A life restored, pain comforted, and turned into good for others
Today I am sharing my latest interview. My guest Barnabas Piper grew up as a son of John Piper and with that surname came many expectations. Divorce wasn’t one of them. But God wasn’t finished with him. Now he is remarried and a pastor.
Barnabas spoke of the stigma of divorce which he sometimes feels even now years later, remarried and working as a pastor. His father, John Piper holds more restrictive view of divorce and remarriage that over time Barnabas decided he did not agree with. But his father graciously made the room for this difference and attended his wedding.
Barnabas spoke of how he needed a time of redemption and healing left him which ultimately left him feeling ready to date and marry again.
We discussed how God comforts us in our specific troubles partly so that we can share that comfort with others who are experiencing any kinds of trouble. It’s not that only someone who has been divorced can help those of us who have had the same experience. It is rather that those who have suffered and found Jesus can help others find him no matter what suffering they are facing.
This interview will be of interest to you if you are going through a divorce, but also if you are a pastor wanting to help others with any kinds of difficulties. There really is hope for all who suffer in any way.
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AI Transcription by TurboScribe.ai.
Hi there, my name’s Adrian Warnock and I’m here with Barnabas Piper. So thanks for joining me, Barnabas. Yeah, it’s a pleasure to be on with you, thank you.
So Barnabas, you and I have never actually met, have we? But I think we’ve been a bit aware of each other over the years.
Yeah, when I worked at Crossway, probably 15, 20 years ago now, we at least crossed paths digitally when you were publishing with them and I was working there in sales and marketing. So yeah, we’ve been aware.
Yeah, but it’s nice to meet you. And of course, most people know you, if nothing else, by your surname, Piper and son of a pastor. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that gets talked about being a pastor’s kid.
I’m guessing it’s even worse when your pastor is somebody as well-known as your dad is.
Yeah, it’s at least amplified. I wrote a book a few years ago on being a pastor’s kid and I discovered that pretty much all pastor’s kids have similar experiences, but it is sort of to scale. So the more well-known one’s pastor parent is, the more the pressure is amplified.
So yeah, I think there’s a scalability to that sort of fishbowl experience, if you will. Yeah, so you did feel that a little bit growing up, that you would sort of under the spotlight of it, did you? Yeah, it was always a mixed bag.
You know, I loved my church. It was a real familial kind of experience, but then there was also, yeah, the pressure of people being aware of you, the eyes on you. And then as my dad’s ministry grew nationally and then even globally, that spotlight sort of grew and it felt a little bit harder to escape in some ways.
It doesn’t help that, you know, I went to the same college that he did. And so I was kind of walking in his footsteps in some ways. And then I worked for a publisher who published him.
And so apparently I wasn’t trying that hard to escape it either.
Yeah, so it’s an interesting one, isn’t it? So over the years though, have you felt the need to somehow sort of escape from a shadow a little bit?
I think in my teens and in my twenties, I felt it more as a kind of a pressure and even something that led to some resentment that I felt the need to escape. I think as I, you know, in God’s kindness helped me mature and a little bit of sanctification along the way, it became something where I just realized the Lord has given me one set of gifts and personality and such, and they’re not the same as his. And so kind of finding some freedom in being what the Lord wants me to be, which has then allowed me to be more appreciative and more loving and more respectful of who he is rather than resenting or feeling like there’s any sort of tension there.
Yeah, it’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? Because one of the challenges, even when you’ve got someone who preaches grace, isn’t there a risk that you feel the sort of pressure to conform, the pressure to be good enough, and really almost a form of legalism, even if it’s not being taught, but actually it can certainly, people I’ve spoken to who’ve been in that kind of situation say that sometimes, you know, legalism and fear of others’ disapproval or whatever can take root in people’s hearts.
Is that, would you say that’s a fair?
Yeah, absolutely. I think the way that I particularly experienced that was, you know, my parents were, they worked very hard not to put, I would say, legalistic, you know, non-gospel standards on me. However, when you know what your parents believe about every single thing, because it’s very vocally proclaimed on Sundays and in books and, you know, conferences and whatever, every decision you make, there’s this, it’s not always what is honoring to Christ, it’s always, what would dad think about this?
You know, and I think a lot of people have that sort of relationship with their fathers, maybe in an unhealthy way, but there’s a tension of, I know his stance on this. And so that’s, that then becomes a thing that I feel the pressure of navigating. How do I live up to it?
Or how do I navigate disagreement? Those kinds of things. And so even if it wasn’t intentional legalism, there could be that pressure of living up to or measuring up to.
Yeah, and I guess that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s one of the downsides of community and church life, isn’t it? That where there are, you know, there are expectations often from the church as well, sort of looking on and thinking that somehow, because you’ve got this, you know, great pastor as a father, that therefore you’re maybe not meant to be as human as everyone else, or not as liable to make mistakes as everyone else.
Yeah, that is definitely a pressure that I, when I was younger, I felt that particularly. And, you know, now that I’m in ministry now, when I have kids, I work very hard to, as much as it’s up to me, alleviate that pressure on them. I think they still feel it to a degree, but yeah, that sense of there’s very little room for questioning or for doubts, or just for screwing up, you know, in the way that adolescents do, just dumb stuff that teenagers do, or the people in their twenties do, that seems to come at a higher, being held to a higher standard, I guess.
Yeah, and also the expectation that your life won’t be messy, that your life will be sort of sorted out.
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a, there seems to be an additional level of shock, maybe when somebody with the last name Piper has a crisis of faith, or a crisis of relationship, or sins publicly, or whatever. Whereas if other people do that, well, first of all, it’s not that public, because not that many people are aware.
And second of all, there’s a sense, maybe more of a sense of like, well, that’s, you know, people do that, you know, there’s a bit of a double standard.
And I like the way you said that, you know, you do feel that your parents, your father particularly, but your parents did their best to alleviate that from you. But I guess some of it’s inevitable.
Yeah, it is. And, you know, and I, again, being in ministry now, I now understand better the tension that they were navigating, where my father wanted us to hold to the same doctrine that he did, and be as passionate about the gospel as he was, and live up to the same moral standard. But also, he had grown into that over decades, and the Lord had done a lot of work in his life, and I was immature, and also just didn’t care that much at various points in my life.
And so there’s this tension of how can you be sort of a patient, gracious dad, who lets your kids grow into this, you know, kind of entrust us to the Lord’s work, and then also try to instill in us certain things. And that’s a real kind of push-pull tension of I want to put things in you, but I also want to give you the space and freedom to grow in the Lord’s timing.
I think that’s so important, isn’t it? I mean, that’s something we’ve got to remember with everyone, I guess. And it’s one of the things that I think we, as Christians, need to remember, that we can’t expect someone to become a mature Christian overnight.
Yeah, and as a parent, and as a pastor, that’s really frustrating to me, when I get my perspective incorrect, because I want people to get from novice and immature to mature and settled and grounded and wise in 10 minutes, and that might take three decades. And it is really hard to let the Holy Spirit work at his pace, rather than at my preferred pace.
Yeah, and it might even be more than three decades, let’s be honest.
Yeah, I know, I mean, absolutely.
And isn’t it true as well, that there’s a sort of, I mean, I don’t know, I recently watched a great movie, which you probably watched before, I suspect, Jesus Revolution. I have seen it, yeah. We hadn’t, it was in the cinemas over here very briefly, and partly because of my health concerns, I don’t tend to go to the cinema much, or I didn’t at that point, go a little bit more now.
But I saw it just recently, and it’s really interesting, because there’s an interesting sort of tension in that, because there’s this whole idea that comes across, and we do talk about this a lot, that, you know, come to Jesus and all your problems will go away almost, it can come across a little bit like, you know, because there’s some very sort of bad cases, you know, of people and drugs and all the rest of it. Suddenly they come to Jesus, and everything just goes.
And of course, you know, we know that reality isn’t always like that, that, you know, this idea that comes to Jesus and all your problems disappear isn’t the case. But I think it’s, if we’re not careful, we can preach that, or we can have that expectation, or we can sort of hope for that, and not prepare people for the fact that it is a journey, as you’ve described. And fortunately, God our Father is gracious with us, and patient with us, which is just as well.
And we need to learn how perhaps better to do that with each other.
Yeah, and I think there’s a richness in coming to terms with the reality of slow progress, in part because you actually, I think, discover much more of God’s character in it. When you realise, oh, he hasn’t yet run out of forgiveness, and he’s not going to, you gain, I think you gain a greater understanding of the work of Christ at the cross, that I keep sinning, and his work still surpasses that sin, and its ability to cleanse, and forgive, and justify, and all of that. But yeah, but it is also exhausting and discouraging.
Sometimes you look in the mirror, and you go, I’m quite tired of my own face, and the one that keeps doing the same dumb stuff, and doesn’t feel free from whatever that burden or guilt is.
Yeah, and we expect, and we constantly, although I think we’re starting to perhaps realise the folly of this a bit more as churches, but we do constantly tend to put certain people on a pedestal, obviously your dad is one, but lots of others, who we think, wow, this guy is, or this woman is super Christian. They are really close to God, and the expectation is that, there’s a huge pressure put on them, by the way, to perform as well, and you hear about, sometimes scandals about just small things that seem like, to me, there’s been one or two times when you hear a scandal in some pastoral, and you sort of think, well, that just seems like getting a bit too far, but a bit sort of overly scrupulous. But then you do hear about the huge disasters, and sometimes it’s someone who everyone thought was this great holy man of God, and suddenly you discover that that’s not the case.
Now, there’s no point getting into specifics, but it happens regularly enough, doesn’t it? And my own thought is, I just wonder whether sometimes those dramatic failures were actually preceded by many years of quietly wrestling with pain and concern about maybe a smaller issue, or letting it build up, not having someone that they could be honest with, not having someone that could help them, this whole discipleship thing, I don’t know, accountability, whatever you wanna call it.
Yeah, my observation, and like you said, there’s very little good getting into specifics, and at this point, we don’t need to, because it feels like every week or two, there’s a new example of significant ministry figure falls into sin, or is found out, and so pick your favorite one. My observation, and then the observation of those who have been closer to some of those, is that those are almost always preceded by a long period of those prominent people growing distant from genuine, honest community, like you said, that provides accountability, but also encouragement, the kind of people who will call you to repentance in a small way before the repentance is for something major, if that’s confessing something of the nature of sexual sin in your mind before it becomes an affair down the road, those kinds of things. Usually, there’s a dearth of substantial spiritual life, them spending time with the Lord at a personal level, rather than just for the proclamation side of things, and those are two very different practices.
If all you’re doing is sermon preparation, your own soul ends up starving. And usually, there’s a lack of friendship, people who they just love sharing life with, and you lose those things, and you’re setting yourself up for a fall.
Yeah, that’s right, and I think the other thing about this as well is this expectation we seem to have developed somewhere, and I’m not quite sure where it’s come from, that these people need to be basically perfect. And that’s not biblical, because one of the things I’ve always thought is that if you look at the Bible, pretty much every character, certainly every major character anyway, everyone who’s got any chunk of material written about them are fatally flawed, actually. I mean, can you imagine if a pastor today did what King David did?
I mean, there’d be no coming back, and yet he’s described after those events of Bathsheba and the murder and everything else as a man after God’s own heart, and you sort of think, wow, how can it be that we’ve got to the point where we’re almost less gracious than it seemed like he was offered grace in that time? And I know there’s all kinds of questions about how do we restore people if they’re not truly repentant, I’m not really talking about that, I’m just talking about the expectation that we build up, that people are gonna be perfect. And even some biographies, I used to love reading old biographies of older Christians, and often these flaws would come out, whether it’s sin, whether it’s arguments and disagreements and breakups that lead often to new ministry, actually, or whether it’s sickness, I mean, Spurgeon’s struggle with sickness was all throughout his biography, I remember reading that when I was younger, and just thinking, a lot of the, maybe because they’re shorter as well, the biographies that you read of people that are more contemporary often tend to airbrush, have tended to airbrush over those things. You know?
Yeah, I think one of the greatest benefits for me of having grown up in the Piper household is a healthy disenchantment with hero worship. Again, that was one of the things that my dad worked hard to sort of disabuse us of the notion of, he was, and is today, very unimpressed with himself, and very dependent publicly and privately on Christ. And so I just, I stopped, or I kind of grew up in the notion of famous people are not really any different than not famous people.
And it is jarring to see the sort of backlash when the flaws of a famous person come out that simply look like, if you unearthed the soul of any human, Jesus follower or otherwise, there are profound flaws. Whether that’s pride or finance related, or racial biases or sins from their past that they have moved past and repented of, but it’s new news once they come out, all of that stuff. We all have that stuff.
And so there is a really unfair response to prominent Christians who fail. Then at the same time, there’s also a, I think there’s also a, the twist of that is it actually allows Christianity to be proclaimed with a little bit more genuineness, both because we can abstain from unnecessary judgment, but then also say, this is what happens when we fall into pride, or when we fall into hiding sin instead of being honest, and those kinds of things. And so it just calls for humility and honesty across the board in a new way.
And you don’t want somebody to be the object lesson of that, but often they serve that way.
No, no, sure, exactly. And I think it is just, as you say, about just realizing that life is messy, whether that’s sin, whether that’s sickness, whether that’s relational problems, whatever it is, it is messy. And I guess for you, you said that you were on your own sort of path.
You know, okay, yes, you went to the same college as your father, and then you worked for a publisher for a while, and then you got into ministry, and you’re still a pastor. You’ve been a pastor for quite a while, is that right?
Several years. So I, yeah, so I worked in Christian publishing for about 14 years, so from 2005 until 2019. And then in 2019, I joined staff at Emanuel Church in Nashville, which is where I had been attending prior to that.
And so I’ve been, yeah, I’ve been in vocational ministry now for coming up on five years.
Okay. And somewhere along the line, though, if I understand correctly, and I know you haven’t said a huge amount about this online, but thank you that when we discussed this, we did say we would talk about it. You did have a situation where your relationship went astray, didn’t it?
And you, or not went astray. You got a divorce, let’s be blunt.
Yeah, so I got married right out of college in 2005. And then in 2016, at the end of 2016, that marriage ended, which is a very passive voice way of saying that the papers were finalized on what was a very painful multi-year kind of decline. Without getting into too many details, the paths that my ex-wife and I were on were diverging pretty significantly, where I, she was less and less interested in walking with the Lord at that point, and chose to pursue a life that direction.
And I was pretty committed to walking with the Lord. And a lot of that was because of a significant crisis of faith several years prior in my own life that the Lord had used to bring me to that place of genuine affection for Christ, genuine faith in Him, kind of a sorting out of what had been handed to me as a child versus what I genuinely rested in and believed in. And so my trajectory was one of wanting to walk with Christ and hers at the time wasn’t.
And so, yeah, so that was end of 2016 when it was finalized. And then from 2016 through 2018, I would say, well, 2017, 2018, so those couple years, that’s the time in which I began attending Emmanuel. So I walked in pretty discouraged and very weary and very unsure of how to navigate church life as a divorced man, two young daughters at the time, elementary school age.
And those two years were profoundly healing and formative for me in terms of discovering what the church can be like for somebody in a truly broken and embarrassed and struggling situation versus what I feared it might be like and what I had observed elsewhere.
Yeah, I think that’s crucial, isn’t it? Because often I think, you know, talking to other people who’ve been divorced and for my own experience, I will just say, you know, I went through a divorce. I’m not gonna go into the details of mine, but what I will say is that the feeling that you get sometimes is that that’s it, that’s the end, you know, maybe God’s finished with you, you’re on the trash heap sort of thing.
And that can almost be vocalized, but it doesn’t have to be vocalized because it’s something you feel inside often.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, and there’s a sense in which that makes sense because if a marriage has lasted for any amount of time and you have put any amount of effort into it, and anybody who’s been married knows that it takes a significant amount of effort. I mean, it takes your whole self.
It is a commitment. It’s a whole life kind of thing that you’re giving yourself to. When that ends, it is absolutely disorienting.
And when it ends in an unwanted way, I mean, I guess there’s not a wanted way for a marriage to end, but a particularly painful way. Yeah, the questions of just sort of like, who am I? Where do I go from here?
What does God have for me are very real. And I think that’s especially true if you’ve been in a position where up to that point you have been involved in fruitful work, fruitful ministry, meaningful relationships, all of that then changes. It can cost people a ministry.
It’s especially if they have sinned as part of this process, but often just the stigma is costly. And so I know for me, it was a slightly different process. I was very lost post-divorce because I just, it had been 11 plus years.
I didn’t have any concept of who I was kind of outside of the context of marriage, but also there were a lot of things in the last few years of our marriage that I had sort of willfully set aside. Like ministry just wasn’t an option because in a marriage where faith is a great point of tension, you can’t then go devote yourself to ministry. There’s limited capacity of what you can do in the church.
It’s just not wise or healthy. And it would have caused even more dissent at home. So for me, there was also a sense as the healing process of just the emotional cost and damage as that healing process progressed of sort of a new horizon of, oh, there may be something that the Lord has for me that wasn’t even a possibility before.
And so I was right to not pursue it previously, but it may be an opportunity now.
So can you talk me through a little bit more about this notion of stigma and church? And you said certain things you’d seen in other places might’ve been negative and where you were was positive. Can you put a little bit more solidity to that?
What helps, doesn’t help someone in that kind of difficult situation?
Yeah, I think anybody who has been through a divorce, especially a recent one, feels like they are wearing a scarlet letter of sorts. I don’t remember who wrote that book, but that idea of the scarlet letter that’s basically a label of stigma. I am divorced, just a big old letter on the chest.
So when you walk in somewhere and it affects how you introduce yourself to people, how you tell your story. Imagine walking in, for those who are listening who have not been through a divorce, you walk into a place and you have to introduce yourself to people and you always just sort of swap facts about yourself. Oh, tell me about your family.
Tell me about your work. Just those basic sort of how are you positioned in life. At some point early on, you either have to duck and dodge and almost be deceitful or you just have to say, I’m divorced.
Especially if you bring kids with you and not a spouse. That sort of raises some questions. So the stigma is, I think outside looking in, the stigma is not as bad as inside looking out.
It’s a lot of self-perception, but that’s a powerful thing because it limits our willingness to enter into meaningful friendships and to trust others. And when you think you’re being judged, you tend to keep your distance. So that’s one piece.
But the other piece is the church does not have a really wonderful history of being gracious to divorced people. I mean, I just think about my own experience growing up. Divorce came with a stigma of like, oh, they failed and they did something wrong.
There’s something wrong with that person kind of thing. I mean, I remember multiple just impressions I had of people growing up. And again, this was in a church that it taught against divorce, but not in a sort of like, you’re gonna burn in hell way as much as that’s not God’s desire for you.
But I knew kids who came to youth group and they would alternate weekends with different parents. And there was always sort of a, hmm, how do we navigate this? That’s touchy.
And there’s not a place in the church for a lot of divorced people in terms of like, they’re not the young professional singles. The rest of the church is kind of catered to traditional families. So if you’re 36, 37 years old with two kids, you kind of don’t fit in most places.
And so there’s that aspect of just kind of going, well, is this even for me? Like, I know I need the gospel and I know I need community and I can get the gospel on a Sunday morning preached here. I don’t know what community looks like, all of that kind of stuff.
So I think that’s a piece of it. I think the third piece is, and you and I touched on this super briefly before we started recording, the temptation in the heart of many Christians to adjudicate somebody else’s divorce. When you hear somebody was divorced, for many people, the instinct is who was in the wrong?
We want to know, is this person innocent or are they guilty? Are they 65% at fault? Are they 100% at fault?
Are they 20% at fault? Are they just the victim of somebody else’s sin? What are we looking at here?
And as opposed to, as you mentioned earlier, that mindset of maybe there should be a much more gracious response, reflective of God’s heart towards sinners, which is not to say sin gets brushed under the rug, but that it’s not really our responsibility to deal with it most of the time. And so that adjudication response is part of what makes divorced people feel under scrutiny, because we feel like we have to justify ourselves. And I mean, I feel that tension now, and it’s been, what, eight years almost since my divorce?
And I still have to kind of navigate in my own heart. I don’t need to defend myself. I just need to sort of state the very simple facts and move on.
I’m remarried. My wife and I just welcomed a new son. Like, our life is profoundly pointed in a different direction, and there’s still that temptation to navigate self-defense.
No, sure. How do you feel personally, then, that you got from that position of feeling a bit lost, being a bit pleasantly surprised about how the church was welcoming you, but still feeling a bit, you know, all that stigma, et cetera, we just talked, to getting to the point where you’re ready and able to meet someone else and get married. That must have been a bit of a journey.
It was a bit of a journey, with some, yeah, with some fits and starts along the way. Real practically speaking, I went to counseling for a period of time, shortly after the divorce, and not because I thought counseling was gonna magically fix me, but he basically asked me, he said, what do you wanna get out of this? And I said, I want you to tell me if I’m sane, because I don’t even quite know how to view the world.
And so, you know, if I talk through how I’m thinking about things, I want you to tell me, is my head on straight? And then give me just practical pointers on how to navigate this. And so that was one just very practical step, going to a professional who has walked people through, and a Christian man, so having the perspective of God’s grace involved there.
But the other big piece was the restoration that came through genuine friendship and community in the church. So when I say community, I don’t just mean sort of like church socials, but those deep, honest friendships that I was able to find, because there were people at Emmanuel, and there are people like this at lots of churches, it’s just, this was my church experience, who just, they leapfrogged over the stigma and just began to deal with me as me. So, you know, inviting me to a community group, it’s the kind of thing that meets in someone’s home weekly, and just like bring your kids, and no weirdness, no, you know, that my daughters were welcomed in just sort of as part of the group.
So it wasn’t, they weren’t sort of stuck in the corner with an iPad while the adults talked or anything like that. And so there was just a real welcoming spirit. And those people who did that became some of my closest friends to whom I could talk through this healing process, this navigating of trying to get, just get my head straight, get my heart straight, get my life pointed in a direction.
They became key people in affirming and figuring out, is it right for me to get back into ministry? Am I at a place to do that? And their observations and encouragement and affirmation were really significant.
On the dating and relationship side, I think the biggest piece for me was getting to a place where I felt like I wasn’t going to drag a bunch of overstuffed baggage into a new relationship. So I got into one dating relationship very quickly after the divorce, and it was too soon, and I was not good for her. So she did nothing wrong, but I was not at a place to handle that relationship well, and it ended badly because of me.
And then I needed to take several more months of just, who am I before the Lord? What does it look like for me to be a godly man, a wise man, to handle my business, my work, my spiritual disciplines, my life as a father, so that when I maybe someday meet somebody, I can walk into that as a standing on my own two feet, trusting in the Lord, able to contribute something to this relationship rather than drag a bunch of junk into this relationship. And I was not desperate to get back into a relationship.
It actually took prompting from a couple wise friends who were like, you have the freedom to do this, and it wouldn’t be bad if you did. So I kind of needed permission and nudging. And then it needed God’s kind of sense of humor and providence because I stood up at church one Sunday and I think prayed or made an announcement.
So I was up front for 45 seconds. And a lady who was sitting in the congregation saw me, elbowed her boyfriend and said, my sister needs to meet that guy. So proceeded to track me down over the course of the next couple months and do a blind setup with Lauren, who is now my wife. And so it was just one of these sort of sequences where I had a lot of private work to do.
I had a lot of support around me, both professional and meaningful relationships. And then the Lord was just sort of like, here, let me walk someone into your path who is the right person for you. So how much of this was a sort of theological wrestling for you? Because obviously, it’s no secret that your father preaches or believes in divorce, really almost whatever the cause, should not ideally lead to remarriage.
I mean, he does also suggest that other Christians might have different views and he’s quite gracious about it. But I guess that is a view that isn’t unique to him by any means. And a lot of Christians in the past have had that view.
So was that something that you wrestled with? Yeah, it absolutely was. And I would say in the late days of my first marriage, where it was very obvious this was going to end in divorce, I began that thought process, not trying to jump ahead, but just kind of the what if questions. How would I even navigate this? In the same way that you want to sort of count the cost and know what’s coming down.
And I didn’t want to get into a situation where I made foolish decisions because I hadn’t thought about them in advance. So I started there. And then I would say after that first dating relationship that didn’t go very well, I really took stock and started talking about it with the pastors at Emanuel and asking them and their wisdom on this, talking through it.
And I knew my dad’s stance. I found John Murray’s book called Divorce, which is, boy, is that not a light read. That is just a slog.
But that’s because he does maybe the most thorough job of exploring how the different divorce texts in Scripture speak with one another, so kind of a coherent fabric. I found that really helpful. And he does not end at a place of there is no place for divorce and remarriage.
He gives some kind of clear stipulations according to Scripture, which I found very helpful and very freeing. And then, yeah, that was part of the process of getting to the place where I felt like I could step back into dating and or marriage relationships was I need to be free of conscience to know I cannot do this if I have any lingering doubt of is this right in the Lord’s eyes. And so, yeah, it was substantial.
It required significant wise outside voices. It also really helped that I’ve been around that conversation for a long time, and so I was aware of many of the stances. I think for a lot of people, they get divorced, and they usually hear one loud voice, whoever gets there first, whether it’s their pastor who’s like, well, there is no remarriage after divorce, I’d say a minority stance, but still out there or something.
So for me to have the access to wise voices in different positions who all submit themselves to the authority of God’s Word and are trying to navigate it faithfully was really helpful. And yeah, frankly, I landed in a different place than my dad on the final decision. But like you said, he does handle it graciously.
So he makes his position known, but he does not hold to it as a, if you sit outside of this, you are in an unforgivable position. And so he’s able to hold this position and then make the relational pivot. So when Lorne and I got engaged and then got married, he’s not holding grudges.
He’s not distant. He’s not unrelated. There was a stance he understands.
He mainly wanted to make sure that I was thinking through it biblically. And that was a really helpful conversation because I kind of came in ready to fight. And he basically just said, I just want to know that you are thinking through this under the authority of God and with the kind of good voices in your ear.
And when I was able to assure him of that, he just said, okay, well, good. Yeah. I think that’s rather precious, isn’t it? Because I think on this kind of issue where there is some difference and on many other issues, the temptation I think is to just be too rigid, isn’t it? And to say, like you said, the loud voice that says, this is the way you have to go this way.
This is what I’m telling you. I, you know, and almost I’m your Oracle. And this is, if you disagree with this, you’re disagreeing with God, you’re disagreeing with the Bible.
And, you know, sometimes even people can feel, even if it’s not said that I’ll be damned forever if I go down a different route. Yeah. And I think there’s a, and there are absolutely people who have gotten divorced for bad reasons and gotten remarried under sort of, you know, kind of with under false footing or on false footing because of that.
And that’s not good, but it’s not unforgivable and it’s not unredeemable. And one thing that somebody like my dad would say is, you know, if you have gotten remarried in a context like that, that’s a covenant relationship that needs to be covenant before the Lord. So you don’t back out of that.
You don’t treat that as lesser. That is, you need to be wholly married. And so they’re one of the things that has stood out to me most in this whole navigation of all of the reality surrounding divorce is just a deeper, richer understanding of what redemption looks like.
And what I don’t mean is sort of like putting a happy spin on things, but rather the reality of you look back and go, there are things that should never have happened that I wish had never happened. But also at this point, I wouldn’t change any of them because that would undo things that God has done that are good. And as a finite human, I can’t get my head around that.
But I think that that sums up so much of the reality of redemption. So for people who have been through a divorce that was regrettable in the sense of you were at fault, a lot of sin was committed, you’re now in a relationship that you look back and you go, a lot of that should never have happened. I have regrets.
That is not unredeemable. It’s not unforgivable. There’s probably consequences for those actions, but not like put kind of punitive, held over your head things.
And so that reality, we can’t dictate it, but we need to be willing to allow it for other people and for ourselves that the Lord redeems in ways that we cannot make sense out of. The fact that I am a pastor at a church that I deeply love, married to a wonderful Christian woman, we just welcomed another son, she’s an amazing stepmom to my daughters. Even my relationship with my ex-wife is amenable.
We can co-parent well. That’s the grace of God. All of these things I look at and I go, none of that makes sense, except that God redeems things that never should have happened.
If you were to draw sort of a perfect moral line, it wouldn’t have looked like this. And yet here God is using the circumstance in a way that makes absolutely no human sense. Yeah, because I mean, there’s things that can’t be undone.
You can’t go back and do certain things. And I think that’s where some people are a little bit unrealistic. And some Christians actually listening to this might be in a situation where perhaps they’ve separated, they’ve been separated for many years or many months, and there’s been a clear decision made by the other one that there’s no way through or the sin that’s happened that makes it unreasonable for it.
But they can still hold on to that, that sort of faint, glimmering hope that maybe reconciliation will happen. And sometimes you just have to put that to death, don’t you? And accept that that’s done. Or there’s maybe other things to come.
Or as you say, if you wake up in, you know, and that’s the beautiful thing about Jesus, isn’t it? He never gives up on us. And he deals with us where we are, not where we somehow think we should be or everyone else thinks we should be. Yeah, and is profoundly more aware of where we are than we are.
So we might think we’re healthier, and he’s aware of our unhealth. Or we might think we’re utter failure, and he looks at us and says, my child. He has a profoundly different perspective on us than we do in all the ways.
I do think, yeah, for those people who are maybe clinging to a marriage that is functionally dead, you can do two things at once, both of which are morally right in the eyes of God. One is never, until the day that that is finalized, never cease to seek reconciliation or at least pray for it. If seeking it is, it’s relationally untenable.
The Lord does miracles. He brings dead things to life and dead people to life. So you can do that, and you should do that.
The other is, and you can get this out of 1 Corinthians, where if you are married to an unbelieving spouse or somebody who is acting as an unbeliever, live with them so long as they are willing. But if they desert you, you’re not held culpable for that in God’s eyes. And so there’s a willingness to let go of that thing, not because you are at fault, but because they have chosen sin, frankly.
And in both of those ways, you’re actually putting it in the Lord’s hands and seeking to be a faithful follower of Christ. And it is the hardest decision to do that, but not a guilt-bearing decision. It’s not a shameful decision.
Yeah, shame is so crucial, isn’t it? As you say, even when we are the ones at fault, even when someone has… The thing that I just thought of as we were talking about that, is how Jesus meets us, whoever we are and where we are. Those people who might be thinking, well, I’ve been divorced and I’m on the scrap heap. Look at that woman from Samaria.
Jesus turned up, talks to her, says, look, yeah, you’ve had five husbands. The one you’re living with is not your husband, and deals with it, addresses it, yes. But he doesn’t suddenly say, right, you’ve got to sort everything out before I can use you.
He says, no, go and tell everyone. And she becomes one of the first evangelists, effectively, that we see in the Bible. Yeah, and even, you want to take that a little bit further, not just first evangelist, but one of the first to take the gospel to the nations, outside of the Jewish people.
So, I mean, there’s sort of layers on Christ’s wisdom and plan in that. Yeah, and there’s just, there’s so many instances like that. I mean, not necessarily, we talked earlier about the stigma of divorce.
I think there’s a sense in which we sometimes treat divorce as a different sort of sin than other sins. We are willing to let the apostle Paul write half of the New Testament as a murderer, but had he been divorced, I don’t know about that. Oh, yeah.
And that’s, I mean, just, that’s a weird, that’s a weird distinction that we make. You know, Peter abandoned Jesus, but it’s okay for him to be the leader of the church of Jerusalem, you know, and sort of the initial first, kind of first and foremost apostle. There’s just, there is an odd, and this isn’t to downplay the significance of divorce, but rather to try to put us in a position where if we are willing to let, and you said this earlier, if we’re willing to let God’s mercy and grace apply itself liberally to these kinds of sins, we should let it apply itself to this scenario, especially realizing that divorce always involves sin, but doesn’t always involve the guilt of both parties.
So sin is present, but not necessarily culpability on both sides. And we just, we’re not comfortable with that in the same way that we would be, you know, if we found out that somebody was an ex-con but was reformed, they’re out of prison, okay, we believe in the Lord’s work in their life, not so sure about the Lord’s work in this faithful woman who was abandoned by her husband. Yeah, I don’t know what to make of that.
Yeah, it’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Degrees of sin is always a bit of a worry in church life, where, and I guess it suggests that we don’t really understand the fact that none of us have our lives right, and maybe that’s something we need to be a bit more vocal about, that, you know, and be more honest about admitting to some of the struggles that we might have that might not be so salacious and dramatic as a divorce, but actually could be of more spiritual significance, actually. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think if there’s a prideful person and a gossiping person in your church, they are far more unqualified for positions of leadership necessarily than somebody who has had a broken marriage in their past.
Now, that person with a broken marriage might be unqualified, there might be undealt with sin, there might be a whole bunch of stuff going on there, but that’s not necessarily true. If somebody is arrogant, is prideful, is contentious, I mean, that’s written right into 1 Timothy, you know, the qualifications for elder or the fruits of the Spirit that say, like, that is a lack of evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work, those kinds of things. And so, yeah, there is a… I’m trying to remember who wrote it, maybe Jerry Bridges’ book called Respectable Sins or Acceptable Sins, but basically talking about there are sins that we just sort of brush under the rug, and then there are sins that we stigmatize, and it is so important to remember that divorce oftentimes is the fruit of sin, not an act of sin necessarily.
It might be, but it’s not always. And that’s where I think we just, rather than dealing with the complexities, we just put it in a category of sort of like, well, you’re sort of subhuman, we don’t really know what to do with you over here. And that’s stating it strongly, but there’s sort of a… in the church, that has been a weakness of ours.
And one of the reasons I’m so thankful to have landed where I am, because there’s a willingness and a richness of thought and faith to navigate the complexities of these things and say, there are people for whom divorce is unqualifying, there are people for whom it’s a painful thing from their past, and those are not the same realities. Yeah, that’s very, very good. And I guess as well, hopefully now, your ex-divorce doesn’t really define you, Barnabas.
I mean, I’m sure you don’t want to be remembered as the guy that got divorced and then became a pastor. Yeah, it’s certainly… in my day-to-day life, it does not define me. There’s so much that the Lord has brought into my life that is much more categorically just, this is who I am, this is what I live for.
Ministerially, it’s an interesting thing. This podcast wouldn’t be happening probably had I not been divorced. So there are opportunities that are presented to hopefully encourage and care for those who are navigating this or walking alongside others.
Like in our church, most, especially men who are going through divorce come to me, which I’m grateful for because this sort of falls under that. Is it 2 Corinthians? With the comfort you have received from the Lord, you can comfort others. There’s that category.
But at the same time, there’s an element of, I don’t want to be the divorce guy. That’s not my favourite label for ministry. So it is kind of a dual reality of my life is not defined by this.
My ministry is shaped by this. But even then, I have the opportunity to serve in a broad variety of ways and it’s not the sole thing. That verse that you just talked about in 2 Corinthians is really interesting on this because I think sometimes people think that for someone to understand and offer grace and be able to help me, they must have gone through the same thing I’ve been through.
But then it becomes really bizarre because then for someone like me, I’d be saying, well, it must be a divorced person who’s also struggled with blood cancer. And it’s like, well, where are you going to find someone who’s gone through everything? But there is a little bit of that. And of course, on a human level, I get it.
If someone’s gone through a journey, then it makes it easier for them to understand that journey. But that’s not quite what Corinthians says there. It says, doesn’t it, that God is the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others in all kinds of trouble with the comfort we’ve received.
And I wonder if you’ve experienced that in your ministry, Barnabas, that as you look back, that perhaps one of the things that going through this experience has given you is an ability to be more compassionate and to pass on more of God’s grace to people in all kinds of other situations, too. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, because the character of God is consistent across all the troubles. And so if I have gone through this kind of pain and difficulty and seen God’s faithfulness and compassion and healing and care and in my lowest moments have experienced the fullness of the presence of Christ in a unique way. I mean, there’s a very real, I have very real memories of particular weeks and days when I was at my lowest and Christ cared for me distinctly.
That’s not different than Christ can do for somebody who is financially destitute or in profound physical pain or dealing with a wayward child who is breaking their heart, all of which are really different circumstances, but the same Christ. And so there is absolutely a multifaceted comfort provided. And I would say this in encouragement to those who have navigated or are navigating divorce, don’t just seek out other divorced people.
What you end up with there is a temptation to wallow and to a weird sort of pride where other people can’t understand us. And in fact, the most encouraging people to me were people who had not been through divorce, people who’d been married 10, 12, 15, 30 years, loved their spouse, had walked through really hard things, but they understood the compassion of Christ and they understood the love of a brother and they showed those kinds of things. And so I am leery of certain kinds of, say, support groups where people seek out others exactly like them.
You have the same problem as me. I’m like, you run the risk of the blind leading the blind rather than God’s design of this multiplicity of encouragement through the body of Christ. Yeah.
You mentioned some of these people that had been particularly helpful for you. I’m willing to bet that most of those people have been through some kind of difficulty, some kind of challenge. And we’re willing to admit perhaps to you as well about the painful nights and all of that.
Because I know for me, there’d be many, many nights where I was just crying into my pillow. And I’m sure that was the same for you. And something about that process of working through that does seem to earth that compassion in people, doesn’t it? Yeah, I think there’s sort of a unilateral nature to suffering and trusting the Lord through it.
So if it has been through job loss or betrayal or whatever, that person can speak God’s goodness into a very different circumstance in a profound way. So yeah, what I discovered is the people who I trusted most were the people who had that sort of depth of maturity found in navigating difficulty and suffering in faith. And so whatever that looked like, those people were profoundly encouraging in my life and remain so today.
And I hope that I offer the same kinds of encouragement to others having navigated and been through some of these same kinds of things with Christ’s love and faithfulness present. So I guess one of the things we’d probably be saying to anyone right now, if you’re in the middle of that suffering, and maybe it’s not even divorce, you just have come across this particular podcast and you’ve listened, and you’re really in that process of feeling tearful and painful and the struggle and that you’re never going to be any use to anyone ever again, what would your message be to those people? And perhaps we can close with that. Oh man, I think I would go back to that concept of, concept isn’t the right word, that reality of redemption.
The reality that at any given time, God is doing thousands of things beyond what we are aware of. So in your place of absolute lowness, He is at work in you and around you in a way that can lead to a reality that you can’t even imagine right now. I hesitate to, I don’t want to misuse promises from Scripture, but that promise from Ephesians, the Lord who can do far more than we ask or think, at the very least, that offers a concept of God’s capacity to redeem, to do good, to lead, to restore, will blow your mind.
And your future, a year from now, three years from now, 10 years from now, will look like something that you can’t even imagine right now, if you claim to Him. And so there is a, the second thing I would say is another thing I mentioned earlier. There is a very particular reality where Christ can be at His sweetest when we are at our lowest, because there is absolutely nothing else we can turn to.
In those, you know, those emptiest moments, whether that, you know, empty in whatever way, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and all we have as Christ, we are reminded that that’s really all we need. And there’s a closeness, a clarity, a profound sense through the Holy Spirit of His presence and His love that will see you through. And so you take those two things, that Christ at our emptiest places and this possibility of redemption, which kind of blows our minds, and you have both a day-to-day way forward and a hope for the future that is, that will see you through.
And then I would just say that this is a very practical piece. I found journaling in whatever capacity works for you to be helpful, because then what happens is two, three, four years down the road, you look back and you go, and you are even more stunned by how God got you there, because you’re sort of tracing the progress of what He’s doing without necessarily always realizing He’s doing it. So I, that would be my sort of threefold encouragement to someone who is at this place of pain, a destitution, my future is bleak, I don’t know who I am.
Christ’s presence in the emptiest places, the tracking of how Christ is working in you, just however that looks, shutting those things down. And then this reality of redemption that your future can be a thing in God’s wisdom that is profoundly beyond your capacity to imagine or describe right now. Wonderful.
Would you mind closing with prayer for those folks who might be in that kind of position? I would love to. Thank you. Father in heaven, in offering up this prayer, I think about particular faces, people I know, people I’ve sat with who are in the midst of devastating loss, particularly the loss of a marriage, the loss of a relationship, and I also think of particular people who have walked through it and who you have ministered to, carried, healed, and restored such that where they are now, they look like a whole new person.
So I ask first for restored marriages, for those who are in the midst of fighting for a marriage that is on the brink, that you would do miracles of restoration. You know what needs to happen in each particular case. I ask for fortitude of faith, that people would cling to you, and that they would feel the closeness and the love and the power of Jesus in their emptiest places, their lowest places.
And I ask for the hope of redemption, that they would look at this and go, no matter what happens, God can turn this into a circumstance that is far better than anything I can imagine right now. And when we’re at our lowest places, our imaginations are so bleak. Would you carry people? Would you encourage them? And would you hold them close? Pray these things in Jesus’ name.
Amen. Amen. Thank you very much.
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