But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. —John 2:24, NIV

The Heart of Adultery

     Several years ago our family read an unforgettable story about some cannibals in Papau New Guinea. The graphic violence depicted in the opening chapter almost made us put the book down. But I’m glad we didn’t because the insights shared by the author, a missionary to the Sawi tribes of Irian Jaya, have proven to be priceless.   
     Prior to this missionary’s arrival, the Sawi had no concept of God and were so thoroughly demonized that their concept of good and evil were almost completely reversed. As the missionary attempted to share the gospel with the Sawi, he was horrified to find that the Sawi regarded Judas as the “super-Sawi and hero of the story.” Like the missionary, I was deeply troubled to think that anyone from any culture would think that Judas was the hero of the story.
     Several questions came to mind as I read about these people. The most intriguing, “Have betrayal, treachery and treason–things that thoroughly disgust me–been sown into my fallen flesh just like all my other iniquities?” And, “How can a culture that tolerates betrayal, treachery and treason survive?”    
     The Sawi admired Judas because they too possessed a perverse penchant for betrayal. This perversion manifested itself as “tuwi asonai man.” That means “to fatten with friendship for unexpected slaughter.” The Sawi were skilled in the art of betrayal. They delighted in watching their victim’s eyes at the moment they realized they had been betrayed and would soon be savagely murdered. Pretty sick group of folks, wouldn’t you say?   
     These savages would sit around the fire telling stories of how thoroughly one cannibal had deceived another, how cunningly it had all been set up, and how surprised the victim was when the trap sprang shut. The Sawi embraced betrayal and treachery as legitimate forms of social interaction.
     Reading the book brought some surprisingly strong emotions to the surface for me. I was appalled by the level of depravity in the Sawi culture. I’m also appalled by the level of depravity in my own culture, but I had subconsciously hoped to hold on to just a bit of cultural superiority over these savages. I’d hoped that at least in one area–the betrayal of those who trust and depend on us–that I could say, “We don’t tolerate that here…We’d never stoop to that level of depravity here…We may murder our children as they’re being born (Partial Birth Abortion), but we don’t embrace betrayal and treachery as legitimate forms of social interaction here in America.” Or, do we?
     My disgust with the Sawi culture was masking something equally disgusting within me and my culture–a fleshly, fallen propensity to betray those who trust and depend on us. The flesh cunningly camouflages itself in the sins of others–in this case, the Sawi. Our sin hides in the Sawi culture just like David’s sin was hiding in the story that Nathan confronted him with. The blatant betrayal embraced by the Sawi caused me to look for the more subtle manifestations of it tolerated by Americans.  
     Betrayal manifests itself in America as divorce and the adulterous remarriage that so frequently follows it. This betrayal attempts to sanitize and cloak itself in more acceptable terms. For example, “We had irreconcilable differences…The financial pressures destroyed our marriage…We just couldn’t communicate…We fell out of love with our spouse and into it with someone else…We married too early; we needed to find ourselves...He was never really my soul mate…She never really listened to me like my secretary did.” Consequently, we fail to see it for what it really is–the betrayal of a family who trusted and depended on us.  
     Tuwi asonai man and the epidemic of divorce and adultery present in America, even in our churches, have more in common than you might think. Both are forms of betrayal. Both result in a devastating loss to every family member. Both destroy trust. Both result in broken families, damaged communities and weaker nations. Finally, and most troublesome to me, both are tolerated by the society in which they occur.  
     In all fairness, I must admit that Tuwi asonai man and divorce and remarriage do have some striking differences. Tuwi asonai man is carefully planned and actively supported by many co-conspirators, including the leadership of the tribe; whereas, divorce and remarriage in our churches is supposed to be an accident and is only passively supported by many co-conspirators, including the leadership of the church.     
     Another difference is that the Sawi affirm publicly that tuwi asonai man is a legitimate practice within their culture. Everyone knows that it is socially sanctioned and to be expected from time to time. The Sawi child, whose father has been murdered, is not confused when this occurs. He knows how he should feel and what he should do. He is angry, and he begins to plan a tuwi asonai man for the one who took his father away from him. 
     The American child doesn’t know how to feel or what to do when his parents divorce. He is completely confused. His intuition tells him that his parent’s divorce and remarriage is like a Haitian earthquake, but the adults in his family and in his church seem unable or unwilling to confront it.
     His father is not dead; he’s living with another woman. But he cannot avenge his loss on this woman because he is expected to respect and obey her (every other weekend). His mother has invited a strange man to live with them, and this man must be respected and obeyed, even though he has abandoned his own family and broken a sacred covenant with his wife.  
     I’m not sure which is worse; to have your father murdered and eaten by cannibals or to have him betray you and your family for another woman and then act as if only a change of address has occurred. This twists the hearts and minds of our children and damages the godly seed. “Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth” (Mal. 2:15B; KJV).  
     What generates this plague of divorce and remarriage devastating so many of our families today? What lurks in the heart of adultery? Buried deep within the heart of adultery, far deeper than any interest in the sexually forbidden, is betrayal. Betrayal, treachery, and treason, instigated by the Devil, executed by the flesh, embraced by the world, and tolerated in the church.   
     Jesus warned us, but many of our church leaders have not heeded the warning. He said, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men” (Mat. 5:13). The flesh, the world and the Devil intimidate our pastors and tell them that they will be thrown out and trampled by men if they become salty. But Jesus tells them something entirely different. Jesus tells them that they will be thrown out and trampled by men if they don’t become salty. Who will they believe? Who will they obey?
     I implore the leaders of our churches to become salty, to acknowledge and confront the epidemic of divorce and remarriage for what it is–the betrayal of a family and the sacred covenant that supports it. I beg them to study and teach boldly the truth of covenant and to reestablish the plumb line of covenant for future generations.

     The leaders in our churches must bite the bullet and confront the American version of tuwi asonai man which is destroying the very fabric of the American Church. If they refuse, one day, and maybe not so far away, they’ll find that they have fallen through the hole in the fabric that they neglected to patch.

The Power of a Definition

Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
–Luke 16:18

     Have you ever considered the power that resides in something as simple, as seemingly insignificant, as a mere definition? Do you realize that the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe vs. Wade in 1973 hinged on a mere definition? Millions of human beings have been murdered in this country over the past three decades, about 43 million to date, because of an unbelievably goofy definition of when life begins–at birth. Wow!...nothing at all was going on for nine months and then suddenly, presto…chango…I’ve got an amazingly complex and beautiful baby! You’d think that the miracle of birth would convert these people to Christ. Unwanted tissue becomes a human being in the blink of an eye…that’s amazing…that’s a miracle. 
     Isn’t that amazing? Millions of lives snuffed out, millions of murders committed without prosecution, and it all hinged on a simple definition–the point at which life begins. If life begins at conception, abortion is murder. If life begins when the baby boy’s head leaves his mother’s body, abortion is simply the surgical removal of unwanted tissue. Legally, it all depends on a simple definition.
     Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear realizes that our land is soaked in innocent blood. No one with a clear conscience could watch an abortion without throwing up. However, the eyes of the law of our land are blind to the injustice. It’s confusing to watch a murder and then hear that no wrong has occurred. It could make you crazy if you didn’t speak up.  
     Satan, the deceiver, is very interested in messing with our definitions. If he can manipulate and twist the definitions of something as simple as words, he can get away with murder. He is very interested in our words. Any time things don’t make sense, like killing babies and saying nothing wrong happened, you can bet your bottom dollar that spiritual forces are at work within the confusion.
     Let me give you another example of a situation in which devastating consequences occur; yet, people say that no wrongdoing took place. It too hinges upon something as seemingly “insignificant” as a definition, the definition of the word “adultery.” Jesus said, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Luke 16:18). This statement is very clear to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. Jesus tells us how He defines the word “adultery.”
     Jesus’ defines marrying anyone when you are divorced or marrying a divorced person as committing adultery. The structure of our confusion is built on the foundation of the definition of the word adultery. Although Jesus clearly defines adultery as He did in Luke 16:18, the modern Church is not in agreement with Him. (I wonder why Jesus would want to come back for a bride that is so disagreeable?)
     Jesus is not the only one giving us a clear definition of what constitutes adultery in the Bible. Paul also clarifies how one becomes an adulteress. “So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man” (Rom. 7:3). According to this definition, it is not a judge’s gavel that frees one to remarry. According to this verse, death, and only death, frees one to remarry without being defined as an adulteress.
     If the Church defined adultery like Jesus and Paul define adultery, we would never hear such nonsense as “God released me to marry again.” No believer could look you in the eye and say “God released me to commit adultery with Billy Bob.” That would sound absolutely ridiculous. The key to being able to say “God released me to marry Billy Bob” is being able to redefine adultery. Many Christians choose to reject the clear definition that Jesus offers us in Luke 16:18 and that Paul offers in Romans 7:3.
      Allow me to give you the definition that Jezebel uses for adultery. It happens to be the same one most churches use, and it’s the definition that the people who say “God released me to remarry” use. Jezebel says that adultery occurs only when people who are legally married have sexual relations outside of that marriage. She puts her faith in the gavel to completely dissolve the marriage. She reasons that if the state abolished the first marriage, God did too, and if the state sanctioned the second and subsequent marriages, God did too. That is the definition of adultery offered up by Jezebel, and unfortunately, too many churches today are in complete agreement with her.
     But that is not the definition of Jesus. Jesus said “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Luke 16:18). Please read this verse slowly and carefully once more. If Jesus describes these civil unions as adultery, why doesn’t the Church? Why doesn’t the Church use Jesus’ definition for adultery anymore?  
         Can you see what I’m saying? It’s as simple as a definition. Jesus says that divorced people who are ineligible to remarry and marry again are committing adultery. Jezebel says “Hogwash…Let these people exercise their romantic skills again…They’ll be happy if they can seduce the right one.” Jezebel says “you are released to marry again while your husband or wife is still living,” but Jesus says you are not.  
     Dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, who will you believe? Whose definition will determine your conduct? God’s children will use His definitions and the children of the world will use her definitions. Here’s the question that puzzles me so much. Why are Christians using Jezebel’s dictionary to find the definitions they need to live by?

"God Has Released Me"

     Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the
one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I too will love him and show myself to him.
–John 14:21

     Have you ever considered the statement, “God has released me to…?” Usually it comes in the form of “God has released me to divorce and/or remarry.” I find this kind of thinking to be nothing short of amazing. With a flick of the tongue, the changeless word of God has been abrogated by something as fickle and cloudy as human thought and intuition.
     What’s even more amazing is that we stand for it in the Church. “Well, if God told them to remarry, even if the Bible says they are not eligible, who am I to disagree with God?” But my question is this: “Who are you to boldly embrace what God has clearly forbidden?” Consider this clear command from Jesus, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Luke 16:18). That verse is crystal clear to me, but it appears to be cloudy to many in the Church today. Do we have God’s commandments? Will we keep them? Do we really love Him? (John 14:21)
     Can you imagine a cowboy from the old west saying “Slim, I’ve been admiring your horse for a long time now and hoping that God would give it to me, and I wanted to inform you that God has now released me to take your horse. Slim might say “That’s interesting Bill because God just released me to shoot you if you get on my horse, and if you survive, the town is going to help me hang you because you would be a horse thief. I wonder if Bill would still feel so strongly about what God “told” him after Slim confronted the nonsense with a pistol. If it meant a bullet from Slim, maybe he would reconsider the validity of the “release” that he thought he heard from God to steal his friend’s horse. What do you think?
     God has clearly communicated to us in Luke 16:18 that remarriage while our first spouse remains alive constitutes the sin of adultery. Why don’t we just say “God has released me to commit adultery with him/her.” That’s nonsense, and I think that most of us would say so if confronted in that situation. But we don’t call it what it is anymore; therefore, well-meaning but deluded Christians, if in fact they truly are, tell us that God has released them to commit adultery. Their mouth says that Jesus is Lord, but their behavior says that Jezebel is. Why do we so easily tolerate this insanity in the Church? What’s happened to us? 
     Hopefully, the Lord will return for us before we get to the point that we hear people in the church say “God released me to kill my boss, to steal from my neighbor, to lie to my children.” But there is one sin that some people think God doesn’t seem to mind in the Church today–adultery. Christians tell us all the time that God has released them to commit adultery. No one in their right mind would give you a pass if you said “God has freed me to steal my neighbor’s horse.” But if you said “God has freed me to steal my neighbor’s wife, we don’t even blink. We’ve been bullied by Jezebel into silence. Isn’t that amazing?
     What is it about the sin of adultery that makes us all get stuck on stupid? It reminds me of AIDS in the 80’s. It became the only disease in the world with “civil rights.” Only the Lord knows how many people died because the confidentiality of the infected individual superseded the safety of a potential victim to be informed of the danger. We simply couldn’t speak freely about that disease. No other disease has ever been allowed such immunity, but for reasons that I won’t get into here, a disease was placed in a protected class. What happens to people who begin to protect diseases from exposure? They get sick and die. The same thing happens to Christians who begin to protect certain sins from exposure.
     Adultery is the only sin I know of that enjoys a protected status within the Church. We found that we couldn’t expose it or discuss it, much less confront it. How did this happen to us? Why did we get so blind when it comes to adultery in the Church? It’s a spiritual issue. The spirit of Jezebel threatens if we dare speak up on this issue…”you’ll lose your family, friends, church, income, etc.” She appears, much like a bully, to be very dangerous, but when she’s confronted, like the bully, she looses all her steam in the face of the truth. Her only hope is intimidation, and she is very good at that.
     But Christian, I urge you to fight for your “lunch money” the next time this spiritual bully comes after it. If we continue to cave in regarding adultery, who knows what dishonor she’ll demand from us next. Will she ask us to perform abortions on the “This do in remembrance of me” table in the sanctuary? It’s time for the spiritual leaders in the Church to stand and be counted or risk losing it all. Jesus told us what happens to salt when it looses its saltiness. It is “thrown out and trampled by men.” 

Kisses and Bandaids

     While driving through Dallas recently, I was listening on the radio to a prominent preacher discussing the problem of divorce. He said that the most recent Barna poll indicated that born again Christians are just as likely to divorce as non-Christians. I didn’t want to repeat this dishonor to the Church without checking it out. It’s true! The results were published in September of 2004 by the Barna Group in an article entitled Born Again Christians Just As Likely to Divorce As Are Non-Christians. In 2004, people that claimed to know Christ as Lord and Savior don’t do any better at staying married than non-believers.
     Maybe we should be grateful for a tie with unbelievers. What if their divorce rate was lower than ours? Would we ask them what their secret is? Can you imagine…how do you guys do it, we just can’t seem to stay married as well as you…could you come and give a talk at our church?
     Some denominations of Christians may need to ask that very question because their rates of divorce were higher than the general non-believing public. Let me share some of the figures from this article with you. “Among married born again Christians, 35% have experienced a divorce. That figure is identical to the outcome among married adults who are not born again: 35%.”  
     The Christians were divided into several groups, and each group was given an average. “Catholics were substantially less likely than Protestants to get divorced (25% versus 39%, respectively).” Hmmm…I wonder if the divorce rate has anything to do with what these denominations are teaching their people about divorce and remarriage. The Catholics have been teaching from the perspective of covenant for a very long time, and surprise!…their people behave differently in that arena.
     The Pentecostals had the highest number of divorces at 44%, while the Presbyterians had the fewest divorces at 28%. I’m a Baptist, and no figures were given for the Baptist Church. That’s good for us. We can pretend it’s near the low end, although the average Protestant score was 39%; our number is probably not far off that mark. Oh, I almost forgot to mention it. “[T]he percentage of atheists and agnostics who have been married and divorced is 37%.” Do you see a problem here?
     If someone bothered to obey the teachings of Christ as it applies to their marriage, do you think that they might have a better shot at staying married than an atheist and an agnostic would have? Is something wrong with Biblical teaching, or do we simply ignore it? The Bible clearly teaches us that remarriage while a previous spouse remains alive is adultery (See Luke 16:18; Mark 10:3-12; Rom. 7:3; I Cor. 7:39). But these teachings, reflecting our covenants with our mates, are roundly ignored in favor of our confusion over the “exception clauses” in Matthew. How is the ole “exception clause” strategy working in the Evangelical Church? The answer is a 39% divorce rate, two percentage points above the atheist and the agnostics. Christian, if that doesn’t boil your blood, check for a pulse.    
     At what point will the Church address this infection with a powerful antibiotic? Would the news that atheist and agnostics are keeping their promises better than we are be an indication that our infection of meaningless promises needs to be addressed with strong medicine? Kisses and Band-Aids aren’t working very well, are they?
     Speaking of kisses and Band-Aids, I’m thankful for a “cruel” nurse I met in the emergency room when I was a young boy. I learned never to ride my bicycle barefoot after that day. I won the race with my friend but found out that his spokes had cut my left foot up pretty badly. When I got to the emergency room, a nurse unwrapped my bleeding foot. It looked awful! She left the room and came back with a course brush and a bucket of some sort of soapy solution that was steaming. She pulled back the flap of skin and began to brush it vigorously. I screamed in pain but to no avail. That woman was determined to cleanse the wound of all the dirt and grease that my friend’s spokes left there.  
     I’m thankful now that my nurse didn’t believe in kisses and Band-Aids. To cover the wound without addressing the possibility of infection would have been unthinkable. That kind of “kindness” may have cost me a foot, a leg, or even my life. She cared about me enough to get the dirt out, even though I didn’t want it out at the time. Oh, and just to make sure that the wound wouldn’t cause any more problems, she gave me a shot of penicillin–ouch!
     I should mention one other thing about the Barna article before closing. Only 24% of the born again group was able to strongly affirm this statement: “when a couple gets divorced without one of them having committed adultery, they are committing a sin.” That means that 76% of the Church cannot strongly affirm that covenant breaking is a sin. Wow! No wonder we are seeing statistics like this. Maybe it’s time for somebody to speak up.
     The Giant of Divorce and Adulterous Remarriage, much like Goliath many years ago, comes out daily to taunt the Church. Is there no pastor whose blood boils at this ongoing dishonor to the name of our Lord? Our pastors need to take the stone of covenant, sling it, and sink it deep into the forehead of this Giant who has insulted and intimidated the body of Christ far too long.   

- Tim Coody,  Author of Meaningless Words and Broken Covenants