My Own Strength Doesn’t Cut it

The fallout from my recent dream has been wonderful so far.

I dreamed the wife of a preacher who had committed suicide threw herself on me and gave me a passionate kiss. It may not sound like a dream that came from God, but it appears that it was.

One of the things I took away from it was a new revelation of the importance of faithfulness to God. Your relationship with God, although not sexual, should be hot, passionate, and exclusive, and you should be appalled by the thought of cheating on him.

You can cheat on God by committing sin or just by conforming to the secular world. You can cheat on him by failing to spend time with him. Many Christians practice idolatry through things like yoga, astrology, the martial arts, traditional Chinese medicine, and so on. Idolatry is the most blatant form of adultery there is.

Anyone who wants to see how Christianity resembles marriage and how straying from God is like having sex with strangers should read Ezekiel 23 in plain English. It’s startling. Here is a link.

I have always hated adultery. It can be hard for a single person to understand how a married person can cheat on his or her spouse, especially if that person is attractive and devoted and has a good personality. I do understand the temptation to cheat on vile people, but I know it isn’t acceptable.

I have never liked the hundred-mile rule. Women may not be familiar with it. It goes like this: “If I’m at least a hundred miles from my wife, I’m single.” I guess this could also be called the convention rule.

If you’re married to someone, you don’t just behave when that person can see you. It’s not okay to commit adultery that person doesn’t know about. Marriage should be characterized by deep trust. Once someone cheats, that trust is damaged very badly.

I don’t understand women who marry men who are unlikely to be faithful. Jada Pinkett Smith comes to mind. She has a famous “open” marriage. Some people seem to admire her for holding onto Will Smith in spite of what he does, but the truth, in all likelihood, is that she simply has no choice other than divorce, and like Camille Cosby, she doesn’t want to relinquish the status he brings. She was a minor celebrity before she married him, and if they divorced, she would fall to a much lower rung on the social ladder.

All this being said, I had a physical relationship with a married woman once. I feel very bad about it. She was in the process of getting a divorce, but it wasn’t final. I told myself that made her single, which was not true. We were in love, and we had plans. I thought we would marry. I used these things to justify what I did. Of course, a physical relationship outside of marriage is never acceptable, so even if her divorce had been final, I would merely have been committing fornication, not adultery. It would not have made our behavior righteous.

But for the divorce proceedings, I would never have touched her. I convinced myself I was still against adultery.

Anyway, regardless of what I did in a time of disgraceful self-deceit, I have always hated cheating.

The passion of the kiss in the dream made me think about the nature of our desire for God. We should be like women who are helplessly drawn to their husbands. The circle of trust around God and us should never be broken. When we are tempted, we should be just as upset as married people who are approached by sluts and players.

We need to start saying “slut” again. There are a lot of women out there who need to have cold water thrown in their faces so they can see what they’re doing to themselves. We shouldn’t let active strippers or other prostitutes work in church ministries. We shouldn’t let career single moms sing onstage. The Bible uses words like “harlot” and “whore” over and over. Pulling punches can hurt people.

It’s too bad there is no similarly powerful word for describing sexually immoral men.

Before I had the dream, I knew my relationship with God was like a marriage, and I knew I was supposed to be faithful, but the knowledge didn’t run deep enough. The dream put it in my heart, and that has been very helpful.

Now when I’m tempted, I think of the way I would feel if I were married and a sleazy woman came onto me. I would be angry because she was threatening one of the pillars of my life. I wouldn’t be nice about it. I would be very blunt with her, and I would let her know I was going to tell my wife everything.

I may have committed adultery in the past, but I certainly don’t want to do it now. I don’t want to be that kind of person.

I am much better at resisting temptation, and I feel that God is more willing to do the things I ask than he was a couple of days ago. That would make sense. Leaders are generally less willing to support followers who are hypocritical or who dishonor them habitually.

It seems like I’m seeing his hand in my life more often. I truly hope so, because when your testimony dries up, you’re in trouble.

Christians whose testimony is weak should be quiet and listen, instead of founding denominations, running churches, and making up doctrine.