Unfaithfulness is one of the major causes of failed marriages all
over the world. This is a topic that a prominent speaker, Osondo
Anyalechi explores touching on the perspective of forgiveness.
A staff of an oil company, according to the Sun newspaper of July
23, 2016, was reputed to have installed a CCTV in his residential house,
because of thieves and he went back to the rig, forgetting to tell his
wife. Going through the caught scenes during his next off-days, he
noticed that his ‘trap’ had caught something. It was what he never
expected nor imagined, his wife committing adultery! The story might be
real or imagined, but what should he do?
Well, if uncle had caught his wife telling lies, it is likely that it
would not raise the same emotion as that of adultery. The reason is that
we rationalize sin, but the bad news is that God does not. As painful
as adultery is, it carries before God, the same weight like any other
sin, such as telling lies. ‘And there shall in no wise enter into it
[Heaven] anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination,
or maketh a lie; but they which are written in the Lamb’s Book of life’
– Rev. 21:27. This is God’s verdict and no court can reverse it.
To some people, telling lies is normal. A man is in the bus with you in
Lagos, and he is telephoning someone that his airplane has just landed
at Abuja! My God! I met a lady in a bus recently, singing Muslim and
Christian songs. ‘You are a student?’ I asked her. ‘Yes,’ she replied.
‘Which university?’ I asked. ‘Covenant,’ she replied. ‘What discipline?’
I asked. ‘Science,’ she replied. ‘There is no discipline called
Science. What course?’ I asked.
‘Medicine,’ she said. ‘Have you done your 2nd MB?’ I asked. ‘I am
doing IT,’ she said. ‘IT in Medical School?’ I wondered. I heard how a
man discovered after his wedding that everything he had been seeing on
his wife’s body was artificial. Chai! A man lost a case in the court,
because he lied to his lawyer. Ask a toddler to give you the things he
is holding and he will put them in one hand, throwing that hand behind
him, and showing you the empty palm. We laugh when he does that,
forgetting that his action is nothing but telling lies. And that is how
and where it starts.
Telling lies precedes adultery. It is not possible to be adulterous
without graduating from the ‘Faculty of Lies’. Lying is the weapon he
uses to cover his tracks. I wrote a few years ago, how a man claimed
before the college authorities that the girl he came to visit was his
younger sister. Unknown to him, the mother of the girl was there,
waiting to see the girl. Confronting the man, she said: “So you are my
son and I don’t know you?” In my newest book, I wrote how a man told his
wife that he would be returning home late on Fridays because of extra
responsibility given to him by his boss. His wife did not mind that, but
at the end of the month, she could not see any extra cash, in
recompense. in his pay cheque.
To make the extra cash she needed, she
went to a distant brothel one Friday evening, knowing that uncle would
be returning late. She told her children that she was going for a
meeting. The rule there was that after registration, the person would go
to the dressing room to remove his or her dress and would then change
to the ‘business’ outfit provided by the brothel. After that, the person
would go to the waiting room, where partners were paired. That was
where uncle and aunty met! Each knew what brought the other there! It
all started with lies, which snowballed to high level of sexual
immorality.
Well, it is difficult to imagine how a wife will stoop to that beastly
level by sleeping with a man, who is not her spouse. Cash, revenge and
carelessness have been identified as some of the causes of infidelity. I
have spoken in many seminars and Couples’ Dinner on the danger, and
that sex outside wedlock is not the same as with a spouse. The joy and
comfort derived in driving one’s car is lost when a thief drives the
same car. God is generous and has made it possible for us to have many
single men and ladies, that anyone who cares, can get a spouse. To
refuse to marry or to be married and then, you leave your spouse and
pitch your tent on another man’s wife, is wickedness. The same thing
applies to women, who seduce other women’s husbands or allow themselves
to be seduced, for whatever reason. God’s message for the wicked is that
it will not be well with them.
What will Jesus do if He were the man, whose CCTV caught his wife
pants-in-hand? Kill her as uncle is afraid he might do, if he continued
to see her or divorce her as by implication, he is being advised? Jesus
will forgive her. What did Uncle Joseph, the carpenter do, when he
discovered that Mary, his espoused bride, was pregnant, when as God’s
children, they had no premarital sex? Knowing that the penalty was death
by stoning, he wanted to save her from that, by putting her away
secretly. That was a measure of his love for God and for her. God then
told him that the pregnancy was by the Holy Spirit. My counsel
therefore, is for the man to forgive his wife. Apostle Paul enjoins us
to have the mind of Christ, which comes through the new birth. Holding
high positions in the Church is good, but it will not give you the mind
of Christ. Paul told the Church in Ephesus that good works per se,
cannot save anybody. It is by grace through faith, however, we are saved
to do good works.
It is difficult for a man, who does not have the mind of Christ to
forgive anybody, including his adulterous wife. It is painful to imagine
how a fellow man will uncover your wife’s nakedness and then sleep with
her, and worse still, in your house. What is amazing is that as ugly as
this evil is, some of the men, who will hit the rooftop in anger when
their wives commit adultery, are the same people that do the same
brazenly. Without fearing God, nor caring for the feelings of their
fellow men, they sleep with their wives, including the wives of their
bosom friends. They do the same also with the daughters of their fellow
men, sinning against their friends and the future husbands of such
ladies. To them, infidelity is abominable when a wife indulges in it,
but male chauvinism or weakness of the flesh, when the husband is the
offender.
Culled from Daily Sun
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