Hank Williams and first wife Audrey Sheppard.

I first heard the song in my grandparents’ living room. Hank Williams’s Your Cheatin’ Heart, written about his ex-wife, skyrocketed to number one, selling over a million records in 1953 after Williams’s untimely death on New Year’s Day that year.

The round, vinyl records swirled on a record player behind my grandparents’ couch in the 1970’s, but there was no cheatin’ going on at their house. My grandpa was a farmer, my grandma a farmer’s wife. Their kitchen was warm, full of home-cooked meals, and good, old common sense. The news on their one TV in the corner talked about national concerns like the Cold War, not marriages gone cold in Hollywood.

I miss those days.

Today’s news is rift with infidelity. Not tabloid news, headline news. Cheating used to be frowned on, now it’s celebrated in America. A popular actress is young and hot, a singer separated from his wife of ten years. A few months of fooling around before the singer is even divorced, and the media’s proclaiming, “It’s the real deal” for this Coldplay crooner and his actress girlfriend on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Why should we care?

Because we don’t know the truth when it comes to love anymore. And we are teaching an entire generation lies that will reek havoc on future families of America.

The Bible says the truth will set you free, so can we please stop celebrating adultery and celebrate authentic love?

The kind of love that holds a phone up to your ear and cries when your wife is in the hospital. After nearly fifty years of marriage to my grandma, this was the first and only time I ever saw my grandpa cry, him talking to Grandma on the phone that day. To my grandpa’s great relief, my grandma came home after her surgery, and Grandpa didn’t touch her, not in front of us grandkids because yesterday’s generation saved intimacy for the bedroom. But Grandpa’s eyes adored everything about this bent, gray-haired old woman, his wife.

This is the real deal.

I’m so weary of the news glorifying good divorces and conscious uncoupling and hot, hopeful affairs in Hollywood. How can an affair be hopeful? Two little kids get to watch their dad fall for Katniss while their mom tries to befriend her. When you’re ten years old, you shouldn’t have to deal with this stuff.

And we shouldn’t have to deal with lies about love on our daily news. The problem today really isn’t adultery, it’s unbelief in America. We don’t believe the Bible anymore, and we don’t believe God, and we don’t believe in the kind of love that lasts.

We believe in self-fulfillment and self-gratification, and we will always act on what we believe. But the truth is the self cannot be fulfilled or gratified. Human relationships will never fill you because you were not made to be filled by a person. You were made to be filled by God.