22 
How Far Should Accountability Go?
Wouldn’t your grief, and the divorce itself,” Jocelyn had just asked Amanda as Betsy and Catharine sat talking in the secret room, “be bearing the consequences?”
“In a way, perhaps,” answered Amanda. “But I could not simply go on afterward as if nothing had happened.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jocelyn.
“I cannot ignore the Scriptures just for my own convenience merely to escape my accountability.”
“But you have said that you were not yourself, that you were not thinking clearly.”
“Ramsay may have been a cad, and maybe to a degree I was brainwashed, though I certainly did not think so at the time. But I am still accountable. No one made me marry Ramsay.”
“I still do not understand why you feel so strongly that you can never marry again.”
“Because of what I just read in Matthew 5:32 this morning. It is a passage Sister Anika told me about.”
“What does it say?”
“That to remarry would be adultery,” answered Amanda.
“Adultery!” repeated Jocelyn, shocked at Amanda’s blunt statement.
“There is no other way to look at it. ‘Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.’ There it is, Mother, in Jesus’ own words. I would be a divorced woman—”
At the words, Amanda turned away and began to cry. Jocelyn took her in her arms, and they sat quietly for a moment.
“The sound of it is too horrible to think about,” said Amanda after a while, wiping her eyes. “But if a man would be committing adultery to marry me—after a divorce, I mean—then I would just as surely be committing adultery myself.”
“Those are strong words, Amanda. Surely God would not condemn you so harshly for making a mistake.”
“It is not that God will condemn me, it is about my doing what is right. And I was reading several other passages, too, before I came out this morning,” Amanda went on. “Another passage Sister Anika told me about is in Mark 10. It is even clearer than the verse in Matthew.”
“And?”
“It says that if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man, she is an adulteress.”
Again the word jolted Jocelyn’s sensitive ears. She was familiar enough with the passage, but to think of Jesus’ hard words in relation to her own daughter had taken her by surprise.
“I wish it wasn’t there,” continued Amanda. “I hate what those words make me feel like, so dirty and unclean. But even if Ramsay committed adultery and I am free to divorce, the verse still says that I cannot remarry without being an adulteress.”
“Dear, please—that is such a terrible word. I just don’t think—”
“But the words are clear, Mother, in black and white,” insisted Amanda.
“But surely you don’t want to remain unmarried.”
“Of course I don’t want to live the rest of my life alone. But can I ignore that passage, and say the words don’t really apply to me and my situation, just for the sake of my own happiness? What kind of obedience to the Scriptures is that? You and Father taught us that the Bible was to be obeyed. I didn’t do very well back then. I resented it every time either of you would say it. But I am trying to take the Bible seriously now.”
“You are convinced that’s what it means?”
“I don’t know, Mother!” said Amanda in frustration. “I just don’t see where Jesus or Paul say that certain men and women may remarry because they later found out things about their husbands and wives they didn’t know before. Maybe I am missing something. I haven’t studied the Bible very diligently, that’s for sure. But it seems to say that remarriage after divorce is adultery and that’s it. Oh, it is so confusing!”
A lengthy silence intervened. Finally Amanda spoke again.
“I have spent my whole life resisting authority,” she said, “caring nothing for what was right or for what God wanted, only what I wanted. I didn’t learn how to submit to you and Father when I was supposed to. So I must begin to live that way now. How else can I know God fully if I never learn what he wants me to learn? I don’t want to add to my troubles now by ignoring what the Bible says just so that I won’t be lonely for the rest of my life.”
“In the matter of your future,” remarked Jocelyn, “much will depend on how you feel God leading you inside. I have never thought of these things.”
“If loneliness is the price I must pay for getting myself into a marriage I shouldn’t have,” Amanda went on, “then perhaps I have to be willing to pay it. I can no longer make light of morality issues. I know what I did hurt you and Father deeply. It cut against all you stood for as Christians and as a husband and wife. If I am going to turn my life around, I have to start sometime. And I think that time has to be now. I have to start making decisions in a new way than I ever did before, saying not what do I want to do, but what is the right thing to do.”
Again Amanda sighed.
“I wish Daddy were here,” she said. “I would just ask him what to do. But since he is not, I must turn to you.”
“I know, dear. But honestly, I don’t know what to tell you. Even with your father gone, I would never remarry. He is the only husband I ever want to have. It is different for you. You are much younger and—”
“Uh-oh . . . here comes the rain!” cried Amanda suddenly.
The next instant mother and daughter were on their feet and bolting for the house.