Attraction or Repulsion?

One monthly gem I enjoy on a regular basis is home Bible study. Held at the home of a good friend I knew for around 35 years, it can be packed to the brim at times, as was the case of the last meeting just a couple of days ago. Remarkably enough, although the meeting is open to anyone who wish to partake, in most cases there have always been a high proportion of male attendees. Very unusual in a church environment, where it tend to be dominated by higher female numbers. Then again, the warmth of a private living room with plenty of varied refreshments on offer present a wide contrast from the stone-cold formality of a grey Gothic chapel, where the sound of voices reverberates within the solid walls of the interior.   

Each of these Bible studies normally centre on a Biblical character rather than doctrine or devotional. In the recent past we looked at Abraham and Isaac, along with Joseph (adopted father of Jesus) together with Jezebel and Deborah, two contrasting Old Testament women whose conduct and relationship with God couldn't be any more opposing. But this time round, from a suggestion offered by one of our regular members, we looked at the Prophet Hosea.

Hosea was the Old Testament seer who was ordered by God to marry an adulterous woman, and for a while remained faithful enough to him for her to bear three children. The first was a son who was given the name Jezreel, a location in Samaria where King Ahab reigned, and a principle spawning ground for ancient Baal worship. The second child was a girl, who was given the name Not Loved. The third, another boy, was given the name Not My People. Some time later, Hosea's wife strayed, and while far from home, she was put up for sale as a prostitute, but her husband arrived at the slave market and bought her, and took her back home. The underlying thread of the study was that God called the house of Israel to himself in order to enjoy a relationship. But instead, the Israelites kept on worshipping foreign idols - images made with hands - and this eventually drained the Almighty of his patience, and the result that the northern ten tribes of Israel - to which Hosea ministered - were led into exile by the Assyrians.

I could see such a parallel between the wife's unfaithfulness, her wandering away and eventual enslavement, and the prophet's redemptive purchase - with the sorrowful history of the house of Israel, her exile into the nations, and the purchase the Lord Jesus made on the cross. For there are prophecies in abundance throughout the Bible foretelling the restoration of the whole of Israel to her homeland, and enjoying a healthy relationship with her King who will one day reign over the nation from the throne of David sometime in the future, just as Hosea enjoyed a happier marriage with his wife after buying her back.

During the session, I came up with a reminder that we are no better than they were. I too can be equally hostile to God and want to run away. And I can point to a time and place where I felt exactly like that. It was the love of God gently and without any condemnation who called me, and sensing his love, I responded positively and my faith was restored, albeit slowly. Quite a similarity to the woman caught in adultery as recorded in John 8:1-11.

There are questions surrounding the story. Caught in adultery? It takes two to tango. Why wasn't he arrested with her? Why just her? Perhaps it was her husband who caught them together. Terrified, her lover legged it as fast as possible. And successfully got away as he constantly turned to look back, he kept on running still, into the sunset. A plausible story, especially if the enraged husband called to the Pharisees who were nearby. Under condemnation by all those around her, she presented a golden opportunity for them to test Jesus, who couldn't have been that far away. Instead he showed her love by forgiving her. And that made her want to follow him instead of returning to her judgemental husband, who was most likely filing for divorce, a legitimate action in Jewish custom for such a transgression.

Then how can we forget the story of the woman at the well in Samaria featured in John 4? All he did was ask for some water. The woman was shocked. She knew that she and her people were hated by the Jews and seen as transgressors of the Mosaic Law. Then the Lord began to offer her something positive, including his awareness of her failed relationships with five previous husbands, along with his awareness of her current house-mate. But there was not a hint of condemnation from Jesus, even if she might have been expecting it. Instead, he showered her with love, and she responded by leaving her jug with him to draw from the well if he needs to, and ran off excitedly to inform her countrymen that the Messiah is here. Another devoted follower, the fruit of Christ's love.

Personally, I can't blame the ancient Israelites for their apostasy and blatant idolatry, rather I can identify with them. Hosea and his marriage, her unfaithfulness, and her husband's purchase and restoration are all models of the entire history of the house of Israel and her relationship with God, her heavenly husband. I believe that after the prophet's wayward wife was brought back, their marriage became stable. Despite her sins, which were many, Hosea showed his love for her, proven by going after her while in a helpless and desperate state. Love wins again. 

   

God has chosen Jacob and his descendants by grace, an act of love. Israel did not deserve God's love, instead his choosing was an act of grace. But God had to show them that they were sinners, falling short of his mark. And the only way sin can be revealed was to give his Law, because through the Law is the knowledge of sin. The whole object of the Law was to bring the sinner to his knees and call for mercy, which was available through the sacrificial ritual God gave them. Looked on in the proper way, the sacrificial system was meant to engender love through recognition of God's mercy, along with an expectation of a more perfect and permanent solution, a once-and-for-all sacrifice. While the intention was to draw them to God, their knowledge of sin compelled them to flee from him in their attempt for an easier route to salvation.

If my own experience has any value, the knowledge of sin in the human heart, stirred by the Law, causes many not wanting to know this God. This sort of reasoning makes it easier for Darwinism to make a home in the human mind, along with, for example, the worship of a certain make of car, or a favourite football team, the adoration of a non-demanding Head of State as depicted in last week's blog, a favourite celebrity, emphasis on nationalism, or anything else which provide an escape from the knowledge of sin in contrast to a holy God. 

Hosea would never had won his wayward wife had he taken the same attitude as the Pharisees, or many in churches up to this day. Look at it this way. If a wife was married to one who was morally perfect, but constantly scrutinising and judging her behaviour, even down to her thoughts and motives, how long would the marriage last? Worse still, if she was unable to leave the house on her own, how much would she love him? History is full of women who had divorced their husbands, there are even cases of murder. The real problem the Samaritan woman at the well was not merely being a difficult person to get on with. Instead, all her husbands most likely kept her under scrutiny and criticised her when she did not measure up to their desires. What she wanted was love.  

The same could be said about the woman caught in adultery. Her husband (if he was there) along with all the religious crowd, wanted to stone her in fulfilment of the Law of Moses, therefore making them look morally pure and feeling righteous. They had no interest in the glory of God. Instead they wanted to prove themselves righteous. But why did the woman commit adultery in the first place? Was she that bad? I don't think so. Instead her husband failed to show her any love throughout her empty marriage. And for that matter, neither her lover really cared for her either. When caught in the act, he legged it instead of standing up to protect and defend her before her accusers. Poor woman! She too wanted the tender love of her husband. Instead her emptiness brought her into the arms of another who, for selfish reasons, temporally showed her some affection and made her feel important. And if it wasn't for Jesus intervening, she would have been stoned to death, her screams echoing across the valley as the fusillade flew towards her from all directions.

Statistics have shown that every week, hundreds of young people abandon the churches their parents attend. Christians come up with such self-righteous, sanctimonious explanations:- "Oh, that proves that they weren't really saved after all." Or, "They were saved once, but having abandoned their faith, they forfeited everything and are lost again!" Maybe a truer explanation is the lack of agape-love in the church itself, not to mention the lack of agape-love between father and mother, as well as towards the teenage son or daughter, no matter how pious they may be in church. In addition, the church or parents could be law-orientated - any love received is conditioned on performance. Therefore they perceive God himself to have a Pharisaic attitude, withholding his love and quick to punish if they don't perform to his standard. Going by my own experience, a religious person who looks to performance in others before bestowing any merit or credibility can be very obnoxious, especially to his victims. Usually he has a very low self-esteem, caused by his own inability to perform to standard, and therefore scrutinising anyone he thinks don't measure up in an effort to lift his own morale.

Then as I would expect, no church is perfect. If such a church exists, I'll be doing everyone there a favour by not turning up - I'll only ruin it! Rather I'm grateful to God that there is a fellowship I can identify with, one I can call my spiritual home. Generally I'm very much liked and respected. Furthermore, Ascot Life Church has provided a good place to talk when doubts and fears overshadow my soul. But as with all other churches, the need to remove religiosity and replace with agape love is essential for vibrant living - especially to teenagers and young people! It needs to be a place where men and women from all walks of life can come in and experience for themselves the truly alternate society where everyone worships from the heart, and not be the ones fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy, like those in the house of Israel - that they worshipped him with their lips, but their hearts were far from him.

Which incidentally, was another comment I made at the home Bible study.

O Come All Ye Faithless...

Of all the decisions I have made throughout life, there are three which I have made without ever regretting, for these three were the very best decisions I could have made. They were:

1. Turning to Jesus for salvation, 

2. World backpacking,

3. Marrying Alex.

And these three are arranged not by priority but in chronological order. And not even flying the nest is included, as there were times when I realised that by staying at home for a few years longer, I could have traveled far more extensively. That is, instead of working just to buy food, pay the rent, and seeing to all the bills, I would have given an agreed portion of my income to Mum, and saved up the rest, then kept on making my way to the airport while holding a long-haul air ticket. Instead what has happened has happened.

Then I could have asked: How could I have gotten the weeks off full time work in order to fulfill such wishes? No doubt, if an employee is not that committed to his company, it's tatty-bye from them and he would have been sent packing. On the other hand, a professional who wanted to take a sabbatical has been known to make a planned agreement with his employer for his later return to his desk. Or for a graduate allowed to take a gap year before commencing employment. As for me, such long term arrangements would have been far less likely. So remaining at home under my parent's roof would have involved leaving one job altogether, go on my travels, then return and look for a new job. Not so difficult for a qualified and experienced pro, but for someone scarcely above the status of unskilled labourer, such constant changing would have ended with holding a very unimpressive Curriculum Vitae.

So self-employment was the perfect answer for such a dilemma. As it was, I was able to take as much time off to travel as I wanted. I worked hard, saved up hard, and by golly, I played hard! Such was the life of an unmarried male who lived alone at a rented apartment. But during those days, as I gradually watched myself losing the freshness of youth, there were times I felt lonely and pondered over old age. Would I die a lonely old man, with no family relatives nearby, in the very apartment I would have rented for decades on end? Such was quite a point. After flying around the world in 1997, then in 1998, hosteled in New York, and then at Boston Massachusetts, I was already laying plans to fly to Cape Town, scheduled for the year 2000, and then from there to Perth (Western Australia) - when I crossed paths with Alex. In the weeks to come, indeed I arrived at the crossroads of life. Travel or marry? After careful prayer and self-analysis on how I felt towards her, I chose marriage. And that had turned out to be the better of the two options.  

From a lifetime of travel, by the end of the day, all I would have had to show was a fatter photo album library, which would have been of no use to anyone after my demise. But life as a married man is very different in the sense that I am not living just for myself anymore. Instead, the purpose of living is to give all to my spouse. All, not merely fifty percent. And I have come to learn by experience that giving all result in greater fulfillment and happiness.

Like all other marriages, ours had high points and low points. One of our highs was when Alex suspected that she might be pregnant, so she bought a home test strip. One morning she submitted herself to the test, and came up positive. I nearly went through the roof with excitement! Then, when she was eighteen weeks pregnant, we went on our trip to the Holy Land to celebrate our first anniversary. As we rented out a room with a marriage bed at a small backpackers hostel in the heart of the medieval Old City of Jerusalem, I watched her kneel and give thanks to God on just about every Christian holy site we visited. Then the lowest of the low, a few years later, when both our daughters were taken away from our home by the State, and given for adoption, due to our mild autism. The emotional distress, eventually followed by physical illness and partial disabilities had made some people in authority rather surprised that I did not walk away from the marriage to re-start a new life as a divorcee. Our first social worker, perhaps the nastiest female I had ever come across, had expressed her astonishment at our insistence that my wife and I will remain together.

And our marriage had blossomed ever since. I made sure that our union was founded upon the Rock, from which we could never be moved. Without trying to sound too spiritual, all I can say is daily devotion to God by morning reads of the Bible has given us both the love and the will to be devoted to each other. I would never dream of looking at another woman, let alone court her, and likewise Alex would never look on another man for the same reason. Like a stamp on an envelope, so we stick together through and through.

So it came as a surprise that the Internet features a website which is designed for adulterous affairs behind the spouse's back. Known as the Ashley Madison website, this facility has around 37,000,000 profiles from all around the world. Of these, the site boasts 1,200,000 Britons, of which 179,129 are Londoners. Of British people, 1,176 are university students, 124 email addresses are from British Government officials, 92 are from the Ministry of Defense, 65 works for the local education authority, while a further 56 email addresses are from N.H.S. staff. Profiles from other professions include bankers, civil servants, United Nation peacekeepers, firefighters, BBC journalists, police officers, even Vatican employees.

World distribution map of Ashley Madison site members

The map above shows the global distribution of Ashley Madison website members. Leaving out other adultery sites, along with many more who had affairs but are not on any Internet site, this looks to be just a small proportion of those who indulge in extra-marital affairs without the spouse knowing. The statistics also says that the website members are predominantly male, and judging by the list of professions listed above, mainly middle class. Also the chart shows the preponderance of offenders live in richer countries, such as the USA and Western Europe, with the east coast of South America following close behind.

Italy looks to be almost entirely covered in orange. And what is so ironic about this is that the Vatican is located on this peninsula. Vatican City, which is an independent State in its own right, is the head of the largest Christian denomination in the world, but even within its boundaries, it's employees don't seem to be free from having affairs. Even history reveals this can of worms, including at least two medieval Popes who were both murdered in bed by furious husbands when caught sleeping with their wives. Not to mention the numerous occasions when cardinals, bishops, and priests were caught in someone else's bed over the centuries. How true this may be, I can't say, but is there an indication here that the teaching of salvation by works rather than faith in Jesus Christ alone encourages sin?

And sin it is, even though it's taken lightly by quite a high percentage of Western society. Sometimes the offender is seen as something of a hero, a Lothario whose power over women would delight a theatre audience, or make good TV drama, stirring admiration among the females, and most likely envy among the men. Then to add to this, social status seem to play a huge role in affairs. Is there something alluring about an executive, dressed in suit and tie, which speaks a great deal about success? I once read a story in a newspaper about a very handsome and physically fit London barman complaining about how one customer - considerably older, overweight, and balding, attracting a number of women who were keen to strike a conversation with him. It was then explained to the curious barman that this fellow was a senior executive of a large corporation, and took home a very respectable income. This seems to collaborate with a conversation I once had with a graduate who came to my apartment for coffee.

As a bachelor, particularly in the 1980's, when travel was limited due to a small income earned from a fledgling business, there were times I felt despondent over my bachelor status whilst already in my thirties. My friend gave an illustration of a window cleaner and a computer programmer, both standing a few metres apart from each other. He imagined a group of young women who were told to pick one of the two whom they prefer to marry. All of them went straight for the computer programmer, with the other left standing alone. That is, until just one female went straight for the cleaner. It was a good illustration. Because being a singleton in a church with a high percentage of graduates, I had to watch one graduate after another getting hitched, while I remained on the shelf, not just into my thirties, but right up to my late forties. But as my friend predicted, Alex came along at the right time - years after my guest, himself a computer programmer, had met and married his wife.

Then as I have already mentioned, we are devoted to each other as husband and wife. Yet from outside come stories of adultery and affairs. This, along with a plethora of divorce cases, with the celebrity world looking to be the hardest hit. I suppose with high status comes power, to prove his virility, his youthfulness, and his red-bloodiness. Then, after the act, unable to understand his underlying sense of guilt, a lacking of satisfaction  or achievement, along with constant secrecy which will eventually lead to massive rows, betrayal and separations. As the TV soap operas portray so well. And those who profess a Christian faith don't seem to be exempt, as I knew of two different pastors who were disrobed because of adultery. And I have heard of stories of unfaithful Christians and their divorce cases. Indeed, sin is the great destroyer of happiness.

According to our experiences, drawing upon God for his love and strength is the real basis for a happy marriage, along with being filled with the Holy Spirit. One of the secrets we have come to learn over the years is to see my wife and to love her in the same way as Christ loves the church. If the Lord loves his church so much that laying down his life for it was a necessity, why can't I be the same?

Our natural sin natures will keep on rearing their heads on a daily basis, and therefore making our marriage less than perfect. And that is another reason why I'm an advocate of Once Saved Always Saved. If salvation was secured only by our performance, there would be no hope of eternal life for any believer, for we all fall short of the mark. Without eternal security, there would not be a single person in Heaven right now. But instead, our experience in this concept has been the bedrock on which to build a happy marriage, incorporating apologising and forgiveness.

Wonderful virtues which Ashley Madison could well learn about.