Adultery, Time, & Physics
Yes, it is an odd individual whose thought process comes to combine the above subjects into a coherent idea, but you knew I was slightly off when you got here… right? Oh good, let’s get started.
This has been a recurring idea within my head for quite a long time, but it was brought up to me again while at the Thinking Like a Christian study I go to on Tuesdays. The topic we were discussing (which was off topic for the class, but we’re a pretty flexible group) was the idea that a second marriage automatically introduces adultery into the woman’s life. We didn’t break out chapter and verse at the time, but I believe the verse in question to be Matthew 19:9, which states,
And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.
Now that references the man, not the woman as in our talk, but the point is the same. I will not play out the discussion for you in full (it was decently short), but the ending gist was just that if you remarry, there is sin in there somewhere, so repent and move on with your life. Basically, treat it like any other sin in your life. And at that, the subject was dropped, so of course, that is where I want to pick things back up. 
While we were sitting on blue chairs in a sort of half circle that evening, I immediately thought of what I am about to ramble about, but the timing just wasn’t there. So instead I bring it to you. Aren’t you excited? No? Well, could you pretend a little? Thanks, I appreciate it.
As I have done with fair regularity, I have attempted to apply the physical laws as we know them to moral and religious topics. You would be surprised how well that works in helping you understand things the Bible says. Well, if you consider that Father created all of the above, perhaps you would not be surprised. Understanding helps me cope, so here we go.
Here is the standard series of events for a person married multiple times. Man meets woman. Man marries woman. Man divorces woman. Man meets and marries a different woman. Repeat as needed. It’s nice and neat and looks good on a flow chart. Assuming no extra-marital affairs, people for the most part seem fine with the above list of events. Few people tend to have an issue with someone who got married early in life to the wrong person and then got divorced, remarrying later in life. Few people will point at the new couple and claim them to be adulterers. That is, few people except Jesus, who does so in Matt 19:9, as we read. For many of the people I know (who I am sure are not the people you know, so shush), his statement seems overly harsh. If the first couple were no longer married, why is one of them remarrying adultery? It just don’t make a lot of sense.
To explain it, let us back up for a minute to something I am sure everyone reading can agree on (well, the Christians at least). Jesus died for your sins, right? That was two thousandish years ago, right? That still works for the sins you will commit in two years, right? I imagine heads nodding, so I will continue.
The blood of Jesus from two thousand years ago covers your sins because the debt was paid outside of time. Do not look at me like that, I’m serious. God is outside of time. Do not think about that too hard, as it will really make your head hurt. In a nutshell, we live in a 4 dimensional region of space, with time being the 4th. Since Einstein, scientists have been finding unification theories that require there to be at least one more dimension, though none have been proven except on paper for various reasons I do not have time for here (yes, the current realm of String Theory is in there somewhere). For any being to have the power our mental model of a god requires, he would have to exist in at least the 5th dimension. So…. God is outside of time. If that still hurts, just get that time is 4, God is at least 5, and 5 is above 4. 
Because Father is outside of time, there is no true concept of past and future as those are simply aspects of time. What that means is that things just ‘are’. This is how you ‘are’ healed, you ‘are’ forgiven, you ‘are’ righteous. It just is. Jesus paid the debt in a dimension above time (no idea how he did that from here… it’s on my short (HA!) list of questions he hasn’t answered for me yet), so you are covered in all time.
Now that you are completely confused, I will hop back over to marriage. Go back to our previous series of events where the man got married a few times and get it in your head. Now remove time from the events. Messes with things, doesn’t it? When you get married, to any being outside of time viewing things, you ‘are’ married. It is not a changing thing. It just is. It is not possible to be divorced, because what has been done just ‘is’. I do not want to get into the whys of marriage being one of the few things that transcend time, but if in the beginning divorce was not to be allowed at all (Matt 19:8), then it is simply so.
If you view things from outside of time, where Father is, then you can see how remarriage is adultery. Because to someone without time, you are now married to multiple people. Please, please, please keep in mind that I have already stated that this can be placed under the blood and forgiven just like any other sin. There is no condemnation meant to anyone.
What does this mean practically? Well, honestly, I think it means two things… which you may or may not find idiotic. But I can find no immediate fault with them, so I will present them to you. One is that all sex not with your spouse is adultery. This includes any sex you have while not married, based on the fact that someday you will be or someday you were. To someone outside of time, you already are married, even if to you it doesn’t seem to happen to years… or if it happened years ago. I have no idea how this affects two people who will remain single their entire lives. It honestly never crossed my mind until now. So the sex you had while you were 17 is adultery against the spouse you marry when you are 23, whom you probably don’t even know yet.
The second thing this means is that sex with your spouse outside of marriage is fine. After all, if you are married, you are married, even if the event hasn’t happened to you yet. Of course, this is a loaded gun just waiting to go off since all sorts of things can happen between the time you have sex and the time you actually say ‘I do’. Even if you know they are the one and all that jazz, what if they get hit by a bus in the morning? So premarital sex still seems a bad idea, but not really for any good moral reason that I can find.
As always, and I feel a huge need to say this today, the thoughts contained on this blog are from my head, and may or may not have any validity or truthfulness in them except as a thought exercise. Read your own Bible, pray yourself, and listen to your pastor. If you don’t have one, listen to mine.
