There is a sin that Jesus calls “unforgivable”: “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (Mark 3:28–29). Jesus’s motivation for making this strong statement stems from the accusation that his opponents leveled against him, namely that “he has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons” (Mark 3:22).

Jesus was famous for healing demonized people—and many others. Some Jewish religious leaders disapproved. They condemned his healing. Later in the gospel we learn that they were jealous (Mark 15:10), but at this juncture their indignation appears to stem from Jesus’s annoying habit of healing on the Sabbath (see Mark 3:1–6). Healing was fine—but doing it on God’s designated day of rest was highly suspect. Couldn’t Jesus just be a good Jew and wait until the Sabbath was over to heal people?

Well—no. In Luke 13, Jesus similarly heals someone on the Sabbath. This time it is a bent-over crippled woman who had been suffering for eighteen years. Jesus heals her. The leader of the synagogue is indignant: “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.” Jesus will have none of it. “You hypocrites!” he decries. “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” In other words, Jesus seems to say, “What the hell is your problem, exactly?”

Back to the unforgiveable sin. It is simple enough to understand: the sin is misattribution. Rather than recognizing the obvious fact that God’s work, performed by Jesus through the Holy Spirit, is God’s work, one instead attributes God’s work to a demon. “By the ruler of the demons he casts out demons,” they say. Such a sin will not be forgiven, Jesus says. All others—yes. This one—no.

So what does this have to do with my divorce? I will try to explain.

I told my minister, Bret, everything. Bret knows about my sin and hers. He knows when I lost it. He knows when I responded poorly to Ljubica’s provocations. He knows when I did shameful things. He knows all about my bad habits.

Bret knows about Ljubica’s abuse. He knows about it all. I hid nothing from him. And he did “due diligence.” He asked her directly about some of the claims that I made. He told me that she denied them. But he also said that he did not believe her denials. He believed me. He concluded, “I’m aware that Ljubica has at various times stated her desire to not be married to you, or her regret at having married you. I have no doubt that such words cause great pain and severely undermine the foundation of a marriage, perhaps irreparably. I do believe you’ve been treated badly in your marriage.” Talk about an understatement: I was treated badly. Thanks for letting me know.

And he knows that I agonized over my marriage. That I agonized over Ljubica’s mental health. That I supported her to the best of my ability. When our marriage was killing me, I still spent hours on my knees praying. I prayed the Lord’s Prayer over and over again. “Forgive us our trespasses,” I prayed again and again. I forgave her. I asked God to help me forgive her. I asked God to help me love her. I lit candles as a testimony of my love for her. I loved her when she didn’t love me. I loved her when he hated me. I loved her when she overflowed with fiery hatred toward me. I loved her when she called me a shit. I loved her when she said that I was nothing to her. I even called myself a pig to get her to talk to me. I sent her flowers with a note that said, “Even though I’m a pig, I still love you.” That was after she hadn’t talked to me for a month. She then took a picture of the flowers and the card and posted them on Facebook. “Even though you’re a pig, I still love you.” And then things were ostensibly okay for a short season—until she started hating me again.

My love finally died in the cauldron of her hate. “Rapist! Child molester!” she cried. Once I loved her. I loved her and then I didn’t. But still I wanted to love her, and that was enough to keep trying. And then I didn’t even want to love her, but I still wanted to want to love her, and that, somehow, was also enough to keep trying. And then I didn’t even want to want to love her. How can love be rekindled when the rains of malice have extinguished the embers and the winds of hate have scattered the ashes?

Still I prayed. Last year in January I spent a month on the floor of a church. I was often on my face before the cross. “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!” I cried out to the Lord. My tears wet the floor of the church. I curled up in a ball on the floor. People would come in. None disturbed me. Perhaps some even prayed for me. Sometimes I could say nothing. The only sound that came out of my mouth was a deep throaty groan. I made sounds for which verbs do not exist. But God was there. He held me. He embraced me. He kept me alive. He loved me. And then the day came. February 1, 2016. I was on the floor of the church. I was crying. If agony has a sound, I was making it.

I spoke to the Lord of the universe, “I can’t do this anymore.”

The Lord spoke back, “You don’t have to.”

“Then I choose not to,” I replied.

“Okay,” he answered.

And it was over. I was free. Life began again. God set me free. God said that I didn’t have to do it anymore.

I am still trying to understand what happened that day. Maybe I always will. The Lord of the universe saw me, loved me, and set me free. I told my best friend about the experience. I told him that I learned that God knows who I am and that he cares about my welfare. My friend told me that this was his definition of grace: God knows who we are and cares about our welfare. Put succinctly, my life mattered to God. I am not sure that I had known this, really. Of course, I knew that human lives matter to God, but experiencing my own individual life mattering to God—this I had never experienced before.

Back to Bret and the unforgiveable sin. He knew about the experience. This was his evaluation: “I suspect that the voice you hear and credit to the Lord, the one telling you it’s all right to divorce Ljubica, is actually your voice. I feel like you’re constructing a justification for what you’ve already decided to do.” These are the words Bret wrote to me. He later preached an entire sermon on the topic. As I sat in the pew, I was acutely aware that Bret’s sermon was for me and no one else in the congregation. Anyway, the minister reasoned that the voice I had heard could not be God’s voice; after all, the Bible says that God hates divorce.

Indeed. God does hate divorce. But God also hates abuse. And not everything that parades under the name “marriage” is marriage. When did marriage become telling your spouse repeatedly that you hate him, that you do not want to be married to him, that he is shit, that he is worthless, that he is garbage, that he is…. Do I really need to go on? Whatever my relationship with Ljubica was, it was not a marriage. And whatever it was, God set me free from it. Why? Because God is good. Because God liberates the oppressed. Because God loves—me.

So, dear minister, consider that you might be guilty of the unforgivable sin. Consider that you may have misattributed God’s work to a demon. Consider that your Pharisaical legalism kept you from seeing the gift of God, the gift of freedom and liberation. How is it that you managed to recognize the fact of my abuse at my “spouse’s” hands but not the action of God that freed me from that abuse? How indeed? Are you really that blind?