We always marry the wrong person.

This is sort of a "Who said it better?" Alain de Botton or Tim Keller. I just saw de Botton's explanation of why we will marry the wrong person in the New York Times. De Botton is a gracious-humanist philosopher and author, and one of my favorite atheists. The piece is quite good and his argument convincing, even if I've heard it before.

When I read the title of the essay, I immediately thought of my favorite quote about marriage by Duke theologian, Stanley Hauerwas: "we always marry the wrong person." Tim Keller quoted Hauweras in his fantastic book about marriage several years ago, and in his short essay on marriage and compatibility in 2012. In fact, De Botton's piece sounds a lot like Keller's piece, but while they both say some of the same things, I think one of them casts a more hopeful image of marriage. 

De Botton's piece has a lot of practical wisdom. Underlying the good advice is de Botton's core argument: that we have simply employed the wrong philosophy when it comes to thinking about compatibility and marriage.

For the last 250 years, de Botton argues, we have been slaves to Romanticism—a philosophical view of marriage that kind of puts our reason on the back burner and seeks to cover our relationships with emotions of the fluttering-heart and sweaty-palm variety. The more of these emotions we feel, the more compatibility we are supposed to have with our partner. But anybody that's been in a relationship knows how fickle and fleeting these emotions can be.

When it comes to marriage compatibility, de Botton charges that we set aside the critical thinking that we employ in virtually every other sphere of life, and maintain an overly romanticized view of compatibility. Tim Keller makes a similar observation. And both would agree that this overly Romanticized view of marriage has lead to immeasurable misery. De Botton and Keller recommend that we temper this romantic impulse by recasting our vision of marriage. But their visions differ. 

De Botton's solution is to "swap the Romantic view for the tragic" which he hopes will orient our marriage expectations to reality. He claims that by adopting a philosophy of pessimism, we will deal better with the inevitable downpour of disappointments that occur when two flawed humans marry. And he is right. We do need to enter marriage with an expectation that our spouses will disappoint us, and more importantly, that we will disappoint them... over and over and over again.

But gosh, telling our selves to simply expect the worst seems like a downer. And what are we to do with all those feels we get when we watch Hugh Grant and Renee Zelwigger movies? Do we want a life without romance? Does it really have to be an either or?

There's an old joke that asks, "What's the difference between a pessimist and optimist?" "The optimist is frequently disappointed and the pessimist is pleasantly surprised. Is our best hope for marriage that every once in while our spouse may do something to make us happy?  

Keller does not ask us adopt a philosophy of frequent disappointment and pleasant surprise. The Christian view of marriage is far more hopeful than Pessimism, and vastly more realistic than Romanticism. And a Christian marriage is not just about getting over compatibility problems by adopting a philosophy that encourages tolerance of another's faults. A Christian marriage has a purpose and a trajectory. Married Christians are journeying toward something.  

The key difference between de Botton and Keller is that the source of our disappointments in marriage are subtly different. De Botton would agree with Keller that we are selfish, neurotic, and immature beings, and that marriage has an uncanny way of amplifying that. But Keller doesn't just attribute that behavior to psychological problems. According to Keller (and the bible), it's a supernatural problem—sin. And Christians are supposed to be especially aware of sin both in others, but more importantly, in themselves.

We're fundamentally spiritually broken. It's the reason why our relationships both with God and humans are so dang hard and full of let downs. So Christians who are steeped in the doctrine of sin, or said another way, a rich tradition of looking critically at themselves, should be better able to understand their own shortcomings and have deep compassion for others whose shortcomings we all share.  

But it doesn't end with a philosophy of pessimism and tolerance. Keller claims that marriage is wonderful, beautiful, and full of love and romance. How? It comes down to the main message of the Christian faith, which is this: we are more selfish and flawed in ourselves than we can probably ever realize without having a nervous breakdown, but we are also more loved, accepted, and fully known than we could ever hope for. This paradox is what Christians are reminded of when they look at the cross. God himself suffered humiliation and death to demonstrate and extend His self-sacrificial love for human beings. But how does that apply to marriage?

In marriage, as in all of life, Christians look to Jesus as a model and example of what it means to be truly human. And that means laying down our lives for others, especially our spouses—both in big ways and little ways. Okay, I'm going to quote another non-Christian here, but I think the author David Foster Wallace got the gist of this when he said, 

"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom."

For Christians, when they set aside their petty selfishness and serve their spouses self-sacrificially, it reflects the divine act of love at the center of the universe. Marriage reveals our innate shortcomings and enables us confront them, thereby freeing us to love in deeper and more meaningful ways. When both partners are committed to this in marriage, it enables couples to help in their spouses sanctification (a spiritual term for becoming better people). Or as Foster Wallace would say, becoming more free. Free from what? Our constraining, relationship destroying, self-centered nature (sin). This enables us to truly love our spouses for their sake, not ours. Now doesn't that sound better than just having low expectations so we can tolerate our spouses? 

I love de Botton's point and his clear thinking, but I think Keller says it best.

Oh yeah, here's the full Hauerwas quote: 

"Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become "whole" and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.

We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married."

 

"In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place."

“It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

                                                                                                                                                     -Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Does the American church deserve to die?

Jake Meador writes here that the American church should die because a bunch of self-described religious-right wingers are endorsing Donald Trump. I get his criticism of these folks. It seems that some politically involved Christians are being forced to make a choice between virtue and political power, and many are choosing to maintain access to that power. And that's pretty gross. But I'm not as surprised as Mr. Meador. Rather, it sort of fits with their normal-Christian-right shtick that we've seen for the last 30 years. But are these folks representing the American church? I don't think so.

So if these folks aren't representative of the American church, then I can't agree with Mr. Meador that the American church deserves to die. Now if Russell Moore, Eugene Peterson, and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops endorse Trump, then yeah, bite the dust American church!

The ugly face of the Republican Party

"The face that is emerging for the GOP is the ugly face we have always been accused of having—misogynistic, racist, and gratuitously authoritarian. If we assent to this, how can we still consider ourselves the flag bearers of the attempt to harmonize traditional accounts of virtue and the political life?"

This is a great line from a thoughtful piece by Ashleen Menchaca-Bagnulo. Since aligning myself with so-called conservatives on issues like limited government, civil liberties (sometimes), and the connection between virtue and public service, I've found many reasons to cringe over the last 10 or 12 years. But this Trump phenomenon makes me embarrassed to be a registered Republican. 

Embarrassed because I always want to be in dialogue with people that I disagree with. Even Alabama fans. But supporting Trump shuts down that dialogue, because Trump is not interested in dialogue. To agree with Trump, you implicitly agree with his name-calling and bullying. And nothing shuts down dialogue like ad hominem.