Ensign, Edwards, Sanford: Adultery & God

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) wrote to his mistress: "God never intended for us to do this... He wants to restore Darlene + me + wants to restore Doug + you. More than that He wants to restore our relationship to Him."

Former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) said on ABC of his extramarital affair: "In 2006 I told Elizabeth about the mistake, asked her for her forgiveness, asked God for his forgiveness."

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) said in a press conference admitting adultery: "But I guess where I'm trying to go with this is that there are moral absolutes and that God's law indeed is there to protect you from yourself, and there are consequences if you breach that. This press conference is a consequence."

Sen. David Vitter (D-LA) said in his press conference after his name turned up on the DC Madam's list: "Wendy and I dealt with this personally several years ago. I confronted it in confession and marriage counseling. I believe I received forgiveness from God."

Many people roll their eyes at these politicians and their religious talk, believing that their references to God are just PR maneuvers. It's not my place to judge whether these men are genuine in their faith, but I disagree with their seeming belief that adultery is the their greatest sin.

God had what Christians call the "Old Covenant" - God's relationship to the people of Israel, in which His will is expressed most clearly through the Ten Commandments. God's law against adultery is the seventh in the Ten Commandments -- or the sixth if you're Catholic or Lutheran.

When Jesus came, He declared what Christians refer to as a "New Covenant,'' meaning a new relationship with God that promises to bring us into the Kingdom of Heaven. The new covenant requires us to believe in Christ and keep His commandments, called the Great Commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said that "on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

So, while Jesus specifically instructed the apostles to continue to follow the God's laws as given in the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament, He makes it clear that the Great Commandments are above all the most important to follow.

Back to Ensign, Sanford, Vitter, Edwards and all the other politicians who talk about God in their public statements on adultery, I think they are missing the boat. And since they can't walk on water, here's a life preserver:

Adultery is a sin against God as clearly repeated in the bible. Adultery is also a sin against your spouse because you broke the marital commitment you made to forsake all others.

And of course adultery hurts your spouse because of the lies, deceit and mostly because it makes the spouse feel inferior, disposable and unloved. Bottom line, adultery is morally, ethically and spiritually wrong. But it is not the worst thing you can do, and that's where I see the misguided spirituality by these politicians.

C.S Lewis wrote that "If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting, the pleasure of power, of hatred."

Yet the Ten Commandments are often mistaken as the only sins of Christianity.

For example, Mark Sanford said at his now infamous post-Argentinean disappearance press conference that: "But I'm here because if you were to look at God's laws, they're in every instance designed to protect people from themselves. I think that that is the bottom line of God's law, that it's not a moral, rigid list of do's and don'ts just for the heck of do's and don'ts."

Sanford is mistaking sin of the flesh as his worst sin. Whereas Lewis wrote, "People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing.' I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long your are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature."

Sanford was in my view closer to the heart of his spiritual path when he said, "But what I would say is, I'm committed to trying to get my heart right...the odyssey that we're all on in life is with regard to heart, not what I want or what you want but, in other words, indeed this larger notion of truly trying to put other people first."

And amen to that part.