Straight Talk to the Adulterous Man

Michael Spencer, The Internet Monk, has a hard-hitting post on the subject of male adultery. I was particularly appreciative of his second major point, “Despite a lot attention to the 'seductress'” in Proverbs, the problem in adultery is the married man, the condition of his marriage and the lies he tells himself”. He writes:

One of the marks of male juvenility, and likely eventual downfall, is the tendency to put the emphasis on flirtatious women, scantily clad women, women with cleavage, women who smile at you, women you laugh at your jokes, women who pay attention to you and so forth. I'm not saying this kind of information is all useless, because it's clearly a kind of common sense warning that anyone ought to heed. It'’s just mislocating the problem.
The guy about to commit adultery is a person with a marriage he's neglected and a wife he'’s turning into an excuse to step out on.
(Emphasis added)

I find this bit of straight, honest talk a breath of fresh air. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing about all the external things that “cause” a man to fall and destroy his marriage. The brutal honesty is that the “fall” began long, long before — not by engaging in inappropriate actions, thoughts or relationships, but by not engaging in the proper loving of his wife.

Consequently, I think Michael is spot on in his closing paragraph:

Look to that marriage of yours with the mind of Christ and the spirit of the prodigal coming home. Call upon the Lord, and he will deliver you. Declare your love for your wife, and let all your actions declare it even louder. Honor your vows, bless your children and do the right thing so that you will have no reason to be ashamed in the day of Jesus Christ.

However, there are a couple items in his first point that make we wonder if even Michael has come fully to grips with the consequences of his insight. The first point ends thus:

What would help? Communities of men that talk to one another honestly about sex, adultery, the 'plot line'” of sexual transgressions and the consequences of sexual sin. David'’s isolation and subsequent cover-up should teach us that we can be better men if we talk to one another, confront one another, and encourage one another in specific, down to earth terms.
I like sermons about Christian guyness, but frankly, having a preacher who can use sexual terms and blunt language is overrated in terms of assisting a man in the middle of the struggle not to commit adultery. Other men, talking to you face to face, are of inestimable value. To be quite honest, if you can't talk about your specific temptations to specific people in specific terms, you don'’t yet have the kind of support that will yield truly helpful self-knowledge.

Quite frankly, I hear this sort of advice all the time. And just as here, it seems always to be focused on the sexual temptation. Given the content of his first point, and the content of the other post to which he points, I'm sure that Michael wouldn't be promoting the kind of “accountability” that consists merely in lists of questions about whether or not you “looked at a woman” this past week.

But I'm convinced that the real accountability a man needs is not about specific sexual temptation but about the specific ways in which he is learning to love his wife as Christ loved the church. If you can help a man do that, you do far, far more than just helping him avoid adultery.

I'm probably resigned to the fact that I'm not going to hear that kind of accountability promoted any time soon. And I'll give Michael the point that his comment about men talking frankly to men about temptation does come early in the piece, before he makes the point about the real issue being neglecting the marriage.

The thing that really bugs me, though, is that for all his blunt talk to men about taking responsibility for their own sexuality and their own marriages, Michael still hasn't stopped blaming women. Or at least that's how I hear the opening salvos in his first point, which he heads as “Adultery happens to men who do not have a truthful perspective on their own sexuality”. He writes:

Sexuality in evangelicalism is largely discussed in feminized, moralistic terms. This isn’t helpful to anyone, male or female. Sexuality is the hard-wiring and software installation of God’s creative design. It is not something we do. It is who we are. Sexuality is as much a part of you as an ignition or fuel system are parts of a car. When the car “runs,” it is because these systems “run.” When you are a man, you are a sexual man.
The separation of male sexuality from Godly identity has been a disaster, and I’ve written about it elsewhere. Castrating men for usefulness in a prissy, feminized evangelicalism is bad. (BTW- the answer to all of this is Jesus, not hairy chested men grunting and making rude noises.)

The rest of his point is that we have de-humanized men by trying to de-sexualize them, largely because of a fear of their sexuality. But why use the adjective “feminized” to describe this evil? The same process that has de-humanized men because of fear of their sexuality has also operated to de-humanize women because of fear of their sexuality — a point with which Michael seems to agree, if only in passing. Ought we then to call such de-humanized women “feminized”? Ridiculous!

This kind of name-calling gender war, in which men call anything they find de-humanizing of themselves “feminizing” or “feminist” and women call anything they find de-humanizing of themselves “masculinizing” or “masculinist” does absolutely nothing to help build the sort of self-giving commitment to one's own marriage and one's own spouse that is needed if the destructive lure of adultery upon both men and women is to be defeated.

It seems to me that the real culprit behind the de-sexing of both men and women in our supposedly Christian subculture is not feminization, but a Gnostic-like dualism that denies the goodness of the created material world, including specifically the human body, with all its God-created earthiness. The same squeamishness many christians express about sex is manifested by many urban dwellers about the source of the meat on their plate — neither are considered appropriate for discussion in polite company. And how many gospel presentations have we heard that made it seem that the best part of the “good news” was that we didn't have to make those revolting animal sacrifices anymore.

There was no need to label this very real problem mindset as “feminized” — it has absolutely nothing to do with anything that is truly feminine. To use such a label in this way simply feeds the fear of the “other” that makes living together with one's spouse in self-giving love and according to knowledge virtually impossible. Michael says:

As I grow older, I am constantly amazed at the number of men who simply have no coping skills in marriage. They are passive and helpless when they most need to act, and they are afraid — often paralyzingly so — to become vulnerable, to suffer gladly, to admit error or to seek humility. They are, in too many cases, childishly distractible by someone else when they are most called to think about and love their spouse.

I say no man who is afraid of being “feminized” by his wife because she is a woman is ever going to be able to “become vulnerable, to suffer gladly, to admit error or seek humility.”

In closing, I'll go back to what I found refreshing about Michael's straight talk to men — Grow up! Stop blaming all your problems on women: flirtatious women, scantily clad women, women with cleavage, women who smile at you, women who laugh at your jokes, women who pay attention to you, the woman you're married to who doesn't seem to ever be satisfied or to give you your due, and the evil conspiracy of womankind who've totally “feminized” everything everywhere. Be a man! Take up your cross and love your wife just as Christ loved the church.