As for Me and My HouseНамуна

Bad Examples

Adultery and womanizing run in my family. Growing up, stories of infidelity were everywhere. 

After experiencing the pain of divorce firsthand as a child, I swore that if I ever married, my life would be different. I would be true to my wife. 

As firmly as I believed I would honor my marriage vows, one thought haunted me. Few men get married expecting to become adulterers. Most fully expect to live up to the vows they make. Yet somewhere along the way, many find themselves walking down a path they never intended to go. 

I wondered how I could I ever hope to break the cycle when so many before me had failed? How could I keep myself from following in their footsteps? Thankfully, God the Father is not silent on the issue. Proverbs 7 is a letter with the fatherly advice I desperately needed.

In this letter, extramarital sex is portrayed much differently than what we hear from our culture. The metaphor of a cunning man on the prowl, looking to “get lucky” with a sexual conquest is completely overturned. The adulterer isn’t depicted as the lucky one, but rather as the prey, an ox on its way to the slaughter. 

Most importantly, he is shown as someone who has a choice. Not someone who must blindly give in to every sexual opportunity that presents itself. Through this passage I learned men can say “no,” too. 

And there are things that can be done to avoid the situation altogether. In Proverbs 7:7 the young man could have chosen to walk down a different street. He could have taken steps to protect himself had he realized how dangerous temptation could be.

A few years into my marriage, I found myself in close proximity to a very friendly and overly touchy female co-worker. I didn’t think much of it until one day she leaned against me while showing me a report, and I caught a whiff of her perfume. Suddenly, her friendliness didn’t seem as innocent as it once had. I started to wonder if she could be a threat to my marriage.

I didn’t want to seem rude to her, but I didn’t want to be “a young man lacking sense” either. From that day on, I made it a point to keep my distance.

I don’t know if she was offended by my sudden coldness or if she even noticed. But I do know this, a couple of years later she married a co-worker, who left his wife for her.

For more help read, “Guarding Against Adultery” on FamilyLife.com.