Psychologist Constance Ahrons, champion of the “good divorce,” ended her life by assisted suicide on Nov. 29 at age 84. Author of the bestselling The Good Divorce: Keeping Your Family Together When Your Marriage Comes Apart (1994), Ahrons coined the term “binuclear family” and was a divorce coach, mediator, and therapist. She defined the “good divorce” as “one which leaves no emotional scars on either the adults or children,” but that is a myth. If a divorce is sometimes necessary under such things as abandonment and physical abuse, divorce is never “good.” Ahrons wanted divorcees to consider the welfare of all parties concerned, but she left out a major one, which is God, the very Author of marriage. Her obituary in the Family Lawyer Magazine says that she “died as she lived: on her own terms.” Indeed, her theme song, and that of the culture she helped to create, was Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way.” But it is a sad, empty way in the end. She had a “partner” rather than a husband (divorced her husband in 1965); she celebrated sunsets with champaign and chocolate, worshiping the creation more than the Creator; and she committed assisted suicide. A member of the Hemlock Society, Ahrons believed “strongly in choosing how one lives and how one dies.” But man does not create himself and is not his own master. Life and death and marriage are God’s prerogatives. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. … God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things. … For in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Genesis 2:7, 24; Acts 17:24-25, 28).
(Friday Church News Notes, December 17, 2021, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)