When I was criticizing that awful Washington Post piece about how morally confounding Mark Sanford’s love life is, it just seemed odd to me that no media outlet has really explained the Christian view of love. For being a country that is majority Christian, it’s shocking how little we read about some of the basic tenets of the theology.
Anyway, no sooner had I hit publish on that last post when I came across an Associated Press story (“For born-again Sanford, love is more than a feeling”) that explains what it calls the “born-again, evangelical Christian” approach to love. You might also recognize it as the Catholic approach to love. And the Orthodox approach to love. And the Lutheran approach to love. And so on and so forth. But I digress.
Here’s the beginning by reporter Allen Breed:
In one especially soul-baring e-mail to his Argentine mistress, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford quoted from 1 Corinthians 13 about the nature of love.
It is patient and kind, he wrote. It is NOT jealous or boastful.
The Christian counselors Sanford sought out while trying to decide whether to stay with his wife or jump on a plane to South America advised him what else love is and isn’t.
“Their point is that love is not a feeling,” Sanford told the Associated Press in a tearful two-day confessional. “It’s a choice. It’s an action.”
That sentiment might seem cold to many Americans, but it is perfectly consistent with the born-again, evangelical Christian world that Sanford inhabits, says sociologist John Bartowski.
Maybe it’s because I’m in a marriage and have contemplated marriage a bit, but I can’t help but laugh that this sentiment might seem cold. To me, cold is cheating on your wife with an Argentine bombshell because you feel like it. Cold is messing up your sons’ view of marriage, romance and love through your narcissism and lack of foresight. Cold is breaking the heart of your wife and partner. Cold is telling the world that you so callously disregarded your marital vows that you somehow managed to pick up a “soul mate” who lives 5,000 miles away. Dios mio! But believing that love is demonstrated through your behavior? That doesn’t seem particularly cold to me.
I think what people are missing about this view is that the head is much more an agent of romance as are the heart and, uh, other body parts. Sanford used his brain to make love choices in recent years — he could have just as easily used that same brain to make different love choices. This isn’t cold so much as reality.
The story goes on to quote someone saying that evangelicals are “carving out a subcultural view of love” that is not so highly romanticized as we see in movies. I think that the source might be confused about whether the Christian view of love predates the chick flick or not, but that’s his fault more than the reporter’s:
That worldview, [Bartowski] says, “divorces” love from emotion, because “feelings are fleeting and not to be trusted.”
“Love is something that is cultivated in the trenches of living a day-to-day relationship,” says Bartowski. “That is not a Hallmark moment.”
Still, it would be nice to have at least one source argue for the romance inherent in the Christian view of love. Let’s go back to that 1 Corinthians quote that began the piece. It’s considered romantic, being used at so many weddings as to be predictable. Here’s a relevant portion:
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
It may be impossible for marriage partners to achieve, but it’s certainly not something I’d describe as cold.
The article quotes a number of evangelicals all reinforcing the idea that love is demonstrated through actions rather than experienced via ephemeral emotions. There’s a lot missing about what that means, though. For instance, the Christian view is that love is not self-serving (see Corinthians, above). Love is directed at something. It’s how you get to take care of others. You love your children by feeding, clothing and taking care of them when they’re sick. It can be viewed as drudgery or a great blessing. You love your spouse by meeting their sexual, emotional and physical needs. Again, it can be viewed as drudgery or a great honor. Lutherans refer to the estate of marriage in vocational terms. I would have loved to see this idea, as described here by Gene Edward Veith, included in the article:
The purpose of every vocation is to love and serve our neighbor. God does not need our good works, commented Luther, but our neighbor does. In our vocations we encounter specific neighbors whom we are to love and serve through the work of that calling. Husbands and wives are to love and serve each other; parents love and serve their kids; office and factory workers love and serve their customers; rulers love and serve their subjects; pastors and congregations are to love and serve each other. And God is in it all.
Of course, we also sin in vocation — insisting on being served rather than serving; loving ourselves rather than our neighbors; misusing the gifts and the calling God Himself has given us — we come to Him on Sunday mornings in repentance, hearing God’s Word, being built up in our faith. Whereupon God sends us back into our callings, with all of their trials and tribulations, for that faith to bear fruit in love, service, and sanctification.
The competing vision is of love as a feeling that is its own judge. The heart reigns above all. But who, really, is being served in such an emotion-based scenario other than Sanford? The AP article really hammers home this idea that the Christian view of love is about duty, drudgery and coldness. That’s a deeply flawed take on the Christian view — one that reinforces Sanford’s views as expressed in his rambling press conferences and bizarre interviews.
I salute Breed for tackling this story, though. And I’m honestly unsure who is to blame for the story’s flaws. Is it him for his “Evangelicals in the Mist” approach and his use of a narrow range of sources? Or is it the inadequacy of the sources themselves?
 | Posted at 7:09 am |  Print
| Permalink | Trackback |
Comments (21) |
July 3, 2009, at 7:48 am
“Still, it would be nice to have at least one source argue for the romance inherent in the Christian view of love.”
Wonderful understatement. I know very few married Christians (clergy, theologian, and layperson alike) who wouldn’t jump at the chance to defend God’s design of passion and romance in marriage. Contra Sanford’s inaccurate statement “love is not a feeling”, most would just caution that it’s not only feelings, that our sinful heart must be subordinate to our head (moral/theological convictions like fidelity). The article’s absence of a viewpoint so prevalent in Christendom says far more about the reporter’s lack of resourcefulness (or getting religion) than lack of the view’s availability.
1Corinthians 13 is indeed a popular and relevant “love passage”, but its context refers to love in general amongst all believers and not limited to marriage. For a more thorough treatment of God’s design specifically for romantic love, I’d refer the reporter and anyone else still unconvinced to a quick read of the OT book Song of Solomon.
July 3, 2009, at 11:46 am
The WaPo reference to Shakespearean romance is a bit off, too: Sonnet 116 is clearly cold, in that Catholic and Orthodox and Lutheran way. But isn’t steadfast faithfulness fantastically romantic?
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved
July 3, 2009, at 11:47 am
It’s all emotions. It’s all in the head. The theological map of love is subsequent to what goes on in the head, ie, emotions.
July 3, 2009, at 1:05 pm
Okay, here’s where I offend all the Lutherans
I was reading a quote from Luther (in the context of the Reformers’ opposition to monasticism) and part of it was to do with the vows of celibacy: short version - he and the others thought these were against nature (because we can’t guarantee that we can be chaste of our own effort) and a restriction on the freedom of a Christian. Marriage trumps celibacy, and in Luther’s words “If love should demand that the vow be broken and you were to hold fast to your vow, you would be sinning.”
I’ve seen this attitude regarding the Fr. Cutié becoming Episcopalian and getting married (which he did recently); the Catholics were upset and outraged that he didn’t wait to be laicised, but the Protestants (including some Lutherans) were upholding the ‘vows are false binding on freedom and he’s free to marry whom he likes without getting permission from the Pope’.
Here’s where I get offensive, Lutheran readers:
Is this the root of the “love conquers all” attitude you mention in the stories about Governor Sandford? That, trickling down after the Reformation, the notion that love is the excuse for vow-breaking has come to this: it’s not really adultery if the parties really love one another, and in that case, the marriage vow is a heavy burden and insisting they stick to it is unnatural binding of the conscience?
July 3, 2009, at 1:06 pm
danr, I think most(?) Catholic theologians would agree with Mrs. Sanford that love is not a feeling, but an act of the will
July 3, 2009, at 1:07 pm
As a preacher, I am constantly hammering the very point you just made about love. Love is not a feeling, but a culmination of our behaviors and attitudes toward others. The redefinition of love as “the passions of the heart” is a great example of media bias. To use that definition (which they almost unanimously do) in reporting is to completely disregard what is being taught from the majority of American pulpits.
July 3, 2009, at 1:11 pm
To back up my Luther quote (before I’m accused of putting words in his mouth):
Quoted in “Monk Habits for Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality for Protestants” by Dennis Okholm; reference is to “The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows” in “Luther’s Works”, vol. 44, The Christian in Society, translated by James Atkinson (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1955- ), p. 304.
July 3, 2009, at 2:27 pm
To Alan Breed and others of his, er, breed, unselfish = cold. I blame the Boomers.
July 3, 2009, at 3:14 pm
I just have to say how much I love this line of analyses on Gov Sanford. I couldn’t agree more with Mollie. Also, good point by Chris B about the Boomers. Addlepated is also such a great word for Sanford (and a lot of the Boomer sensibility, in general) as used in an earlier post.
July 3, 2009, at 5:48 pm
It’s a feeling and other important things too.
July 3, 2009, at 7:05 pm
Martha (#5), you could well be right as I’m not Catholic and only moderately familiar with the doctrines. My Protestant view, at least, acknowledges that the different “loves” (brotherly, romantic, and charity/agape) are all accounted for in the Bible. My inner teacher is wondering if you’ve done your homework from my post (#1) and reviewed Song of Solomon?
July 3, 2009, at 8:58 pm
And the Swedenborgian view of love. And the High Anglican view of love.
Recall how Lewis warns us against thinking that “They lived happily ever after” means “They felt for the next sixty years exactly as they did the day they married.”
July 4, 2009, at 3:16 am
As a Catholic, I was taught that love is not just a feeling. It’s not an either/or situation. Sometimes, some days, or some weeks, or even months, the feeling is just not there and the will sees you through.
The guy ought to take a peek at John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. It is anything but cold.
July 4, 2009, at 8:36 pm
Toby and the boys said it well back in the ’90s:
Hey, tell me, haven’t you heard
Luv is a serious word
Hey, I think it’s time ya learned
I don’t care what they say
I don’t care what ya heard
The word luv
Luv is a verb
I know that tmatt agrees with me, being the big fan of CCM that he is.
July 4, 2009, at 8:40 pm
I had a big conversation with a freind about this last year; I think you can move from intellectual/will love to felt love, and that is the real objective. To experience the love God ardently feels for people requires an effort of mind and body but renews itself as we act it out. It’s like smiling can make you happier, only more so: You choose to follow the path of Christ, and his nature is expressed in you, perfecting and expanding your love.
July 5, 2009, at 11:07 am
Cold-blooded indeed…
July 6, 2009, at 12:05 pm
The emotions of this crazy little thing called ‘love’ got me to the point where I was willing to make a commitment. Emotions led me to where I was willing to enter into vows of marriage but my decision to honor my vows cannot be based on emotions – that is an act of will.
July 6, 2009, at 3:34 pm
Martha,
As a Lutheran, I don’t find your Luther critique to be offensive! But I don’t think it is accurate to blame him for the romantic view of love and marriage that emerged a long time after Luther died.
I think Luther’s quote makes more sense in the context of his overall ideas about vocation, which Mollie’s Veith quote captures so nicely. When Luther talked about love, it was almost always the love for neighbor as expressed through vocation, his quote about changing diapers being one of the highest good works of a Christian gets at the kind of love he was talking about.
Luther made a harsh critique of the religious vocations of his time failing to serve the neighbor in love. Therefore, Luther believed that Katie was called by God to serve as a wife and mother and be more of a blessing to her “neighbor” than she could have been while walled up in a convent.
To ascribe to Luther the Sanfordian view of love is way off. But at least you didn’t blame him for the holocaust!
July 6, 2009, at 3:53 pm
Chris B.,
Thanks for the theological reflections of DC Talk on this issue. That cracked me UP!
I’m sure tmatt enjoyed it as well. (Your last line made me laugh out loud.)
July 6, 2009, at 4:03 pm
Martha,
As a Lutheran, your theory didn’t offend me. Although there were many great corrections and benefits that came from the Reformation, I also admit that there were a number of unfortunate unintended consequences that also occurred. It’s not unreasonable that the “love conquers all” mentality may have had the Reformation partly to blame, although I think it played a much more minor role than the Rennaissance mindset that predated and coexisted with it. My recollection of history and historical analysis (albeit limited) is that the pre-eminence of romantic love as the best type of love was well-entrenched before Luther and the other reformers came on the scene. If they were guilty of anything, it might have been introducing a theological “stamp of approval” of the already-existing sentiment with their discussion of Christian freedom.
July 6, 2009, at 4:22 pm
Martha,
To follow up Matt’s point (who must have been posting at the same time as me), what Luther was trying to convey and what people did with Luther’s points later can differ. On a topic I know more about, what Thomas Kuhn said about how science works and what others do with Kuhn’s works can be radically different. (To paraphrase what someone said about Calvin in another post, Kuhn probably wasn’t a Kuhnian.)