I was thinking about it today and it is so funny. The human soul knows how to feel about cheating. Why do you think Montel, Maury and Jerry Springer are still in business? I have never cheated but I have been cheated on. I remember in high school I trashed an ex-boyfriend's truck because he cheated and lied. (I was sixteen and hormonal, cut me a break - ha ha!)
In an article in GQ, it showed several statistics that men who cheat are going to keep cheating because of the conditions of their life. It justified their adultery. I read the whole article. I wanted to understand this mentality because we know that cheating is wrong, painful and goes against the rules of love! Do you not agree?
What brought this up? Well, I was reading the book of Hosea and it is about a man (Hosea) that is told by God to find himself an adulterous wife. Interesting, right? Well, he does and she bears children by Hosea but she does not stick around. She runs away to go back to her old life. Hosea, of course, gets angry (and so does God) but Hosea (inspired by God) goes back and gets her, forgives her and brings her home. This is the language he uses:
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt."
What love, right?! I am astonished. If you checked yes to my first question, would you have taken your lover back who betrayed your trust and broke your heart? No way! Even though we as humans instinctively know that cheating is just wrong, we feel this innate pull to be with one person. Is that not interesting? Any outsider can understand the taxing and numbing lifestyle to be had by people who jump from one lover to the next.
It's not like we need more than one person! I mean, people can hardly make it in a marriage to just one person. You already know divorce is just as popular as weddings are, not marriage. Yes, this is an ad for marriage. More than that, the truth is that the only way one can make it through a relationship of any sort is forgiveness.
Yes, cheating is absolutely wrong. Yes, there is no excuse. But, have you not done something wrong to someone and needed a second, third, fifteenth chance? Perhaps there was no excuse for your behavior then and you can never know how much what you do affects someone. Yet, marriage in its truest form must be all about forgiveness because it is meant to last a lifetime - that is a lifetime of forgiveness!! God gives us a perfect example of this, not just in this beautiful story of Hosea but in our everyday lives! Nothing can separate us from the love of God because He will always forgive our every sin, big or little. Maybe America should take notes. Families, couples, churches, schools and children would be greatly affected by one person's choice to forgive.
When I asked my dad, who has been happily married for 30 years, what has made he and my mom make it this far and he said, "Julie, if I could wrap it up in one word it would be forgiveness." He then commenced to tell me that he has done many stupid things and my mom has forgiven him when he did not deserve it. I am not suggesting that he cheated on my mother, but I am suggesting that 30 years with someone definitely means they have brought you great joy and great pain, period.
Ultimately, I think deep down in our heart of hearts, we want one wonderful and complex, sometimes stupid, beautiful human to spend our lives with and if we behave otherwise it is an attempt seek that out without knowing that is what we really really want and need. Just like people will wander the earth and do all kinds of research to find God and ultimate truth, people will join eHarmony, go out to bars, lose weight, join clubs, churches and organizations to find "the one"! The key is forgiveness. The reality of the situation is that not matter how in love we are, or how much we adore our significant other, without forgiveness we can forget longevity of anything.
There is hope! A few verses down in Hosea, God tells this to his people,
"I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord."
Amen.
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