This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

I should know better than to do this.

But...

I can certainly see how traditional Western marriage and family structures contribute to the earthly happiness of men and children. Not so women.

And on another hand, what of the person who wants to marry but does not want to have children?

Megan:

To your first statement I would reply: Define "earthly happiness" and place it in the context of Christian redemption and sanctification.

I would also add in my reply to the first statement and question/answer to your question: to what degree must disordered/fallen human desires be brought into this context of redemption and sanctification, and what sort of transformation can we expect?

Or in other words, even if a woman might be "happier" in an unmarried partnership, or who understands her happiness to be dependent upon not rearing children, it would make sense, in Christian terms, to question whether these feelings and desires are disordered and unnatural. In point of fact, that is precisely the point of the article from which I've excerpted a few paragraphs. Despite claims to the contrary, the scientific evidence is showing that traditional marriage is, indeed, the norm for humans, men and women. (This should in no way be construed as denigrating or devaluing celibacy, because for those gifted for it, it is God's norm.)

That being said, below is a list of links indicating the "earthly happiness" for women (and men and children) associated with traditional Western marriage. These are all associated with socially conservative organizations, but I have only included those who reference their assertions to research studies. You can, if you wish, dispute their findings and conclusions, but you should do so, of course, on the basis of having examined the research.

Why Marriage Matters for Adults (references)
Science Commends Marriage (references)
MarriageDebate.com (Institute for Marriage and Public Policy)
Marriage Still Safest Place for Women and Children (looks at the relationship between domestic violence and women and children; references)
Married Women and Public Assistance (references)
Marriage and Affluence (references)

"Not so women."

My poor, silly wife. She actually believes that being married has made her more content, confident, and free to be herself than the self-centered years of being single.

She's so silly to think this way.

I think that Megan and Cliff will both have valid points in this. I see a few frustrations myself.

Christian marriage, a marriage of constant Christ-like giving by all parties, is a glorious thing. The psedo-Victorian/Leave it to Beaver kind of marriage (closer to what Megan is speaking of?) is a bulls**t paradigm where the male is the overlord and women are considered incapable of caring for themselves...thus they need the economic power of men to hold them up. IN some Christian homes, this is how the servant leadership of Christian marriage can be twisted and destroyed.

The American court system is not interested in Christ-like giving. Divorce is endemic in this country for many many reasons. Some good, some bad. I know people who have been destroyed by divorce and some for who divorce was the only livable alternative to a horrific marriage. Maybe this takes us down some tired roads. I know. Sorry. But it is part of the reality. It is not as cut and dry as we would like it to be. There are few structures in our society, even today, to protect victims of abuse. I know few churches who have tackled that problem. I would like to know how Orthodox deal with the unrepentant abuser.

Sorry, that's just where I go.

re: contraception...That is a slippery slope, Cliff. The risk is that a woman will no longer be a victim of male sexual desire, but simply a baby-making machine for the edification of the male's status. This is where that ideal has taken us in the past. No, it is not always the case, but it seems we are picking our poison here. We gravitate to the poles.

In this idea of contraception-free sex in marriage, where does sexual pleasure come in? Is that even a laudable quality of the relationship? Does the Pope also suggest that a man learn how to pleasure his wife before he has his pleasure and impregnates her? Are ther alternative modes of pleasure set aside?

I am serious about these questions. None were sarcastic.

Thanks for the can of worms. ;-)

Tripp:

The article itself, nor my response to Megan above, should in anyway be construed to convey the notion that Christian marriage (biblical, traditional) should be understood as idyllic and free from all sin. When two sinful human beings get together, there will be sin.

The fallacy in your comments, however, is that of ascribing to traditional marriage the sins that properly belong to the spouses and thus to remedy purported failures of Christian marriage by the advocating of either its negation as normative or the seeking of alternative relational arrangements on equally normative terms as traditional marriage. So long baby and bath water.

No, the remedy for marriages that do not properly restrain the sinful tendencies of the respective spouses is the repentance of the spouses and the adherence to biblical norms (sacrificing husband, submitting wife). Clearly the science confirms the benefit of marriage, thus to advocate that spouses step away from the one thing that would bring health, affluence, happiness, and so forth (which the science shows), is to fail the troubled spouses.

I used "unrepentant" for a reason. I am not talking about people who say "Gee, This is hard and you don't put the toilet seat down." and then get a divorce. I am saying that when someone's life is in danger, and the lives of their children are in danger, then we have to offer some sollution other than "Stay and die." Maybe you disagree.

Maybe "Stay and the church will protect you." is an option. Is Orthodoxy doing this? I dunno.

I agree that the preservation of marriage is all important. I also think that educating people about marriage, its difficulties etc is something we do poorly. That is another post and another conversation.

In either case, as you said, we are not talking utopianism. I am not saying you are. I am asking what it looks like then when things go beyond irritation and inconvenience to abuse...what then?

Tripp:

The Church is clear: divorce is sin. And the pastoral care of the Church toward her members in situations you decribe is also fairly straightforward: first get the abused spouse and children to safety; next attempt to get the abuser into counselling and rehabilitation; and finally attempt reconciliation and reunion. But even if the abuser refuses to repent, and the pastor with the abused spouse sees divorce as the only way to guarantee the safety of the abused spouse and children, then such may be counselled. But it is still recognized as sin, albeit one may categorize it as involuntary sin (something the Orthodox repent of each time the office or the Liturgy is prayed). Jesus himself recognizes this: the man who divorces his wife causes her to sin (although one may grant that the wife does so involuntarily).

It's interesting to me, however, to note that when these topics come up those who are generally resistant to Christian marriage as the norm (even for Church members), want to bring into play all the rare, though real, extreme cases. The simple fact of the matter, nearly all divorces happen for much less legitimate reasons, most all of which have to do with the selfishness and self-centeredness of both spouses.

The Church in her wisdom knows well what to do about the "hard cases" which you describe. But if you or I aren't in such scenarios ourselves, we do well to discuss the more prevalent realities of lust, greed, pride, and so forth which spouses refuse to repent of. That is to say, we need to deal with the simple fact that most of the time it is we ourselves who are destroying our marriage. If we repented we might well save it.

I just wanted tobe certain, Cliff, because the conversation is seldom as you prescribe. The conversation goes the direction I took it because many of us know people whose life has been improved by divorce, sin or no. And we can argue the rarity of it later. The statistics are mind-numbing. Working in a hospital has been quite eye-opening.

Is divorce for Christians always a sin? Yeah, I guess so. There should be something about entering marriage unadvisedly as well. Heh. Ah well, crazy kids.

Issues of selfishness etc are fine and dandy to discuss, and I am happy to do it, I just needed the parameters. Otherwise, I tend to hear the conversation in more extreme terms whether you mean it to go there or not. This is not you, its me and I needed to clear that up.

So...done. Thanks.

btw: you should post on "involuntary sin." We prots do not think like that very often...at least not that I have seen. We justify, baby!

You might look again at the notion of "lives have been improved by divorce" and what the social research on divorce is proving about that common conception. In the extreme cases involving abuse and physical safety? Sure, one can grant improvement.

But once again it is with the common "garden variety" of divorce that we have to deal with. And though one or another spouse may not have to deal with their ex's sins, neither, then, do they very often face the need to examine their own sins which also contributed to the sin of divorce.

M. Scott Peck has called marriage a "monastery of two." And the Orthodox call the marriage and the home a "little church." The proper understanding of Christian marriage is that the spouses help each other rid themselves of sin and pursue Christlikeness. I submit to you that until you've stayed with the same "ol' bastard" or same "ol' nag" for something more than thirty years, you don't really have an understanding of the sort of life-giving sacrament marriage is.

(And by the way, you surely know that I cannot say this on my own authority. I have it on the good testimony of those who've been there.)

Of course, as with all things sacramental, marriage isn't magic. Frogs don't turn into princes unless and until they're willing to put to death all in them that will both damn themselves and harm their mate.

Clifton and everyone,

I checked out your blogsite because, as it happens, I'm one of the fellows who had the long discussion with David Hart on suffering, over at the Touchstone site.

I'll say out front that I'm a Roman Catholic who once upon a time (when I was young and stupid) disagreed with every one of the Church's teachings regarding sex, except that I never favored abortion. Then reality hit me -- or I should say grace hit me. One by one, the walls fell. "Oh," I would say, "I was wrong about that one, too."

I've seen bad marriages: the worst I've ever seen that did not end in divorce is that of my wife's mother and father, now married 52 years. As is typical, the offender is the one who seeks the divorce. In this case it was my mother-in-law. She kept "her" own money, spent it like water; she drank heavily; she threw things at him. He, for his part, is about the meekest and gentlest man you'll ever meet. A sinner, sure, like everyone, but an extremely hard worker and a kind man and father. When my wife was 17 -- she's an only child -- her mother came to her and said, "We're getting a divorce." My wife cried so much that her mother never breathed another word about it -- and for this I give her great credit.

The result was, they stayed together. I don't believe they've shared the same bed in forty years (she worked odd shifts for a long time at the Mars candy factory). Eventually the drinking stopped, but not the insults, the shutting of herself in her room for a week, the tantrums, the money squandering. Yet blessings came. Think of them as shoots poking up through the asphalt. My wife and I married -- and there was something for the two of them to unite around (my mother-in-law has been nothing but good to me). Then we had children, their only grandchildren -- and there was something else for them to enjoy together. And my children had the two of them, always together, not in separate states, not with blended grandfamilies, that is to say not with chaos.

My mother-in-law has long been slowly losing her memory, the result of small strokes probably occasioned by the drinking. This last summer she's had to go to a nursing home -- she can no longer take care of herself, and her husband had to have a triple bypass, and could no longer take care of her. His care for her, though, both at home and now that he visits her every other day, is a remarkable and beautiful thing to behold; and the Alzheimer's, in her case so slow, has worn away almost all of her hardheartedness, and the old love remains, the love that caused her to elope with him 52 years ago. She is like a child in her dependence upon him; and the real blessings of this unexpectedly resurrected love, the graces gained for both of these hardly devout people, are something to behold in awe. She had never been baptized; now she has been. She had always been afraid to go to church; now she attends services in the nursing home.

Jesus never says that if we follow him we will be happy-go-lucky. He says that we will be carrying crosses. But there is a joy in following him, even when we are shouldering the cross. To believe that our lives can ever "improve" by breaking a solemn oath that we take before God and man is, frankly, presumptuous. It may be that in His mercy God will give us the graces to overcome the evil of our divorce -- but that hardly justifies the initial sin. And it is a grave sin, tearing away at the fabric of our society itself -- it harms us all.

The marriage between man and woman is an image of the Trinity itself. To believe that divorce can ever be a good is to believe that the Father could disown the Son. I am not talking about physical separation from someone who threatens you or your children, your life or your safety. Separation, never considered permanent, is one thing, and divorce is another.

And about independence: it is a delusion. There is no such thing. Man and woman were made to be dependent upon one another. As for baby-machines, the metaphor is peculiar to our century; in every other age, a large family was considered a great blessing, and women boasted of it. A last consideration: I found out, to my dismay and shock, back some years ago, that "sodomy" includes all sexual intercourse whose natural function is frustrated deliberately, or which is carried out in an unnatural way, so as to be rendered fruitless. You ought to hear what Luther has to say about it!

Tony

Dr. Esolen:

I've long admired your work in Touchstone, and I thank you for going out of your way to my backward corner of the blogosphere, not merely to read but also to comment on what is here.

And your story of divine grace as exhibited in the marriage of your in-laws is among the most moving accounts of the truth of the Gospel I've seen.

One of my patron saints has remarked that whenever one speaks of theological principles one should do one's best to illustrate them by the lives of the saints. You have do so here, and I thank you.

Cliff (if I may),

Thanks for your kind words. That was a real donnybrook over there at Touchstone this weekend, but all's well that ends well. Privately David and I have resolved our disagreement in a charitable and gentlemanly way -- and we've learned that neither of us was arguing quite for the horrible thing that the other of us thought we were.

But in a way I'm glad we had the debate -- it got Touchstone a lot of notice, and that's a magazine that deserves it. The guys who run it are fearless! And it has helped me sort out my thoughts. Yet I find still that this is a flat out beautiful world, and would be thankful to God for it even if I didn't know there was more to come.

Tony