Re: But how can that be?
Submitted by Ray on February 18 1999 at 09:31:58
In reply to But how can that be? Submitted by F.O.D. on February 17 1999 at 07:36:11
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F.O.D., I can't even begin to contentrate on responding to your questions, but I don't want to pass them by now either. So, just some basic stuff! You wrote: What I mean is, the idea of marriage being exclusive I get from Jesus, when he reminds us about divorce "what God has brought together, let man not put asunder". Several comments on this; first, regarding what God has brought together. I'm not ready to equate "what God has brought together" with a union through religious and civil ceremony, contract and vows. I think there are many of the latter without the former. I'm sort of vague in understanding exactly what test to apply to know with 100% certainty what God has and hasn't brought together. I think God can bring people together to make love in casual and recreational sex which lasts 15 minutes or one night! And I think that some exploration of sex and relationships is appropriate. I didn't go through that until about middle age! I really don't expect I'll find many "Christians" who'll agree with me on these opinions! I can hear the shouts of "blasphemy!" A psychologist told a friend of mine that the "normal" person meets 20 people in his or her lifetime with whom he/she is compatible. My father married my mother 8 months after his first wife died, and I was born about 4 years later! I still wonder what his 4 children between the ages of 8 and 20 thought about that at the time! Was my dad unfaithful to their mother? Particularly since the woman he married had been an unwed teenage mother about 13 years previous! So, F.O.D., you were on overload before we began this thread! I'm on overload, too, and don't want to take the time to explain enitrely what I mean. You're probably better off thinking as you were and ignoring what I'm saying. Just a bit more though! Following are some quotes I used in a paper on Human Sexuality to the Evaneglical Lutheran Church in America 3.5 years ago, a paper which no one has noticed to this point! Energy to love is limited Because genuine love involves an extension of oneself, vast amounts of energy are required, and, like it or not, the store of our energy is as limited as the hours of our day. We simply cannot love everyone. (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth, NY: Simon & Shuster, 1978, p. 157) Capacity to love The first obligation of a genuinely loving person will always be to his or her marital and parental relationships. Nonetheless, there are some whose capacity to love is great enough for them to build loving relationships successfully with the family and still have energy left for additional relationships. For these the myth of exclusivity is not only patently false but also represents an unnecessary limitation upon their capacity to give of themselves to others outside their family. It is possible for this limitation to be overcome, but great self-discipline is required in the extension of oneself in order to avoid "spreading oneself too thin." It was to this extraordinarily complex issue (here touched on only in passing) that Joseph Fletcher, the Episcopalian theologian and author of The New Morality, was addressing himself when he reportedly said to a friend of mine, "Free love is an ideal. Unfortunately, it is an ideal of which very few of us are capable." What he meant was that very few of us have a capacity for self-discipline great enough to maintain constructive relationships that are genuinely loving both inside and outside the family. Freedom and discipline are indeed handmaidens; without the discipline of genuine love, freedom is invariably nonloving and destructive. (Ibid., p. 159.) Sorry, F.O.D., if I'm just confusing the issue for you! Scott Peck was referring to polygamous relationships, I believe. I was referring to several other things. Ray |