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.