Journal: Faith and Mission
Volume: FM 05:1 (Fall 1987)
Article: Every Pastor’s Dilemma: A Theological Reflection
Author: Thurmon E. Bryant

FM 5:1 (Fall 1987) p. 53

Every Pastor’s Dilemma:
A Theological Reflection

Thurmon E. Bryant

Associate Vice President For Mission Management
Foreign Mission Board, SBC

The drama unfolded in the case, “I Don’t Want a Divorce, Pastor,” received a response by another drama which took place in the heart of the first drama’s author, Daniel Carro, which could be entitled, “Did I Do the Right Things? I wonder if I should have acted with more resolution... I feel that I may have gotten involved too quickly, that I failed to maintain objectivity and impartiality... Is there still something else I could have done to help Marta... and Jose?” These are haunting questions that trouble the mind of every experienced pastor with a caring heart to help redemptively those of his congregation who hurt. This case on divorce presents some issues by which every aspiring young pastor and seminarian may profit if he is to be alert to them early in his ministry.

The overriding issue one perceives in these dramas is that of attempting to minister effectively from a highly rigid, dogmatic context. Many seminarians leave the seminary with their theology pretty well tied up in a neat package. It is easy to function within a rigid system as long as one has no life-shaking problems to deal with, or as long as one is willing to live in blindness to reality. Knowing something of the Argentine context in which a pastor must exercise his ministry, I can well see why Daniel Carro may have found the dogmatic pattern forged by his seminary and by the social, political, and religious environment of Argentina to be a bit uncomfortable. Is it valid to suppose that a well-ordered theological structure had been propagated by the pastor over a period of eight years during which Marta had been shepherded by her pastor? Else, where had she been so “tightly” indoctrinated that divorce was an eternal, “No, No”? One can hardly conclude that it was in the Roman Catholic Church, where she had been baptized as an infant and “hardly ever went to mass,” that she had learned a divorce would “be going against the expressed command of the Lord,” and that it was better to be dead than divorced. It is most difficult to unravel the theological dilemmas generated when one approaches problems of human relationships from the perspective of an ironclad dogma. It is more difficult to live out the moral and spiritual dilemmas by one personally entwined in such relationships, whether it be the person most intimately involved or one who attempts to counsel.

A second issue highlighted in this case is the not-so-easily-detected pitfalls in the pastoral ministry role. It is quite evident that there had been a serious breakdown in communications between Marta and Jose. How frequently marital problems stem f...