Proverbs 7 gives an eye-witness account of a naïve young man getting involved with a savvy married woman.

She draws him in, kisses him, and explains that she has made temple offerings, which means she would have prepared food as a religious sacrifice, and has leftovers in her house.

Her bed is beautifully made, and lavishly perfumed. She invites him to have sex, as her husband has gone on a long journey, and will not be back for days.

She seduces the young man, who does not realize he is being led to his death. His reputation, fortune, peace, and very life will be in danger for getting involved with a married woman.

The main focus of this passage is danger of getting involved with someone else’s spouse.

I want to consider a different element of the story.

Often we hear single people who get involved with married people saying they’ve done nothing wrong.

I’m not married. I didn’t break my vows.

That woman is married. She broke hers.

And that is technically true.

Can we, however, really claim righteous behavior if we are participating in someone else’s misbehavior?

Are we innocent as an accessory to someone else’s crime?

And since sex involves a whole lot of intentional behavior, can we acknowledge that we can never really say it “just happened?”

I mean, sure, the decision to give in to temptation can be a single moment, but a whole bunch of putting out signals, and responding to signals, online flirting, and face to face flirting, building a rapport, and having discrete conversations, and meeting up somewhere for coffee, or lunch, or a drink, and choosing to go somewhere more private, and making sure that place is secure, and various types of foreplay, and removing clothes, etc, etc. generally precede a sexual act.

You didn’t just make one bad choice. You made a hundred.

I am reminded of Married at First Sight Australia’s Poppy Jennings, who tearily recounts her former husband’s terrible accident: tripping and falling and landing in his coworker’s private parts, where he is still stuck.

I certainly can appreciate the critique that the person who cheats on us should face more of our anger than the person they cheat with, and that society has historically demonized “the other woman,” while largely bypassing the cheating husband as just doing what a husband will do.

The Pharisees and Scribes famously brought Jesus a woman caught in the act of adultery, but not the man they caught her with.

That said, the move to make the behavior of any person who participates in an affair righteous is, I would argue, an overcorrection.

After dismissing the woman’s unjust accusers with the invitation that he who has never sinned should cast the first stone, Jesus also told her go and sin no more.

He did not condemn her but did not pretend that her behavior was right.

We can’t reinvent our transgressions just because someone used them to punish us.

I would say the same of our efforts to redeem the infidelity of someone in our tribe.

“She cheated because she felt neglected and lonely.”

Ok. But she still cheated.

“He cheated because he felt emasculated and unheard.”

Ok. But he still cheated.

If you are unhappy, you can leave. It’s painful. It may devastate other family members. I pray you exhaust all other options. But it’s honest.

Any other decision, no matter how noble or understandable the motivation, is cheating.

I’m not urging anybody to stay in an abusive relationship and take one for the team.

That’s not love. That’s self-abuse.

I’m just saying we can’t perform spiritual origami on an affair and turn it into a butterfly.

That said, I’m also not suggesting a community gleefully condemn a cheater and shun them forever. People make mistakes. And if they genuinely repent and look to make amends, I pray we find the grace to begin the restoration process. It may take years. But it’s possible. May we never be the outsiders holding a grudge in a relationship that has been reconciled.

Infidelity is never good. And here I would return to Solomon’s counsel. I don’t want to see anyone get murdered. I don’t want to see permanent damage come from temporary feelings.

Whether we are single people seeking a connection, or married people seeking a new spark, or people looking to have some fun, there is no ethical way we can do it while lying to one or many people in our lives and participating in the violation of a vow.

The young man in the Proverb naively heads to his death.

But we aren’t naïve.

And we don’t have to die to get a new life.

(Photocredit: AA's Photography)

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