I typed the word fidelity onto a document and right clicked it to check for words that mean the same. It was an impressive list; loyalty, faithfulness, reliability, trustworthy, dependable, devotion, commitment. We use this word many times to describe a monogamous marriage relationship. Sometimes banks use it in their names; First Fidelity or maybe, Fidelity Savings and Loan. Sometimes the words on the mean-the-same list are also used to describe “Ol’ Blue”, the hound dog sleeping on the porch. Whether it is marriage, money, or man’s best friend, fidelity comes down to relationships. I have heard the question, “Is it a religion or a relationship?” Does fidelity fit into this question’s answer? Does it fit into our culture, our values, and our ethics? Our personal lives, our spirituality?
LSM’s mission in Ethiopia involves sharing hope with some of the world’s most vulnerable kids. We can gain access to these lives through impacting the lives of their mothers, women who are commercial sex workers. ”Shermuta.” One question being asked of us repeatedly which may only indicate curiosity, “Where do all the clients come from that occasion and support these ladies as they cling to their needy lives?” ”What is with the men, (what about fidelity)?” It can be in our nature; if we can identify a root cause as being sin which is beneath our dignity, then we have permission to dismiss ourselves from involvement with relief of the pain it is causing. While men of infidelity may be a contributing cause, it should not be a scapegoat. Non-involvement is not what is meant when God’s Word asks us to, “keep ourselves unspotted from the world.”
These kids of our mission, the vulnerable, they are a consequence of fidelity, or rather a lack of it, but they dare not be dismissed as inconsequential on those grounds in self-righteousness. The consequences that dictate the doom of their lives, the HIV, the probability of becoming orphans; these catastrophes are beyond their control. Men of infidelity, while it is only a part of the story, cannot allow us to sit in judgement and indifference and dismiss the opportunity and responsibility of offering future hope and sharing it with innocent hearts.
Our religion or our relationship…our values and our ethics…our response and our calling to follow The Example. We are part of the Marriage Bride. The money in the bank is not our own. Our fidelity should go beyond that of a sleeping hound dog on the porch.
