It is curious to see how on the cinema and television the majority of films and soap operas always portray the Husband as being less interesting than the secret lover; or the Wife as being less amusing than the mistress. Marriage is distortedly pictured as a sad and impossible routine and the extramarital relations as a pleasing and necessary adventure.
The stories in these kinds of scripts are so misleading that the spectators are led to believe and support the adventurous option as the best alternative for those involved in the plot, rather than to believe in the improvement or restoration of their marital relation. In this context betrayal is shown as normal and infidelity as a virtue.
The risk is when the spectator adopts the options from the screen and transfers to real life the misleading concepts from fiction, choosing for themselves the alternatives that are conflicting to the teachings of the bible. The person that does that soon discovers that the sweet illusion from infidelity is like a desert mirage, unreachable. The desert thirst can never be satisfied with sand.
Opposite to the distorted reality from the films and soap operas, marriage as conceived by God wasn’t designed to be tedious or uncomfortable, but innovative and enjoyable. It’s an exclusive, enduring and everlasting union of love where men and women can fully develop their individual and collective potential.
However, this optimistic truth is for when marriage is constructed over the biblical fundaments, but when built on other bases, the outcomes can be of the most pessimistic ones. Let’s discern between fantasy and reality, between what’s true and false. When men and women truly decide to follow the word of God, conjugal happiness changes from utopia to reality. In this context betrayal and infidelity are unnecessary.
- Which concepts influence your way of seeing marriage?
- How can marriage avoid falling into infidelity?
(The institution of marriage, Genesis 2:23-25 / The conjugal commitment, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5)
Commissioner Torben Eliason is the Territorial Commander of the Southern Africa Territory