I was being interviewed for what would be my first church pastorate and I was nervous and unsure what to expect. The twelve deacons sat in a row in front of me and took turns to ask questions which I answered as clearly as I could. All went reasonably smoothly and then came the really tricky one: "What is your position on divorce and remarriage? Would you remarry a divorcee?"

I didn’t know if this was a trick question or simply an honest one. There might have been a deep-seated pastoral need behind it or it might have been a test of my orthodoxy. Either way, I didn’t think I could summarise my view in one sentence and, when I thought about it further, I couldn’t decide what exactly my view was. I gave a deliberately vague reply: "Well, I guess it depends. Every case should be judged on its own merits."

It sounded good to me – and fortunately it must have sounded good to them, too, because they offered me the job – but I made a mental note to put a bit of study into the subject of divorce, quickly.

It’s a good thing I made that decision because I soon needed a real answer to what had until then been merely a hypothetical question. My Baptist Church was in a suburb with an Anglican and two Catholic churches nearby. Divorcees from these churches came to us asking if we would conduct their new wedding. The Anglicans would say something along these lines: "Our vicar says we can’t remarry in our church. He told us to get remarried in the Registry Office and, after that, we could have a church blessing, but we want to say our vows before God, not to a civil Registrar."

The Catholics had an additional problem: "My priest advised me to get my previous marriage annulled, but that would mean that it wasn’t legally valid." I remember one particularly upset man saying, "I don’t want to make my children into bastards", and although Catholic theologians would say that isn’t quite the way it works, it is how many people regard an annulment. All this made me very concerned that I found the right response to give to these sincere Christians.

Then I found that some of my deacons were remarried divorcees. Should I throw them out of church leadership? If I did, I realised I’d be losing people who I believed to be some of the most spiritual in the church, and who had exemplary Christian homes and marriages which God appeared to have blessed.

I was surrounded by people who needed the right answer – but what was the right answer? I had always found the Bible passages about this to be confusing and contradictory.

• Why did Jesus sometimes say no to divorce and sometimes allow it?

• Why did Jesus allow divorce only for adultery while Paul allowed it only for desertion?

• Why was remarriage equivalent to adultery, even though it was after a divorce for adultery?

So I hit the books. Well, more specifically, one book – the Bible – and I was surprised by what I read. I wasn’t surprised by the content because I had read all the relevant passages many times before, but I was surprised because this time it suddenly made sense.

It had been some time since I’d last looked at these passages properly and in the meantime I’d done a PhD in 1^st century Rabbinic Judaism. Whilst doing this I think I’d read everything the early Jews had written so that this time, when I read the familiar New Testament texts again, I was now doing so through the eyes of a 1^st century Jew – the people to whom Jesus and Paul had addressed their teaching. All these difficult texts on divorce and remarriage became clear.

Maybe not quite all the texts. I still had some questions to answer and some work to do. I didn’t really understand the ancient Near Eastern context of Moses when he wrote down the ancient laws of the Jews given to him by God at Mount Sinai and I didn’t understand all the Greek legal jargon in Paul’s writings. I had to go and check up a lot of Jewish documents again, but broadly speaking the problems and contradictions which I had been used to seeing before, now became perfectly clear – and what’s more, their teaching was sensible.

The trouble with most theologies of divorce is that they aren’t sensible. They may give a reasonable account for most of the texts, in a forced kind of way, but their conclusions just aren’t practical in the fallen world we inhabit.

Most of society feels that the Bible has nothing sensible to say about divorce and remarriage, and even many Christians feel that they can ignore the Scriptures on this particular subject. The laws of Western nations, which are based largely on Biblical principles, have deliberately decided to avoid the issue of grounds for divorce by allowing no-fault divorce. This has resulted in a huge increase in divorces as well as a feeling that marriage can be ended by just about anything, and this in turn has resulted in disillusionment with the whole institution of marriage.

Draw your own conclusions

My only aim in studying this topic and in writing this book, has been to listen to God as he speaks to us through the Bible and I hope that you are prepared to read the Bible again with me as I explain further. But please don’t just accept what I say as being the correct interpretation. I’m not claiming any revelation from God and many Christians interpret the texts in other ways. Paul says in 1 Cor.14.29 that we should judge the prophets and if we are asked to judge those who bring direct revelations, then we should certainly also judge our Bible teachers. My prayer for readers of this book is that we will use Scripture, the help of the Holy Spirit, and our intelligence to judge where the truth lies and then live by our consciences.