Quote:
Originally Posted by mama bear
Way back in this thread, I said it is adultery. How could it NOT be?
Their minds are as one!
Yes, I was jealous...had to repent...I knew I wasn't supposed to be, can't always control my emotions. Thank God - God knew how much I could take. It's been years, and I still have a hard time hearing her name!!
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The question I posed was a theological one, is an emotional affair adultery as defined in the Bible?
It's kind of a Catch 22 because if you say "Yes" then it opens a Pandora's box of possiblities as to what can be construed as to what an emotional affair is or is not. Could Aquila's "Jack" have an emotional affair when he neglected his wife for his own personal emotional affirmation on internet church forums? Could a person have an emotional affair of sorts with their ministry or with their job or their business or their hobby? It's easy to say that it's not the same since the other thing is not a person, but aren't the dynamics the same and the result the same? If it walk like a duck...
But if you say "No" then it seems like you're being liberal when in fact your being conservative by sticking to a narrow defintion of adultery as defined in the Bible. As far as I know the Bible doesn't mention emotional affairs specifically, but it has alot to say about adultery as a physical affair. But in being conservative you run the risk of appearing to 'go soft' on emotional affairs which, as we know, 'going soft' on anything is anathema to most conservatives.
I think we can all agree that emotional affairs are real and they're bad and they're incredibly dangerous and damaging.
But I would hope too that we could also try to put ourselves in the shoes of those, like Jack and Diane, who meandered into the quagmire of emotional affairs seemingly by accident and who are still good people who screwed up. Part of the problem I think is that emotional affairs aren't talked about much, as I said I'd never heard of 'em until recently.
Part of the problem too is incomplete discipleship on the part of those involved who are operating from unbiblical expecations that led to what are sometimes unbiblical 'needs' that if goe unmet drive the person to find a source of affirmation they reallly don't need in the first place. In other cases people do have a genuine emotional need that is being unmet by their spouse and their sorrow makes them vulnerable to someone who is (even unwittingly) willing to meet that need. And then there are the true rats, the ones who are so self-absorbed and uncaring and who mess around as a matter of course and just don't seem to care.
But I hesistate to throw the majority of offenders into that narrow category and choose instead to try to be graceful and show mercy, without compromising on the sin, to those who fall prey to this trap.
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Hybrid Mode
