In Defense of the Indefensible

How do you respond in a difficult situation?

Several years back, I was single with a couple of great guys as roommates. They became true friends and were a big part of helping me join the Catholic Church. I love them, still do, even though we’ve all moved on to spouses and new places in our lives. 

One day, my roomie Peter sat us down in the living room and said he had something to confess. With a somber, sincere countenance, he told us he had an affair with one of our friends who was in an already-troubled marriage. He had cut it off, acknowledged the violence he’d done to their marriage, and needed to tell us. Within a few years, both he and the woman he had an affair with moved on to good marriages with other people. 

I felt no judgment or disdain toward Peter. He was my friend and I loved him. I did not condone what he did. I felt sorry for him, the woman, and her husband. But I was his friend no matter what. The reality of life puts us in tough spots sometimes.

We may have strong convictions against adultery, but we can also have a strong love for those who fall into it. 

Years later, my own wife had an affair. She confessed it to me through tears and genuine remorse. Our marriage did not survive. The affair wasn’t the only reason. Our union had other underlying issues and the affair was just a tragic symptom of those deeper ills. Our marriage was later annulled. 

At the time, of course, I was angry at her. I reeled from the hurt and betrayal. I had friends who unequivocally stood in my corner through it all. For them, the situation was black and white. They took my side without question. I appreciated their loyalty. It was their way of trying to show me love. But even then, I recognized that it wasn’t so simple. My wife was suffering too. She was just human and the affair was her way of trying to find some relief from her pain. 

Of course, I didn’t always see it that way in the heat of the pain.

I was tempted to see myself as the innocent victim who could walk away from the ruins of our marriage with a clean conscience, morally unscathed. But was that really true? No.

It always takes two, and every affair or divorce is a confusing and messy conflagration of unique circumstances, troubled motives, and poor choices. 

The white-hot pain and anger of my ex’s affair gradually dissolved over the years into something more like a pale blue sky after a storm has rolled away. I didn’t hate her. She never hated me. We were just two flawed humans who couldn’t make our relationship work the way God intends. Did that make her a devil? No. Did it make me a saint? Absolutely not.

In no way am I justifying extramarital affairs, or defending the actions of adulterers. But every person has their own story and we are all human.

A friend recently said you can’t judge someone’s whole story by the chapter you walked in on. It’s true. 

I haven’t spoken to my ex in a few years, but I trust she is not the same person who cheated on me then. She is allowed to fail, grow, heal, and do better in the future. If I don’t recognize and honor that, then I can’t extend the same second chance to myself. 

All of this is a way, I guess, of saying: we have to choose love. It won’t be easy early on when the wound is raw, when we feel betrayed and abandoned. But we are all capable of doing the same hurtful things someone else did to us.

No one is beyond moral failure. Thankfully, no one is beyond God’s grace and love either. 

In his song about divorce, “What Nobody Should Know”, Andy Squyres sings:

Wondering why love is allowing

All of us to hit the the floor

Down here is one of the strangest places

Nothing but hearts and dirty faces

Maybe this is where amazing grace is

God knows we need some more

Indeed, it’s a strange place to find yourself caught up in a divorce, whatever the cause. It’s also a strange place to find yourself sympathizing with the offender in an extramarital affair.

But beneath all the easy explanations and clean-cut definitions of who’s the villain and who’s the good guy, lies the truth. We are all the villain. We are all the good guy. 

And, as Christians, we are all called to try to understand, show compassion, and forgive.

It doesn’t mean we have to be buddy-buddy with a person who hurt us or our loved one. It doesn’t mean we don’t stand firmly in support of our offended loved one. But we have to try to understand that the offender is human too. That’s what Jesus did. In Matthew 5:43-47, he said: 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. 

For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?” 

God’s love calls us to a high standard. It won’t always be easy getting there. But it’s the same standard God applies to us.

One for which Jesus himself suffered and died and rose again to give us all the hope of a second chance. Let’s pray with him: “Our Father in heaven… forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:9,12).