You Shall Be Faithful: The Seventh Commandment in the 21st Century

You shall not commit adultery. (Exodus 20:14) [1]

It might be possible to say that this commandment, perhaps more than any other in the list, must be set aside today, as persons have learned a new joy and fulfillment in life through the adoption of much freer relations between human beings sexually.[2] 

Marriage in the United States is no longer defined as narrowly as it was in the past and adultery has lost its teeth as a social taboo.  Modern American media accepts and glamorizes adultery and Americans voraciously consume it.[3] And yet, we are also conflicted about it, “a vast majority of people still say it’s wrong.”[4] However, does it follow that the 7^th Commandment, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14), has lost its relevance for the 21^st Century?[5] At its core, the 7^th Commandment offers us guidance about creating and sustaining relationship: bringing two individuals together in the creation of a singular and sacred covenantal union. As long as humanity cleaves together in covenant relationships, we will need the guidance this commandment offers.  This paper will address ways in which a less literal and more faithful understanding of the 7th Commandment elucidates its relevance for the 21^st Century.

I. Adultery in Historical Context

In its historical context, the 7^th Commandment defined adultery very narrowly:

An engaged or married woman committed adultery if she had sexual relations with anyone other than her husband or her betrothed husband-to-be. The man committed adultery only if he had relations with the wife or betrothed of another man. (Harrelson 1980, 123)

The prohibition of adultery is, in essence, a “property rights” issue. The 7^th commandment was written in order to assure a husband that the progeny produced by his wife was his own.[6] The husband, as head of the household, was in control of his wife’s fertility and the progeny she bore him and, by extension, of her sexual fidelity.[7]  But there was more at stake at the time than bragging rights. “Paternity is essential for inheritance law,”[8] so it was critical that the mother be virtuous – pure or unadulterated – to assure paternity. “Within this biblical framework, virginity was an economic, not an ethical concern.”[9] A husband “owned” his wife and if another man adulterated her purity; it was a crime against the husband: he had been robbed of predictable progeny. The adulterers in this case were the man who “robbed” the husband, and the woman whose reproductive purity was adulterated. “The man can only commit adultery against a marriage other than his own, the woman only against her own.”[10]  

There is, of course, a prohibition in the Decalogue against stealing.  Too literal a reading of the 7^th Commandment might lead one to erroneously perceive it as redundant to the 6^th. In fact, the Decalogue builds on itself, to some degree.  The 6^th Commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exod 20:13) is not repeated in the 7^th, but nuanced.  Not only should you not steal the property of your neighbor, you should not render his property unusable to him. You should spoil it, so to speak, or blur the lines of ownership.  Remembering that adultery is also a form of trespass and that the commandments were written to a people living in community, there is in the proximity of the 6^th and 7^th Commandments, a template for respect among neighbors. The two commandments together might be interpreted as saying, “Don’t take what is not yours, and don’t even borrow it without permission.”

The language of adultery in the text could have “the man or the woman as subject” (Childs 1974, 422), but the act of adultery imparts impurity only on the woman. If the fertile ground in which the husband will presumably plant his seed had not been “polluted,” the wife is “unadulterated.”

If a man has had intercourse with her but it is hidden from her husband, so that she is undetected though she has defiled herself… (Numbers 5:13)

 Then the priest shall make her take an oath, saying, ‘If no man has lain with you, if you have not turned aside to uncleanness while under your husband’s authority, turned aside to uncleanness… (Numbers 5:19)

But if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had intercourse with you (Numbers 5:20)

 But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be immune and be able to conceive children (Number 5:28)

The man shall be free from iniquity, but the woman shall bear her iniquity (Numbers 5:31)

Adultery was a crime against the husband, certainly, and a serious one because progeny, legacy, the perpetuation of the family line was essential to early Israelite identity (Levine 2009).  In fact, “since the aim of every person and every family was to live on in perpetuum, siring a son was both a matter of self-interest and a duty to family ancestors” (Levine 2009, 316). Absent from this understanding of adultery is any expectation of equity or parallelism between the parties involved.[11]  There is no presumption of monogamy on the part of the man. He is not bound to his wife in the way she is bound to him. There was “no equivalent demand for male marital fidelity” (Levine 2009, 198).  It was incumbent on a man, should his wife not produce progeny, to look elsewhere for a wife who can perpetuate his name in Israel (Levine 2009, 316, 23-24).  As a result, polygamy was commonplace in the Ancient Near East and is nowhere prohibited in the Bible.

The term for betrothal signifying sexual “separateness” …referred only to the status of a wife. For while a man sexually separated a woman from all other men, there is no equivalent female verb: a wife does not separate her husband! (Levine 2009, 71)

Adultery was also perceived to be a sin against God. The man committing the adultery rendered the woman unsuitable for reproduction (Levine, 2009 178) and violated the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28).  Nor is the woman blameless in the eyes of God: “Who forsakes the husband of her youth and forgets her covenant before God” (Prov 2:17) and is punished with such severity (Lev 18:20, 20:10, Deut 22:23). The curse of Onan combines both sins: he “spilled his semen on the ground” rather than impregnate his brother’s wife, doomed his brother’s line and incurred the displeasure of God (Gen 38:8-10) (Harrelson, 123).

II. Adultery in Contemporary Context

“In the last half-century new truths and new attitudes have fueled a sexual reformation. Standards, values and choices are being redefined and altered.  The task of the Christian in such a world is not well served by remaining ignorant of or blind to these changes.”[12]

In the 21^st Century, much of what is premised in this historical context has become obsolete. First and foremost, marriage is no longer primarily a question of “property law.” A betrothed or married woman is no longer considered the property of her partner in any legal way.  His concern with her virtue before they enter into an understanding is no longer protected by law. However, in the 21^st Century, what was once bound by law is bound in convention. One is assumed to have an obligation or a commitment to the person with whom they are in covenant.  The nature of that obligation may vary from covenant to covenant, but the convention of commitment is well established.

In addition, in the 21^st Century, determination of paternity is no longer at issue.  Genetic paternity can now be determined in a laboratory with virtually incontrovertible results. And the importance of determining paternity in order to “perpetuate the family name” is not as important as it was in Ancient Israel. “Bloodlines” are not the only way to perpetuate a legacy; adoption is far more commonplace and widely accepted, and inheritance law no longer requires a literal “son and heir.” 

In the absence of the need to determine and protect progeny, those aspects of the prohibition against adultery which depended on that need have also become archaic.  In Ancient Israel, a woman could inherit property in the absence of a male inheritor, but ownership passed away from her upon her marriage (Frymer-Kensky 2005).  In the 21^st Century, depending on jurisdiction, property brought into the union can be considered communal – that is, owned by both – or remains the sole property of one party.[13]

The commandment proscribed fidelity for women only: men were presumed to have extra-marital affairs as well as to be polygamous (Levine 2009, 189). In the 21^st Century, where monogamy is the norm, fidelity is expected of both parties.  Contemporary divorce law permits either party to bring a divorce complaint on the grounds of adultery.[14]

Interestingly, while Biblical adultery turns on a “property rights” issue, in the 21^st Century as a rule and in my home state of Illinois, divorce law tends away from adultery as grounds for divorce because it does not have a bearing on “the distribution of marital assets” (ILGA.GOV , Coladarci, 2010).

III. Covenant in the 21^st Century

Ancient Israel defined marriage in very limited terms: two individuals, a male and a female, entering into a heterosexual covenantal union and sexual relationship for purposes of procreation.[15]  “Adultery” applied only to persons in or entering into that definition of marriage (Freymer-Kensky, 2005).

In the 21^st Century in the United States, however, marriage encompasses a much wider spectrum of covenantal arrangements.  State governments, the governmental bodies that grant marriage licenses, as a rule do not concern themselves with the reproductive goals of the couple applying for a license, except where consanguinity maybe at issue (ILGA.GOV). Some states exclude the one-man-one-woman requirement.[16] Churches and religious organizations are no more uniform in their definition of the covenant of marriage (for example the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church of America).[17] And while the majority of people forming covenantal unions in the U.S. do so in a “traditional” marriage, the number of “partner” unions[18] which fall outside of those parameters is rising dramatically.[19] The 20^st Century also saw a rise in behaviors that might once have been considered adultery, but in a modern context are within the bounds of covenantal behavior including “swinging,” and “open” marriages. “The only limit on the freedom, the only demarcation of the moral space, is in the terms of preservation of the covenant commitment.”[20]

Certainly, in an era in which the Decalogue was compiled, unions and arrangements like these were beyond comprehension.  The language, “You shall not commit adultery,” reflected its contemporaneous cultural setting. However, the essence of the commandment surely does not stop there. 

The Levitical laws have to do with a particular kind of sexual act, not with the gamut of affections, feeling, act, and commitments that belong to a relationship of two persons that is intimate and permanent, characterized by love and faithfulness.  (Miller, 2009, 295)

The Word of God, the 10 Commandments and specifically the 7^th Commandment are meant to apply to all people under all conditions. “The commandments are meant not only as norms of behavior but also as objects of contemplation to lead toward the perception and love of God” (Falk in Dozeman 2009, 462). What God wishes for humanity, he wishes for all of humanity, regardless of the presence of a state license or a valid ketubah.  In order to return it to relevance in the 21^st Century, the 7^th Commandment must be examined at its most elemental and universal level and applied to covenantal unions in their myriad modern forms.

IV. Redefining Adultery

The way in which the Old Testament takes up the matter of adultery and sees it as an image and parable for the faithful relationship with God is consistent with Paul Lehmann’s suggestion that the man-woman relationship as described and laid out in the creation stories can be understood as foundational rather than limiting or restrictive.  It is paradigmatic for human relations rather than restricting them. In various ways employment of the adultery image indicates that we have in the marriage relationship and its protections something that points us to various relationships and identifies the critical thing as keeping covenant and not harming the neighbor’s relationship. This has much significance for understanding what matters with regard to same-sex relationships.  …it is a matter of the significant in the factual, in this case the character of the relationship, more than the fact of it. (Miller, 2009, 295-296)

Adultery is a legal term that applies only in limited circumstances.  We seek here to apply this limited proscription to a broader and more modern context.  We can do this by looking closely at the commandment itself.  The word “adultery” originates from the Latin adulterare meaning “to corrupt.”[21] Historically, this corruption applied to the wife, betrothed or progeny. We have seen how this application is no longer valid in the 21^st Century.  In light of these shifts in social context, perhaps we are better served by the Scripture if we read the commandment as prohibiting any action that makes impure or compromises not the wife or the progeny, but the relationship itself.

 The prohibition against adultery stakes out the claim of the two partners in marriage to a relationship between themselves that is not to be compromised or destroyed by the action of either partner. (Harrelson 1980, 125)

In antiquity, it went without saying that the product of the union was progeny. Both parties entered into the relationship understanding reproduction to be the desired result and the boundaries around fidelity were very tangible and specific thing.  In the 21^st Century, where there is a much wider diversity in the kinds of covenantal relationships available to individuals, what constitutes “adulteration,” that is, what blurs the lines of the relationship can be as varied as the relationships.

Whatever the agreement (if it really is an agreement), that is the accepted ideal for this couple... The infidelity is the breaking of that agreement.[22]

Biblical commentators cleave to the belief in “the possibility of a genuine relation of fidelity that is outside the conventional sanctions of legal marriage.”[23]  In the absence of strictly conventional boundaries and a uniform definition for “adultery,” they have arrived at a constellation of qualities which describe (even if they are not altogether specific and concrete in their terms) an unadulterated modern union. An unadulterated covenantal relationship is one in which both parties thrive:

In its fullest interpretation, the command against adultery envisions covenantal relations of mutuality that are genuinely life-giving, nurturing, enhancing and respectful. (Brueggemann 1994, 850)

It fosters a sense of one-ness, of being united by the covenant and a commitment to the union:

The commandment against adultery might be restated, at the most, to underscore commitment and to support partners in committing themselves to one another … in such a way as actually to reflect the commitment they are making to each other as a whole. (Harrelson 1980, 130)

And it is unique and “binding”:

The understanding of marriage as a covenant that joins the two parties together in a binding relationship and in a commitment that does not allow either one to commit to any other in the same way. (Miller 2009, 285)

And so its opposite must necessarily be as universal, and as vague: “Adultery means anything that shakes human confidence and weakens human trust.”[24]

 Adultery as Idolatry

The appropriation of the marriage and adultery metaphor for speaking about faithful an faithless conduct on the part of Israel seems to rest very much on the understanding of marriage as a covenant that joins two people together in a binding relationship and in a commitment that does not allow either one to commit to any other in the same way. (Miller, 285)

In the face of these somewhat sweeping generalizations, the language of Scripture offers some guidance.  “The worship of other gods and the construction of their idols in the second commandment are interpreted as adultery.”[25]  Adultery is commonly used in the Bible as a metaphor for the relationship between God and Israel: “Love’s passion becomes a theological motif to describe the relationship of Yahweh to Israel” (Dozeman 2009, 485).  Idolatry displaces God with imagery or concepts that are not divine and opens the door to behavior that should be confined to the covenantal relationship (i.e., worship).  Idolatry lends itself to adultery as a metaphor:  “Law gives voice to reservations concerning Israel’s capacity to remain faithful to covenant” (Dozeman 2009, 461).

Idolatry, in general terms, is the mistaken elevation of an “idol.”  In English translations of the the Hebrew Bible, the English word “idol” may reflect a variety of Hebrew words including: “pesel: “carved image;” masseka: “statue;” and shiqqutsim: “shameful ones.”[26]

The language and imagery of adultery is most commonly present in Scripture where Israel’s fidelity to God is threatened by idolatry: “Israel’s faithfulness is spelled out in detail as a story of broken marriage, punishment and restoration” (Miller 2009, 283).  What is of interest to us in this application is not the imagery of adultery, per se, but more specifically, the imagery of separation and alienation.  When Israel violates its covenant with God, it does so by creating a distance between itself and God. Idolatry creates an unnatural separation between covenantal partners; it violates the boundaries of the relationship (Dozeman 2009, 477).  “Those who love (ahab) Yahweh draw forth a response of love (hesed) from God,” whereas, “the root meaning of “hate” (sane) is forced separation” and may also “refer to rebellion of a treaty partner” (Dozeman 2009, 486). 

The notion of forced separation is carried over into divorce law. A spouse declares divorce by publically proclaiming his or her hatred (Deut 22:13-16, 24:3). (Dozeman 2009, 485)

 In the texts below, the italics which emphasize the germane language are mine.

….because the Lord your God, who is present with you, is a jealous God. The anger of the Lord your God would be kindled against you and he would destroy you from the face of the earth. (Deut 6:15)

The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and played the whore there? And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me’; but she did not return, and her false sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom so lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. (Jer 3:6-9)

Perhaps the most famous of the tales of adultery is the story of David and Bathsheba:

So David sent messengers to fetch her, and she came to him, and he lay with her….When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. (2Sam 11:4 , 11:27)

The child conceived outside of the boundaries of Bathsheba’s covenantal relationship was to die.  It was only when David brought her into relationship with him that their children (Solomon and Absalom) would be allowed to live.

By far the most challenging imagery related to adultery is present in Hosea.  In the selected verses below the dichotomy is thrown into sharp relief;  adultery is described in terms of separation and alienation, while fidelity to the covenantal relationship is described in terms of return and re-union.

Infidelity/Separation:

1:2 When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, ‘Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.’ So he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son…

2:5 For their mother has played the whore;

   she who conceived them has acted shamefully.

For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers;

   they give me my bread and my water,

   my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’…

2:7 She shall pursue her lovers,

   but not overtake them;

and she shall seek them,

   but shall not find them.

Fidelity/Union:

2: 6 Therefore I will hedge her way with thorns;

   and I will build a wall against her,

   so that she cannot find her paths.

2: 7 She shall pursue her lovers,

   but not overtake them;

and she shall seek them,

   but shall not find them.

 Then she shall say, ‘I will go

   and return to my first husband,

   for it was better with me then than now’…

2: 9 Therefore I will take back

   my grain in its time,…

2: 14 Therefore, I will now persuade her,

   and bring her into the wilderness,

   and speak tenderly to her. …

2: 19And I will take you for my wife for ever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. 20I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.

These texts reaffirm the association of separation and disunity with adultery and of intimacy and unity with fidelity. 

Idolatry replaces one “beloved” with another and thereby alters the original condition of covenantal union. Where the boundaries of covenant are blurred or crossed there is disunion and separation, the covenant is adulterated.

  V. Adulteration and Boundary Making

Fidelity should be the guiding theme of interpretation of this command, as distinct from legal arrangements that bespeak old property practices and rights. (Brueggemann 1994, 850)

Brueggemann here suggests, and this paper will explore, the possibility that the efficacy of the 7^th Commandment is obscured by its language. If we were to change the phrasing of the commandment from the negative: “You shall not commit adultery,” to the positive: “You shall be faithful” then our focus shifts from prohibiting the violation of legally binding vows to embracing a mutual understanding of commitment and union.

Fidelity (from the Latin fidelitatem meaning "faithfulness, adherence")[27] is here used to express the honoring of boundaries, the intentional commitment to common understanding, the unification of two into one (Gen 2:24).  Fidelity contemporizes the notion of “covenantal relationship.” By framing it in terms of fidelity, the 7^th Commandment can speak to the much broader spectrum of relationships in evidence in the 21^st Century.

Fidelity is gender neutral. Where adultery implied an impurity on the part of the female (and perpetrated by a man), fidelity is a dialogical concept: either party may be faithful or unfaithful with no distinction for gender or dominant/submission stereotypes. Adultery is premised on insuring the purity of relationships in which progeny is at issue. Fidelity, on the other hand, manifests itself dialogically between two parties who share a mutual understanding of the nature and limits of their union. Fidelity, therefore, applies to relationships which are not strictly monogamous, not intent on reproduction, etc. In short, “fidelity” embraces the width and breadth of covenantal relationships because it allows for the definition of union to be established on a case-by-case basis between the parties involved.

The premise underlying the 7^th Commandment, then, is this: When two parties enter into a relationship, the nature of that relationship should be unique, mutual and transparent.  Neither party should be deceived as to the other’s intent.

The chief thing is that human beings continue to commit themselves to one another honestly, truthfully, and lovingly, avoiding deception, exploitation, and irresponsible conduct of any kind. (Harrelson 1980, 130)

In the 7^th Commandment, the Scripture warns us against adultery and, in its narrative warrants, exhorts the virtues of fidelity. The objective of the commandment is union, mutually supportive, transparent, covenantal, and loving union.  Such a union is defined not by a convention established by a government or religious body, but by the parties entering into the covenant.  It is delineated by boundaries that are determined by those parties in clear communication and as an act of creation.  As a result, the boundaries and behaviors of each union will be unique to each couple.  They will also be incomprehensible to those outside the union. Inherent in this interpretation of the 7^th Commandment is a presumption of privacy. Only the people who delineate the boundaries can speak to their location or permeation.   It is the union of two into one in fidelity, in mutuality, in trust and in love.

VI. Conclusion

Far from its perceived obsolescence in the 21^st Century, the 7^th Commandment offers valid and insightful guidance for forming myriad covenantal unions in faith.[28]  The prohibition against adultery ensures and sanctions unions formed with clear communication between the parties, with boundaries and objectives which foster trust, commitment and integrity.  Where the foundational trust and boundaries are violated, there is disunion and heartbreak.  Unions made in the faith of fidelity and transparency, reflect God’s expectations for his covenantal union with humanity.   In as much as we are created in His image, we should aspire to create covenants that reflect our covenant with Him.

From Justin and Aquinas, through Luther and Calvin, and into the present time… Christian interpreters have explored the universal truth of the Decalogue for creating a just society. (Dozeman 2009, 473)

Scripture, like all literature, was written at a specific time by a specific set of authors for a specific audience.  As such, we are bound to admit to the frailties of the text: the language may not be acceptable to contemporary ears; the cultural context may seem impossibly bigoted or arcane.  However, Scripture is distinguished from other literature in consequence of its revelation.  We as Jews and Christians believe that this text documents the in-breaking of the Deity into human history.  We believe that we can expect more of the words of Scripture than of any other.  In consequence, we may not look at portions of Scripture as essential and revered as the Decalogue and say they simply do not apply in the modern era.  Rather, it is incumbent on us as faithful readers and scholars to seek in Scripture the eternal truths and timeless exhortations, which are as valid in the 21^st Century as they were when they were written.  In the case of the 7^th Commandment, we must look beyond the prohibition of adultery to see the affirmation of faithful, loving and blessed covenantal union.

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.  And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Gen 2: 24-25)

  

Resources

Achtemeier, Paul J., under “Idol,” in the Harper Collins Bible Dictionary, (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco) 1996, 448-450.

Brueggemann, Walter, “Exodus” in the New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1, (Nashville: Abingdon Press) 1994.

Chadman, Charles E.,”Adultery,”in A Concise Legal Dictionary, (Chicago: American Correspondence School of Law) 1909.

Childs, Brevard Springs, "Exodus: A Commentary," Journal of Biblical Literature 81, no. 4, (Westminster Press) 1962: 428-318.

Dozeman, Thomas B, Commentary on Exodus, (Cambridge: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company) 2009, 457-495.

Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. "Israelite Law: Personal Status and Family Law," in  Vol. 7 of Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Detroit: Macmillan Reference) 2005. 4730-4734. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 11 Dec. 2010.

Frymer-Kensky, Tikva, “Virginity in the Bible” in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, Matthews, Levinson and Fymer-Kensky, eds. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, LTD) 1998, 79-96.

Harrelson, Walter, The Ten Commandments and Human Rights, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press) 1980.

Levin, Etan, Marital Relations in Ancient Judaism, (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz) 2009.

Miller, Patrick D., The Ten commandments: Interpretation Resources for the use of Scripture in the Church, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press) 2009.

Müller, Sigrid, “Adultery- medieval times and reformation era” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 1 (Berlin/New York :Walter de Gruyter) 2009, accessed 12/9/10.

Parker-Pope, Tara, “Love, Sex and the Changing Landscape of Infidelity,” The New York Times, published, October 27, 2008, accessed December 10, 2010.

Phillips, Anthony, Essays on Biblical Law (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, LTD ), 2002.

Pittman, Frank, Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company) 1989.

Setel, Dovorah D.  “Exodus” in Women's Bible Commentary. Newsome and Ringe, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox) 1998, 31-39.

Spong, John Shelby, and Denise G. Haines, Beyond Moralism, (San Francisco: Harper and Row ) 1986.

Sueltz, Arthur Fay, New Directions from the Ten Commandments, (New York: Harper and Row) 1976.

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[1] All references to Scripture in this text will be the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

[2] Harrelson, Walter, The Ten Commandments and Human Rights (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 129.

[3]In February, 2010, following the revelation of her husband Mark Sanford’s affair, Jenny Sanford’s memoire reached #8 on the New York Times Best Seller list (http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2010-02-28/hardcover-nonfiction/list.html) ; the 2009 season premiere of AMC’s Mad Men, featuring philandering business men in the 1960’s, garnered 2.9 million viewers (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2074481/mad_men_season_premiere_sets_ratings.html)

Tara Parker-Pope, “Love, Sex and the Changing Landscape of Infidelity,”  in The New York Times, published, October 27, 2008, accessed December 10, 2010.

[5] This paper is does not engage in the debate about what does or does not constitute “marriage” in a modern context. Not only is such a definition a movable target, having changed in appearance profoundly between the Post Exilic period and the present, it is also highly subjective.  More to the point, however, framing this commandment in such a way as to make it applicable only to traditional heterosexual marriages limits the universality inherent in the Decalogue as a moral code.  If we wish to bring biblical guidance to bear in the 21^st Century, we must have faith in its limberness and the underlying absolute right it represents. We need not protect the word of God from the realities of His creation. Rather, we must look to Scripture with eyes of faith for its divine guidance in any context. This paper, therefore, will apply the 7^th Commandment to a variety or relationships without concern for their qualifications as “marriages” under any terms.

[6] Etan Levin , Marital Relations in Ancient Judaism (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz), 2009, 189.

T. Frymer-Kensky offers a wonderful exploration of the foundations of the “cult of virginity” in ancient Israel and the A.N.E. in “Virginity in the Bible.”

[7] Tikva Frymer-Kensky, "Israelite Law: Personal Status and Family Law," in  Vol. 7 of Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Detroit: Macmillan Reference) 2005; As a rule throughout this paper, the term “wife” will presume the inclusion of “betrothed” as well because “a betrothed girl…was for the purposes of the law of adultery in the same position as a wife” (Phillips 2002, 83).

[8] Thomas B Dozeman, Commentary on Exodus, (Cambridge:William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company) 2009, 494.

[9] Dovorah D. Setel, “Exodus” in Women's Bible Commentary. Newsome and Ringe, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox(1998), 34.

[10] Brevard Springs Childs,"Exodus: A Commentary," Journal of Biblical Literature 81, no. 4, (Westminster Press) 1974: 422.

[11] “In the ten cases devoted to marriage and sexuality in his Decretum (Secunda Pars, Casus 27–36), Gratian (d. before 1160) deemed husband and wife equally liable for adultery” (Sigrid Müller, “Adultery- medieval times and reformation era” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 1 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter) 2009, accessed 12/9/10.

[12] John Shelby Spong and Denise G. Haines, Beyond Moralism, (San Francisco: Harper and Row ) 1986, 88.

[13] John A. Coladarci, Esq., Coladarci and Coladarci, Attorneys at Law, in personal correspondence, 12/7/10.

[14]Illinois Legal Code: (750 ILCS 5/) Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act., hereinafter  ILGA.GOV, http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=075000050HPt%2E+IV&ActID=2086&ChapterID=59&SeqStart=3700000&SeqEnd=5200000 Accessed 12-09-2010.

[15] “Marriage in a modern sense was unknown in ancient Israel. There are, for example, no words for ‘marriage,’’ wife,’ or ‘husband.’ The terms commonly translated as such mean ‘taking,’ in the sense of taking possession of something, ‘woman,’ and ‘master,’ respectively” (Setel, 34).

[16] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112448663

[17] www.ucc.org/lgbt/issues/marriage-equality, www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/ecumenicalhandbook2007.pdf

[18] It is important to note that partner unions would not have been considered adulterous in Ancient Israel because the woman in question is not betrothed or married to another man. 

[19] In the 2000 Census of the United States, of the 105.5 million households in the United States, 52% were maintained by married couples (54.5 million), 5.5 million couples who were living together but who were not married, (up from 3.2 million in 1990). These unmarried-partner households were self-identified maintained by people who were “sharing living quarters and who also had a close personal relationship with each other.”

http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-5.pdf (accessed 12/9/10)

[20] Patrick D. Miller, The Ten commandments: Interpretation Resources for the use of Scripture in the Church, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press) 2009., 279.

[21] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=adultery&searchmode=none (Accessed 12/10/10)

[22] Pittman, Frank, Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company) 1989, 20.

[23] Walter Brueggemann, "The Book of Exodus" in The New Interpreter's Bible. Vol. 1. (Nashville: Abingdon Press) 1994, 850.

[24]Arthur Fay Sueltz, , New Directions from the Ten Commandments, (New York: Harper and Row) 1976, 73.

[25]Thomas B. Dozeman, Commentary on Exodus, (Cambridge: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company) 2009, 485.

[26]Paul J Achtemeier, under “Idol,” in the Harper Collins Bible Dictionary, (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco) 1996, 448-449.

[27] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fidelity (Accessed 12/7/10)

[28] Throughout this study, I have used the expression “in the 21^st Century” to reflect a socially diverse, liberal, literate and practical American context. In short, I am preaching here to my own demographic. The presumptions made about society, and covenantal unions in society, are not meant to reflect or to speak to contemporary communities for whom social, religious or cultural norms might prohibit them.  This disclaimer is intended to explain the narrow focus of my language in this paper, it is not meant in any way to undermine the universality of my conclusions.

The Ninevites and the Al Qaeda

The Ninevites and the Al Qaeda:
Contemporary Lessons of the Book of Jonah

Shay Robertson
May 2, 2011
In the biblical book of Jonah, a man who is the victim of a violent crime is asked by God to offer the hand of peace and salvation to the very people who committed the crime against him. Jonah is understandably unwilling.  The Ninevites are criminals in Jonah’s experience.  If they convert to the religion of YHWH, they will be Ninevites all the same.  And, Jonah fears, God will show them mercy, forgiveness that Jonah does not believe they deserve, salvation to which he does not wish to be a party.
It is very much the same quandary that presents itself to Christians this week following the death of Osama bin Laden. Here is a man who has committed a heinous crime against the United States. We as a country and a culture have hunted him down and sought our own retribution in kind. What remains are his people, Al Qaeda, our sworn enemies. And we as Christians are called by God to love our enemies, to hold out the hand of peace and salvation to the very people who committed the crime against us.  But even if we reach out to them in compassion as bearers of God’s love, they will be Al Qaeda all the same. Jonah hoped for the destruction of the Ninevites, he feared that God would let them live.  Can we, as emissaries of a God of love, find it in ourselves to pray that God’s will be done to our enemies, even if it means that Al Qaeda goes unpunished?
The book of Jonah offers us an opportunity to examine our internal conflict in the context of Scripture.  Jonah is a character in very much the same situation.  He struggles with setting aside his own opinions and fulfilling the call of the Lord.  Scholarly criticism frequently interprets Jonah as a character as representing the people of Israel, God’s people.   They tend to interpret the story as instructional, though they disagree as to what the lesson may be.  In any case, for generations, Jonah has been held up as an instructional narrative.  This work attempts to explore how Jonah as a literary character speaks to us today, as the people of God in light of current events.
The Book of Jonah
The book of Jonah is to some degree an unknown quantity.  There is relatively little in the text to suggest a firm date of authorship beyond a very general “late exilic or post exilic period.”    There is some debate over the composition of the text: it may be a composite of various pre-existing elements and it certainly embodies a long standing folkloric tradition (Limburg, 1993).    The ambiguity of the intended audience at once confounds some scholars, and delights others,  as it opens the door to broader and more radial hermeneutical application. It is this aspect of the Jonah story which I will exploit in this examination.
While the story’s historical context is uncertain, its setting is solid: the Jonah mentioned in the books is evidently the same Jonah as appears in 2 Kings 14:25 and is there identified as a prophet. As is common to biblical narrative, Jonah’s name may hold some clues as to what we are to think of him.  Jonah, the Hebrew word for “dove” might hold the same connotation to its contemporary audience as it would to modern ears: he is an emissary of peace, an extended olive branch following an act of violence (See Genesis 8:6-12).  Further, the dove as an image would very likely have communicated to the text’s intended audience that Jonah was meant to represent the people of Israel.   “Ben Amittai” translates to “son of the faithful one”(Trible 1998) perhaps indicating that he comes from a tradition of piety.  For our purposes, it bears repeating: Jonah ben Amittai is a messenger of peace, a symbol of Israel and of a long tradition of faithfulness to YHWH.
According to 2 Kings, Jonah of Amittai lived during the reign of Jeroboam, II (785-744BCE).   Accepting that date, Jonah had very good reason to resist any contact with the people of Nineveh:
During the reign of King Menahem ben-Gadi, shortly after Jeroboam II's reign and before the conquest of 722 B.C.E. the King of Assyria imposed his rule over the land, making Menahem a vassal ruler who paid allegiance and taxes to Assyria. Assuming that political events do not happen in a vacuum, we can assume that during Jonah's lifetime, the Assyrians were already seen as a grave threat to the Northern Kingdom. We can then further assume that in those days Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria could stand for an arch-enemy poised for the destruction of Israel.
Nineveh’s reputation in other books of the Bible is no more flattering:
Woe to the bloody city,
All full of lies and booty… (Nahum 3:1)

It is to this horrible place, to these reprehensible people, that Jonah ben Amittai is sent on an errand of the Lord.
Also important to our application is the idea that Jonah might be considered a parable (Trible 1998, 469). A parable is a literary device which uses hyperbolic or exaggerated characters, events or language in the context of a narrative.    It frequently incorporates irony to enable the audience to perceive the absurdity and incorporate the lesson or objective of the story. As rule, parables are used in biblical narrative in order to communicate moral or ethical guidance and/or social correction (for example, 2 Samuel 12, in which Nathan relates the parable of the rich man and the lamb as a corrective to King David). If we look at the story of Jonah as a parable, as a satire of traditional prophetic literature (Trible 1998, 474), then we must ask ourselves with whom we are meant to identify in the text.  As Jonah seems to have been intended to personify Israel, that is the “us” in this text, we are, inescapably, meant to identify with Jonah (Trible 1998, 467).
Looking at Jonah
Having established his narrative and literary context, let us take a closer look at Jonah as a character.
Jonah is not a prophet. The text begins with a word from God (1:1).  As a rule, prophets who are told by the Almighty to jump, ask “how high?” Jonah runs the other way: “Go at once to Nineveh…But Jonah set out to flee” (Jonah 1:2-3). Much has been made of the fact that Jonah’s behavior is unconventional for a biblical prophet.   However, in the book of Jonah, there is no mention of Jonah as a prophet, it is only in reference to 2 Kings and where commentators have perceived the Jonah story to be midrash on 2 Kings, that his role as a prophet is explicit (Trible 1998, 472).    As a matter of fact, Jonah bears very little resemblance to a traditional biblical prophet.  Biblical prophets tend to speak to Israelites (the exception is Elijah who prophecies to foreigners) (Trible 1998, 481), their prophecies are more specific about what kind if sinning is happening and what consequences lie ahead if we proceed down that road and as a rule prophets are pleased at the success of their prophecy, whereas Jonah is decidedly not (4:5). Thus, while Jonah ben Amittai may be a prophet in 2 Kings, in the book of Jonah he is not acting like one.
It is the overwhelming irony of the story of Jonah that, despite his departure from the prophetic type and his utter lack effort, he manages to convert everyone he comes in contact with.  By the time he departs the ship, the sailors are converted: “Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows” (1:16).  With one phrase uttered on the outskirts of town, every Ninevite down to his donkey is converted (3:9).
Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’(Jonah 3:6-9)
Jonah is insincere. Jonah is confronted with a task he does not wish to perform, so he runs away, he flees the “presence of the Lord” (1:3). Now, he knows this is an exercise in futility. He describes God as sovereign over all Creation (1:9), but that doesn’t stop him.  He hires a ship with a pagan crew and goes the opposite way from Nineveh (1:4). If Jonah were a stereotypical prophet, he might get onto the pagan ship and start shouting the praises of the Lord, but instead the sailors on the ship are the first to mention YHWH and must call on the prophet to speak to the god for whom he theoretically is the mouth piece:
The captain came and said to him, ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.’ (1:6)
But alas, Jonah is no more inclined toward typical prophetic behavior now that he’s had a storm thrown at him.
The message with which Jonah is charged is significant, as well.  “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me” (Jonah 1:2, 3:2).  We are not told in this verse exactly what Jonah is to say. It is not altogether clear that YHWH has the destruction of Nineveh in mind until 3:10: “God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” Upon arriving in Nineveh, and creeping in a few feet, his prophecy is a mere 8 words long (5 in Hebrew), a half a verse in our modern translations. He doesn’t tell the Ninevites what to change, how or even to repent of evil, and he doesn’t even mention YHWH at all: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (3:4b).
It is interesting to note that Jonah is almost as averse to being proactive as he is to the commission he has been given.  He is called on to perform a task for his Lord and, having flagrantly headed in the wrong direction, proceeds to take a nap.  When something has to be done to end the storm and save the lives of the sailors, Jonah is picked up and thrown into the sea (1:15). It is the sailors who take action that might enable Jonah to complete his mission (1:13). Jonah asks twice for God to take his life (4:3, 8).  He doesn’t take any initiative himself, he just begs for death. Even when finally driven to complete his task, Jonah fails to measure up to our expectations as a representative of God.  Despite the city’s being “a three days walk across” (3:3), Jonah walks only part of the way in – a day’s walk (3:4).
Jonah is not angry at Nineveh. It is significant that the book of Jonah does not end with Nineveh complying.  The story is not about Nineveh, after all.  It is about Jonah, about Jonah’s relationship with God and himself.  It is for this reason that the last chapter of the book, and indeed the last verses, are among the most compelling of the entire work. We learn in the fourth chapter why Jonah fled from his duty as a servant of YHWH. Jonah is not angry at Nineveh after all.  He is angry at YHWH:
He prayed to the LORD and said, ‘O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. (Jonah 4:2)
These words echo a description of the attributes of God, a formula which appears in a number of places in the Hebrew Bible (Dozeman 1989).  But here he turns the recitation of praise into an accusation.  These divine qualities praised elsewhere in the Bible, are supremely frustrating for Jonah.
It is at this point that God asks Jonah the pivotal question of this text: “Is it right to be angry?” Initially, he asks the more general question, after he has apparently made a decision about Nineveh.  The second instance, however, follows his provision and then destruction of a plant to shade Jonah.  He asks specifically if it is appropriate for Jonah to be angry “about the plant.”
God’s action and question served to reinforce Jonah’s anger at divine justice.  Now Jonah’s own experience with destruction as the hands of God has convinced him that God is not just.
In Chapter 1, Jonah knew YHWH created all the earth and sea and still sought to “get away from” him.  Now, Jonah, knowing and loving God for the attributes he names here, is still unable to keep from resenting him for those very reasons.
Jonah was committed to a God of strict justice and was scandalized by God’s compassion for those he considered to be wicked and due for severe punishment – the justice/mercy conflict. (Magonet 1992, 941)

Jonah is not a paragon. Finally, it is critical to note that the weight of scholarship thinks of Jonah “whose values are the inverse of those of the real prophets” as a parody (Magonet 1992). Parody depends on the audience knowing what is expected in a certain context and being surprised when they find the reverse.  By exaggerating certain characteristics, parody enables the audience to perceive the absurdity of a situation or character.  As mentioned above, Jonah can be thought of as representing the people of Israel and his absurdities, therefore, are subject to the scrutiny of, and hopefully be modified by, the text’s intended audience. Jonah is not a paragon, then, but a parody, a character with whose foibles and flaws the reader is intended to identify… and consequently reject.
What we are not asked to do.
Let us look at Jonah, then, as a cautionary character.  He has been called to offer forgiveness to his enemies; he has spoken God’s truth to them through clenched teeth and thereby become the unwilling vehicle of their salvation.  Jonah is now faced with the very conflict that confronts us as Americans and Christians this week.
In the wake of our righteousness, we, like Jonah, have been given a task by God. And, we, like Jonah, are asked to do what is painful to us. We are asked to be the faces and hands of God’s peace in relationship with an enemy we have learned to despise. Jonah offers us a lens with which to examine what are and are not asked to do as we live out this calling.
We are not asked to be prophets.  Nowhere in our text is Jonah called a prophet and, as pointed out above, nowhere in our text does he act like one.  Neither should we.  Unless we have been chosen, we are not in the business of predicting outcomes in the name of the Lord.  We should not be tempted to predict dire consequences and ascribe them to the Almighty.  We should not be on a mission unless we are sent on that mission.
We are not asked to be martyred.  Jonah’s life was never in danger. Jonah repeatedly begged for death (2:12, 4:3, 8) but God did not permit it. Even when Jonah was tossed overboard like so much ballast, God sent a great fish for his rescue.  Our own destruction is not a part of the salvation of our enemies.  In this case at least, what is necessary for the healing of what is broken in creation is not self-sacrifice.  It may be self-examination, it is certainly self-discipline, but it is not martyrdom.
We are not asked to convert anyone.  Note that Jonah was not asked to convert anyone in Nineveh.  He was asked to give them God’s message and while we don’t know exactly what that was, the words Jonah spoke were not evangelistic:  ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ It was left to the Holy Spirit to do the rest and because Jonah didn’t get in the way, it all went down with amazing smoothness.  From the beginning of the text of Jonah to the end, there is no indication that God wanted their fealty.  He wanted them to “give up their wickedness.”  God never spoke of converting them to Yahwism. It may have been in his mind, it may just have been gravy, but in any case, the conversion of the Ninevites was not part of Jonah’s prophetic call.  Jonah was called to do as he was asked, God was sovereign over the rest. We would do well to remember that.
We are not asked to decide the fate of our enemies.  The overarching lesson of Jonah is that God is sovereign: “Deliverance belongs to the Lord” (2:9b). We can lie down and go to sleep and God will get the work done.  We can run as fast as we can in the other direction, and God will get it done.  We can argue and threaten and pout and God will get the job done.  And he may even use us against our will to get the job done, as he did with Jonah, but ultimately our will is not the operant force in the process.
What we are asked to do.
Just as it did to Jonah, the word of the Lord came to us.  We, like Jonah, have been given a task: to “love God with all our hearts, our minds and our souls and to love our neighbors as ourselves” (Matt 7:12). That is our calling, simple but not easy, short but not sweet. Jonah was asked by God to take a message of tenderness to people he despised with all his heart and he tried to escape the calling. He fled, but he failed.  God was with him in the depths of his despair and in the belly of the Great fish (2:10).  There is no depth to which we can sink from which God cannot rescue us. With this confidence we are asked by God to perform one and only one task:  To love God with all our hearts, with all our souls and with all our minds and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
We are asked to love God with our whole heart. Whenever we go into the world, we are emissaries of the Word. It is a kind of incidental evangelism.  We are loving because we are loved by God.  We are righteous because we have a righteous God. We are compassionate because we have a compassionate God.  We are created in the image of God and we try to live that out daily.  Even when meeting the enemy face to face.  Even when speaking in public about the enemy, even when filled with rage that “burns” like the rage in Jonah (Trible 1998, 517). Even then we are the face of God to others and we must embody that evangelism responsibly.
We are asked to love God with our whole mind.  We believe that man is made in God’s image.  Even members of al Qaeda. We may be furious and hurt, we may need consolation and desire justice, but we cannot forget that God created all men, all men, in his image and what we do or say to our fellow man; we do or say to God and his creation.
We are asked to love God with our whole soul. We are asked to show mercy and to offer compassion.  We are asked to give generously to those who have taken from us, simply because they have need.  We are asked to look at the children of Al Qaeda and see only children of God.
And we are asked to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We love ourselves even though we know the ugly truth about ourselves.  We are sometimes cowardly (1:3), we are sometimes petty (2:8), and we are insincere (3:4) and resentful (4:2).  But the book of Jonah gives us an opportunity to see those weaknesses for what they are and to address them. We get up every morning and look in the mirror at a flawed person; we forgive that person and try to begin again in a new day. That is how we love ourselves, one day at a time, one sin at a time, with chagrin, humility and faith.  That is how we are asked to love our neighbor.
Even the neighbor we hate.
The book of Jonah asks many difficult questions: Why do good things happen to bad people? Is God arbitrary or unjust?  And finally: Are we right to be angry at God for being compassionate to those whom we despise? It asks these questions, but it does not answer them:  “the ultimate fate of its principle characters is undetermined.”  This is perhaps the most telling fact of all about the book of Jonah.
I am not sorry that Osama bin Laden is dead.  But I am not glad.  I am not willing to call back the forces deployed to protect my children from terrorist attacks, but I do not want them to drop another bomb on a village in Iraq.  I have not forgotten the people I loved and lost on September 11, 2001 and I have not forgiven their murderers.  And so, though I have scoured the text and read the commentaries and searched my heart, I confess, I still have no answer to the questions put to us in the book of Jonah.
Perhaps that is why the book of Jonah ends on a question mark.

Resurrection is New Year's Day

Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. (John 2:19-21)

Outside my study window this morning more than the usual number of warmly dressed and determined runners are fulfilling their New Year's resolutions.  With a show of hands, all across our great country, it would be interesting to know how many people are resolving in some way to alter the condition of their bodies.

In this portion of John's gospel, Jesus has found the Temple of the Lord in bad shape.  It has been ill-used (to his mind: historically, commercial transaction there might arguably have been acceptable) and let fall into decay.  The he people present ask him who he thinks he is to tell them how to care for their temple. He responds, "tear it down and I could build it back up in three days."  The Scripture tells us that he is talking about his body.

We all know that our bodies are our temples, and by extension that our lives are edifices of our existence.  I am, it so happens, forty six years old and my body bears a horrible and shocking likeness to the temple in question. Over the course of 46 years, I have not laid every brick with loving care.  I have had periods where I knowingly used construction materials that were inferior, in fact harmful, to the structure as a whole.  I have gone through times where my attention to detail, let alone artistry, was lacking or entirely absent.  And the result is that there are places in my temple which are weak, there are flaws in the foundation and there are places that got so bad that they were unsafe and had to be removed.

And what have I been doing in this progressively less pure and wonderful temple?  Like the Jews  in the text, I have not always conducted myself as befits imago dei.  I have hurt people, destroyed things I could not rebuild, been capricious and ruthless and "done trade where I shoulda done prayed."

This is my favorite holiday - not for the drinking, though I am almost an exclusively champagne drinking kind of gal - but the new beginnings, the fresh journals and open calendars and the suspenseful potential for organization, self discipline and brighter days that have not yet been squashed by a lack of time or energy or the cruel reality of mediocrity. I make resolutions every year, though I should really just photocopy them from year to year, about losing weight or getting fit or not chewing my nails or solving some nagging problem with my foot. We all do, don't we? Hope for self-discipline? Hope to realize the potential of a new beginning in ourselves, now, once and for all?

When Jesus said he could raise the temple - even if they utterly destroyed it - in three days, the Scripture tells us the Jews knew he was speaking of his body.  Commentary tells us he was speaking of resurrection.  But perhaps he was also talking about New Year's Day.

What if I told you that no matter what you've done to your body - even if you've been doing it for all forty six or however many years of your life - it can be returned to its previous perfection in a ridiculously short period of time, in the course of an unbelievably simple resolution and with the result of miraculous transformation. All you have to do is dial 1-800 - ha-ha, no just kidding. All you have to do is make the right resolution.

Resurrection is New Year's Day: resolve to let the Holy Spirit do her work in you.