Wendell Berry on Marriage and Community

Here's a quick follow-up to my last post on sex.  Many pit the church's view of sex against the world's view of sex by saying that the church is anti-sex and the world is pro-sex.  As I tried to show in that last post, Christianity is pro-sex and the church should be likewise.  We should be talking about the goodness of sex whenever we talk about it.

If we are going to use dichotomies to talk about this, and I am not sure we should as the issue has too many nuanced to treat purely in terms of dichotomy, I suggest we ought to look at the dichtomy between sex as an end in and of itself and sex as a means to a greater end.  In fact, I think we can and should extend this to marriage in general - is marriage an end in itself or a means to a greater end.

To that end, I ran across the following quote on my friend Byron Borger's blog.  It is from Wendell Berry's book, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community.

Lovers must not, like usurers, live for themselves alone. They must finally turn from their gaze at one another back toward the community. If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other things. They say their vows to the community as much as to one another, and the community gathers around them to hear and to wish them well, on their behalf and its own. It gathers around them because it understands how necessary, how joyful, and how fearful this joining is. These lovers, pledging themselves to one another "until death," are giving themselves away, and they are joined by this as no law or contract could join them. Lovers, then, "die" into their union with one another as a soul "dies" into its union with God. And so here, at the very heart of community life, we find not something to sell as in the public market but this momentous giving. If the community cannot protect this giving, it can protect nothing...

The only thing I would add to that is to mention that my practice when doing pre-marital counseling is to tell couples that their vows are first and foremost to God, and these promises to God transcend the promises to humans.  I do this to add weight to the marital vows.  People are remarkably creative when proposing reasons to not keep their promises to one another - we can always point out a failure in the other party as a rationale for why we don't keep our promises.  If we vow to God things are different - there is never a failure in Him that would justify breaking our vow to Him.

Having said that, marriage (and sex) are about so much more than the individuals who are engaged in these activities.  Married couples have a duty to their communities and God to have the healthiest marriages they can, and oh yeah, the happiest and most fulfilling sex lives too.

Comments

[pgepps]

... and the community needs to support and encourage the marriage, too. It's a reciprocal thing. Members of a Christian marriage are jointly and severally (a) member(s) of Christ's Body; so their relationship is a Body relationship, never an autonomous unit, if there is a functioning local body for them.

If they aren't reminded of that, isn't their church failing?

Why, again, is the US divorce rate so high?

Cheers,
PGE

[DLE]

David,

It appears you're going all "Crunchy" by quoting Wendell Berry. What next? Espousing the benefits of organic food, opposing big business interests that crush the little guy, or praising environmentalists?

Seriously, I think God is doing a work in many Evangelicals by getting them to question a lot of the societal and "culturally Christian" attitudes we've developed on a number of issues. I may not agree with everything Berry writes, but he thinks outside the box and we need more people like him challenging the status quo.

American Christianity has gotten far too status quo for its own good.

[David Wayne]

Peter - yes indeed, I think the church is failing in that regard and I wouldn't say that's the whole reason divorce is so high but the church has bought into individualism in such a way that it contributes to the whole thing.

Dan - crunchy? Well, at least you didn't call me "fruity" or "flaky." I agree with you very much on challenging the status quo. For me the tension is in discerning what needs to be challenged and what is legit.

[DLE]

David,

Think the book "Crunchy Cons" by Rod Dreher. My current series is tracking with that book and you're helping to reinforce my posts.

[Marcos Villa]

.... so stay married for the sake of the community?
Boy! talk about an esoteric description of the eeevilss of individualism and the benefits of commuunity, (commune-unity)
This emphasis on community reminds me of Hillary's Rodham Clinton's book "It Takes a Village"... to raise a child... what is needed is a collectivist, holistic altruism, as I remember history did'nt Russia have a system of holistic (i.e.totalitarian) altruistic commuuunity- communist-unity? that benefitted the community in the village as a whole?
This new emphasis on community is part of "The Communitarian Movement" which aims to create a new society within the shell of the old with the philosophy of the new which is not new philosophy at all, but a very old philosophy, so old that it looks like new. Communitarians claim to represent a "balance between selfish individualism and holistic communism, like a new middle ground. Communitarianism is the political theory that advocates for "New World Order" Now.. most people have not heard of this, where did this lovely. vague, fuzzy, feel good, bipartisan, middle ground philosophy originate?, why should we care what it is?, Because communitarianism is the final phase of Hegelian induced communism, which is World Government. It originated with the founders of communist world empire, it is the foundation for our new Imperial Community Government. It is a published plan and not a conspiracy theory. Communitarians redefined values to mean selfless community service or "volunteer" obligated to the central collective. Please do your homework. It is a very powerful subterfuge. communitarianism is the basis for the "Faith-Based Initiative" With this emphasis on community.. the church is being used as a social tool acclimate the mass population into acceptance on a New Global Community.

[Brad]

for the person who posted the comment comparing berry to world government agendas clearly didn't read berry, what berry proposes is precisely against anything that would look like that. Picture progressive, modern Amish over totalitarianism, except not that exclusively self-contained. You know in someways Berry's proposal looks a lot like ... the community of believers in Acts. The problem with the mindset of the last posting is it is so steeped in political-religious paranoia that it can't think freely, only in prepackaged sound bites. Acts as well as the life of the disciples with Jesus is specifically communitarian. The only way you could not see that is if you're predisposed to disallow any such thought from entering your head. Berry is as refreshing as any author out there.