Scandalous Truth

For months I have been working on a post about admissions of scandalous facts. I was prompted to start the post after reading a "Dear Abby" in which a man wrote of a past affair that his wife never discovered, but over which he felt guilty. It is more than just an interesting bit of gossip. The guy sinned with a friend of the family and if he disclosed the long-over affair to his wife it would ruin their friendship with the other couple and could end his now much stronger marriage. The writer told "Abby" that no other discernible consequences have developed, but he felt overcome with guilt and wanted to tell his wife about his affair to get it "off his chest."

What do you think? My personal feeling is that he needs to enter into counseling both alone and with his wife. The affair did not happen in a vacuum and there are root issues that needed to be dealt with. If the wife needs to learn of the affair to get past some of those issue, it may be necessary, but I personally feel like it would not be wrong for the husband to deal with that guilt without his wife ever knowing about it. That is essentially how "Abby" responded in her column.
My wife on the other hand was disturbed that such advice should be given. "I'd want to know!" was her response. Why? "Because I just should know!" Don't worry, there won't be an admission from me here now that I know how my wife feels, but the strength of her response made me take notice. I have asked other friends who basically agreed with my wife using some great reasoning. Mom told me that his wife probably knew about the affair and was waiting for him to tell her. Other friends agreed with me (it always feels good to have someone on my side).

This discussion highlights some important ideas about truth. How much is really necessary? Suppose that I had a deep dark secret that no one ever found out about me. Let's say the secret caused me some pain, but I dealt with bringing justice to the situation without involving the people who were not involved, including my wife. Would that be wrong? This secret could be some money I embezzled and paid back with interest by working overtime while still providing for my family. Maybe I met up with a prostitute while away from home and sought counseling afterward to help me come to full repentance and protect my marriage from further abuse. Maybe all my wife ever knew was that I needed to work out some personal problems and now our marriage was stronger.

The issue is complex, but it also has some simplicity. God desires truth in the inward parts, but He doesn't necessarily want us to taint everyone unnecessarily. Some secrets need to be dealt with secretly. Being honest for the man who wrote to "Dear Abby" means admitting to God that he was wrong and needed to find counseling to make sure he was now on the right track. Obviously if he contracted some sort of disease from his affair, his wife should know why. Each situation has its own reasons why someone should tell this kind of secret, and that is why a good counselor is invaluable. Sometimes we need someone to know so that we are motivated to change. Some addictions are fed by secrecy. I can quickly think of several situations in which someone should have disclosed a secret life early on so that it wouldn't come out later in a more hurtful way. Many politicians have been hurt by keeping such secrets, and many well-known religious leaders have had their ministries ruined because they let a sinful desire go unchecked until it was much more than a questionable thought.

But suppose I can see that I have shown to God and myself that I have lived years in full repentance. Do I need to admit something like that to my unsuspecting wife? Shouldn't she know the truth? The fact is that the truth may even be hard for me to see. I mean the "True truth". The fact is that the man who started this whole thing had a deeper truth to reveal to his wife than the fact of his affair. He needed to tell her that he sometimes struggles with whether he wants to be married or stay faithful. The focus really needs to be what caused the affair.

Sure, my wife doesn't like me keeping secrets from her, but there are some things that don't need to be told. Suppose that my wife caught me in an affair (which she won't. This is hypothetical). She would not really care about all the details of the sex, but she would want to know the details of why. To insist on telling her all the details of how it happened is to punish her more than she deserves. No one deserves to have their spouse violate their trust, but even more than that, no one deserves to have that violation of their trust flaunted.

God desires truth in our very deepest parts. No rationalization over how I couldn't help it. No calling it a harmless fling. No insisting that no one was hurt. The sinner must first admit the whole truth to God, and then he must repent fully. If it takes someone knowing to force him to repent then he should tell someone, but if God works in his heart so that he never returns to that sin he should seek a wise counselor that can help him deal with the root cause of that sin though he may never share the details with anyone. A sure sign that he hasn't repented is that he considers doing it a second time. Secret sins have a way of becoming public, especially if I never deal with the root cause. So, I may be keeping a couple secrets, but that doesn't mean there isn't repentance. If I have not repented be sure I will not have that secret for long.