Love/Marriage
Richard R. Crocker
Rollins Chapel, Dartmouth College
April 21, 2013
Genesis 2:18-25
Last week I spoke about kindness as a
chief component of a good life. This week I want to talk about a related
virtue, an essential part of the good life, which is love, and especially
marriage. Love is an essential part of the good life – perhaps the essential
part, and marriage is one of its truest expressions.
I mentioned
last week that, during my forty years as a chaplain/teacher/dean/counselor, I
have frequently been asked what one should look for in a life partner. I
replied “kindness.” One of you accosted me after chapel and expressed amazement
that I had been asked that question at all, much less that I had been asked it
frequently. This person stated that such a question (about choosing life
partner) was not on the minds of college students during this generation.
Hmmm, I
thought. Maybe things have changed. It is certainly true that I do not
perform as many weddings as I used to. It is also true that dating is almost
taboo in college these days, while “hooking up’ seems to have been normalized.
Nevertheless, I stand by my assertion, slightly revised, to say that, during
the forty years of my ministry, thoughtful young people have often asked me
what quality they should look for in choosing a life partner, and I stand by
the answer: Kindness. Beauty, brains, and wealth are appealing but not enduring,
while the character trait of kindness is the key to a happy relationship.
Recently Susan
Paton, a 1977 graduate of Princeton and the mother of two current Princeton
students, created quite a stir by her article in the Princeton newspaper telling
Princeton women that one of the chief parts of their Princeton education should
be choosing a mate. She wrote: “You will never again be surrounded by this
concentration of men who will be worthy of you.”[1]
This argument has drawn understandable criticism from many – but it is still
true, isn’t it, that many of us do find our life partners during the college
years.
I thought I
should begin this meditation by going back to the beginning, to the Garden of
Eden, when, according to the story, God created Adam (man), and then, seeing Adam’s
essential loneliness, created Eve (woman) by taking a rib from the man and
making a woman. Now, please remember
that this is a story – a profound and important story, but a story. It is not
history and not biology. Those who literalize the story are missing the point.
I remember that when I learned this story as a child in Sunday school I was
told that someone (a woman), somewhere in the world had my rib, and it was my
task to find her. This was not helpful.
But the essential point is profoundly true, because this story gives us the
best definition of love that I know. It is this: love is a connection that
alleviates loneliness.
A connection
that alleviates loneliness. The ancient story in Genesis says that God first
brought all the animals to Adam to see what he would name them. That is cute,
but also profound, because, for many people, their connection to a pet, to an
animal, is their chief antidote to loneliness. Some people love their pets more
than they love anything or anyone else. This is true. But the story says that connections with animals were not enough for
Adam. He needed another human connection, an intimacy so profound that the two
shared their very nature. And so Eve was created from Adam’s own flesh, as a true
companion, the essential companion, to alleviate loneliness. Now I am aware
that this story is offensive to some people, but it is the story, and its
essential point is profound. There is no feeling so miserable as loneliness.
Remember how you felt when you first arrived at Dartmouth? Remember how
desperately you sought friends, or at least a friend? And then remember how much better you felt
when you found one? Remember, even now, how difficult it is for some people to
go to commons unless they know they will find someone there to eat with?
Friends are
important to the good life. Indeed they are. But even if we make life-long
friends, they will not be with us every moment. They will not share our daily
successes and failure. They will be integral parts of our family on a daily and
perpetual basis. They will go their way and we will go ours. We will not share
our lives completely.
So most of
us desire and need a lifepartner --- not
a one night stand. Sex is the biological drive that fuels our search, but it is
only the fuel, not the essence. And so
it is that marriage has evolved as the relationship in society that many people
find essential to the good life.
I say many,
not all. Let us be aware that the forms
of marriage have been varied. Plural marriage was common in the ancient world,
and serial monogamy is common in the present one. Marriage between a man and a
woman has been, in the western tradition, the only legitimate form of marriage
for millennia, but same-sex life-long partnerships, though not always recognized,
have always existed. Now, in our society, many more people recognize that
same-sex relationships can have the same sacred legitimacy as heterosexual
ones, but this reality is very disturbing to some people who are more traditional
in their ideas. They sometimes cite the
Genesis story: you have heard them say, I am sure: God created Adam and Eve,
not Adam and Steve. And they point to the words of Jesus himself, when he said,
in reply to a question about whether divorce is permitted: “Have you not read
that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and
said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his mother and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall be one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:3-6)
This passage
both reflects and establishes a very traditional view of marriage. But note
that Jesus used the words in relation to a question about divorce. Just as we
have come to understand that divorce is sometimes necessary (though always
painful), so we may also say that the gender specificity in Jesus‘ words is not
the main point; rather, the devoted union of two human beings is.
What can I
say to you about this? My voice is only one of many. The Christian church is
quite divided on questions of gender, but I hope that it is united in its
understanding of God’s love. I can only say this: Love is the connection that
alleviates loneliness. Most of us seek and need a human connection that will
endure for our whole life-long, and that will include, for many, the nurture of
children. Such a relationship, when it is founded upon mutual kindness, and
directed toward increasing the amount of kindness in the world, is one of the
greatest blessings of a good life.
[1] An
Alumna’s Advice for the Young Women of Princeton: Marry My Son” .
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/30
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