You may assume that those with higher moral development have a lower risk of affairs. You may assume that those people that you trust to handle your money, political decisions, church affairs and educate your children are wonderful since they care for youth, the disadvantaged, social justice and other matters. The reality is that moral development, as it is currently defined has no correlation with affairs. Just look at how many politicians, church leaders, business owners, civil rights leaders and other prominent persons are leading profligate lifestyles. The bottom line is that they live by different morals than they espouse. Your cheater may be like them. Your cheater may believe that affairs are wrong, but that did not stop them from having one.
I mention this for the reason, that when the cheater is telling you things, even though they are moral things, it is more important to look at what they do. They may say they are sorry, that they regret what they have done, that they will never do anything like that to you again. Those things sound nice. They sound like the cheater now has morals. What is important is what they do. Have they removed the lover from their phone, their facebook and their lives? Have they removed the photos and tokens of them? Have they taken any steps to repair the damage that they inflicted? Those actions will tell you more about their true state of heart than all the moralizing.
The take-away is this: Moral development has little to do with whether or not they have an affair.
If you want to start the year off right and get your marriage back where it needs to be, consider my e-book on trust (How to trust after an affair). Making your marriage stronger by having more trust is one of the best things you can do for yourself in the coming year.
Best Regards,
Jeffrey Murrah
3 Responses
This is an interesting topic. I was studying something else one day a while ago and they pointed out that one of the deceptive aspects of the corrupted teachings the seeped into the way our culture declined was people were practicing ‘MORALISM” instead of Biblical truth and thinking it was the same thing .
During the fifties it was rather prevalent that what was thought of as ‘Christianity’ was more or less a ritualistic , social routine than a lifestyle based upon a personal relationship with the God of the Bible day to day .
Assumptions that one was ‘Christian’ began to be heard like “Of course I am a Christian , I was ‘raised’ in a christian family ” or ‘ I am an American …that makes me ‘Christian’
The knowledge of WHAT following Christ means was watered down and accepted as our culture post war became more and more interested in economic growth and recreation became a more available goal …In the years prior the various inventions that provided more and more ‘free time’ and the entrance of women into the work place and higher educational opportunities began to redefine what a “life’ should be ‘entitled ‘ to .
Morals are only as good as those that one is trained up to practice and the motive and equipping to HOLD one to those is basic as God’s Word tells us ‘The FEAR of the LORD is the BEGINNING of wisdom’
It is WISE to be ‘moral’ but since ‘morals ‘ apart from GOD are on a sliding ‘scale’ because more and more people have been confused and persuaded “GOD ” is old fashioned, a myth, and the Bible is full of ‘stories’ rather than RECORDS inspired by GOD to testify to the various outcomes of sinful behavior versus lives of those who followed after TRUTH …and truth being accepted more and more as based upon ones “personal opinions’ and ‘relativism” and :the really great one …SITUATION ETHICS…..the world is a MESS and in CONFUSION
The word tells us that ‘Where envy and strife are is CONFUSION and EVERY EVIL WORK” …and God is NOT the author of Confusion …but of peace…
Peace with GOD that is ..for one who follows the LORD will find himself at “odds’ with the way the WORLD decides to live and promote ‘self’ , ‘flesh’ and ‘getting ahead’
Thus many may gain the WHOLE WORLD but lose their own soul as they follow the BROAD WAY of ‘destruction ‘ with the” MANY”.
Like the proverbial ‘frog in the slow boiling pot ‘ ….religion posing as ‘Christian’ has declined as it has given way to many doctrinal practices that are not authorized or called for by the Lord Jesus Christ and thus the decline as many civilizations in the past have experienced….
The only way to be ‘moral’ is to allow oneself to have a NEW LORD rather than oneself as lord….and then the real ‘fun’ begins as many many changes come about …as we are led to see what the comparison with HIS life is with what we have been settling for prior to meeting Jesus Christ ..within the pages of His WORDS.
Good article Jeff…thank you …always some eye opening comments from your ‘pen’ …
Zaza,
I never heard the term ‘moralism’ before. I often used the term ‘cultural Christians’ in referring to those raised in the culture and taking their identity from it rather than from relationship.
Much of the study on moral development came from the studies of Lawrence Kohlberg and others, whose theories are often embedded with their own biases. I addressed the topic, since the way some people have dealt with the immorality of infidelity by simply redefining what morality was. By changing the definition, they often excused what had been unacceptable to previous generations. The new ‘morality’ was then used to gradually push out the old one. Part of the fruit of those new definitions is that it destroyed many families and communities in the process.
Yes, I had not heard that term either before that but it DID seem to be the way it was. And it is a sad reality but it is what we are dealing with
I enjoy your articles and your courtesy of the replies you have taken time to write .
Keep on with the ’cause’ !