Your Cheatin’ Heart

Actually, this post has nothing to do with Hank Williams (Sr. of course, while turning one song into a 20 year career with Monday Night Football is impressive in its way on Jr.’s part, Hank Sr.’s music still holds up today in contrast to Jr.s’ forgettable 1980s country-schlock). What follows is a longish, rambling treatment of why adultery is sinful that I wrote one night when unable to sleep. Actually it doesn’t have all that much to do with adultery either, it is rather a back-door entry into a discussion of relationships (marriage specifically, but really any relationship, erotic or not, should take and participate in suitable degree with this form for the Christian). Any obscurity in it is hopefully explained by how late in the night it was written, but I have no real interest in editing it here. Also there is a bit in there about marriage necessarily producing children and the inability for the adulterous relationship to do likewise. This should not be taken too literally - although there is perhaps some deficiency in a marriage that does not eventually desire children (see Europe) – but is emblematic of the necessity of the relationship to go beyond itself, be fruitful, and not become its own end. Again, this comes from a little notebook I keep and wasn’t originally intended for blogging – think Pascal’s Pensées, except less worthwhile. Also the Paolo and Francesca mentioned are from the first circle of Dante’s Hell and my thoughts here probably draw more than I realize on the notes from Dorothy L. Sayers’ translation of the Comedy and in turn from both my own and her reading of Charles Williams’ The Figure of Beatrice.
Why is adultery sinful: that is, what makes the adulterous relationship different from the marital? Lack of acceptance by the community. Adultery cares nothing for the community at large, does not seek its acceptance, but draws the sphere down to only two. “And the two shall become one flesh.” Without the community, the relationship is cut off from all others; Paolo and Francesca spinning alone for eternity. The relationship becomes an end in itself, neither regarding God or the community for its context or continuance it collapses into itself, into self-love, the mutual gratification of erotic love. It does not seek its own perfection; it seeks only its own gratification. By refusing to be itself publicly (eros expressed in and supported by the community in marriage) it may also cease to be itself privately, the somewhat tenuous bonds of eros failing, unsupported by familial love and refusing to seek perfection in agape. Christian marriage places itself in its correct orientation to God and fellow man. Adultery, precisely because it refuses to place itself in any greater context is unable to seek any end other than itself and thus can grow into solipsistic self-determination – when the other partner no longer meets my needs, I end it. Adultery is unable to forget itself because it has already declared itself to be all that matters. Thus paralyzed, it must continually reaffirm itself, take stock of itself against itself, and justify its own existence by its effects. As it only exists so far as the two individuals will for it to, and its paralyzing self-affirmation stagnates itself (such a relationship can have no children, no other objects of love, it begets nothing) the adulterous relationship must increasingly seek its validation in the effects on the individual rather than on the other. And the one shall become two. Marriage may be perfected, beget (and so forget itself as an end) and create a real union (two as one flesh) as the individual no longer seeks its telos in oneself or in the relationship (which necessarily resides in oneself) but empties oneself and looks not only to one’s own interest, but the interest of others and so shares in the mind of Christ, the Bridegroom.
Hopefully that was helpful as a preliminary foray into this subject, sketching out in broad strokes the trajectory I think we should follow. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the allusion to Philippians 2 in the last sentence, as the Scripture it points to is much more important, has much more to say on the subject than anything written here. Also, I would point you to an essay by C.S. Lewis called “We Have No ‘Right to Happiness’” that can be found, if nowhere else, among the essays collected in God in the Dock. While I only read it for the first time this morning and didn’t incorporate any of it into what has been written here, I found it to be good, useful thinking on this subject coming from a different angle.
– As a site note, I realize I have not been posting much lately. When the internet is not so readily available, it makes me more discriminating in the things I think merit posting. This may not necessarily increase the quality of my posts, but it certainly does decrease their quantity. I will try and make a note of new postings on facebook from here on out, unless they become somewhat regular again.

Fun with Emperor Marcus Aurelius

Lately before bed I have been reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius who was the last in the line of so-called “good Emperors” of Rome in the second century.  They were primarily called good because they really did appear so when put in relief against those that followed.  Marcus Aurelius’ son, the aptly named Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Gladiator) proceeded to flush a lot of the good the previous Emperors had done down, well, the commode.  But that’s not the reason I’m reading the Meditations, and the reason I’m reading the Meditations is not the reason I am posting this.  Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic philosopher on the side, and I was interested from a historical standpoint in finding out more about Stoicism.  Turns out it’s near-Christian ethics plus solipsism, making it the perfect philosophy for any occasion from emperors who want to feel good about their isolation at the top to Southern planters that felt justified in enslaving their fellow men because they convinced themselves that their paternalistic care for them really did improve their lives.  Like Christianity, Stoicism commands love for neighbor, but not in order that the neighbor be loved or because they are bearers of the Divine Image, but because the Stoic is the sort of man who loves his neighbor; the object of the love is necessary only so far as it (and the other person can hardly be really conceived as other than “it”, only the self matters, has interiority) allows the self to manifest its love and so keep with the “spark of divinity” within itself. 

But this is not the reason I am posting this.  The reason I am posting it is because Marcus Aurelius says some pretty funny, strange things.  To really see how strange these two meditations I am going to post are, it is necessary to see them in light of the rest of his meditations.  Here is a typical example: “Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man, to do steadily what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and a feeling of affection, freedom, and justice.” (Incidentally, this meditation is the one quoted to Binx Bolling in Walker Percy’s wonderful novel, The Moviegoer, by his aunt who is representative of Old South Stoicism.)  In contrast to that, the following seems almost intentionally comic, although it is the emperor’s complete seriousness that in the end makes it even funnier “Are you irritated with one whose arm-pits smell? Are you angry with one whose mouth has a foul odor? What good will your anger do you? He has this mouth, he has these arm-pits.  Such emanations must come from such things. “But the man has reason,” you will say, “and he could, if he took pains, discover wherein he offends.”  I wish you well of your discovery.  Now you too have reason; by your rational faculty, stir up his rational faculty; show him his fault, admonish him.  For if he listens, you will cure him, and have no need of anger – you are not a ranter or a whore.”

The final passage I will post from the Meditations is, admittedly not quite so funny in my mind as the last, but it is a strange, melodramatic extension of everyone’s mother’s advice, “If you keep making that face, it will freeze that way.” From the seventh book of his meditations, “A scowling look is quite unnatural. When one often assumes it, the result is that all one’s comeliness fades and is at last so completely extinguished that it cannot again be lighted up at all.  Look to conclude from this that scowls are contrary to reason.  For if all knowledge of doing wrong is lost, what reason is there for living any longer?”

So there you have it: Don’t get mad at folks that smell bad and frowny faces make life not worth living.  Thanks Emperor Marcus Aurelius!