Divorce or Murder?

Many of us have been following the case of the preacher's wife, Mary Winkler, who shot her husband in the back, leaving him to bleed to death, and then took her three children on a vacation to the beach. What could have been the motivation for such a violent act we asked?

Another lesser known case of murder took place in Olathe, Kansas, back in 1982. Here the husband and wife slept together until an intruder cruelly bludgeoned the husband to death and left the wife unconscious. The case remained unsolved until recently when investigators reopened the file. The investigators put on trial a former student of Mid America Nazarene College. It appears that the student and the wife, an employee of the college, were emotionally involved with one another. They plotted to kill the husband, claiming it was the work of two African American intruders.

Although the two cases have more differences than similarities, i. e. Mary Winkler was a victim of sexual and physical abuse of her husband, Matthew, and the wife in the second case simply fell in love with someone else, they share one important similarity. Both families were members of very conservative evangelical churches where divorce has been considered anathema. In other words, in the perpetrators' minds, they would rather murder than divorce. In fact, Mary Winkler repeatedly told her father, with her head in her hands, "No, Daddy, I can work it out."

What legalistic rules are there in these churches that give wives (and their lovers) such a notion? Yes, the Bible speaks of wives' submitting to their husbands, but taken in context of the whole New Testament passage, it means to love their wives and to submit to them as well. Yes, families are important in the Scripture, and God has given many examples of His mending of families that have been torn asunder such as Adam and Eve, David and Bathsheba, Job, and Lazarus. The Bible also states in the book of Psalms that "God placeth the solitary in families."

Does that mean then that there is never a reason to leave one's spouse? Of course not, since the divorce rate in America already attests to the fact that many Americans take marital commitment too lightly and sometimes divorce on a whim. We need, however, to review our teaching in conservative churches and amend any impression that would convince spouses to stay together after adultery or physical and sexual abuse. It is o.k. to leave; it is certainly healthier.