03/31/2001

By Dale W. Patterson

Guest column

When did the infidelity begin? How did it become so easy to rationalize that God had led me to that new place in my life?

Years before, it was like that with her. I loved to be with her. I thrilled in her every word. Coming into her midst, I was refreshed. And our passion found consummation in promises.

"I will do all things that prosper this covenant, this commitment. I will flirt with no one else. She will be mine, and I will be hers."

We promised.

Time passed. The fruit of passion, those promises bore fruit, and we multiplied. Life in the covenant offered us delights. Yet with each passing day, the passion seemed a bit more commonplace, not quite the charge it was the first time I touched her. Not long after that, my promises – that covenant – seemed a little more formal, a lot less lived in the flesh, especially when a new one wooed me. Years passed, and I almost forgot the promises we spoke.

I remembered our excitement, but the passion was less common in my life with her by now.

So it started innocently enough. My feet led me there, just down the street, and she came into my glance. A delight to my eye she was. Never did it occur to me that I was meeting a new "her." The glance – it was the eye that first caught my focus, yet my eye easily was seduced. Then I listened to her.

Her words spoke as poetry, the most delightful song I'd heard, at least for a while. Her clothes were new. Everything about her was as I'd never lived it before (but I had).

The song she sang filled my soul. Had there ever been such an instrument of praise? We chatted. We dwelt together for a bit. What could be wrong – to listen to one another, to fill our eyes with one another? Yet innocence soon gave way to a not-so-subtle flirtation. The flirting let me know that the first "her" was now lifeless. She had none of the vitality that I saw in the new "her." No wrinkles. My new "her" airbrushed away any flaw; blinded was I to anything but her virtues.

We dwelt together. I sampled her delights. My mind, my passions, my desires quickly convinced me why the one to whom I was promised had broken every covenant, failed me in all respects. A guilt I knew dissolved as – could it be God? – yes, as God led me to realize that my covenant with my former now was nullified. The Lord led me to a new beloved and the chance to have a new covenant partner. I've heard the Lord tell me, "Take a new beloved, take a new covenant partner, one who will not fail you, one who will not so violate the contract you solemnly swore."

Not long thereafter, the divorce came, and a new marriage took place. I finally found my new beloved. This time the promises were for real. Promises made. Covenant forged. Excitement, commitment fills my soul with new delights, as does she.

A story, a parable of a man and a woman, but not really. A parable about broken promises, not between a husband and wife but between members in the local church, the covenant family.

Faithful Christians join their local church enthusiastically. Often promises are made to our Lord and to one another to be in covenant with one another. What is a promise, though, when it is easily broken when a more exciting fellowship family comes along? Should it surprise us that even Bible Belt Christians who divorce as often as their pagan neighbors, often flit from church to church when disappointment comes, or are easily seduced when a fresh fellowship invites them into The Grass Is Greener Holy Church?

Maybe the marriage analogy is invalid. Maybe we can't equate joining a church with marrying one's spouse. Yet where in the Lord's teaching does he suggest that breaking a promise is "God's will," let alone that "The Lord's leading us to a new church"? Christians are doing such, over and over again.

Maybe our only promise is to Jesus. Yet was it Jesus who said, "By this you will know you are my disciples, by how you move from one fellowship to another"?

Maybe the charge of infidelity is too harsh, an overstatement. Then again, what does it mean to stand before the church and promise to the Lord, and his people?

Smells like a broken promise to me.

The Rev. Dale W. Patterson is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Hackberry Creek in Irving.

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