THE HARDER THEY FALL

Alas! how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too deep or a kiss too long,
And then comes a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.

--George MacDonald

I keep seeing my friends fall. I wonder why they do it? What causes men and women to trash their marriages and all they've worked for, for a transient affair? Take David, for example---Israel's greatest king, the "man after God's own heart." He fell for Uriah's pretty, young wife, Bathsheba.

It happened "in the spring, at the time when kings go off to war" (2 Sam. 11:1). That spring, however, in fatal lethargy, David's fancy turned to thoughts of love. "One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of his palace" (11:2). From there, he had a commanding view of Jerusalem and could look down into neighboring courtyards. As he surveyed his city, his eyes fell upon a young woman taking a bath. The text says she was very beautiful (1:2).

If the woman seems immodest, you must remember there was no indoor plumbing in those days. Baths were normally taken outdoors in enclosed courtyards. (Archaeologists working at Achzib in Israel recently unearthed a statuette of a young woman sitting in an oval, flat bowl taking a bath. She dates from David's period.)

David was entranced! He sent someone "to find out about her" (1:3), whereupon, one of his friends tried to end the matter: "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, and the wife of Uriah the Hittite" (1:3), he asked. She was a married woman---married in fact to one of David's close friends, an old army buddy, Uriah.

David, however, would not be denied. He "sent messengers to get her." One wrong thing led to another, "and he slept with her. Then she went back home." later, we're told, "she sent word to David, saying, 'I am pregnant!'" (11:4, 5).

David knew was in big trouble! Bathsheba's husband was engaged in the siege of the Ammonite city of Rabbah and would be away for several months. Anyone could count to nine. In other lands kings were the law, but not in Israel. No one was above God's word. And adultery was serious sin.

But David, always a man of action, devised a plan to avert the consequences of his affair. He sent word to Joab to release Uriah from his command and send him to Jerusalem, ostensibly to report on the war, but in reality to bring him home to Bathsheba. When the old warrior arrived, David perfunctorily listened to his briefing and then dismissed Uriah to his home: "Go down to your house and wash your feet" he said with a twinkle in his eye.

But Uriah "slept at the entrance of the palace with all his master's servant and did not go down to his house" (11:9). The old soldier explained, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord"s men are camping in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and to lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing. Then David said to him, 'Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will let you go.' So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants; he did not go home" (11:10­p;13).

Uriah may have heard palace rumors of Bathsheba's dalliance or his integrity as a professional soldier was a stake. He would not go home while those under his command were separated from their wives and families. Despite David's repeated efforts to persuade Uriah, the stern old Hittite refused. Even the expedient of getting him drunk failed. Each evening Uriah rolled out his sleeping bag on the floor of the palace guardroom and slept with the rest of the troops.

Time was running out. In desperation David put a contract on his good friend's life, ordering General Joab to, "place Uriah in the front line where fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him, so that he will be struck down and die" (11:15).

Joab, who was no fool, refused to follow David's directive. The plan was so obviously treacherous that he altered it: "While Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David's army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite was dead" (11:17)

Joab placed Uriah where his intelligence reports told him the fighting would be most intense, in the hope that Uriah would be slain. Joab's plan, though less obviously treacherous than David's, resulted in greater loss of life. There were many Israeli widows and orphans who wept that day.

Joab then sent a runner to David with a report on the battle. He knew David would be critical of his tactics and the resultant loss of life, but, as he hastened to report that Uriah had been killed (11:18­p;22). "Ah," mused David, "the sword devours one as well as the other" (11:25). The fortunes of war. C'est la vie.

When Bathsheba heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him, and when her brief period of mourning was over, David "had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son" (11:26,27).

David moved with inappropriate haste, but marriage put a legal and final end to the sordid affair, or so David thought. But God knew: "The thing David had done displeased the Lord" (11:27).

A year passed, during which time David deteriorated physically and emotionally. As he later described his feelings

When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night
your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer. (Psalm 32:3,4)

His gnawing conscience kept him restless and melancholy. Every waking moment was filled with misery; at night he tossed and turned. Anxiety sapped his energy. His depression deepened with every passing day.

2 Samuel 12:26­p;31 describes a telling event during the year that David tried to evade his conscience. (The account is displaced chronologically, actually occurring shortly after Bathsheba and David were married.) Joab captured the citadel guarding the water supply of the Ammonite city of Rabbah and knew that the fall of the fortress was imminent. He called for David to lead the army in the final assault. When the city fell, David massacred the population of Rabbah and her sister villages, and "sawed them with saws and with iron picks and with axes."

We cannot mitigate David's sin. Judah's most illustrious ruler, sweet singer of Israel, "the man after God's own heart" had become David, the seducer, the adulterer, the liar, the murderer, the mass murderer, utterly pitiless and unmoved by his monstrous misdeeds. Israel's ruler was now ruled by sin. He had discovered the truth of Augustine's axiom: "The punishment for sin is sin."

Eventually, David had to face the facts. To be more precise, he had to face the prophet Nathan, who dug up the facts. Nathan trapped the shepherd­p;king with a trumped-up story about a rich man who had vast flocks of sheep but who seized another man's pet lamb to serve to a "traveling stranger," Nathan's metaphor for David's transient passion (2 Sam. 12:14).

David was enraged: "As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity" (12:5). Sheepnapping was not a capital offense in Israel. According to Israelite law a thief was only required to make fourfold restitution to the victim (Ex. 22:1). David was over­p;reacting out of moral outrage: What monstrous cruelty!

Nathan drove his verdict home: "You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little I would have given you more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes?" (12:7­p;9).

Brought face to face with his corruption, David's defenses crumbled. Burying his face in his hands, he cried, "I have sinned against the Lord." And Nathan replied, "The Lord has also taken away your sin. You are not going to die" (12:13a).

No excuses, no extenuating circumstances, no special pleading. David acknowledged his sin and God canceled the handwriting that was against him. David could lift up his head. As he later wrote (Ps. 32:5):
I acknowledged my sin to you,
and did not cover up my iniquity
I said, 'I will confess
my transgression to the Lord"---
and you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
As John promised, "If we confess (acknowledge) our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 Jn. 1:9). Happiness is knowing that our sins have been forgiven.
Blessed (happy) is he
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed (happy) is the man
whose sin the Lord does not count against him
and in whose spirit is no deceit (Psalm 32:1,2)

David bore terrible consequences for his sin---his family life and political career fell apart at the seams---but he could rise from his fall to walk with God. "No amount of falls will really undo us" wrote C.S. Lewis, "if we keep picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give up."

The Law of Inevitable Sequence

Reading David's story and watching my friends fall has lead me to one conclusion: Moral collapse is rarely a blow­p;out; it's more like a slow leak---the result of a thousand small indulgences the consequences of which are never immediately apparent. Hardly anyone plans an adulterous affair: They transition into it.

It begins with attraction. It's not so much lust as infatuation that brings us down. We find ourselves drawn to someone sensitive and understanding, someone who listens well and seems to care. We're seduced by that attraction and led on by subtle degrees.

Attraction becomes fantasy: We imagine ourselves with that person and the feeling is good. Fictionalized affairs always seem right. That's their fundamental deception.

The fantasies soften us and our convictions erode. We're then in a frame of mind to listen to our longings, and having listened we have no will to resist. As a wise man observed, we cannot escape the realization of our predominate thoughts (Proverbs 23:7).

Then there are the meeting, the sharing of inner conflict, marital disappointment and other deep hurts, and with that sharing the relationship begins to shift: We're suddenly two lonely people in need of one another's love. As Louis McBerney says, it's as decisive as reaching for a zipper.

Then comes the inevitable yielding and with that yielding the need to justify the affair. We can't live with the internal dissonance. We have to rationalize our behavior by blaming someone or something else---the pressures of our business or the limitations of our spouses. Other's wrong­p;doing becomes our reason. Everything must be made to look good.

But our hearts know. There are moments when our wills soften and we long to set things right. If we do not then listen to our hearts there is a metallic hardening and then corruption. Our wrong­p;doing mutates, altering its form and quality, evolving into dark narcissism and horrifying cruelty: We don't care who gets hurt as long as we get what we want.

And finally there is inevitable disclosure. First we deny: "There's no one else!" Then we dissemble: "It's only Platonic." And finally our deception is shouted from the housetops. There's no place to hide from the light.

When our seams have been opened, when our evil deeds have been exposed, then God reminds us of his cross, his forgiveness and his incomparable grace and begins to make us new. But there's only one way to know that forgiveness: acknowledgment of the awfulness of one's sin and that old­p;fashioned word, repentance. We must hate what we've done, and turn from it in disgust.

That's what Paul calls "godly sorrow (that) brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret" (2 Cor. 7:10). Ungodly sorrow is the sorrow of being found out or of suffering the consequences of being found out. The result is intensified guilt, anxiety and hopelessness. Godly sorrow, on the other hand, is sorrow over sin itself and the harm that it's done to others. Godly sorrow asserts itself to set thing right.

Here's the way Paul put it: "See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness (to obey), what eagerness to clear yourselves (of wrong­p;doing), what indignation (against evil), what alarm (that we might fall into sin again), what longing (for purity), what concern (for all those damaged by our sin), what readiness to see justice (righteousness) done" (2 Cor. 7:11).

As David himself learned, "The sacrifice of God (a godly sacrifice) is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you will not despise" (Ps. 51:17). God doesn't despise us when we fall. He discerns the possibilities even in our defilement, unmakes the mistakes and sets out to make us better than we've ever been before. He uses our sin to awaken our need for his grace, he softens us and makes us more susceptible to his shaping than we've ever been before. When we fall we have fallen into his arms. As one of George MacDonald's characters said, "When a man or woman repents an' humbles himsel', there (God) is to lift them up---an' higher than they ever stood afore!"

Therefore, rather than mourn our humiliation we should move on. Sin may have terrible consequences with which we must live for the rest of our natural lives, but sin repented of, can only work for ultimate good. God takes the worst that we can do and makes it part of the good he has promised. He's the God of fools and failures and the God of another chance. Etiam peccatis (Even from my sins)," wrote Augustine, "God can draw good."

Avoiding the Inevitable

Anyone can fall. The main thing is to know how vulnerable we are and always be on the alert. We're overthrown because we're unguarded (1 Cor. 10:12). "What can we do?" we ask.

We can guard our relationship with God. The wise man says, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life" (Proverbs 4:23). There's a close relationship between human sexuality and human spirituality. As Charles Williams observed, "Sensuality and sanctity are so closely intertwined that our motives in some cases can hardly be separated until the tares are gathered out of the wheat by heavenly wit." Sexual passion is in some inexplicable way a small representation of our more profound, spiritual passion for God---our "urge to merge" with him. He alone can gratify that desire. Devotion to Christ serves to satisfy our deepest longings and quell our other lusts. But when our love for Christ is on the wane, we get restless for something more and our resolve in every area begins weaken.

We can guard our minds against romantic and sexual fantasies. "Our predominant thoughts determine our inevitable actions," as someone has said. What we think in our hearts is what we always do.

Thomas á Kempis put it this way:
"Meet (temptations) at the door as soon as they knock, and do not let them in. One simple thought can enter the mind and start the process. The process starts like this. First, the thought is allowed to enter into our minds. Second, the imagination is sparked by the thought. Third, we feel a sense of pleasure at the fantasy and we entertain it. Fourth and finally, we engage in the evil action assenting to its urges. This is how, little by little, temptations gain entrance and overcome us if they are not resisted in the beginning. The longer we let them overcome us, the weaker we become, and the stronger the enemy is against us."
"But," you ask, "How can we stop our erotic thoughts?" As Melanchthon lamented, "Old Adam is much too strong for young Philip!" Our fantasies are much too strong to subordinate. It's much better to re­p;channel or displace them. When sexual fantasies intrude into our thoughts we have two choices: We can either reinforce them, in which case they eventually become obsession; or we can sidetrack them into devotion, meditation and prayer (cf. Phil 4:8).

We can cultivate affection for our spouses, daily rekindling the love and passion of our marriages, maintaining its romance. That's mutual protection (Prov. 5:15­p;20). We're terribly vulnerable if we neglect our marriages permitting them to grow dull and unfriendly.

We can watch for infatuations. Augustine confessed that he could not distinguish between the "clear shining of affection and the darkness of lust. I could not keep myself within the kingdom of light where friendship binds soul to soul And so I polluted the brook of friendship with the sewage of lust."

Are we attracted to someone other than our spouse? Do we look forward to being with them? Do we look for excuses to meet them? Do we dress a certain way when we know we will be with that person? Do we find ourselves wanting to reach out and touch them, hug them or express affection in tender ways? Do we imagine a romantic or sexual relationship them? Are we defensive when our spouses express uneasiness about our relationship with that person? These are early warning signs of a friendship turning into infatuation.

St. Francis de Sales said,
"We must be on guard against deception in friendships, especially when they are contracted between persons of different sexes, no matter what the pretext may be. Satan often tricks those (who) begin with virtuous love. If they are not very prudent, fond love will first be injected, next sensual love, and then carnal love. (Satan) does this subtly and tries to introduce impurity by insensible degrees" (Introduction to the Devout Life).

We can guard against intimacy with anyone other than our mates. The secrets of our hearts, our deepest hurts and longings, are reserved for them alone. The greatest mistake we can make is to share our inner conflict and marital disappointment with some one of the opposite sex.

We can be alert during periods of unusual pressure. Flaws always show up under stress. We should be especially wary on days when we're emotionally and physically depleted, when we are lonely and isolated and long for attention and affirmation.

We can guard ourselves against those who come after us. Occasionally a man will encounter a woman, dressed for the kill and with "crafty intent" (Prov. 7:10). And there are those male conquistadors, who spend their lives preying on women. Such people live to bring others down (cf. Proverbs 5:1­p;23 and 7:1­p;27).

We can regularly rehearse the consequences of an affair. We gain insight through hindsight, as someone has said, but foresight is the less costly way. As Proverbs warns us: Though "the lips of an adulteress drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil; (make no mistake,) in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double­p;edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave" (Prov. 5:3-5). Adultery is suicidal; adulterers kill their souls. Paul Dunbar wrote,
`This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best---
God! but the interest!
Years ago a friend of mine received a note from a man who had been involved in an affair and whose marriage had crumbled. He passed it on to me.
"I have to live the rest of my life now without the person I truly love and that used to love me, with no chance to undo the wrong I've committed. I lost the best thing that ever happened to me---my best friend."

We can publicize our home life, talk lovingly of our spouses and surround ourselves with momentos, pictures and reminders of our marriages. It's good for us and it's good for others: It lets them know we cherish our mates.

We can find a friend on whom we can unload our darkest secrets, who will not flinch when we they hear the sordid stuff of our minds, who will hold a confidence, who will hold us accountable, who will ask us the tough questions and then ask, "Did you lie?" (Men and women in trouble lie.)

We can ask God to guard us every minute of the day. We're in terrible danger whether young or old; single or married; in the dumps or on a roll. We're frail and unfinished; no matter how willing the spirit, the flesh is weak. Our safety doesn't lie in keeping ourselves safe, but in our putting ourselves in God's hands for safe­p;keeping. Jesus' words come to mind: "Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation."

David Roper