Instapundit asks “Is infidelity an external force, something that “takes down” a man?”
I doubt he believes that, but I’ll answer the rhetorical question anyway. HELL NO.
Oh yes, that sort of thing makes me angry. Very angry. Infidelity isn’t waking up one day and suddenly leaping into bed with someone to whom you’re not married. It’s a process. It’s looking at someone with lust and not averting your eyes, but instead letting your gaze linger. It’s allowing that vision to become fantasy, instead of willfully focusing your mind on what it is about your husband or wife that made you want to get married in the first place. It’s a series of small decisions to prioritize your desires ahead of your commitments. It’s talking to that person, feeling the thrill of sexual attraction, deciding to carry on the conversation, and later making excuses to go back for more. It’s arranging a private moment for a phone call you KNOW you should not be making. It’s the willful decision to continually put your emotions – always changeable – ahead of your common sense, and to do those things until you are inured to your emotional unfaithfulness. Once you’re comfortable with that emotional unfaithfulness, the physical part is inevitable.
Let’s not have any excuses about being overtaken. Infidelity is always a choice.
1 Corinthians 10:13:
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Amen! I hate it when people try to cop out of their infidelity – “It just happened” pssh. Bologney, it is.
Great post.
People need to draw the line way before it even becomes a temptation. Just don’t put yourself in the position where you even have to make a decision. This happened to me recently with a woman I work with. For some reason, I just found everything about her delightful and I had a terribly compelling urge to just talk to her face to face for long periods of time.
Anyway, I talked to her a bit about spiritual things like apologetics, and I found that she wasn’t interested in that at all. Even though I could not stop thinking about her for a week, I just stayed away from the floor that she worked on until it passed. Now I don’t even think about her.
People have to think about what God will get out of all these relationships… if he isn’t getting any advantage, then we would not engage in that relationship. I just think that it is wrong to kick God out of my desire for happiness. I have a prior commitment to God’s goals and any relationships need to fit in with that pre-existing commitment. With respect to God’s purposes, my desires are expendable.
I should not find a woman attractive based on non-Christian characteristics. Instead, I ask: Is she interested in my plans? Can she help me in my plan to give God something he’ll like? Those are the real questions a man should ask. And if he expects to have children, he should be thinking about whether she is qualified to help with that, too.
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Oh, I should say this for people who don’t know me. Not only am I not married, but I’m chaste (never even kissed a girl yet). So the temptation that I am avoiding is just guarding my chastity and my emotions.
Wintery Knight´s last blog ..MUST-SEE: Canadian Broadcast Corporation explains Climategate
There are a few couples in my church who committed to that level of purity and they were all glad for it later. If nothing else, you avoid the kind of heartbreak most people go through as teenagers but think is normal.
Wintry Knight, I love your comment above. I’m married and I have two girls, one 17 and one 12. I’ve had my 17 year old attend about 4 abstinence conferences, but I don’t think anything she’s ever been to really puts a good reason for abstinence the way you just described in your post. Thank you so much.