So I was going to do a short blog today about Jessica Simpson’s parents divorce. However when I sat down to do some background research on her father, Joe Simpson, all I found were stories about how is has said he is homosexual.
Needless to say this blog just got a whole lot more complicated. Let me start with a simple idea and ease into the more difficult ideas.
I think that I should state right out of the gate that marriage isn’t easy. Anyone that has been married more than a year will tell you that. (For those of you that just got married prep yourselves) Now I’m also not saying that marriage is a horrible cage of misery and pain. I’m simple saying it takes work. It take a solid foundation of love and so that I am clear let me point out that this love isn’t the “lovey dovey your a cutie patootie love”.
I am speaking of the love that we see exemplified in Jesus. The love that gives and expects nothing in return. The love that shows grace when grace shouldn’t be given. A love that is selfless. This kind of love is the only kind of love that will sustain a marriage.
Admittedly I don’t know anything about the Simpson’s marriage. Its not like I went to church with them, hung out with them on the weekends and know their kids. However let me offer my thoughts on the process of how this went down.
Its much like the story that many other people have that I have spoken with or have been close to that have gone through. It starts with the idea that you should be be the center of the relationship. So all the activities, money and time must center around your likes and dislikes. You start to view yourself as a mini-god, though you wouldn’t every say that out loud. This view of ones self then sometimes leads to the extreme idea that if “it doesn’t make you happy you shouldn’t have to do it”. That idea, now perpetuated over weeks, months and years, leads the eventual breakdown of the relationship. This can end in a variety of different ways but all are bad if not repented of.
I am assured that this is what has happened in this situation as well. The marriage, over years, broke down due to sin and selfishness. It didn’t happen over night but it did occur. It occurred, in this case, in such a slow way that by the time they decided to end it there is a good possibility neither party cared. If they do care it appears that they have no intentions of repenting of sin and reconciling the relationship.
This is the sad reality of sin, it tears apart what was once close and leaves nothing. In this case it lead a man that was once a pastor to a place so far away from where he started that he wouldn’t recognize himself anymore. I’m not judging him. I am simply pointing out something that he himself most likely said years ago.
Without repentance sin will always kill the good gifts God has for us.
Resources:
Pastor Mike Moore 