“’I am innocent, but it makes no difference to me—
I despise my life. Innocent or wicked, it is all the same to God.
That’s why I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’”-Job 9:21-22, NLT
Ever noticed the pressure among Christians to talk about “our part” when our marriages end in divorce–even to a cheater?!
I know I’ve felt it internally. The battle to acknowledge my own imperfections and sins in the marriage alongside the cheating of my ex-wife is real.
However, I take comfort in knowing that nothing I did or could do caused my ex-wife to commit adultery.
The whole “model” Christian spouse who talks about their “10%” of the marriage problems is not someone I aspire to be.
“She cheated on me,” says a faithful husband…
“He cheated on me,” says a faithful wife…
“And we are now divorced.”
These are complete sentences. They ought to be enough of an explanation for why the marriage ended in divorce among Christians.
Those statements are enough for God, after all (see Deuteronomy 22:22, Jeremiah 3:8, Matthew 19:9, etc).
I aspire to be a faithful spouse whose words and actions debunk “The Shared Responsibility Lie“–i.e. the lie that teaches shared responsibility for the sin committed by one party. And I hope many more faithful spouses join me in that journey to sound, biblical practice on the matter.
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*A version of this post ran previously.
“True, he did hit me with a baseball bat, but I did burn the toast.”
Being innatentive to the toaster is not cause for assault with a deadly weapon. The assault comes from a place of malevalent dysfunction, not response to a slight.
Every marriage has unresolved issues or individual problems. None of these are valid excuses for adultery.