By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
A couple’s intimate moment at a Coldplay concert was broadcast on the jumbotron, revealing an alleged affair between Andy Byron, a married CEO, and HR Chief Kristin Cabot. Their actions drew public scrutiny, emphasizing the harm of adultery. The incident highlights the emotional pain for families and the spiritual consequences of infidelity.
Continue reading “Caught on Jumbotron: The Impact of Infidelity”By Elizabeth Prata
It’s wedding season when so many young women get married. The flurry of bridal showers, wedding planning, caterers, dress fittings. Then the big day comes, it’s a high that a woman does not soon forget.
It does all go by fast, the day is a blur, but a happy one. Everything is fresh, new, dewy promises and hugs and handshakes and assurances and vows.
And then if they honeymoon, after the honeymoon’s over they return and sink into life. The routine of working, cleaning, cooking, chatting, fighting, resenting, making up. Repeat.
If a married biological biological woman and a man (for there is no other kind of marriage) are not saved by the blood of Christ what you have in marriage is the close proximity of two sinners competing for dominance of their own sin nature. In the case of non-saved couples, marriage is hard, one of the hardest things on earth, because you must not only mortify your own sin, but submit to one another.
Both saved and unsaved people intuitively understand that marriage is hard. When coming across a married couple that have stayed together for 30, 40, 50 years, they are looked at like a mythological creature. We are gazing upon a griffin or a unicorn. I often hear people wonderingly ask a long-term married couple, “What’s the secret?”
I remember that myself. We were visiting an old Italian nonnie in Providence Rhode Island. She wasn’t saved. They were 50 years married. The husband came ambling through, the wife playfully joked with her hubby and they had a brief moment of teenager-y interaction ending with a quick kiss. It could not have been any cuter than two kittens playing. We stared in wonder, as if we were at a zoo, gazing at them through glass, the placard beside it stating “Long-term Married Couple in Love. Species: Human. Habitat: Providence, RI.”
One of us in the group asked, “What’s the secret to a long marriage?” We breathlessly awaited the pronouncement, the answer to the key of life from someone who had unlocked it.
She took a deep breath, aimed a crooked, arthritic finger at us and said slowly, “You have to overlook a lot of things.”
We nodded sagely and let the moment have its moment, before resuming our conversation.
I got married when I was 22. The progression I had been taught to follow for a life plan was graduate high school, go to college, then get a graduate degree, get married, get a house, and have a career in academia. I was on that track. I was not saved yet.
I’d graduated from college the year before, my fiancé and I moved in together, spent the next year establishing ourselves in our city finding jobs etc. I became a substitute teacher (my ultimate goal was to earn a Ph.D and teach college, so teaching in an elementary school was a good first step while I saved up money for grad school). He wanted to be an engineer. We also spent the year preparing for the wedding.
The day came and I was happy. I really was. Yet I knew deep down this was not the man for me, but I had an idol of marriage and I stuck to it rigidly. I wanted the love and security I thought a marriage would provide- all on its own. I thought that stepping through the threshold of the marriage temple, that THEN everything would be all right. Automatically.
It wasn’t.
What we had were two sinners with competing self-interests. I became a golf widow pretty quickly (his idol was sports). He was gone all Sunday so I took that time to prepare my lesson plans for school. I had earned my teaching certificate and was teaching first grade.
Saturdays we had to spend at the in-laws. Every Saturday without fail, the bulk of the day at mom-in-law’s. I didn’t mind visiting, but it was the “have to” I found objectionable. I hated that he was tied to his mother’s apron strings and didn’t have the courage to say “My wife and I are having a picnic this Saturday…going to a movie…taking a drive to the mountains…” Nope. His mom came first, not his wife. We weren’t saved, so he didn’t know Genesis 2:24, that “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” Our marriage had 2 flesh, but one of them wasn’t mine.
We always piled in to the in-law’s living room and and there was never a question that every Saturday of our lives we’d would be doing this. The work week was, well, work. We never had time to ourselves.
A few years went on. Even though we were not saved, we had followed normal wedding protocol. Our wedding was in a Methodist church and there was a minister and the marriage vows. One of those vows was ‘forsaking all others’.
He didn’t.
but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. (Matthew 5:32)
He found someone else at work, fell in love with her, had an affair. Deep down I knew. His attention had dwindled. His temper was shorter. Always a nervous fellow, he was more antsy than ever before. He just didn’t want to be here. Emotionally, he wasn’t.
Adultery is a devastating sin. The Bible tells us that sexual sins are bad.
but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:28).
When you have two saved and forgiven sinners you have the help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the natural sin nature in us that wants its worldly lusts. Subdue the sin that wants to nurse bitterness. Subdue the sin that wants its selfish desires fulfilled. Subdue the sin that doesn’t know what it means to serve, sacrifice, and truly love. And it’s still hard!
Do not lust in your heart for her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes. (Proverbs 6:25)
Since a marital couple is one flesh, when one of them rips away to include an interloper into the marriage, the wound is deep, deep. Is the fleshly satisfaction of uniting with an adulteress or an adulterer worth it? No. There is shame, and conscience-pricking, and anger, and if there are children, they are wounded. Even if the sin isn’t caught out, it’s still a terrible sin.
In my case, he divorced me and married his lover. I am glad they found love, though neither was saved. They stayed together 30 years, until he died. But what is it to satisfy a lust, to declare one’s worldly love to and with another worldling, but forfeit your soul? I do not believe he ever repented and was saved. If not, he is paying for his adultery and divorce for all eternity. I am so grief stricken over that. Was 30 years of happiness worth it compared to an eternity of punishment for defying God?
It’s a mess and a tragedy. Don’t cheat. It’s awful.
Here is a resource for women:
Downloadable pdf- “False Messages: A Guide for the Godly Bride” by Aileen Challies
Here is a resource for men:
Blog with link to downloadable pdf- Sexual Detox
Book- The Exemplary Husband: A Biblical Perspective, by Stuart Scott and John MacArthur
Book- The Excellent Wife: A Biblical Perspective, by Martha Peace
Sermon- The Relationship of Marriage, No. 762, by C.H. Spurgeon
Blog- Bible Reading in the Marriage of Charles and Susannah Spurgeon, By Ray Rhodes, Jr
Book- Marriage to A Difficult Man: The Uncommon Union of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, by Elisabeth Dodds
At age 53, on Christmas day afternoon, it appears that George Michael has died “peacefully at his home”. Fox News, BBC, UK Mirror, Business Insider confirm. Here is TMZ–
George Michael passed away at his home in England at the age of 53 … his rep confirms.
A rep for the pop star says, “It is with great sadness that we can confirm our beloved son, brother and friend George passed away peacefully at home over the Christmas period.”
Details surrounding Michael’s death have not been released. Police say there’s nothing suspicious about the death, according to the BBC. George was a music legend — and sold more than 100 MILLION albums during his career. Michael launched his career with WHAM! in the ’80s — churning out hits like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and “Careless Whisper.
The immediate thought whenever a celebrity or local person dies, is always, ‘I wonder if they are surprised at their eternity’. Either way, whether the person died in their sin or they died in Jesus, the fact of their eternity becomes real one second after breath expires, and is a billion times worse, or a billion times better, than he could ever conceive while on earth.
I have a connection to George Michael. I’m 56 years old, three years older than he was, and grew up on his songs. I wasn’t saved until I was in my forties, so I enjoyed pop songs with all the range of lyrics from sweet to profane, for half my adult life. I liked Wham! and I liked George Michael’s songs.
But even more than that, music is so forceful especially when you’re a teen and young adult. The lyrics feel almost alive, embedding themselves into one’s brain and heart to settle intimately with the very sinews and tendons of the body, becoming part of us in ways that other leisure activities do not. You hear a certain song, it immediately takes you back, you’re swallowed in a memory with all its smells, feelings, and sensations as if it occurred a moment ago. At Psychology Today the question is asked,
Why Do the Songs from Your Past Evoke Such Vivid Memories?
We all know the power of an old song to trigger vivid memories that seem to transport us back in time and space. What songs bring back emotional memories from your past? The songs we love become woven into a neural tapestry entwined with the people, seasons, and locations throughout our lifespan. What is the neuroscience behind the ability of music to evoke such strong memories of the people and places from our past?
The discovery may help to explain why music can elicit strong responses from people with Alzheimer’s disease, said the study’s author, Petr Janata, associate professor of psychology at UC Davis’ Center for Mind and Brain. The hub that music activated is located in the medial prefrontal cortex region—right behind the forehead—and one of the last areas of the brain to atrophy over the course of Alzheimer’s disease.
The article goes on to describe findings from three different studies about the therapeutic potential the research can yield.
One of George Michael’s biggest hits was the song Careless Whisper. It is about a man expressing regret over the pain that his now-discovered adultery caused. It was a good song, but it was too real for me. It was on the radio when my ex-husband was engaged in adultery and leaving our marriage. This life-altering event occurred over thirty years ago, and the pain of one flesh being ripped back into two has simmered to long healed scar tissue, only occasionally flaring up…such as if I hear Careless Whisper again in an elevator…radio…or in the wake of George Michael’s death. The Careless Whisper is a whisper with teeth, ready to bite.
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. (Hebrews 13:4)
It’s strange how life takes you and your loved ones on different paths. Neither my husband nor I were saved while we were married, but eventually I became saved by grace afterward. To my knowledge, he never was. He died unexpectedly 6 months ago as a young man of 58, and I wonder, did his eternity surprise him? Is he regretting his own careless whisper? There but for the grace of God go I…at any point prior to being saved if I had died my own eternity would have surprised me as I’d be punished for all my own many careless and careful sins.
Adultery is horrible, and it inflicts a particularly painful pain that which takes many decades to soften. The grace of God lifted mine and gave me the strength to overcome anger and bitterness and to forgive. The careless whisper of adultery brings pain and spiritual death. The careful whisper of Jesus on the cross is the guiding whisper of my life, ‘It is finished.’Even as His own breath expired, He brought life to His elect who are now forgiven in sins. The sin of adultery forgiven as all other sins are forgiven. What a difference in life and death Jesus makes.
Men, women, husbands, wives, I can tell you that adultery is terrible, whether it’s the person committing it or the person being committed against. I’ve experienced it, I’ve helped wives through it. It is a dastardly sin. Don’t do it.
Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. (1 Corinthians 6:18).
I can never hear that song by George Michael, his Careless Whisper, and not be immediately transported to my old sunny dining room, me with a Walkman sitting at the table doing the bills, and hearing the first notes of the mellow and sultry saxophone, turned up full blast on my ears, my heart breaking, my hands shaking.
My ex-husband died recently, and this brings its own sad weight to the grace-filled heart. The man who wrote and sang the song is now dead, too. One wonders, (hopes), they are enjoying bliss and not torment. My own sins are forgiven and I know the eternity that awaits me. We three, our own unholy trinity inside a song, inside the lyrics, blowing wind borne notes now at long last released, lifting into different destinies.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
the-end-time.org 