With the regularity of clockwork I encounter stories of teachers sleeping with students or pastors sleeping with members of their flock. The typical reaction on the news sites and on social media is typically outrage and questions of “How can they do that?”
Although each situation has some unique attributes, one common factor often ignored by the media is ‘moral paralysis’. Although you’ve read the stories, I doubt you’ve encountered this idea before.
The simplest explanation that my wife uses is “A confused mind says no!” What happens is that they are faced with so many choices about morals and doing what’s right, they get overwhelmed.
When your mind is overwhelmed, even by good things or making good choices, it goes into a state of paralysis. Consider how you are supposed to care about people in your neighborhood, your city, your State, and the Nation.
If that’s not enough, you are supposed to care about refugees from other nations around the world, people starving, gas attack victims and the under privileged in other places around the globe.
You are faced with guilt trips and needing to care that is beyond your capacity. It’s over whelming.
While in this state, choices are made without considering consequences. You get to the point where you don’t care anymore. Your compassion can’t be stretched any further.
This is common in professions where the needs of those they serve and the demands places on them is more than they can handle. Add to that all the rules they’re supposed to enforce and it’s only a matter of time before they succumb to some degree of moral paralysis.
Even after leaving their job, they are assaulted by news at home with social justice causes, cries for equality, the burden of massive student debt, threats of bursting financial bubbles and the starving multitudes in Kiberia, Kenya. There always seems to be something greater to be concerned with than their own marriage and home.
When you are caught in the vices of competing compassions, it wears on you. You can only take a limited about of guilt trips for all the woes all over the world before being over whelmed. All that compassion puts a strain on your marriage.
If the bonds of your marriage are weak, all these competing compassions and moral burdens contribute to creating moral paralysis. When in moral paralysis, you just don’t care what the consequences will be or what may happen. Your capacity for compassion is overextended.
This is where having healthy boundaries, including boundaries on your own compassion are needed. In my program on “Preventing Affair Relapse” I cover ways of setting boundaries and their importance in your marriage.
This program is available to members of the Restored Lifestyle site as part of their membership. In moving past moral paralysis, you need support, encouragement and healthy boundaries.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
