Adultery and its religious and societal implications

There is a lot in the press about the Saudi woman who has been punished for being raped after being in an adulterous relationship.

There is also a lot in the press about the frequency of adultery, by both men and women, in modern marriages.

Here is the reason that adultery is condemned in the Bible (both in the Old Testament and by Jesus in his teaching) and the Qur’an, where harsh penalties were proscribed.

I know it’s hard to remember a time before sexual freedom, no children, abortions, birth control, and “do your own thing.” But for most of human history the unit of the family and the ASSURANCE that children born of those marriages would know their identity was of paramount importance. This was important whether the couple was rich or poor. Before the time of birth control and “sexual freedom,” sex was for the most part confined to family and it was understood that children were the outcome of sex. Children were the treasure of the poor (both for love and for their ability to work and support the agricultural family) and of the rich (both for love and for their political or social connections). So children were valued, though in ways different than people understand and feel today. “Back then” when the Bible was written (three to two thousand years ago) and the Qur’an (a thousand four hundred years ago) children were the one treasure that anyone could accumulate. The poorest man could be a father. The poorest woman could be a mother. While people liked their sexual gratification just fine back then you have to remember that building a family and having children was first and foremost the means of survival. Just ask any single parent what it’s like today and you’ll better understand. When God directed the Law as prescribed in the Bible and Qur’an it was of the utmost importance that children were born into parents of stability and clear identity. THAT is why the Old Testament Law, the words of Jesus, and the Qur’an are universal in their prohibition of adultery. “Back then” sex resulted in children and children were the treasure of the rich and the poor, and the means by which humans survived. There could not and must not be confusion about the parentage of children. And the family had to be the bedrock of society. This is not only God’s law but common sense.

(By the way, in Medieval times parentage was so important that often courtiers had to "witness" in the marital chamber the first sexual encounter between a monarch and his spouse to ensure that a child would indeed be from that union).

The same thing can be said about multiple wives, which was permitted in early societies and Biblically approved. It was needed then because they were dire times of short life spans, and in some communities women would be without husbands if there were not polygamy. Also the need for children to provide agricultural assistance in the household meant that rich or poor, people had to have children to survive. Things started to get messed up in the Industrial Revolution when people could no longer feed themselves on farms and were forced into jobs and inner city poverty, requiring money to purchase food to survive. This is when you started seeing “street urchins” as written in Dickens and other’s works, where children had to scrounge in the city. In Biblical times you did not have that problem. Children were part of families, clans, tribes. They may be poor and dependent on the land but they were not alone. Both the Bible and the Qur’an is firm about the need to support widows and orphans. So times have changed and polygamy is no longer approved and is in fact a means by which women can be abused, except in those cultures that have sustained to this time the respect and structure of those positions of primary and secondary spouses. The better health and survivability of children is also a factor in the rise of monogamy in even these traditional polygamous cultures.

So adultery back in the time that God prescribed rules to humanity was not the giggly “getting some sex” issue that it is today. It was a dire threat to the family by destroying the paternity of children and therefore the survivability of the entire family, clan or tribe. Adultery was not a “sex” issue that it is today. It was all about the children. Duh.

Where intact families and guaranteed paternity are still important you are going to find that people continue to adhere to God (Allah) teachings very strictly. It is not the “hot sex” that is the issue; it is the admonishment by God to be faithful in union so that the family will be intact with clear paternity that was “God’s motivation” in forbidding adultery.

So in the very childless and aborting society of the Western “culture” of today, one needs to make an effort to translate the wisdom and religious law of thousands of years ago into pertinence today. Adultery is more of a symptom of commitment and contentment issues than it is a threat to children. I mean, who is having children as a result of adultery anymore? No one. But “back then” EVERYONE had children and adultery was a threat to the children and the family’s basic livelihood when resources were so scarce that many toiled endlessly for their very food.

So think this through clearly. Children came “first” and adultery was the threat to children and families.

Now “adultery” has come to mean “sex outside of marriage.” Back then adultery meant “children who had uncertain fathers who may or may not feed them.”

Prohibition against adultery is not only God’s instruction but it is pertinent today more in a sense of “coveting” than it is about the family and children destroyer that adultery would have been historically, had it been permitted.

So people should not in general be adulterous today because there is the “coveting” aspect where someone wants what someone else has. But remember, even Jesus did not go off the wall in outrage against adulterers if they repented and changed and THAT was in the very time of threat to children by adultery that I’ve just spoken about.

Another thing to remember is that “sex becoming stale in marriage” was not an issue until these modern times. People worked too dang hard to survive to be looking for a big orgasm every night. If you are breaking rocks or knocking yourself out tending the herds and fields you tend not to be needing “extra” sensual fun. And as it was, people had plenty of children WITH THEIR SPOUSES. So people were used to having sex in cycles. Wives were often pregnant, and both were often fatigued.

Another thing to remember that in “Biblical” times people did not live anywhere near as long as they do now, plus there were dangers that resulted in frequent early deaths. People who were widowed remarried. So there were many people who had multiple marriages but they were in sequence. Often a spouse would succumb at an early age due to illness, war, childbirth, and the general hardships of the times. People remarried. This is something to remember when being unkind nowadays about people who are divorced. It’s not like a lot of people in Biblical times got to celebrate their thirty year anniversary with their first spouses either. People just did not live that long and they didn’t have time to be “sexually bored” and “needing to find the younger hotter model.” They were grateful if their spouse didn’t die too soon!!

So remember that adultery is a threat to children and the family and it is going to continue to be socially and religiously unacceptable in societies where children and the traditional family are the first priority. Adultery nowadays is more symptomatic of societal and family turmoil in the context of an increasingly childless society. It’s still not a good idea, in general, and it’s still not God’s plan, but the backdrop of the meaning of adultery and its threat to children have been completely overshadowed by the downfall of the traditional family and the aborting of children on a global scale. If someone does not know who the daddy is, there is the welfare check. Back in Biblical times if a woman bore another man’s child she put all her children in jeopardy of potentially not even receiving food and starving to death.

So when you reference back to the Bible or the Qur’an for guidance about adultery, remember to read those passages understanding that God and society’s highest priority in the prohibitions against adultery were the safety and preservation of children with clear identities and a NAME with an OBLIGATION to feed and shelter them. That is why adultery was such a grave sin. It literally would have meant the death of families and children if it had been permitted.

Now we can see the death of families and children from other reasons because society has disintegrated away from the traditional family and from the perception of children as the family’s treasure. So adultery is not the profound potential threat to society that it was throughout human history. People would not have the global prosperity that exists today if the forefathers and mothers had not built prosperity in agricultural and herding units based on the husband, wife and children within extended family, clans and tribes. If there had been a “free for all” about who fathered children there would have been a rapid social disintegration and many children would not have survived. You can imagine this scenario a bit better now that you’ve read what I presented here. Fathers would have fed only their own children and only if they were able to and had an advantage to doing so. A father would not have fed a child who he fathered in another family if that child was working the crops in that family. And the family with the illegitimate child would have broken apart as the patriarch wondered who he fathered and who he didn’t; expelling children he no longer could claim as his own. The chaos would have been unbelievable. This is why God prohibited adultery.