promiscuous

I've used the word "unfaithful" to describe my relationship with God. I don't like it, but it's accurate so I face up to it. But to me there's a big difference between unfaithfulness and promiscuity.

God sent the prophet Hosea to challenge his people about their unfaithfulness, and he told him to use a pretty graphic example to make the point. Hosea 1: 2 says, "When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, 'Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.'"

God accuses his people not just of unfaithfulness and adultery, but of promiscuity. Judah was not just having an affair, she was running around with any and every partner available to her. 

Is that me? Am I really a spiritual tramp, that person who's available for any fresh new sin that comes along? In addition to returning over and over to my favorite sins, do I also cast an appraising eye over new possibilities and chase the ones that appeal to me?

I like to lump it all under a single three-letter word, sin. In some ways it seems like just one thing that way. In fact, it's really easy if I just pray for forgiveness from my sins. 

But when I start trying to list my sins as I pray, I soon find that there are a bunch of different kinds. I realize, too, that I probably can't remember all of them, and that there are likely some things I do that I don't recognize as sin.

The truth is, I dabble with a variety of unfaithful behaviors. I'm not just having an affair with the world, I'm keeping a whole string of lovers on the line.

Thinking of sin this way makes me feel sordid. That's probably why God used Hosea's promiscuous wife as his example. It strips away my ability to look at my sin as somehow more just weakness that truly disgusting. 

It's hard to return to faithfulness when all your dalliances aren't even front lobe in your brain. I think I need to watch myself more closely for a while.