We Is the Reward for Doing God's Will – Part II
Me is retribution for doing Lucifer's will
This is the second of a two-part series on relationships that contrast cultural vs. Biblical worldviews.
Last week, I wrote about my pathetic experience dating in a digital world. Part One of this series may be read here. The impetus for sharing my less than flattering story on the 50-year old dating scene was a Free Press article by Olivia Reingold’s titled, The Dating Pool Dropouts. In this article, the author discusses the current dating environment mostly from men’s perspective. What struck me was not the shallowness of people in the dating pool but the ramification of dateless societies. This excerpt illustrates that point:
The U.S. marriage rate is the lowest it’s been in over a century, with a quarter of 40-year-olds having never married (in 1980, only 6 percent of adults fell into that camp). It’s a trend that continues even though research shows married people are happier.
Americans today “discourage commitment now,” says Steven Mosher, the lead demographer at the Population Research Institute. “The expectation 50 years ago was that everyone would eventually get married and have children. Now, that expectation is gone.”
Already, an increasing number of women are going it alone as mothers, freezing their eggs and using sperm donors to procreate. At some point in the future, Mosher says the family— “the fundamental unit of society”—could completely break down. “We’re going to have children born from sperm donors, with no fathers, eggs and embryos frozen suspended indefinitely until someone wants to add a child to her life.
“This is not a happy future for most of humanity.”
Even today, after my hectic days as a single parent have passed, people laude my accomplishment of raising three children without a mate. These accolades come more from women then men, as I believe the fairer sex has had far more experience in the realm of single parenthood. The cliché of the absent father, abandoning his family for his “soulmate” secretary still happens in in our modern Western world and it affects women more than men. Although the single-parent achievement sentiment was politely acknowledged, it was flat because I always felt that something was missing. Being a single father and raising three children on my own was not part of my master plan of male empowerment, it was merely a result of my poor decision making. (Sobriety taught me one thing - learned I made poor decisions when I drank.)
The complements on my single parenthood felt hollow because I knew I was incomplete. The hole in my existence could not be filled through parenting nor could it be filled through my career. The feeling of incompleteness could not even be filled by a church full of loving and supportive members. That is because something is bigger at play in the meaning of our lives. That is, we are purposed by our Maker to serve a higher calling than ourselves. That service starts when two are joined together in His name.
If all this relationship talk “in God’s name” is uncomfortable, look at it from Aristotle’s point of view. In Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics, he talks about three types of friendship. The first type is friendships of utility. These are superficial personal exchanges that exist within convenient close interactions between two people and fade the moment the exchange is complete. In the modern hook-up culture, Tinder has monetized this perpetual “swipe right” friends of convenience market.
The second type of friendship in Aristotle’s work on ethics is friendships of pleasure. These friendships grow out of shared interests and last as long as those interests’ alien. However, friendships of pleasure are fickle and easily dumped when a new source of pleasure arises (cue the secretary scenario.) Most of the on-line daters fall into this camp. Their ego has them believe they are looking for a true partner, though their “666 rule” or “Barbie doll figure” dating requirements paint an entirely different picture. Friendships of pleasure is what keeps the on-line dating apps humming. Finding true love is bad for business, and those lucky few that do fall off the apps as subscribers.
Aristotle’s third type of friendship is friends of virtue. These are friendships built on the notion that friends grow stronger together in and for a good greater than themselves. In simple terms, friendships of virtue wish their friend good will apart from themselves. In the world of addiction and recovery, these are the friends who continue to support a recovering addict, not just in the good times but also during the setbacks. There seems to be no dating app geared towards linking friendships of virtue. Perhaps it is because people seeking friends of virtue are such a minority in the dating world. Also, those relationships need to develop over long periods of time, assuring that there is no financial upside to creating a dating app of this sort.
To summarize Aristotle’s notions on friendship in the simplest terms, friends of utility stare passed each other. Friends of pleasure stare into each other’s eyes. And friends of virtue stare in the same direction. Mathematically speaking, when adding together the first two types of friendship, it never yields a number greater than two. In the case of friendships of utility, I am not sure even sure it adds up to one. But relationships bound by virtue, or for unions seeking His blessing, the result always equals three or more. As friends gathered in virtue always extends beyond the two selves and serves a good far greater than themselves.
Healthy, vibrant, and long-lasting societies foster Aristotle’s friendships of virtue. Strong religious organizations promote marriages as well because heathy families’ output is always greater than their whole. Olivia Reingold is correct to point out that society suffers when 25% of 40-year-olds never marry. A society that is not united in the Beauty of God’s creation and God’s will for us will always seek self-interest and self-indulgence. And, in the twenty-first century, we have multiple apps that feed those desires.
Recently, I was fortunate to be a guest at a Jewish wedding. The young couple, contemporaries of my children, were married in the Jewish tradition. The service was performed in Yiddish, with English (thankfully) translations. What struck me as significant was the symbolism of uniting this young couple outside, under a Chupa. The canopy held up by four poles forms a chamber with four oversized doorways, one on each side. This, according to ancient tradition, allowed guests to arrive to support the marriage from all four directions. When a bride and groom are forming the foundation of their future life, they do so under the canopy, symbolizing their commitment to build a household that mirrors this tradition of goodness and kindness. The uniting under the canopy with God created a number greater then two and according to rabbinic tradition, multiplies as stars in the heavens and sand on the seashore. I felt honored to be invited to support this young couple by approaching via one of the four doors. It was also reassuring to see that not all is lost in the “me” culture.
The “not a happy future for most of humanity” that Ms. Reingold’s article alludes to is a direct reflection of ignoring this disputed fact. Modern women building their on-line dating persona of a larger than life accomplished professional, with soft-filtered and highly edited photos looking for their perfect “666 rule” mate is not looking for a partner to share in a greater purpose but is merely looking for a “beau” to service her. Same too, for the “photo-shopped” male who has placed the parameters so narrow on his “ideal” mate, that even the folks at Mattel could not create a doll that anatomically met his criteria. One cannot help but wonder what type of personality would respond to either of these highly selective dating app search requirements?
Money does not buy this type of friendship either. Even unmarried billionaire vigilantes, like Elon Musk and Bruce Wayne, who use their wealth to fight censorship and wicked crime in a dark and soulless world, cannot excel beyond their oneness. Fulfilling God’s desire for us defies mathematics, as one plus one equals two in the secular dating world but one plus one in a partnership with God is greater then the three in that union and resulting happiness far exceeds the number two as well.
What was missing in my life all those crazy running around single parent days was “we.” The “me” nature of modern dating, that is the self-centered and ego driven search engine requirements designed to fulfill a shopping bag full of superficial attributes dating scene, misses the point of finding a true partner. In Genesis, when God gave Adam a partner, He didn’t give him a “beer buddy,” someone hang out to watch TV and tell fart jokes with, He gave him a mate. From the beginning, the strength in partnerships always exceeded the one and this was by Divine design.
We should be weary of any actions that do not lead toward fulfilling sacred relationships. For there is one who is jealous of the Father, and he desires all to follow him. The lord of darkness would have us believe that happiness resides in “me.” What is playing out in society is truly a numbers game. If people who are joined by “we” represent a number greater than their whole, then the more “we’s” we have the more our culture is secure by Divine provenance. If, however, the secular “me” in relationship forming continues to expand, the numbers favor the lessor being. Lucifer is playing the long ball and is gathering his team. Every separation, every “go it alone” parent and every “never marred” individual tips the scale away from God’ design. At best in the “me” world, one only equals one. And, in our current dating culture, the dark forces of secularism are stacking up way too many “one’s.” Biblical history informs us that when this “tipping the scales towards me” occurs, the resulting Judgement floods the earth.