Love
A couple of weeks ago I read a really interesting article written by a catholic lesbian. It was a very honest and vulnerable account about why, in a world full of Christian churches and denominations that would fully embrace her sexuality and fully endorse her right to practice it, she had refused to leave the catholic church knowing it would never offer her the same. If you want to you can read the full article here; but I want to focus on one point the author raised: the church’s (so-called) preoccupation with marital love.
I remember vividly how aggravating I found it talking to friends who were in relationships or married when I was single. My inner monologue went something like this:
“It’s easy for them to talk about ‘not worrying’ and ‘being patient’ and saying stuff like ‘your time will come and when it does it will be worth the wait’ and ‘blah blah... smug smug... puke!’ But they’re already happy! I just want to be with someone!!”
This is a bit of a caricature but let’s be honest: this is quite familiar to a lot of us! Even when non of our friends are in relationships – and particularly when lots of them are – we all feel that inner yearning for real intimacy, genuine affection, and that person who we can love and make feel special and who loves us and makes us feel special.
Now... I recognise that I’m hardly the most qualified person to launch a full scale critique on this way of thinking. I’ve been* married! I believe in marriage. And I’d very like to be married again some day. And when married I too joined the ranks of smug couples coughing up the same tired, non-advisory clichés to my single friends and to the young people I work with about patience and not worrying etc. But, recognising my own experiential bias, I want to question my own thinking about love. I don’t want to launch into my own revamped Christian dating shpeel about how our identity should be in God and how we can’t properly be in a relationship until we don’t feel like we need to be in a relationship. If you want that there are plenty of books out there: Sex God is a good starting point if that’s what you’re looking for. What I want to do here is respond to the point raised in the article about how Christians can have an unbalanced emphasis of marital love over other forms of relationship and let that challenge my theology.
So let’s begin at the beginning. We have two stories in the Bible about God’s creation of man:
Genesis 1: 27 – God created man in his own image: male and female he created them. After this, God looked at all of his creation and deemed it very God.
Genesis 2: 15-25 – God put the man to work in the Garden and decided it wasn’t God for the man to be alone, so after trialling a few birds and wild animals which were deemed unsuitable helpers, God created a woman from Adam’s rib. They were naked in the garden and felt no shame (and I assume that Adam looked at Eve and thought that she was very good!)
So... 2 different stories. What do they tell us?
The first story – Genesis 1:27 – I think teaches us one of the most fundamental things about human identity. We were created to represent God on earth. So when people look at us and interact with us; see what we do and hear what we say; they are supposed to understand who God is, know what He is like and see what matters to Him. Interestingly, and fundamentally I think, this bearing of God’s image isn’t done by a single person, or a single gender, but by humanity: lots of people, both men and women. God is a community of three: father son and spirit, so it requires a community to represent him as they have to be able to show God-like relationships. And although we refer to Him as a “He”, God is genderless: so both male and female play a part in representing Him. So this verse in Genesis is less about marriage and more about our identity as humans – called to live in Godly relationship with one another, equally, man and woman, representing God on earth. You could say this verse is less about how we love, and more about the fact that God first loved us – and so made us a little lower than the heavenly beings: crowned with Glory and Honour.
The second story – Genesis 2: 15-25 – is a little more complex (there are a whole 9 other verses to interpret!) and is a key passage in how we theologise about marriage. Here we see that God created a woman as a helper for the man. He started with a man, not a woman. And he created the opposite gender as a helper, not the same gender. They were naked together and felt no shame. Interpret this as you will, but keep in mind that whilst many would be prepared to consider this an argument against homosexuality; very few would be prepared to consider it an argument that now we live in the light of the New Covenant we should all be nudists! Despite the fact that, I’d argue this second interpretation is as equally shallow a reading of this particular text as the first...
Adam and Eve are our first Biblical example of a married couple. And their relationship and this story is referred to by Paul and even Jesus when discussing the question of marriage. But whilst this text is clearly pro marriage, and whilst they themselves refer to it, Paul and Jesus present two of the strongest cases for not being preoccupied with marital love and relationships.
Jesus wasn’t married. Fact! And although The Last Temptation of Christ infamously suggested He may have struggled with sexual feelings and had a crush on Mary Magdalene (an idea that, whilst controversial, is perhaps not unrealistic given that Jesus was fully human and had to contend with human desires and temptations – which should come as enormous comfort to every man, woman and pubescent child out there); and although The Da’Vinci Code would like to persuade us, for no readily apparent evidence or reason, to think otherwise: Jesus remained unmarried for his time on earth. So what does this say about the importance of marriage?
Likewise, Paul is an unmarried man, and he teaches a lot more on marriage through his apostolic letters than Jesus is recorded doing through the Gospels. And one particular conclusions of his is particularly striking:
“I wish that all of you were as I am (Single). But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 7: 7, 32-35
So Paul is single, and is condoning singleness as a great way to keep yourself free and fully focussed on God’s service. I suspect He is probably reflecting on His own journey and work, as well as that of Jesus, and thinking that maybe travelling here, there and everywhere is not often possible or ideal in the context of a marriage. Which I’d have to agree with! As a married man, I had to learn the vital importance of making time for my wife and not just throwing all my energy into youth work so that she either got no time with me, or time with a tired, moody mess wanting his own space. I didn’t always get that balance right, but at the times when I got it wrong i’m reminded of the words of a guy called Rikk Watts – a man whose teaching I love and trust: “Don’t sacrifice your family on the alter of ministry – when you’re married, your family becomes your primary ministry.”
It’s not that marriage is bad – it’s good! But Paul (and Rikk) rightly recognise that marriage involves commitment to your spouse. This is good and Godly, but does mean that you have less time and devotion to give to other ministries – like gallivanting around the Mediterranean getting ship wrecked, arrested, flogged, stoned, and imprisoned for the sake of the gospel!
We have to weigh up the fact that Paul is encouraging the church in Corinth to remain single because he believed that Christ’s second coming and the end (and new beginning) of all things was imminent. Equally we could say that Jesus had a limited time to fulfil his ministry in and so marriage for him, like Paul, would have been a distraction. But their lack of marriage still suggests to me a couple of things:
Marriage is good – Godly even. But not necessarily something that we all need or all should pursue.
You can be a complete human being without being married. You don't need to be married to a person of the opposite sex to be an image bearer of God, you need only be in appropriate loving relationships with them – what those appropriate loving relationships look like we’ll consider presently...
Again, I write all this as a married man and I still remember hearing these ideas from married people when I was single and wanting to punch them in the face a little bit. Some of this is cultural. Our culture is obsessed with marital or boyfriend-girlfriend relationships: every chick flick and rom-com out there involves the protagonist finding love and completeness through another person, even shows on Disney pitched at under 10’s portray their leading characters engaged in a constant pursuit of relationship happiness. There’s plenty in UK media at the moment calling attention to the over sexualisation of our youth through the clothing on sale, the role models being presented and the 1 click access to porn, but the media are missing the even deeper issue that we are still driving into people from every angle the idea that if you're single you are lacking, and the only kind of love worth giving and receiving is of a sexual nature.
However, I don't believe nurture can fully be blamed for our desire for love. Some of it is simply nature. There is within us a deep longing for intimacy and community and mutual, open and honest, loving, affectionate and appreciative relationships between ourselves and others. I would even agree with those that argue we were created that way.
But neither Jesus, nor Paul satisfied this natural craving through marriage. Instead they surrounded themselves with good friends and appear to fulfil such yearnings through a community of love that was not based on sexuality but on deep, authentic friendship. Jesus had his disciples, with different levels of intimacy and vulnerability; Paul had his travelling companions who were chosen wisely based on their ability to stand firm with him through thick and thin. We see other biblical examples of this too: Ruth and Naomi (Ruth nearly didn’t re-marry so as not to betray Naomi); David and Jonathan (no – I push back on those that suggest they were in a gay relationship… The same word used to describe how they loved each other is also used to describe how God loves his people!). Monastic communities are founded upon the very idea that the love of a Godly community can provide not a substitute but an equal alternative to marriage that fulfils all of these inner yearnings.
So, should the church be so concerned with marriage? I suppose marriage and sexual union is a big deal in our culture and so we need to have the right structures in place to help people enter into marriage commitments well. But should we not also put people through friendship courses as well as marriage courses? Particularly as there are many people out there who are single, or like our Catholic lesbian friend, who are told by the church they must remain celibate because of their sexual orientation.
I’d suggest we as a church and myself as an individual need to be better at exploring Godly friendships with people. And making that as big a deal as exploring marriage with them. I don’t want my answer to youth who are desperate to fulfil their inner longings for love to be “stay clear of relationships until you’re old enough to commit to marriage... and then get married.” There has to be more than that! Particularly while they are young, and particularly while marriage isn’t even a legal option for them, surely we need to invest time in teaching them how to fulfil their need for love through each other. Of course sex and sexual urges will be part of that exploration – puberty is a hilarious and wonderful thing – and of course marriage will come up too; but surely sowing the value and practice of Godly peer to peer (including guy peer to girl peer – remember we need the opposite sex to be a community that images God!) is an imperative for the future of the Church.
If you have any thoughts on how I can begin to work out this recognition, please let me know! I don't pretend to have the answers but feel suitably challenged to want to find them. I’ll leave the conclusion of all this to the eloquent lady who prompted this challenge in the first place. Her words put it perfectly:
“Friendship was once a form of Christian kinship… It was honored by society, guided by theology, beautified by liturgy. It wasn't a sloppy-seconds consolation prize for people who couldn't get the real love of marriage; it was the form of love experienced and most highly praised by Jesus himself. Renewing this Christian understanding of friendship would help to make the Church a place where people (including gay people) have more opportunities for devoted, honored love—not fewer.”
After all – love is all we need!
* At the time of originally writing this I was newly married. Since then I have gotten divorced. I updated the language of this blog to reflect the change in circumstances but the rest of the content remains the same as it was when first written in 2013.
