Posted on 05/27/2006 11:02:16 AM PDT by wagglebee
Broken promises are serious business. Every parent has heard the familiar childhood lament, “But you promised!” More often than not, the scene is highly emotional with bitter tears and anguish that rips your heart out. Sometimes there is blazing anger or hostility. All parents who have experienced such scenes mentally kick themselves for having created impossible expectations.
Thankfully, relationships don’t require perfection, but they do have to be based upon honesty and trust. There is a limit to the broken promises a relationship can absorb. Since we all stand in need of God’s forgiveness, there is no better time to model humility and penitence than in sincerely asking forgiveness when we mess up on something we promised and didn’t deliver.
If promises are often broken, however, the child’s protest is likely to be accompanied by an air of caustic resignation that implies, “I can’t believe you; you never come through.” When an outsider observes such attitudes in children, it is distressing and sad because, in such circumstances, the shameful history behind the development of those attitudes is obvious.
Such situations outrage fair-minded people. They offend our sense of justice and our belief that all children are entitled to consistency and honesty from those entrusted with their care.
Whatever the circumstances, the standard parental reply usually begins, “Yes, but . . .,” as the parent tries to explain to the aggrieved child – frequently justifiably – that something unexpected intervened that was beyond her control. But it better be the truth! Kids develop a special ability for detecting lies not long after they learn to yell “No” and “Mine.” Even if we manage to fool them, something in us, something at the core of our being, is damaged.
Lies do that, you know. Like other forms of injustice, lies consume innocence.
Fidelity, along with its antonym infidelity, is an old-fashioned word. In this era of “me-first” individualism, the significance of fidelity is often minimized. But the realities behind fidelity are integral to our interactions –– our negative responses to a broken promise or other violations of trust are as innate and reflexive as blinking the rain out of our eyes. No one has to teach us to be upset or offended when someone “lets us down.”
Fidelity also counts within our own selves. Break a promise you make to yourself and the damage is as real as when you renege on a commitment to a loved one.
Christ’s second great commandment is to “love your neighbor as yourselves.” On the surface, the commandment seems obvious –– and easy to fulfill. The truth is that it is remarkably easy to break promises to ourselves. And, nothing is a surer road to self-hatred and loathing. Of course, there’s always rationalization – which most of us are very adept at – but a steady diet of rationalization compounds the damage to our self-respect. Experience soon teaches us that there are good reasons not to want neighbors who don’t love and respect themselves or who don’t keep their word.
We all have an innate desire for love, but love without fidelity is meaningless. No one has to teach us this truth; we know it intuitively and it figures in our decisions as to whom we want to know and be known by, in every sense of the word.
What has happened in the last 40 or 50 years to our regard for fidelity and honor? Why have these virtues become so neglected when the betrayal of trust is such a devastating injury?
In part, fidelity has been displaced by phony lip service about being nonjudgmental. Why has this latter virtue – which so many people talk about but few actually practice – become so elevated? Perhaps because not being judgmental seems, on the surface, to be so much less difficult than it actually is; on the other hand, it doesn’t take long to learn that keeping your promises is sometimes going to be an expensive, thankless proposition.
Call it Gresham’s Law of Virtues: pick the virtue that costs you the least.
Sometimes, being nonjudgmental is a rather dignified way of saying, “Hands off. Mind your own business. I’ll live my life the way I please, thank you very much.” More often, it is simply a dodge, a means of rejecting the constraint of moral boundaries.
In recent months, we have seen these principles played out in popular culture by movie star Tom Cruise.
Cruise put aside the vows he made to Nicole Kidman, divorced her just as he did his first wife and, after a couple of high-profile affairs, took up with a much younger (perhaps more malleable) woman who is not much more than a girl. He’s in love, you understand, and he went on television to jump up and down –– telling Oprah and the whole world how deliriously happy this new love has made him. But . . . despite getting Katie Holmes pregnant, he simply couldn’t find the time in his busy, busy, oh-so-very-busy schedule to marry her before their daughter, Suri, arrived.
Of course the public is supposed to join Katie in making allowances for him because he is a celebrity and because he’s rich, famous and charming (at least in the eyes of his fans). Also, there’s his recent revelation that he was abused as a child. Still: Can someone explain to me why this young woman should take Cruise at his word that he loves her? Because she’s pretty? Well, Nicole Kidman wasn’t exactly run-of-the-mill. Why should Katie expect that he will be true to her when at least three previous, beautiful women couldn’t count on his promises? Besides, Katie won’t be pretty forever.
Oh sure, even if they, as the saying goes, “grow apart,” there’ll likely be more than enough money to pay the bills, assuming Cruise has a decent investment advisor. But ask most kids if the money is what’s really most important to them. Those children who’ve been down this road tell a bitter story about how it feels when mom and dad don’t stay together and in love.
At any rate, all the publicity – either because the wedding makes a huge splash, or not – might help Katie’s career. Careers are important, you know. Maybe Mission Impossible III will shore up Tom’s career. Its opening box-office receipts, however, indicate he may be past his peak. Their child, Suri . . . who can say? Maybe she will, and maybe she won’t, have to adjust –– like the star’s other two kids and the millions of other children whose world gets ripped apart when their folks trade down from “'til death do us part” to merely “as long as love shall last.”
Without fidelity, life can have an awful lot of “maybes.”
Please spare me the threadbare cliché about “how resilient kids are.” Sure, wounds do heal . . . but they can leave really ugly scars – some that disfigure and impair – and they tend to last a lifetime. Kids really do have this huge need for unconditional love from the kind of parents who keep their promises to each other and to their children.
And, fidelity? Isn’t that the name of some bank or insurance company?
How do you know I'm a woman? And flirting isn't a sin.
I'm just saying that not all adultery happens because of anything in the mutual space. I know a guy who cheated on every single girlfriend he ever had, then he made one girlfriend a wife and still cheated on her. He just never grasped the concept of one set of knickers.
Pity his wife.
In post 97 you said you were a women.
And if you'd like me to put it more plainly, I will.
If you're not trying to seduce married men then I wasn't talking to you or about you.
But since you're being so damn defensive, perhaps it's out of guilt?
there's a huge diff bet something being wrong in the marriage and just problems
that's what wrong with these threads... too many freeper men who obviously don't have a clue about how to be married or keep being married
Well said. Today's marriage is about making me happy. G-d's marriage is about being a servant to our spouse and children. In view of that, what does it matter that we're no longer compatible in bed, or that he/she doesn't excite me the way he/she did when we were young. Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand complained "You don't bring me flowers anymore."
Contrast that with Golde telling Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof" all the things that she's done for him for the past 25 years. "If that's not love, what is?"
Since I've been an adult, "What is" is "Whatever makes me feel good."
Shalom.
Find anywhere in the Bible where it says G-d wants us to be happy.
G-d wants us to be Holy.
I don't mean to imply that G-d wants us to be miserable. But G-d knows that the surest way to become miserable is to become overly focused on being happy.
Shalom.
Are you referring to the 10 really good suggestions?
Shalom.
Moral "trickle up" is more like it. We've gotten what we asked for. How many times can a man drive a woman off a bridge and still be re-elected?
Shalom.
I always liked the Don Francisco song line, "Jesus didn't die for you because it was fun. He hung there for love..."
The Chorus from that song is "Love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will.
Shalom.
I don't think so. There are a large number of people who take their cues of write and wrong from what is socially unacceptable. Not just in sex, but in honesty, courage, etc. Once a practice starts to spread they jump on the bandwagon.
We are social beings, and we have social tendencies. One of them is to be influenced by the society we live in.
There were always some who were loose, but once it became socially acceptable there were more.
Shalom.
Marriage was created by G-d when He gave Adam to Eve. Jesus affirmed this when He commented on marriage and divorce.
Marriage is meant to be one man, one woman, one lifetime. Divorce was permitted bacuse of the hardness of hearts of G-d's people. But it was not part of the design and G-d hates it. While there is no clear prohibition of polygamy, there is a clear statement that "multiplying wives" is dangerous. And, again, there is the clear statement of what G-d designed marriage to be in Genesis 3.
We choose not to abide by that design, and we pay the price.
Shalom.
Doesn't apply to me. I am a true believer in the Eight Commandments!
Are you referring to the 10 really good suggestions?
Shalom.
LOL!
Thanks for you post....
Jesus said, "Why do you call me Lord and do not keep all that I have commanded you?"
How can someone claim that in order to be happy they must do something that is the opposite of what He commanded?
I've put my deceased parents' remembrance above my own personal welfare. On Memorial Day, I paid tribute to them by visting their graves and taking the time to thank them. Its hard for me to do it but fidelity to my family came before any need I had to have fun and a good time. If I ever get married, I will put my wife's needs before my own. You're lucky when in this life, you have people who love you and we have to remind ourselves the unwavering devotion of another human being towards you who has your best intersts at heart doesn't come along very often. So let's do it the right the first time and do what we say about keeping faith with those we cherish.
Oh, I see.
As long as you "keep being married", it doesn't matter if you're screwing around outside the marriage.
Damn good thing that God is more forgiving than people are.
And yes, I need a TON of forgiveness!!
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