The other day I was watching a Bollywood film. It was delightful, if sentimental: beautiful blind girl diva falls in love with a handsome tourist guide rogue. It’s the idealized story about men and women.
Reasserters - those who elevate the 1st century view about the primary utility of genital sex – make a few assumptions about romance and attraction, I think. I’d like to examine a few.
A theology that emphasizes genital difference or prioritizes it as crucial to human nature is not distinctively Christian. Paganism places fertility, fecundity, and gendered sexuality as central to the human, and earthly, experience. Isis and Osiris, Sati and Shiva, Hera and Zeus – not to mention those of Babylonian origin – all demonstrate that genital difference is easily divinized.
Attraction and desire are not necessarily holy. If anything, Christians should steer clear of elevating the experience of attraction as being particularly holy. Romance, however, is easily elevated in the culture, and can be found in the way straight people spend on weddings. But a Christian marriage, if it is to be accurate, admits that “attraction” cannot be the crucial part of a marriage. Important? Perhaps. But not all important things are distinctively Christian.
Of course, once we argue that attraction is not crucial to marriage, we further undermine the genitalization of sexuality, because the reason why we intuitively know that particular men and women “fit” is because they are, largely, attracted to each other. Otherwise we would say that any man could marry any woman and it would be holy. Such a belief would be wrong because it undermines the particularity by which God is involved in any relationship.
What should we judge a “Christian” relationship on? Not attraction. Attraction is great: it is stimulating, electrifying, enlivening. But we judge the relationship based on the ability of a couple to live into a promise – to embody a covenant analogous to the relationship we have with God.
What makes a Christian marriage different than other kinds of relationships may be that it is fundamentally based on friendship. But it cannot be romance. Romance you can get without Christ, and without God.
But, Fr Salty, Reasserters have not forgotten the sole positive result of the instituion of arranged marriage: that people can *come to love* one another.
Attraction is *not at the core of their argument. They, like all puritans/iconoclasts/aescetics everywhere disapprove of *anything which makes human beings physically happy (though they are not displeased when people become resigned to misery).
Posted by: Oriscus | Jul 21, 2006 at 10:18 PM
What makes a Christian marriage different than other kinds of relationships may be that it is fundamentally based on friendship. But it cannot be romance. Romance you can get without Christ, and without God.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can't you get friendship without Christ, without God? Does true friendship imply God's presence, even if the presence isn't actively noted by the friends?
Posted by: Tyler Simons | Jul 23, 2006 at 11:54 AM
Its all about the love not romance. If you have love for God and Jesus Christ first and love for your friends and love for your to be spouse or already is. This is good.
God has asked for my wife and I to bring as many as possible to him in Love for him and each other. Please read our website www.cjandrandy.com
In Gods Love
Posted by: Randy | Jul 24, 2006 at 09:39 AM
Tyler, I think true friendship does denote God's presence. I don't think Christianity has a monopoly on friendship, but I think that the emphasis on friendship within the economic unit of the family has some foundation in Augustine.
Posted by: John Wilkins | Jul 24, 2006 at 09:50 AM
Let me remind that heterosexuals do not have a monopoly on friendship in union relationships, indeed in theologizing about same sex relationships, friendship plays pride of place and has a long history starting with Plato.
See the rite my partner and I along with Caelius and others developed. To see the rite, look under Holy Fratrimony: Service of the Presanctified Gifts.
Posted by: *Christopher | Jul 24, 2006 at 06:23 PM
What movie was it? And more importantly, do you understand Hindi? :-)
Posted by: Samuel | Jul 24, 2006 at 06:41 PM
It's not just about attraction, romance or genitalia. It's about fear, homophobia in most cases. Some people fear what makes them uncomfortable, and homosexuality makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Everything else is people trying to justify their fear.
I know a guy who has a phobia of overweight women. He doesn't understand how any guy could be attracted to a large woman, finds the thought and them having sex repulsive, and says he doesn't think they should be allowed to date/marry until they lose weight.
His phobia is irrational but not any more irrational than real homophobia.
Posted by: DanielR | Jul 25, 2006 at 12:29 PM
This article rings true to me. I'm not religious, but at 40, I've been in two long term relationships. If it's all about the goosebumps, the buzz you get when you're with that person, it won't last. When it wears off, you'll look for the buzz elsewhere. But when the romance falls away, you may decide to stay and love that person, and really build a relationship with that person. Doesn't mean the sex isn't good, it's just that's not the sole reason you're with that person now. Also, I like this article because it strikes me a comment to conservative Americans who think hetero relationships are so special and awesome and that God hates homosexuals. That doesn't strike me as a very Christian viewpoint, though they seem to think it is.
Posted by: timmeh_fz3 | Sep 14, 2006 at 02:39 AM