A Banquet Defiled

Every Tuesday we’ll post an article about restoring and strengthening marriages that have been damaged by sexual sin. Hope it helps.

Several years ago, while teaching a marriage retreat seminar, I was taught an indelible lesson by one of the attending wives.

We’d split the men and women up for a few sessions, and I was leading a group discussion with the wives about betrayal. Most of them had spouses who’d committed adultery, so they carried and expressed every variety of wounding. Midway through, one of them said, “Words fail me. Can I draw my feelings?” At which point the others asked if they could do the same, so each withdrew to a quiet place with pencil and sketch paper, returning 30 minutes later to share the results.

As always, a thousand words couldn’t compete with a picture, one in particular. The wife had drawn a table that had been set with obvious care: elegant china, crystal glasses, a large turkey, vegetables, salad, the works. But what was prepared had been brutally discarded, thrown down and smashed into piles and glass shards strewn about the floor. Even the lace tablecloth was desecrated, smeared with the spilled food and hanging obscenely, half on the floor, half on the table, tattered and ruined.

In the middle, where the meal had first been laid out, stood a soda bottle and candy bar. Whoever had rejected the feast had opted for junk food, brushing aside something prepared with loving effort, dining instead on sugary trash.

That’s when I cried.

Men are often accused of being clueless as to what a woman feels, a charge we can hardly defend ourselves against, the evidence being so obvious. Nor do I think we’re required – men or women – to fully grasp the inner emotional workings of the other sex. But that day I felt a smidgen of the devastation a woman’s heart goes through when her man rejects the gift she’s so lovingly prepared, pledged to him alone, and wants him to have and enjoy. For her feast to be passed over for someone else’s gas station snack is crushing in ways only images can convey – beauty thrown over for junk; wholesome joy discarded for cheap thrills.

That’s a point husbands involved in sexual sin often miss. It’s not just that they’ve done a bad thing; they’ve also scorned a good thing, making adulterous behavior an especially cruel sin. The married man who gets drunk, gambles recklessly or flakes off on the job is wrong, but his actions are a rejection of his own responsibility, not his wife’s loving gift. But when the philanderer trespasses he not only tells his wife I want this. He also adds, and I choose it over you.

Ask him, and he’ll tell you something different. He’ll say, sincerely, that he loves his wife, had no intention of hurting her, but in a moment of weakness, he caved. And to a point I’d believe him. After all, over 25 years of working with such men, I’ve not met one who was indifferent to his wife.

Most, in fact, cared for their partners, viewing their own sin as a bad habit, not a callous dismissal of their spouse. But the fact remains the table had been set, the meal carefully planned and prepped, the fine china on display, all of it brushed aside for junk food. And if that isn’t an overt rejection, what is?

My hope, having seen the sketch on paper and in the faces of anguished wives, is that husbands honor the feast their women offer, appreciating the value of a healthy meal over fast food trivials, and considering what it’s like to offer your most intimate self only to have the recipient say, “No, not good enough. Next!”

That’s a pain we can all imagine and, I’m sure, avoid.