Michael Medved, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh a week ago, made a valuable observation in a monologue when he talked about the message of Hollywood emphasizing the idea of “following your heart.” This is scarcely a new concept; after all, Paris would not settle for anything less than Helen though it eventually cost him his life and the downfall of the city of Troy. If he had used his head, however, Homer would have needed someone else as source material for The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Medved contrasted the academy award-winning movie Casablanca with The English Patient: the former ended with a head decision (involving duty and responsibility); the latter followed a heart decision (in which Self came first). He then commented about how widespread the “follow your heart” message is.
According to the August 26th Dallas Morning News, the producers of television programs are preparing many shows for this fall which will highlight such decisions (between head and heart). One of them will appear on Disney-owned ABC. The blurb underneath the promo says: “The hero of Nothing Sacred, a Roman Catholic priest played by Kevin Anderson, runs into a former lover, now in a troubled marriage. Will they get involved again?” (5C). The viewer might think that the priest’s faith will keep him strong. Hah! What faith? He questions the existence of God. He will not counsel against abortion. He is opposed neither to homosexuality nor promiscuity; he tells his parishioners: “I was not ordained to be a sexual traffic cop.” Was Moses (EX. 20:14)? This priest is so evil one would think there had been a Catholic boycott of Disney instead of one by Baptists.
Caryn James comments on the change in attitude concerning adultery in our society.
In the old days, unfaithfulness automatically marked a character as a villain or a home wrecker. For the last five years or so, dramas (and to a lesser degree sitcoms) have turned a corner. No television show has suggested that philandering is a good idea; in fact, in both sitcoms and dramas adultery always produces serious emotional fallout. But now the people involved are often major characters we like and sympathize with (6C).
She continues by citing NYPD Blue and E.R. as examples of shows that sport “flawed people who made understandable mistakes.” She feels that the current fare is a great improvement over “the days when television defied reality and insisted that marriage was a constant state of unblemished monogamy.”
James’ choice of vocabulary lends credibility to her case; so consider a few substitutions. In place of realistically flawed people, read sinners who are too weak to resist temptation, who “follow their hearts.” Her choice of terms almost sounds as though the characters cannot help what they do, when the truth is that they lack strength of (fictional) character.
The word affair really softens the imagery. It sounds light and rhymes with air; it conjures up images of something exotically French. Adultery is so much more harsh and pejorative. It seems to carry much more of a wallop in the ten commandments than the other word would: “Thou shalt not have affairs.”
It may surprise Caryn to know this, but there are still many spouses that are monogamous; most of the publicity, however, attends those who been unfaithful. She writes that these “understandable mistakes” reflect “real life,” as though marital faithfulness does not. We might ask if responsible marriage partners only subsist in the twilight zone (but that’s a fictional place).
Next she cites celebrity failures, such as Prince Charles and Lady Diana, Frank and Kathy Lee Gifford, and Bill Cosby. Things were not always perfect in Camelot, either (choose whichever Camelot you prefer). She admits, however, that the television programs are not so much copying celebrity lives as they are reflecting “the way Americans have been dealing with infidelity in more complex terms.”
Oh, really? What terms are those: lust, sin, defilement? What James means is that Americans are becoming adept at rationalization–trying to justify people’s “mistakes.” Instead of saying, “I committed adultery, and I was wrong,” the emphasis has shifted to, “I had an affair, but you can understand how that could happen.” People talk so glibly about adultery that one would never guess that in the Old Testament the penalty for it was being stoned to death!
In a May 24th article in The Dallas Morning News Cal Thomas commented about society’s reluctance, as well as the hesitation of religious bodies theoretically upholding the Bible, to denounce adultery.
Rushing to keep pace with the cultural decline are at least 40 member churches of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which recently signed a “covenant of dissent” signaling their noncooperation with the denomination’s “fidelity and chastity” law. That law, to be adopted this spring, requires church leaders not to engage in sex outside of a male-female marriage bond. If some churches start going wobbly on a central biblical teaching, what are the rest of us to think? (31A).
Perhaps this attitude should come as no surprise, since so many have dismissed young couples’ “living together” (translate, fornication) as “normal.” Regardless of what society and some man-made churches teach, however, the Bible still says: “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Heb. 13:4).
As a culture, we seem to have lost sight of moral absolutes. We now view ourselves as THE GREAT EXCEPTION to whatever rule or moral principle we find inconvenient to abide by. The only problem with that kind of thinking is that, sooner or later, we must grant others the same “exception” rights we appropriated for ourselves. After all, it is rather hypocritical to accuse someone else of the same sin whereof we ourselves stand guilty.
Soon a large segment of society has participated in the same sin, and no one wants to accuse anyone else. And if a voice should break the silence, that person becomes vilified; the brave but intrepid soul is characterized as “self-righteous” or “sanctimonious.” “Doesn’t he know that none of us is perfect?” Thereby the problems caused by sin are minimized and accepted, which is wholly inadequate. Thomas continues:
Psychiatrist and family therapist Frank Pittman has written about adultery, calling it the primary disrupter of families, the most dreaded and devastating experience in marriage. It is the most universally accepted justification for divorce. It is even a legally accepted justification for murder in some states and many societies (31A).
While that last statement may be the case, it is not the right of a Christian to so behave. But Pittman is correct about the devastating results of adultery. Trust has been breached, and in many cases divorce will follow. A new study recently given a great amount of publicity said that divorce is not nearly so bad as most people have thought. This study contradicts many of the findings that experts have agreed upon for years, but it is reported that the sampling used was only 100, which is very limited.
Recently, a North Carolina case made national news. Margie Cox was sued by Dorothy Hutelmyer for alienation of affection–and won. Dorothy claimed that she and her husband Joseph had a storybook marriage (her husband wrote her poems and love songs). Margie Cox, a divorcee, worked for Mr. Hutelmyer as secretary.
How well she did that job we don’t know, but she did a good job of persuading her boss to divorce his wife and marry her, for which she was sued. The court granted the first Mrs. Hutelmyer one million dollars (to be paid by the second Mrs. Hutelmyer). Needless to say, the case was appealed, but the former Margie Cox lost again.
Of course, some despise the alienation of affection law and have pointed out that the husband has a free will of his own. It was also alleged that the original Hutelmyer couple had not been “physical” for seven years, which (if true) might tint Dorothy with a little guilt of her own.
But the law was originally passed to keep one woman from stealing another woman’s man through “physical” means. [Of course, this seems to presume that men are weak-minded and susceptible to being vamped (Pr. 7; Matt. 5:27-28).] But it serves as yet another way to show that adultery can prove costly.
If married couples would determine to follow what the Bible teaches in 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 and Ephesians 5:22-33, many marital problems could be avoided.
*Send comments or questions concerning this article to Gary Summers. Please refer to this article as: “AFFAIRS OF THE HEART (9/14/97).”