Guidelines For Living

Guest (Male): Take a break from your busy schedule and join Harold Sala for Guidelines For Living.

Harold Sala: Infidelity is not new, but we are treating it more casually than any previous generation in recent history. The reality, however, is that its consequences are not lessened by our more liberal outlook on life. In most cases, infidelity is the crowning blow to a marriage that may have already been on the rocks.

Psychology Today says more people say they have cheated on their marriage partners than on their tax returns or expense accounts. Why can't people just forgive and forget? The answer, simply put, is that we aren't put together psychologically in such a way that you can throw an emotional switch and everything clears the screen of your memory and feelings.

Jealousy, resentment, feelings of betrayal and breach of trust, they all make it difficult to just move on with life. Long ago, the writer of Proverbs observed that jealousy arouses a husband's fury and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge.

When the birth control pill was invented, thus separating sex from procreation for millions of people, a cultural revolution began which lowered the bar in the restraints which had governed society for centuries. But when men and women who consider themselves to be liberated and free from these traditional restraints realize that a husband or wife is in someone else's arms, jealousy and resentment rages just as it did centuries ago, and marriages become casualties of this misaligned sophistry.

Why did God place a premium on fidelity in marriage? Because He made us and He knew how deep our emotional needs are and how they only can be met in marriage. And that is through a monogamous relationship.

Remember God's plan was: For this reason, a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and they become one flesh, a formula which Jesus repeated. Wait a minute, you may be saying. Didn't Solomon have 700 wives and 300 concubines? And didn't even David have several wives?

Yes, it's true, but a study of scripture shows that from Abraham's time to the Babylonian captivity, pagan practices involving polygamy influenced God's people but were never part of His plan or purpose. From the Babylonian captivity in 586 BC on through the entire New Testament, there are no statements or examples which would justify either polygamy or infidelity. To the contrary, leaders in the church were to be husbands of one wife, and the context means married to just one person.

But it's just the way men are made, I've been told. Before you buy into that mentality, read Psalm 51 written by David, a man who has been there and faced the consequences. If there were no God, no Ten Commandments with the injunction you shall not commit adultery, no heaven or hell, and no accountability to God, you would still discover that if you want to make your marriage work, you had better be faithful to the one to whom you committed yourself in marriage, because nothing less than that will work.

Don't buy into the myth that affairs can actually make your marriage stronger. That's like believing that gargling with hydrochloric acid will take away your sore throat or shooting yourself in the foot with a .45 is the best way to deal with an itch on your toe.

Well did the writer of scripture put it: Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? So is he who sleeps with another man's wife. No one who touches her will go unpunished.

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