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By Diane Singer|Published Date: July 26, 2010
You shall not commit adultery. -- Exodus 20:14
A modern morality tale
“This is a story, I supposed, about a failure in intelligence: the Rawlings’ marriage was grounded in intelligence.” So begins Doris Lessing’s 1963 short story “To Room Nineteen” which chronicles the unraveling of Matthew and Susan Rawlings’ marriage and Susan’s eventual suicide.[i]
According to the world’s values, the Rawlings have everything anyone could need to be happy: steady careers, plenty of money, a big house, four healthy children, an active social life, and servants who lift the mundane daily chores from Susan’s shoulders. Both are described as popular and smart, with the “infallible sense for choosing right” when it comes to making important life decisions.
Yet, after a decade or so, they are bored with marriage, bored with their family, and bored with life in general. There is a certain “flatness” in their lives which leaves them restless and searching for happiness in all the wrong places – Matthew in repeated affairs and Susan in ever-increasing withdrawal into herself, until she commits the ultimate selfish act: she rents a hotel room (Room 19), turns on the gas, and kills herself.
Feminists view this story – written mostly from Susan’s point of view – as a warning to young women that choosing the life of a suburban housewife is a recipe for misery. They see in Matthew’s adultery and Susan’s increasing emptiness a vivid reminder that devoting yourself to your husband and children will only lead to the death of your “essential” self. In their philosophy, it would be better for women to avoid marriage altogether rather than suffer such a fate.
A superficial reading of the story may support such an interpretation, but a closer reading indicates a more fundamental problem, one that doomed the Rawlings’ marriage before it even began. How? Because even then “they had joked: Of course I’m not going to be faithful to you, no one can be faithful to one other person for a whole lifetime.”
It’s no surprise, therefore, that when Matthew comes home and confesses his first affair, Susan gives Matthew a pass – not from a Biblical call to forgive those who have harmed us (Colossians 3:13), but because it was the “intelligent” thing to do: “There was no need to use the dramatic words, unfaithful, forgive, and the rest: intelligence forbade them. Intelligence barred, too, quarrelling, sulking, anger, silences of withdrawal, accusations and tears. Above all, intelligence forbids tears.”
The tragic irony of the story is that Susan recognizes her husband’s sin for what it is; but because of her amoral worldview, she refuses to label it as such and so becomes intellectually and morally dishonest with her husband and herself. Consequently, as the “intelligent” Matthew goes from affair to affair without one word of rebuke or protest from his wife, the “intelligent” Susan comes to believe that “nothing mattered,” not even staying alive for the sake of her own children.
A recipe for misery
We see the same foolishness today in the popular voices of those who consider it a sign of their intellectual superiority to mock traditional Judeo-Christian values, especially those related to human sexuality. Adultery and other sexual sins are promoted by the gurus of pop culture as something fun, glamorous, exciting, and romantic. In books, television shows, and movies, they “entice unsteady souls” (2 Peter 2:14) by their relentless campaign to undermine God’s Law and turn those who follow His Word into objects of ridicule.
Yet adultery is no joking matter – just ask Tiger Woods and Jesse James, two public figures who have recently lost their wives and children, and their public reputations, because of their adulterous behavior.
Not life in suburbia, but going into marriage with the attitude that faithfulness isn’t critical is the real recipe for misery. God forbids adultery for good reason: not because He is a cosmic killjoy, as the Hugh Hefner’s of this world would have us believe, but because He wants to protect marriage – one of the greatest sources of happiness in this life if we follow His design, and the foundation of all society.
We cannot break God’s Law with impunity: sin always leads to bad consequences which hurt not only the sinner, but everyone he or she knows (Deuteronomy 28:15). The husband or wife who cheats may think that they are getting away with it; but they are actually doing lasting damage to their spouse, their children, and their own body (1 Corinthians 6:18; Proverbs 6:32).[ii]
Someone once said, “sin will take you farther than you want to go, cost you more than you want to pay, and keep you longer than you want to stay.” This is certainly true where adultery is concerned: any fleeting physical pleasure gained from an illicit affair will quickly fade in the tsunami of bad effects.
Marriage can survive
The good news is that a marriage can survive adultery: the Bible’s call for repentance, forgiveness, and restoration offers that hope to Christians who will deal honestly with their sin or the sin of their spouse. [iii] It is far, far better, however, to do the truly intelligent thing and avoid adultery altogether (Matthew 5:27-28).
For more insight to this topic, get the book, Getting Marriage Right, by David P. Gushee, from our online store. Or read the article, “The Meanings of Marriage,” by John Witte, Jr.
[i] The story is available from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Room-Nineteen-Doris-Lessing/dp/0006548067.
[ii] If you don’t believe this, consider the cheating husband who contracts a sexually transmitted disease which he passes on to his wife, and perhaps his unborn child. The first person I knew who died of AIDS was a woman whose husband infected her after he contracted the disease from his gay lover. His sin literally killed his wife, killed him, and orphaned their two children.
[iii] Brit Hume, of course, scandalized many non-Christians when he suggested Tiger Woods become a Christian so he could experience true forgiveness. You can view the video at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/03/brit-hume-to-tiger-woods_n_409720.html.
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