What would you say to Jon and Kate?

By: Jeff Sample

Jon and Kate Plus Eight is minus one as of this week – dad. What God joined together is now split asunder, leaving eight confused children who don’t understand why dad and mom cannot just get along.

Apparently, Jon and Kate don't understand it either. When the reality of the end sank in, Kate curled into a ball and sobbed convulsively; later, she confessed, “I feel like I failed.” How can something as significant as joining two lives by a covenantal “I do” end with an “I don’t.”

If you were their friend, what would you say to Jon and Kate?

I would remind them that marriage requires a greater love, a greater grace, and a greater strength expressed in selfless giving than anyone can muster. It is not in fallen, deeply flawed people like us to live well together in so intimate a relationship as marriage, happily ever after. I would point them to the Savior of souls, who mends broken hearts and homes with transforming grace for any and all who receive and rest on him.

Admittedly, turning to Christ is not a magic wand creating marriage nirvana; the hard work of loving, living, learning, and leaning must still be worked out in the stuff of real life – I know that, and so do you. Still, Christ enables what he has given and to what he calls us. And in the crucible of marriage, grace received from Christ is lived out daily in ways - large and small - that demonstrate practically the realities of the gospel.

Marriage (and parenting!) is so demanding that God uses it as a major means of sanctification – driving us to the end of ourselves and our resources over and over, and leading us to trust his help and wisdom over and over.

So, when the well of human resource, wisdom, and love runs dry, how will you live? Without Christ we will fight, flee, or drift into the tolerated coexistence of living separate lives in the same home.

As a friend, I would beg Jon & Kate to turn from the idolatry of self and celebrity to the only God worthy of worship and in whose service we find real freedom - the kind of freedom that enables responsibilities by turning them into opportunities to experience more of his goodness and power. I would remind them that doing the hard work of home repair will never be regretted as they love and live to see their union reflected in the futures of their sons and daughters.

With as much mercy as God would grant me in that moment of difficult conversation, I would share the experience of twenty-five years as a pastor: divorce is seldom the solution people imagine it to be. Just ask the kids, young and old.