: Something Doesn't Add Up

The news of Paula and Randy White's decision to divorce came as a painful shock to me, as to many other Christians.

While I did not always have use for some aspects of Paula White's preaching ministry, I enjoyed her half-hour TV show Paula White Today and often listened to it via an Internet feed. I learnt a lot from her teaching and I even once bought a CD with one of her sermons, which she was offering along with a book by an author that I admired. So hearing of the divorce plans left me stunned.

Even more shocking to me than the news of the divorce, however, was the explanation given for the split. For Christians of the Pentecostal movement, citing "two lives going in different directions" as the justification for divorce is incomprehensible. It sounds as wrongheaded as someone blowing off the most important opportunity of their lives for a flimsy excuse like rainy weather. If the two of them are running their lives and their ministries under the authority and direction of the Holy Spirit, I do not understand how the marriage has reached the point where they feel there is no option but to go their separate ways.

Jesus, speaking about marriage, proclaimed: "So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate." (Matthew 19:6, NKJV). Where, under this clear declaration, is there room for a couple to call it quits because their lives seem to be moving away from each other? When challenged by the Pharisees about how Moses permitted divorce, Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries antoher woman commits adultery." Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.(Matthew 19:8-9, NKJV)