Free Download of Saint Augustine's Confessions

The Legitimacy of Eros

Or, Fearing Romantic Love

I am in agreement with the modern courtship movement’s rejection of “disposable relationships” as my own wonderful girlfriend—whom I adore—refers to the popular dating system we are all familiar with.  However, within this movement there exists (as I perceive it) a sort of anti-romanticism, which I find troubling.  It’s as if eros is itself an evil.  “Emotions are dangerous things!  Guard your heart!” etcetera ad nauseam.  Ironically enough, I find romantic love most often condemned with a verse from the very Song of Songs (2:7 specifically), employing that oh-so-wonderful my-verse-trumps-yours tactic while overlooking the passion between the lovers, and the archetypal romantic love of Christ and his future bride.

What I find troubling about this anti-romanticism is what it consideres romantic love to necessarily be: something consuming—something burning rather than growing.  And thus, it must be safely contained and confined before it can be activated, lest it spread out of control.  But this is a corruption of eros, not eros itself.  Romantic love when pursued to its natural and proper end does not lead to the same fate as Guinevere or Faust.  I can only speak for myself, but most disastrous relationships I’ve witnessed do not follow the path of Romeo and Juliet or Anna Karenina—rather, they follow a much more mundane path of hook-ups, break-ups, and divorce.  Selfishness, not romance, is their downfall. 

Romantic love is not something to be feared and legislated, but cultivated, maintained, and rightly ordered.  It must grow, in the words of Wendell Berry, like a tree and not a forest fire.  The danger of the selfish Lydia Bennet style relationship is to burn out; the danger of the pragmatic Charlotte Lucas style relationship is for love to never grow.

The danger of the courtship movement, then, is to foster exactly what it was trying to avoid:  cheap, perfunctory relationships, wherein the individuals are more concerned with what one can get rather than for each other (i.e. St. John from Jane Eyre).    

Relationships without love… it can take the form of a college hook-up or a cold courtship; but it is an evil in either case.

Until next time,

-Shane

P.S. This isn't a slam on Josh Harris, as I believe he actually spoke out against a legalistic approach to courtship and maintained the importance of relationships.

Reading Scripture like Shakespeare…

Or, why the opinions of old, dead Christians actually matter.

"You are a very fine fellow," he said. "You can believe in a sanity which is not merely your sanity.”  --From The Man Who Was Thursday

When an individual endeavors to read Shakespeare, he would be wise to seek the guidance of Shakespearean scholars.  If one merely enjoyed the immortal bard, then he might be content to simply wander through the passages by himself, delighting in the stories, but seeking no further study of the author.  This may be excusable for casual reading, but not for serious study.  Indeed, one would be considered foolish not to explore and defer to the long standing tradition of scholarship; the very act of deference is one of humility—it is a way of saying that we know less than our forebears and wish them to bequeath their knowledge to us.  Why, then, do we so often read Scripture like it’s pleasure reading… like it’s “private”?

Consider the Christian who solitarily opens up his Bible in his study and comes to a personal conclusion on a matter of doctrine which is wholly in opposition to traditional orthodoxy.  Naturally, he thinks it right to study to show himself approved.  I do not doubt his sincerity; I do, however, doubt his humility.  He has, in that moment, assumed that his own private interpretation is superior to that of every Christian before him.

With such a vast weight of tradition behind us—the democracy of the dead—we should, at least, be slow to accept the insights and practices of our own era above a far more timeless and transcendent tradition (such as infant baptism, mass, etc.)

Holding to that tradition does not mean abandoning the authority of scripture.  Rather, it means deferring our own private interpretation of it to long dead Christians…  It is to believe in a sanity and reality that is not merely our own.

Until next time,
-Shane

Found this article from the band "Cold War Kids"...

"The next real literary 'rebels' in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal:shock disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today's risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to riskthe yawn, rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the 'Oh how banal.' To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. " DFW

A sonnet of earth...

Child of Dust

Dear prodigal you are my son and I
Supplied you not your spirit, but your shape.
All Eden's wealth arrayed before your eyes;
I fathomed not you wanted to escape.

And though I only ever gave you love,
Like every child you've chosen to rebel.
Uprooted flow'rs and filled the holes with blood;
Ask not for whom they toll, the solemn bells.

A child of dust, to mother now return;
For every seed must die before it grows.
And though above the world may toil and turn,
No prying spade will find you here below.

Now safe beneath their wisdom and their feet
Here I will teach you truly how to sleep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKTpMofVxAk