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are you saying that they weren't legally married? Are you suggesting that whenever someone commits adultery that his marriage is automatically dissolved in the eyes of God, whether or not the parties divorce? If so, please provide Biblical authority for that position.

If adultery automatically constitutes divorce in God's eyes, the implications are staggering. I've never heard that asserted before, and I'm dying to know where you're getting it.

Matt,

On the marriage issue, I am in wholehearted agreement with you that marriage in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the state are not the same. As a quasi-libertarian I would like to get government out of the marriage business altogether. But the practical problem is that there needs to be some method for the state to determine who gets social security survivor benefits, who gets to make medical decisions if someone is incapacitated, who inherits property if there isn't a will, etc.

So, what the state basically does is define civil marriage and leave to the churches to define for themselves what they consider to be marriage in the eyes of God. I can promise you that there are plenty of Massachusetts churches that don't recognize gay marriage even though the state does. (The church I grew up in didn't even recognize second marraiges by the divorced.) Conversely, some churches recognize common law marriages in states that don't. So what we are really talking about is two different entities -- the church and the state -- deciding within their respective spheres of influence how to define marriage.

So, maybe Michael and Terri Schiavo had ceased being married in the eyes of God -- adultery is biblical grounds for divorce, though I don't read it as making divorce mandatory or automatic. But even so, the state still has to sort out who, under its civil law, can decide to pull the plug. Terri Schiavo would certainly have had grounds for divorce had she been competent and chosen to file for divorce; but because she was incompetent there was no one to make that decision.

Now, on the question of allowing her to die, there are several possibilities:

1. One could argue that starving someone to death is murder whether they want to die or not; her wishes are irrelevant; and the state should not have allowed that choice to be made no matter what. If that's your view (and I gather from your previous comments that it is), then all of these other questions are largely irrelevant.

2. If one takes the view that it should have been her choice, then the following possibilites exist:

A. Her husband was right that that was her wish, so the outcome was the correct one.

B. Her husband was honestly mistaken about her wishes; she did not wish to die; in which case the wrong outcome happened but it was nobody's "fault" in the sense of a moral failing.

C. Her husband is a complete and utter scoundrel who knew full well that she did not want to die and lied about it so he could get her out of the way to pursue his new life with another woman. If that's the case, then before God I think he is a murderer and will be judged as such.

That takes care of the husband issue; it does not take care of the state issue. If you agree with #1 above that her wishes should have been legally irrelevant, that it's murder to starve someone to death no matter what, then the state has an evil law on the books that needs to be changed.

If, however, you believe, as I do, that the choice should have been hers, then a court system can only be expected to do the best it can in terms of sorting out who is telling the truth. So long as judges are fallible humans mistakes will be made in some cases, and that is both unfortunate and unavoidable.