Flipping through the channels yesterday in the hope of finding something to “watch me” while I iron for a few hours. I stopped at a segment of the Mary, Mary (un)reality show. Now I know why so often I feel like it is me who is living in an unreality. The theme was spousal infidelity. My thoughts: It is, in a very real way “her (their) faults” (it seems that the sisters share the experience). I am listening to the husbands “explain themselves” in the segment, and I am wondering why these women expected a different outcome then the one that emerged? Why are they with these men whose (proclaimed) principles are so different from the gospel music they sing? Men who are making nonsense (no sense at all, I desperately tried to follow their “logic”) in place of sound spiritually guided judgment. God’s thinking and purpose concerning marriage is never discussed; and so what was all of that “praise and worship” music about? It would have been better (for me) as a consumer of gospel music if I was never exposed to their husbands; I (thinking positively) imagined that they were married to strong (or at the very least settled) men of God, but now…… Is the obvious absence of a spiritually sound plan in their professional lives (now pouring out their personal business in a reality show, filmed speaking from bed no less) reflective of their disconnection from a solid and serious man of God in their private lives? After listening to these two men speak; and then listening to how articulate the women were*; I can’t imagine that “infidelity” was not one of the many negative possibilities on the list, prior to marriage. How often have we “recruited” (invited) people into our lives based on the standards we have established, either consciously or unconsciously. And so why is it that we expect a different outcome then the one we expected?
*I admit to a professional predisposition here, as I believe that there is a linkage between language (speaking) and thinking (ideas formation); educators will recognize this as a major Vygotskyian theoretical principle
