Hard Hearts.

In an earlier post I mentioned how God commands us to do something because it reflects His holy character. However, there are some things that obviously don't. Divorce is one thing. Jesus makes this clear when talking to the Pharisees in Judea:

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"
"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."
"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery."
Matthew 19:3-9

It seems that some things that God allows are to be seen as concessions to the hardness of the human heart rather than reflections of God's holy character. God is pretty blatant here:

"I hate divorce," says the Lord God of Israel, "and I hate it when people clothe themselves with injustice," says the Lord Almighty.
Malachi 2:16

The same can be seen with slavery. It exists because of the hardness of the humans heart, not because God wants it to. God doesn't completely ban it from Israel, but he sets rules to limit it's evil. You could not kidnap a man and sell him to slavery (Exodus 21:16), you couldn't return an escaped slave to his master (Deuteronomy 23:15), and anyone who harmed so much as a tooth of his slave had to let him go free (Exodus 26:27). So it may be good to make a distinction between what God commands because it's good in His eyes and what God allows for now, but still hates. My prayer is that we reflect Him.