A Warning to All Soldiers

by Barry York

One hesitates to add a voice to the cacophony surrounding the revelations regarding General David Petraeus.  Every little blogger should not feel the need, like buzzards on a carcass, to comment about this awful situation.

Yet with the families affected by this in ruins, our nation's intelligence perhaps compromised, and a mysterious cloud still hovering over the deaths of four Americans in the Benghazi attacks, a warning should be given once again about the awful ruins of adultery.  Soldiers especially need this warning.

Why? In the normal providence of my devotions, I read the passage below from Proverbs 5.  In its warning against adultery, notice in the highlighted portions the exhortations against adultery and the descriptions of its consequences that should concern any soldier.  Soldier, you have made a  sworn oath to defend family and country with honor. Do you really want to put on your uniform in pretense that you are fulfilling that pledge just to undermine it when you take it off ?  According to the Word of the God whose help you asked for when you made your oath, that is exactly what you are doing when you commit adultery.  

Read and plead to God that you would be a true soldier, strong in body and in soul.

My son, give attention to my wisdom,

Incline your ear to my understanding;

That you may observe discretion

And your lips may reserve knowledge.

For the lips of an adulteress drip honey

And smoother than oil is her speech;

But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,

Sharp as a two-edged sword.

Her feet go down to death,

Her steps take hold of Sheol.

She does not ponder the path of life;

Her ways are unstable, she does not know it_._

Now then, my sons, listen to me

And do not depart from the words of my mouth.

Keep your way far from her

And do not go near the door of her house,

Or you will give your honor to others

And your years to the cruel one;

And strangers will be filled with your strength

And your hard-earned goods will go to the house of an alien;

And you groan at your final end,

when your flesh and your body are consumed;

And you say, “How I have hated instruction!

And my heart spurned reproof!

“I have not listened to the voice of my teachers,

Nor inclined my ear to my instructors!

-Proverbs 5:1-13