Simply A Night Owl

Well I finally got around to being able to actually sit down and write a little bit again and wanted to wrap up a few thoughts that occurred to me while I was writing this post and this post.

Matthew 5:32 says this:

But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress…

I found this to be interesting because on the surface, one might assume that “marital unfaithfulness” and “adultery” mean the same thing and in the context of today’s society, they would be correct.  However there are two different words used in this verse to define those.  Porneia is used to describe marital unfaithfulness while Moixaw is used to describe adultery.   I want to see if I can sit here and work this out to a logical conclusion.  The problem with language though is that it’s a rabbit hole; especially when translations are thrown into the mix.   Translations tend to mirror the thoughts, emotions and beliefs of the translator.  I’m fairly certain that is why there are so many different translations of The Bible and they are all different.  I’ll come back to that though.

I recently had a discussion with a good friend of mine who was telling me about something that was relayed to a friend of his through a pastor.   While I agree that third hand information is always tentative at best, I tend to have not doubt as to the veracity of what I was told by this friend because of the relationship that I have with him.   He told me that a friend of his, who just went through a divorce questioned a pastor about what was actually considered as adultery.   This person was told by this pastor that anything that was more important than the marital relationship could be considered adultery.   I just got to say that I laughed a little hard at this. I thought to myself, “Like what?  Fishing?  Hunting?  Writing?  Surfing the web?  Then, whose perception of the importance of these activities counts in establishing whether or not they should be classified as adultery?“

Moixaw is the word for “commit adultery” which doesn’t leave any room for exploration as it is is simple, concise and clear.  On the other hand, Porneia is defined as “fornication”; of which the literal definition is prostitution, adultery and incest.   My questions start at the discovery of defintions of adultery and fornication.   According to Easton’s Bible Dictionary, an adulterer is a man who has had illicit sexual intercourse with a married or betrothed woman and that such a woman was an adulteress.  Based on that definition, there are some who might argue that the Holy Spirit himself is an adulterer but I’m not going to open that can of worms here.   The definition of fornication according to Easton’s is intercourse between a married man and an unmarried woman.

So based on what I have discovered, a single man and a married woman can fornicate without fornicating and if nobody’s married, you can pretty much do whatever you want.   You know, things like…

• Pre-marital sex
• Orgies
• Oral Sex
• Fetishes
• Improper Thoughts
• Pretty much anything you can think of

So here’s a question since I’ve gone down this branch of the hold; who was it then that added all of these “sins” onto the list and more importantly, why do they all of the sudden become okay when we’re married?

So I’m sitting here now and getting dizzy.   My eyes are crossed and I’m seeing double.  I’ve got a headache that’s measuring about 6.2 on the Richter scale the the epicenter seems to be located in the vicinity of the frontal lobe.  I don’t think that I will ever be able to fully wrap my brain around this subject.

It’s a good thing for grace!