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>>This is where belonging to a good church comes in...In my church, for example, I am held accountable by my Elders to be loving towards my wife. If she or anyone else ever reports something to the contrary, I will be contacted by an Elder and will be given Biblical counsel. If I an unrepentant, I will be subject to church discipline and at some point treated as an unbeliever.
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>>If I do repent, then she is still bound and the marraige relationship moves forward as it should - with a loving husband.
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>>The Bible only allows for divorce on the grounds of adultery or abandonment of an unbelieving spouse (I think that's the second one - not 100% sure the spouse has to be unbelieving.) Once I go through the entire church discipline process and am determined to be an unbeliever, I think she would be free to divorce me and remove herself from my leadership.
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>I guess it's all just a bit too much for me. I like the idea of being responsible for my own behaviour. I would dislike the idea of having to submit my behaviour to some form of overseeing by a religious council. I know that one of the men I worked with believed much as you do. Whenever one of his children acted 'badly' growing up, he would call the church elders. Frankly, I'd have run away from home at a very early age.
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>I once heard a woman on TV say it the best way I've ever heard. She talked about being in the car with her dad at about 3:00 in the morning. He was driving her home from her job I think. Anyway, he came to a red light and there were no cars anywhere on the road in any direction as far as the eye could see. She asked him why he didn't just drive on. His answer was, "Integrity is doing the right thing, even when you know you won't get caught."
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>If I can't do the right thing without God, or Jesus, or a church Elder looking over my shoulder, then I have no right calling myself a decent human being.

Doesn't it give you the impression of going into a dimly-lit room, with all these old geezers, with stiff high collars, wearing black, sepulchral faces that have never seen the sun, sitting in stiff high-backed chairs (but definitely not drinking stiff high-balls). "Well speak, Brother Bennet. What sayest thou?"

Or the misery of the elders in that James Stewart film, where he's like a Quaker and they get embroiled in the Civil War.