Wow. One data analyst indicates that the VAST majority of women accounts on the cheating website Ashley Madison were fake. Only about 12,000 accounts out of millions could be positively identified as being actual accounts, though likely that is a low number.

It appears that most men were not cheating with a person, but with a mere fantasy. I'm not sure if this makes this more or less tragic. Note the article link and excerpt below.



Almost None of the Women in the Ashley Madison Database Ever Used t...http://gizmodo.com/almost-none-of-the-women-in-the-ashley-madison-d...

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When hacker group Impact Team released the Ashley Madison data, they asserted that “thousands” of the women’s profiles were fake. Later, this number got blown up in news stories that asserted “90-95%” of them were fake, though nobody put forth any evidence for such an enormous number. So I downloaded the data and analyzed it to find out how many actual women were using Ashley Madison, and who they were.

Editor’s Note: The number of female users reported in this article are based in part on a misinterpretation of the data. We’ve done a thorough analysis of the source code and offered a new interpretation here.

What I discovered was that the world of Ashley Madison was a far more dystopian place than anyone had realized. This isn’t a debauched wonderland of men cheating on their wives. It isn’t even a sadscape of 31 million men competing to attract those 5.5 million women in the database. Instead, it’s like a science fictional future where every woman on Earth is dead, and some Dilbert-like engineer has replaced them with badly-designed robots.

Those millions of Ashley Madison men were paying to hook up with women who appeared to have created profiles and then simply disappeared. Were they cobbled together by bots and bored admins, or just user debris? Whatever the answer, the more I examined those 5.5 million female profiles, the more obvious it became that none of them had ever talked to men on the site, or even used the site at all after creating a profile.Actually, scratch that. As I’ll explain below, there’s a good chance that about 12,000 of the profiles out of millions belonged to actual, real women who were active users of Ashley Madison.

When you look at the evidence, it’s hard to deny that the overwhelming majority of men using Ashley Madison weren’t having affairs. They were paying for a fantasy . . . .

Is it more or less tragic that most men were apparently cheating with a "fantasy?" What do we learn from this?

In his article, One Trait that Set Apart the Earliest Christians, Michael J. Kruger points out that the sexual ethic of the early Christians was something that set these Christians apart from the culture. Note the following quoted section below:

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Tertullian went to great lengths to defend the legitimacy of Christianity by pointing out that Christians are generous and share their resources with all those in need. But then he said, “One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives” (Apol. 39). Why did he say this? Because, in the Greco-Roman world, people sometimes shared their spouses with each other.

In the second-century Epistle to Diognetus, the author went out of his way to declare that Christians are normal in regard to what they wear, what they eat, and how they participate in society.  However, he then said, “[Christians] share their meals, but not their sexual partners” (Diogn. 5.7). Again, this trait made Christians different.

We see this dictinction play out again in the second-century Apology of Aristides. Aristides defended the legitimacy of the Christian faith to the emperor Hadrian by pointing out how Christians “do not commit adultery nor fornication” and “their men keep themselves from every unlawful union.”

A final example comes from the second-century apology of Minucius Felix. In his defense to Octavius, he contrasted the sexual ethic of the pagan world with that of Christians:

Among the Persians, a promiscuous association between sons and mothers is allowed. Marriages with sisters are legitimate among the Egyptians and in Athens. Your records and your tragedies, which you both read and hear with pleasure, glory in incests: thus also you worship incestuous gods, who have intercourse with mothers, with daughters, with sisters. With reason, therefore, is incest frequently detected among you, and is continually permitted. Miserable men, you may even, without knowing it, rush into what is unlawful: since you scatter your lusts promiscuously, since you everywhere beget children, since you frequently expose even those who are born at home to the mercy of others, it is inevitable that you must come back to your own children, and stray to your own offspring. Thus you continue the story of incest, even although you have no consciousness of your crime. But we maintain our modesty not in appearance, but in our heart we gladly abide by the bond of a single marriage; in the desire of procreating, we know either one wife, or none at all.

This sampling of texts from the second century demonstrates that one of the main ways that Christians stood out from their surrounding culture was their distinctive sexual behavior. Of course, this doesn’t mean Christians were perfect in this regard. No doubt, many Christians committed sexual sins. But Christianity as a whole was still committed to striving towards the sexual ethic laid out in Scripture–and the world took notice.

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I know that there are numerous Christians who are tremendously bothered by the change in laws regarding marriage and sexuality in the US. And certainly, this reflects a troubling moving away from Judeo-Christian ethics in our culture. However, it may be that with these changes in laws, Christian may stand out much more--hopefully in a positive way for what we stand for, more than a negative what we stand against.

How do these quotations from early Christianity affect your view of what is happening in our culture in regards to morality? How should we respond to the changing morality that we see and face today?

John W. Smith tells a story of a couple who goes to marriage counseling. The husband, of course, does not want to go, but the wife does, and finally she gets him to go with her. And for four hours, the wife pours out her heart to the counselor saying how he never notices her, he never thanks her, he never compliments her. She feels lonely and unloved and wonders if she has any self-worth at all. 

At this, the counselor gets out from around his desk, walks over to the woman, gets down on his knees, grips the chair, and tells her--"You listen to me. You are one of the most kind, caring, compassionate and beautiful woman I've ever met. You have incredible self-worth."

The counselor then turns to the man, who is a bit dumbfounded, watching this, and he says, "Do you see this? Do you think that you can do this? She needs this EVERY week, three times a week. Can you make sure this happens for her?"

The guy says, "Man, I don't know. I can drop her off for you on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but Fridays are tough. I play golf."

This is a funny story--except it  so unfortunately describes the reality of marital relationships in so many cases. 

Guys--if we do not value and compliment our wives, someone else will. And vice versa. That need for "admiration" and words that build up are one of the top 5 needs in "His Needs, Her Needs."  Song of Songs is filled with beautiful compliments and words from one spouse to another (even if some of these compliments don't translate well today:).
Paul says, "29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen" (4:29).


How can we better build up our spouses in our marriages with kind words? What is the danger if we do not do this?