The Devil Didn't Make You Do It! (Responsibility in an Affair)

Let’s start with the bottom line: the person who chooses to cheat is 100% responsible for their choice and for the affair. Any refusal to own up to this will undermine their spouses healing and efforts to forgive. Blaming the offended spouse is especially injurious to reconciliation. Don’t blame your upbringing. Don’t blame your spouse’s shortcomings. Don’t blame your hormones. You made a wrong and evil decision – man up! (Or Woman up!) Admit it, apologize for it, ask for forgiveness. If you desire reconciliation – ask for that and be ready to pay the price emotionally to help that happen. (Now, your upbringing may be a factor in why you made the wrong decision – you may need to explore this and learn from it – but it does not excuse what you did!

All marriages have problems and are less than perfect. Many marriages impacted by infidelity are more troubled than average (but not all). Both spouses are responsible for the problems in the marriage. Both need to accept responsibility for change to improve their marriage. 

A sensitive (and inconvenient) truth is that the short comings in the marriage may contribute to the unfaithful spouse’s decision to be unfaithful. This is where it can get tricky. Many factors contribute to every decision we make, good or bad. But we alone are responsible for those decisions. “The Devil made me do it” doesn’t play well! You may have had a very unstable childhood. Your spouse may have been very distant and neglectful. You may have had too much drink the first time you slept with the other person. You are still 100% responsible for the  choice you made. Even if your spouse was truly horrible, you had other alternatives to deal with that.

Contributing factors in the relationship need to be recognized and addressed because they will continue to undermine the relationship if they are not. But none of them remove or shift responsibility for the moral wrong involved. The first step to healing your marriage is accepting full, unequivocable responsibility for what you did. 

I have seen many marriages saved after an affair.  But it requires tremendous courage and a lot of hard work by both spouses.   The offended partner will have a lot of anger to deal with.  The struggle to forgive is huge.  And rebuilding enough trust to make the marriage work is usually the hardest of all.

If your marriage has been intruded on by an affair, and both partners say they want it to work, see a good marriage counselor.  Don't try to negotiate this enormously difficult task on your own.

Father?? Really?

William Tyndale’s translation laid the foundation for the King James Bible.  I find His translation of Ephesians 3:14-15 pregnant with meaning as I consider Fathers’ Day. “¹⁴ For this cause I bowe my knees unto the father of oure lorde Jesus Christ  ¹⁵ which is father over all that ys called father In heven and in erth.”  In the Greek the second occurrence of  “father” in verse 15 is “patria” (the first is “pater”).  They are related words.  Most often “patria” is translated “family”.  Of more modern translations the New Jerusalem Bible is the only one I found that follows Tyndale somewhat.  They translate, “¹⁴ This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every fatherhood, in heaven or on earth, takes its name.”  But several study Bibles or footnotes make note that “patria” could be rendered “father” or that it is related to the word for “father”.

“The Father of all fatherhood”…… “Father of all that is called father”…… 

I am tempted to say that God has chosen to reveal Himself as Father.  Yet Scripture seems to say something even more outrageous to our modern ears.  The first person of the Trinity IS Father. 

Even aside from feminist thinking, this is challenging for many people.  Some earthly fathers are scoundrels!  As a pastoral psychotherapist I hear horror stories of what some fathers have done to their children.  You hear similar stories in the news, stories of abuse, torture, incest.  It is far more potent when you are sitting a few feet away and looking in the eyes of a survivor who is telling THEIR personal story of mistreatment. 

Then on a different level there are the fathers who simply are not there.  There are fathers who are there physically, don’t beat their children with their fist, yet beat them down with criticism and put downs.  There are fathers who get drunk or high and scream in their children’s faces for hours.  Some fathers are wonderful, some are horrible.  Some are a confusing combination of violence and tenderness (see my previous blog about human nature).

Drs. Tim Clinton and Joshua Straub in their book “God Attachment” quote several studies that confirm what I always heard in Sunday School and sermons.  Our image of God the Father is powerfully impacted by our relationship to our earthly father!  Dads, you need to take this seriously!  If you are harsh and demanding your kids will usually instinctively expect God to be harsh and demanding!   If you seem distant and disinterested in them, at the deepest level of their wounded heart they will usually expect God to be far away and uncaring.  But if you are nearly always accessible, involved, caring yet firm then they will usually expect their heavenly Father to be the same. 

Many of us carry “father-wounds” of one degree or another.  This does not mean we are hopelessly broken.  It may mean for many that you will face challenges in experiencing God as He really is.  It may mean impairment in other areas of life.  But our loving Father has provided means by which we can find healing.  If you have struggles in this area seek out a safe, Biblical church.  If your struggles are deep enough you may also need to find a counselor who is aware of these things and able to help.

Do You Hear What I Hear? Part 1

Do You Hear What I Hear? (Part 1) By Rev. Frank J. Busbey, LPC

“That’s not what I said! You just don’t get it!” Ever say something like that? Or have you heard a loved one say something like this to you? Communication is an unbelievably complex and difficult process. The relationship of language, thought, speech and reality is very complex. To try bring it down to earth, every time we speak there are multiple messages. There is the message we intend to say. There is the message we actually say. And there is the message our listener hears. Add to the mix if we have more than one listener each one may hear things differently! I don’t know how many times after a sermon someone thanked me for saying something I didn’t think I had said!

No matter how carefully we try to craft our words, communication does not take place until a listener hears what we are trying to say. In the forest of relationships if the tree falls and no one hears it has NOT made a meaningful sound.

Communication is the life blood of relationships. Whether we are talking about a marriage, a parent-child relationship, a friendship or a work relationship, there has to be communication.

Even though it is incredibly difficult to convey a clear message I believe the hardest part of the communication process is listening! James 1:19 says, “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;” (ESV). Much of communication is non-verbal. This requires a good listener to listen with their eyes and heart as much as with their ears!