D. A. Carson, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, used to meet with a young man from French West Africa for the purpose of practicing their German. He writes:
Once a week or so, we had had enough, so we went out for a meal together and retreated to French, a language we both knew well. In the course of those meals we got to know each other. I learned that his wife was in London, training to be a medical doctor. He was an engineer who needed fluency in German in order to pursue doctoral studies in engineering in Germany.
I soon discovered that once or twice a week he disappeared into the red-light district of town. Obviously he went to pay his money and have his woman.
Eventually I got to know him well enough that I asked him what he would do if he discovered that his wife was doing something similar in London.
"Oh," he said, "I'd kill her."
"That's a bit of a double standard, isn't it?" I asked.
"You don't understand. Where I come from in Africa, the husband has the right to sleep with many women, but if a wife is unfaithful to her husband she must be killed."
"But you told me you were raised in a mission school. You know that the God of the Bible does not have double standards like that."
He gave me a bright smile and replied, "Ah, le bon Dieu, il doit nous pardonner; c'est son metier [Ah, God is good. He's bound to forgive us; that's his job].
