Time Immortal

I had to step out of the choir room yesterday during rehearsal when one of the older women in the Alto section began spouting off to Grace and myself about her daughters’ weddings. If I’d been on the ball, I’d have shut her down with a comment about rudeness when she barged into the conversation Grace and I were having about some aspect of the wedding plans, but for whatever reason I didn’t.

(Actually, I know the exact reason: I’m the Vice President of the Chorus, and so I have to be a bit more diplomatic when dealing with other choristers than I otherwise would be in a normal social situation.)

Anyhow, she was going on about how one daughter’s wedding turned into a disaster (thanks for the reassurance!), and then about how the other daughter had decided to elope. To be fair, I can see the merit in eloping…weddings are friggin’ expensive things even when one is trying to be a minimalist about it. And don’t get me started on the logistics!

But I digress. This lady goes on to tell how both the bride and the groom at that second wedding had evidently wanted their respective mothers to be on the altar with them, and how her daughter had chosen “very traditional” vows (as though it were a bad thing). Apparently, enlightened feminist that she is, she pulled her daughter aside just before the wedding and told her that either the vows would have to change or her daughter would have to find someone else to stand with her on the altar — this lady would have no part in her daughter taking a vow to her husband that included the word “obey”.

“We do not ‘obey’,” she stated, matter-of-factly. She then made a throwaway comment about how it might be acceptable if both the husband and wife made the pledge. It’s about that point that I walked away. I really wanted to speak up and issue a good verbal flaying, but…ah, politics. It wouldn’t be appropriate for a choir VP to verbally incinerate a chorister with only thirty seconds left before practise began, so I went and got a drink of water instead. Grace realized I was fuming, though. Not like I can ever hide anything from her in the first place.

If memory serves, this lady who was speaking to us is divorced. I would not confess myself surprised if that is in fact the case.

Let’s leave aside the blistering narcissism that must be necessary to allow one’s personal views to motivate one to actively interfere in another’s life in this way. This lady is, of course, welcome to be as feminist as she wants…but in that case, she ought to be able to respect the decision that her daughter made (and she assured us that it was her daughter, and her daughter alone, who decided on which vows to use), and not let her own views interfere with the wedding planning to that extreme level.

Had I had more time, and had I been in a setting where I could…ah…let me executive role slide a bit, I would have been very tempted to cite a bit of David Warren’s thoughts on marriage vows, and the innate beauty — and, indeed, importance — of the “traditional vows” which this lady so disdained. I’ve discussed Mr. Warren’s reflections before, but it serves to cite some of his words again. Thus:

Our ancestors had the advantage of being reared, mostly, in stable homes, and of inheriting a body of folk wisdom through tradition and custom. They might or might not be learned, but when they received commands, suggestions, aphorisms, and hints from such sources as the Bible, or great literature and art, they could assimilate these into a fabric already taken for granted.Whereas, we “postmoderns” have minds that must usually start from scratch, and thus rarely get anywhere. We are like the child left to teach himself how to tie his shoelaces. Nine in ten would go through life with their shoelaces untied.

That is why we tend to be utterly astounded by old-fashioned assertions of common sense. For the sense is no longer held in common. We are no longer in possession of the obvious bits, that tie the less obvious bits together.

Let me use for my example, to roll eyeballs today, a key nugget of wisdom contained in the old Christian marriage rites. Unambiguously, the man is told to love his wife, and his wife to obey her husband. What an astounding thing to tell a “liberated” woman!

But did you also notice: what an astounding thing to tell a postmodern man!

This is because our idea of love has been reduced through cheap romanticism to a consumer good. It is “something wonderful that just happens”, like everything else delivered to the malls. While it lasts, people stay together, when it goes, they fly apart. Love exists for them, not they for love.

I suspect that the reason that most people who disdain the “traditional vows” disdain them is that they do not understand the poignant significance of them in the first place. Not surprisingly, most of the people I can think of from my own life who hold such disdain are divorced. And those divorces come as no surprise — if a couple cannot grasp the significance of the commitment in its entirety (and the “traditional vows”, however clunky their wording might be, do convey that meaning to the fullest extent), they will likely not last. If they actively disdain that full significance, even unknowingly, then they will likely only accelerate their eventual failure.

The beauty of the traditional vows comes from the fact that they are not “equal”, in the sense that the man and the woman at the altar do not profess identical vows to each other. They are very similar in most respects, but in the most traditional professions they are not completely identical. This is a good thing, since men and women are obviously not identical in every way either.

These differences, the reader should note, go beyond the merely physiological: men and women think in different ways, and place different values on logic and emotion in decision making and in daily life.

One thing that was telling in the way this lady in choir told the story of her first daughter’s disaster of a wedding was the way she mentioned that the bride had stated that the day of the wedding was “her day”. I would hope that none of my children, should I be so blessed as to a) have children and b) have children that will one day get married as well, will ever utter such trite nonsense on their own wedding days. For the wedding day does not belong solely to the bride, nor solely to the groom. Indeed, although it is certainly a day of celebration for and of both the bride and groom, it does not belong to them as a couple either. The wedding day, as all days, belongs only to God, and in fact belongs especially to God, for it is in the Sacrament of Marriage that the kingdom of God is made joyously visible in an especially poignant way, in the mutual self-giving of the married couple to each other.

Notes David Warren:

That is why we might have difficulty with the apparent inequality between men and women suggested by that old-fashioned love/obedience “formula”. Glib minds have trouble processing anything above the atomic level.

For that formula IS unequal. The man is given the harder task. For this is love that is commanded, as inescapable duty, not some slippery romantic love, to be enjoyed for a season. It leaves the man no room for excuses. It hardly permits him to be a tyrant.

Two minds reasonably attuned will reach most decisions by consensus. Yet practically, there will be moments when a decision needs making, and the couple disagree. And the man must make such decisions, not for himself alone. Love commands that he sacrifice himself for his family’s good. Moreover, a loving man will, after thinking things through, side with his wife, if she had the better argument. But crucially, a decision gets made.

Obviously if the husband tells his wife to do something unconscionable — to have an abortion, steal, commit fraud, tell a damaging lie — she cannot say to herself or to God, “I was only following orders.” But that problem won’t arise with a decent man. I think women should avoid marrying indecent ones; and try to win over the indecent ones they have married through sanctity and earnest prayer.

Sometimes unthinking obedience is necessary. An example would be on the deck of the Titanic. The husband tells his wife to get in the lifeboat. She doesn’t want to, would rather drown with him. But it’s a moment when there’s no time to argue, and she gets in the lifeboat by obedience alone.

Now doubling back to where I started, consider the following possibility. No one need tell us to love ourselves, because that comes naturally. It is not to be selfish, that we need to be told. Similarly, a normal woman does not have to be told to love the husband who genuinely loves her. Deep answers deep.

But this is where men and women are different, and again, we postmoderns can’t handle that. A man can be deeply loved, and not “get it”. A woman’s love is a responsive love; and reciprocally, she is quite apt to hate herself when she is hated. Men are not like women in that. The whole mechanism of their self-esteem is different. Which is why they must actually be told to love.

Nor are women naturally obedient. In fact, men are, by nature, more given to obedience than women, which is why they make much better “team players”. They are less sceptical than women, overall. They more easily grant the benefit of the doubt. They are actually more generous in some ways, relevant to the case; though as any woman could tell you, less generous in others.

Glib readers will by now have dismissed Mr. Warren as hopelessly sexist and trapped in a flawed ideology. To do so, however, would be a disservice…not to Mr. Warren, but to the one(s) doing the dismissing. For his writing is not, I think, sexist at all, but rather an honest reflection on a fact that should surprise no one: men and women are different on more and deeper levels than just mere physical characteristics.

And the unspoken implications of his word are profound. Men are, as a general rule, naturally more inclined to obedience, to teamwork, to taking and giving directions easily. A man does not need to be told to obey, typically — he will simply do so when it is right so to do, and it will be an unconscious thing to him to do so. The wise woman, then, should take note: if a man is none of the above things, and does not demonstrate a knack for obedience that is innate in his nature, it is a reasonable conclusion to draw that he is probably not “marriage material” either. Not, at least, until he is able to reform his thinking.

Likewise, women do not need to be told to love — she will simply do so, offering love even at the risk that it will not be reciprocated. It will be for her an unconscious thing to do so. The wise man, then, should take note: if a woman is not so open with her offering of love, and does not demonstrate the innate ability to love without expectation of return, it is a reasonable conclusion to draw that she is probably not “marriage material” either. Not, at least, until she is able to reform her thinking.

(The reader will note that I have formatted the arrangement of the previous two paragraphs almost identically, and there was a reason for this. Re-read both of them, and then test just how post-modern your viewpoint is: if you are a less traditional person, the second paragraph will seem to you to be vastly more sexist than the first. Be forewarned: this condition may impair your ability to understand what follows.)

The flip side of what Mr. Warren is saying is just as wise, and just as true. If a woman is not shown reciprocation for the love she freely offers, it is damaging to her. Indeed, there are few things more damaging to a woman than to know that she is not fully loved by her spouse. She will feel (rightly) unloved, and may come to hate herself, or else may seek the love that is missing elsewhere.

Likewise, if a man is not shown obedience in reciprocation of his own obedience, it is damaging to him. Indeed, there are few things more damaging to a man than the scepticism and devout refusal to obey of his spouse. He will also feel (rightly) unloved, and may come to hate himself, or else may seek the obedience that is missing elsewhere.

The reader would be correct in assuming that built into the word “elsewhere” is the assumption that it is in these deficits that the seeds of adultery may be sown.

The problem that people like this lady ultimately have and create is that, in their quest for what they see as being “respect”, they actually abandon not only the strictures and tenets that would ensure that they would be respected, but they also abandon their understanding of the need to in turn respect those they would have respect them.

Ultimately, a man who will not love his wife as she needs but wants her obedience nonetheless is a hypocrite. But equally so, a woman who will not obey her husband as he needs but wants his love nonetheless is also a hypocrite. In neither case is the one partner respecting the full needs of the other, and that is a shaky foundation on which to base a relationship. How much shakier a foundation is it, then, when the couple can not even make those pledges to each other on the altar, at the moment that their marriage is consecrated before God?

In our received liberal wisdom, and in our culture that has been thoroughly undermined by (among other things) feminist ideology for the last forty or more years, we still command that the man pledge to love his wife when he makes his vows to her. We have not stripped away the man’s obligation in marriage. But we get up in arms — in the extreme! — when even the hint of the notion that the woman might have to profess obedience appears on the horizon, and we have stripped that out of the vows she makes. This creates a disparity which has been well-enough detailed above…and it should come as no surprise, in light of this disparity, that one in three (or more) marriages fail.

(Also: David Warren’s reflections on marriage in light of Valentine’s Day are also worth a read as a follow-up to the article cited above.)