Letters to My Kids: Your Baptism and… Ascension Day

Blessed Ascension Day!

It’s been 40 days since Christ overcame death on Easter morning. Scripture tells us that it was on this day that he ascended into the presence of his father and sat down at his right hand. There are all sorts of important things to say about that amazing event, but I hope you remember one in particular. Today is about who you truly are as a Son of Adam and Daughter of Eve.

God created men and women to rule over creation in his stead. That is what the Kingdom of God means: creation ruled by God through people. But we never matured into the sort of creature that could do that faithfully. In fact we went the other way. The baby who was born of the Virgin Mary was God’s way of making sure that we would share in the glorious calling, which he had planned for us, and which we had rejected.

Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men. He became what God first dreamed of when he first thought ‘man.’ Jesus was truly human because he fully and faithfully reflected the god in whose image he was made.

All men and women wish to be godlike. That is part of our humanity. Men and women seek to rule because that it what we were made to do, but we are idolaters. We don’t understand what God is really like. We think of him in terms of self-interest and violent power over others. And so men and women step on others in an attempt to be godlike. We do this on the battlefield; but we do it at school, at home… even at church, too. Jesus knew the Father as no one else could have, and he knew that mankind had it all wrong. He offered another vision of’ humanity’ and ‘god.’

Fallen men- both religious and secular- threw their common vision of human glory up against his, and they killed him; or rather he lay down his life. Of course this was his greatest ‘test’ and victory- the way in which he carried the sins of his people-and their enemies- as if they were his own. To see Jesus on the cross was to see a true reflection of the God who made him. This is what it means to be truly human. This is what it means to be godly.

We know that he got it right- both the ‘God’ and ‘Man’ bit-because God himself raised Jesus from the dead. Rome and Israel gave their performance of ‘human.’ Jesus gave his contradictory one. When they were done God cast his vote: ‘Jesus,’ he said ‘Bravo!’ He announced this by raising Jesus to the life of the Age to Come on Easter morning. Those who made their claim by putting him in the grave… well, they’re still in the grave.

God finally had the human ruler that he had wished for, and that is what today is about. Christ’s reward- his vindication- didn’t stop with the resurrection. God would give to him all that he desired for humanity. A human being would rule over creation.

According to the story of our people, the first man and woman were run out of the garden, which they were given to rule over, and warrior cherubim blocked them from returning. Men and women cowered and fled from the angels flaming swords, but on this day….

…. A human- a man- walked up the stairway which leads to the throne of God. He walked past all of creation and its creatures, and they each bowed. Past buzzing insects, birds and lions; and they acknowledged their new ruler. Past storms and nebula which obeyed his commands, and He walked past the cherubim that had lorded over our first parents, and they bowed, too. He walked past the archangels, and they lowered their eyes, and bent their knee. Up to the very top- until there was no one but God before him; and God gave him his seat, and all of creation- seen and unseen- fell at his feet, at the feet of their new King.

At last, a human sat on throne of the universe!

Each of you is united to this king through your baptism. What is his, is yours. That is why he and his Father did this thing: for you.

The whole world tells you that you ought to be ‘this or that’. It tells you that true human flourishing looks like the gangstas on videos, or the business man who neglects his family or the poor in the pursuit of money, or some shallow yahoo who is famous for simply being famous. Your baptism tells you that you are someone else.

Rachael, Bekah, Hannah, Naomi and Essie, you are each a Princess.

Tommy, you are a Prince.

Royalty, of the house of David!

That’s not pretend. That’s not sweet ‘dad stuff. That’s who you are. Be who you are- whom God declared you to be in your baptism. This is what Xian faith is about. You are royalty in training.

So, congratulations. For through your older brother, this is your coronation day, too. Rule your part of creation well! One day, all of Christ’s New Creation will be yours.

 

Letters to My Kids: Same Sex Marriage- O Brave New World

Dear kids,

Who are you?

When you go to ‘ciphering’ on that question, I bet you think  of family. To be is to have a mother and a father, grandparents, sibling, cousins, aunts and uncles. To say ‘you’ is to picture ‘the rest of us.’ Personal identity that is based on blood and birth is the foundational way in which society is imagined. This is the very stuff from which life begins. It is this basic familial material that humanity spends its days (and nights) weaving into the various human worlds that enrich our planet. It is what history is made of.

How did such a universal vision arise?

It’s obvious, really; or used to be. Every human being who has ever lived has a mother and father. Every single one. No exceptions. And the same is true for the parents of those parents, back ‘world without end.’ The web spins out in all sorts of directions. We belong to others, and they belong to us by birth-with all of the duties, sorrows, joys and responsibilities that ‘belonging’ implies. That is how we understand the bedrock of our existence, and up until this generation society has built its institutions on that reality.

Unless actively frustrated, every sexual union of the type that is necessary to consummate a marriage is capable of producing a child. Unless, of course, something is broken. Creating children is the very biological end of a sexual union between man and woman. It is a ‘privilege’ granted to them by nature herself- a privilege that is non-transferable to unions of other kinds.

One man and one woman= children.

Every child conceived- every child= one man and one woman.

Now think about this. Every Same Sex relationship that involves a child, necessarily involves a third party. No exceptions. This is true in some heterosexual relationships, too- even marriages, but only and always because something has gone wrong. There is an unwanted child in need of an adoptive home. There is a barren womb, an impotent man. Sterility. Brokenness.

Let me ask you: What is broken in the Same Sex relationship?

Now, if in order to avoid ‘discrimination’ we are to treat those relationships as being in every way identical to that of a heterosexual couple, then fertility, fecundity… the significance that comes from the ability to have children must be stripped from our legal conception of all marriages. The significance of biological relationship must not be acknowledged. It is unallowable, because unavailable/nontransferable to the same sex couple. It discriminates, and so must not be a part of the legal institution. This is why I said in an earlier letter ‘(SSM) is not the extension of some supposed ‘heterosexual rights’ to homosexual people; rather it is the remaking of all marriages according to the standards of something new. ‘Gay’ people don’t get what ‘straight’ people have; rather in the eyes of the law, all men and women will be entitled to only those rights that a same sex couple are capable of enjoying. Anything more would be discriminatory. Marriage- all marriage- is reshaped in the image of Same Sex Marriage.

Now think;  if the very stuff of human identity depends on biological relationship, then what does this mean for human identity as we know it?

If society can no longer be based on ‘extended biological kinship,’ then what is left? Children are left belonging to the State or the Market- either cogs in the Collective or commodities for acquisition. Without biological families, what else is there?

Perhaps this sounds like extreme alarmism, but the imaginations of most young people seem to have embraced this change already. I see this in the ready way in which the technological necessities behind every Same Sex family is accepted as normative. To every mention of Same Sex sterility is offered the promise of technology. Of course.

But kids,  to normalize these technological measures so as to make them identical to natural birth is by definition to disconnect birth from the sexual act. Birth and the human relationship that naturally gives rise to it – even if only that of a one night hookup- must be seen as at best, artificial. That might be how some families come into the world, but certainly not all. Without exception, its not how any Same Sex family originates. And so children, birth and family are re-envisioned. So called ‘Heterosexual Marriages’ must not have that which is not available to ‘Same Sex Marriages’. ‘Same Sex Marriages’ can not have full biological ties with offspring. So rights arising from biological parentage must be downplayed. QED.

‘Heterosexual Marriages’ will continue to result in children. ‘Same Sex Marriages’ must likewise be granted children, but where will these children come from?  Sperm donors and surrogate mothers demand both payment and privacy; but the children of such  efforts at meeting the demand for ‘offspring’ still wish to know who their biological parents are. The two desires are incompatible. Donors wish to remain anonymous; children wish to know ‘who their biological parents are.’ Which seems the more natural longing to you? Which desire must be treated as insignificant, if Same Sex Marriages are to be legally affirmed as  identical in every way to what was once simply referred to as marriage; and what does this mean if not that the legal recognition of the significance of biological kinship must become intolerable.

From whose ecstatic human embrace did you come to be? Who are you? Who is responsible for you? Who are you responsible for? Who do you belong to? As I’ve said many, many times: the institution of marriage as we’ve inherited it answers those questions by privileging biological kinship, but it is the privileging of biological kinship that Same Sex Marriage must deny. In such a world, children- all children- can only be viewed as an acquisition- not the natural result of human biological bonding.

What will such a world look like? We have no idea. It’s never been tried, and yet like the naive members of the Children’s Crusade, we dance and celebrate on our way to that dreadful place ‘we know not of.’ To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum- ‘the complete lack of humility for nature and the combined wisdom of human experience that’s being displayed here is staggering’

It has always been this way- this human way, and for me it’s difficult to imagine it being otherwise, but there have been those who’ve undertaken the thought experiment of revising family, sex, birth and child. In 1984 Orwell imagined one horrible route to hell on earth- the State. In Brave New World Huxley imagined another- Amusement and the Market. Which is the more likely? My money is on Huxley, but with purposefully deciding to declare the bonds of biological kinship, insignificant, both paths are wide open.

How far will we go down either of those paths? No one knows, but why would we go down either when we know where they lead? Those who think a people can’t or won’t choose a nightmare for themselves are simply ignorant of history, and wherever we land will be normalized in our imaginations, too.

O brave new world,
That hath such people in ‘t!

It is nothing short of a Brave New World that is being proposed.

Brave because untried.

New because of how we must now answer the question of the nature of the people in it?’

Brave New World because of its seductiveness and inevitable despair.

 

 

Letters to My Kids IX: Same Sex Marriage- Two Steps Forward; One Step Back Redux

Dear Kids,

Well, that last one generated some confusion, and not where I thought it would This will mean two of the last three letters were written for clarification. Not a good sign for my position, perhaps; but y’all know me pretty well. Regardless of the topic, it’s more likely that the trouble lies with me. I’ll try harder.

To review: I offered some advice on why you ought not to think of yourselves or others as special types of human beings in terms of something called ‘sexuality.’ I said that this new vision of humanity was artificial, unhelpful and dehumanizing. So far so good. I then claimed that such a view of humanity was required by any legal redefinition of the marriage institution, which was made on the basis of a civil rights argument. I thought this would be a misstep- one which we would one day wish to undo. This is where it got a bit trippy.

Now, I didn’t make explicit the link between a civil rights argument and the classification of human beings according to ‘sexuality’ because I thought it was obvious: civil rights arguments claim that one identifiable group is being treated inequitably (for the purposes under consideration) in comparision to another group. For discrimination to happen, then 1) homosexuals/heterosexuals must be considered distinct types/groups of humanity and 2) they must be treated differently for the purposes under consideration. The last letter was meant to poke around the edges of that first requirement. I want to offer some clarification on that, and then talk a bit about the second requirement.

So back to requirement one- let me see if this helps: many years ago, race played a defining part in how we viewed each other. One of the most important things you could know about a person (perhaps THE most important thing you could know) was whether he or she was white or not. Race- especially in terms of ‘whiteness’- was treated as hugely significant. It, supposedly, told you something about the person- something you needed to know. Some people still think it does.

Thankfully, most people now think that that is a horrible way to look at human beings. Being black or white necessarily tells you something about skin color, but that’s about it; and-like being a plumber or a member of the Radio Control Community- that ain’t much.

But years ago the significance of that identification seemed obvious and unquestioned. In some areas of the country, this was handled with ‘mathematical precision.’ People were either white or black; then there were people who were half white and half black. Those people were identified as Mulattoes. In addition there were Quadroons and Octoroons and Quintroons, etc, etc. This crazy way of thinking about people made it into the legal code.

Those labels are hateful.  It’s amazing that they can be found in official legislation. It’s something to be ashamed of; and usually we are.

Whether rooted in reality or not, people were identified by these labels, and  I understand that justice requires that we deal with reality- even an ugly reality (perhaps especially an ugly reality), and pass legislation that forbids discrimination against ‘those commonly known as Mulattoes’; but it would be a much better world in which that word had little meaning.

That is my point about homosexuals and heterosexuals and bi-sexuals and…etc. Perhaps we need to pass legislation against discrimination on the basis of ‘sexuality,’ but it would be a much better world in which there were only men and women.

Those whom society wants to label homosexual etc. ought not to be discriminated against on the basis of that identification. Agreed.

Have I given up the debate, then? No; not at all. In fact I think a simple observation makes it clear that no discrimination is going on: When were gays ever denied the right to marry? Think about it. Those ‘commonly referred to as Homosexuals, etc’ have never been forbidden from marrying. In fact in the past many- if not most- of those we now identify as gay, did marry. They conceived children and then raised them in a loving home. Until our present confusion, no one ever dreamed of making it illegal for ‘gays’ to marry… or suggesting that they ought not. Of course ‘marriage’ meant by definition the lifelong sexual union of a man and woman. That relationship was open to all people- ‘gay or straight.’

This exposes a significant difference in the civil rights issues that revolve around race and the current debate about Same Sex Marriage. The comparison is often made between old laws that made interracial marriage a crime and our current ‘refusal’ to allow gays to marry someone of the same gender. The argument is that since we all agree that the old situation was unjust, we ought to agree that the new one is too. Because we desire to be fair, it has a powerful emotional appeal.

But I want you to notice the difference in the two cases: in many parts of our country, it was once illegal for ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’ to marry. No one questioned whether they could get married. No one questioned whether it happened. Some people simply believed that it ought not to, and so it was outlawed.

The current debate is not over the permission to marry; rather it is over the ability of two people of the same gender to marry. Thus there has never been legislation against it. There was no need. It would be like passing a law that forbad a man from mothering a child. If we now pass a law that allows such a thing, then we can do so only by changing what we once meant by ‘man, mother or child.’ And all of this redefining and replacing would be done on the assumption that Gay and Straight have radical significance.

That issue of sexuality aside, the inability to show when ‘gay people’ were ever forbidden to marry demonstrates that the proposed ‘recognition’ of ‘Same Sex Marriage’ is not an issue of discrimination. It is not the extension of some supposed ‘heterosexual rights’ to homosexual people; rather it is the remaking of all marriages according to the standards of something new. ‘Gay’ people don’t get what ‘straight’ people have; rather in the eyes of the law, all men and women will be entitled to only those rights that a same sex couple are capable of enjoying. Anything more would be discriminatory. Marriage- all marriage- is thus reshaped in the image of Same Sex Marriage.

That has huge ramifications. We’ll talk more about that later.

Love you as always,

Dad

Letter I- The Discussion

Letter II- Equality

Letter III- Institutions

Letter IV- Human Stuff

Letter V- Children, Love and Sexual Restraint

Letter VI- What I Meant to Say

Letter VII- A Commercial For the Opposition; Sorta

Letter VIII- Why I’m Not Straight and I Hope You Aren’t Either

 

Wrath Reconsidered, by Jason Micheli

I’m uncomfortable with the vision of reality that I was taught in my youth- both the vague version of my childhood, and the more rigorously scholastic one that I so fervently embraced as a young man. Law is not the final reality that lies behind all else. I used to believe so, but now I know that there is a deeper magic.

Because of this I tend towards knee-jerk reactions when God is depicted as angry. I equate them with the legal transactional-ism of former days. I see the divine bookkeeper who needs to give an account to ‘his ledger’, if he is to act graciously; but…

….then I remember that there are other reasons for anger and hatred. Chief among them is true love. I was reminded of this when I read Jason Micheli’s wonderful reflection over at Jesus Creed. Its worth your time: Wrath Reconsidered.

 

Bulverism: Real Arguments Are Soooo Old Fashioned

If you wish to understand what Lewis referred to as Bulverism, then I’d suggest you listen in on current ‘debates’ about Same Sex Marriage. I’ve yet to be involved in a discussion in which I haven’t said in frustration ‘I’ve not brought up religion. Why do you feel compelled to?’

‘You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism.” Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third—“Oh you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment,” E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.’

C.S Lewis- from Bulverism: or the Foundation of 20th Century Thought

 

Letters to My Kids: Same Sex Marriage VIII- Why I’m Not Straight and I Hope You Aren’t Either

Dear Kids,

I have a confession. I’m not heterosexual, and I hope you’re not either.

One of my concerns with the debate about Same Sex Marriage- especially as argued on the basis of civil rights- is that the revision will legally redefine our most basic institution by affirming a really significant fiction. It’s not simply a fiction, but a newfangled fiction and a dehumanizing fiction. It identifies persons by something called sexuality (another newfangled creation). It says this one is heterosexual; that one is not; and that that is the most important thing you can know about them,

I don’t believe in heterosexuals; or homosexuals for that matter. They simply didn’t exist until slightly over a hundred years ago. That might be hard to believe, but it is true. Of course there have always been people, who were attracted to the same gender, and there were those who acted on that attraction; but they weren’t treated as a specific kind of human being because of that. They weren’t identified as a human being by that.

My beef isn’t with labels. They’re necessary and helpful. It’s good to know that this woman’s a plumber. Its proper to speak of the local Radio Control community, but we know that these labels only tell us a little bit about the people to whom they are applied. They tell us how someone makes a living, where their expertise lies or that they enjoy model cars or airplanes. With sexual identity we’re talking about something different. We are claiming that these people are a particular and distinct type of human being because of the distinction.

When the medical community first dreamed them up, both heterosexual and homosexual were labels for sexual deviations. Did you know that? A heterosexual had non-procreative sex with the opposite gender. A homosexual did the same with the same gender, and then in addition there were normal people. Before psychology (I think it was a German) first spoke hetero and homosexuals into existence ex nihilo, there were just people.

Now people are sexual beings, and people have all sorts of odd sexual things going on. All people. Some are frigid; some like toes; others are into flannel or… stranger things, but there’s only one sort of ‘people:’ those who are particularly peculiar in some sexual way or other.

That seems the right way to account for things- to me anyway, and not just because I distrust real innovation.  It levels the playing field. Xians and conservatives especially need to realize this. The new categories of humanity blind them to their own issues, and privilege them from the get go. ‘Hetero’ starts out normal, okay, straight… ‘Homo’ indicates aberration, bentness, kink. I have too many memories from High School with ‘hetero’ friends. I know myself too well. That way of viewing people is either silly or dishonest. No, there are just people- sexually odd people.

Identifying people as ‘Homosexual’ or ‘Heterosexual’ is problematic because it tells us nothing about them- other than things that really aren’t much of our business, but it treats those things as the most important thing about them. It identifies them as a human being by those things that are none of our business! Jenell Paris asks us to imagine two filled paper grocery bags. You can take one home. Which do you choose? Hard to decide because you have no idea what’s inside them. What if one is labeled ‘Homosexual’ and the other ‘Heterosexual’? No help at all; sure, when you start unpacking them, you’ll take out a box of ‘same sex desire’ or ‘other sex desire,’ but that’s only one package. The bag is full. What about all the rest of the bag’s contents- honesty, love, hardworking, loyalty, compassion, bravery, intelligence, humor or…. their opposites. Which bag contains which of those?

Identifying people as Homosexual or Heterosexual is problematic because it really doesn’t tell us much about those things which aren’t our business, either. What does ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ really mean? The labels treat sexual desire as simply binary. You’re gay or straight- whatever that might be meant to indicate, but human experience touches every point along that continuum. There are very flamboyant and effeminate men who have never been attracted to a female. There are very masculine men who have the same experience. There are very flamboyant and effeminate men who are married with children. There are men who married, but were awakened later in life to a same sex relationship. There are those who’ve made a life of pimping themselves out to other men simply for survival. There are happily married men who just occasionally recall an experience from summer camp as a teen… The experience of women is as diverse. There are an infinite number of people, which the term ‘homosexual’ is supposed to describe, and yet they are as different as can be. Which of these is really ‘gay?’

Identifying people as ‘Homosexual’ or ‘Heterosexual’ is problematic because it forces people- especially young people- to struggle with placing themselves in an identity which is artificial, imprecise and arbitrary. Are you gay? Are you straight? Are you sure? Ever been curious to peek at the urinal or in the locker room? What does that mean? Can you ever be true to who you are without knowing? Can you marry, if you’ve wondered or peeked; or would that be a sham? What about all those girls who were once Lesbians, but now have a boyfriend or vice versa? Did they change? Are they bi-sexual? What is bi-sexual? Is being curious bi-sexual? Is knowing that someone of the same gender is attractive mean that you are bi-sexual? Does acting on a dare and then surprisingly enjoying it mean that you are bi-sexual? What about seeing something in a movie or at a party that awakens curiosity that you’ve never felt before? Did that make you bi-sexual? Did you change? What does it mean? How can you be true to who you are without answering these questions with certainty?

Kids, those are questions you oughtn’t have to struggle with. It’s an artificial identity. All of humanity has known what we seek to deny with our innovations. People are attractive; sex feels good; everyone wishes to be cared for. To this universal knowledge we can add that of our own Xian confession: people are broken. There are simply and only human beings in particular places in life to which they bring all sorts of sexual peculiarities. That’s true of you and your friends. That’s true of me and your mother.

Redefining marriage so as to extend it to Same Sex couples on the basis of civil equality depends on labeling, identifying and classifying human beings on the basis of an arbitrary and inaccurate binary characterization of sexual desire. It requires that we legally redefine our most basic institution by affirming that these labels are accurate and radically significant descriptions of human beings as human beings.

I believe that labeling is dehumanizing in that it causes us to live according to artificiality, it privileges one group over another by making one think that their struggles are somehow different from that of the others and it causes us to judge on the basis of something other than a man or woman’s character by treating something other than a man or woman’s character as apparently the most important thing we can say about them. We ought to know better than that.

You are each a wonderful human being, and the most important thing you can know about yourself is that God claimed you by name in your baptism. That is who you are. You have a lifetime of struggling to be faithful to that identity, and you have assurance of forgiveness when you inevitably fall short. That’s what I know about you. You’re people, and you’re people redeemed by Christ.

Hope to write more latter. Love each of you.

Dad

Letter I- The Discussion

Letter II- Equality

Letter III- Institutions

Letter IV- Human Stuff

Letter V- Children, Love and Sexual Restraint

Letter VI- What I Meant to Say

Letter VII- A Commercial For the Opposition; Sorta

 

Letters to My Kids: Same Sex Marriage VII- A Commercial for the Opposition; Sorta

Dear Kids,

Ok; I’m not an idiot. I do realize that marriage envisioned as I’ve outlined it, is becoming something of an endangered species.  Recently,  CBS marked Valentine’s Day by pleading against conceiving of marriage as wed’lock’; and just last week I saw Sara Gilbert express the prevalent view when she asked why anyone should throw away a life of happiness over a promise?

In the minds of most, marriage is (despite the vows that are actually made) a contingent arrangement, which is entered into for the purpose of individual personal fulfillment and sexual expression and whose very legitimacy depends on the presence of romantic affection. ‘Marriage’ means pretty much the opposite of what it has always meant. This is to say that in the minds of most, the institution of marriage is already dead as an institution.

The result can be seen in the broken families of our community, and the effects of that sort of experimentation with human formation are just as apparent in our society. Marriage as an institution was created to answer a real need. When the institution goes away, the need is left unanswered.

But the point of this letter is to acknowledge that if this is what we as a society mean by ‘marriage,’ then I see no reason not to extend it to whomever feels a romantic attraction for another and wishes to express their current conviction about the route that their personal fulfillment must take.

That seems clear, and fair.

It also seems clear to me that conservatives who wish to denigrate same sex couples, while subscribing to the revisionary conception of marriage which the same sex couple wishes to enter into have little ground to stand on.

Apart from simple bigotry, the principled embrace of casual sex and the growing Divorce Culture necessarily involves the legitimacy of Same Sex Marriage. This is because all three share the same vision regarding the purpose and definition of ‘marriage.’

And so this is why we find ourselves where we do: in a discussion about equality and rights. We are dealing with the concept of marriage in most people’s heads- not the institution of marriage enshrined in our law.

It’s a problem that the two diverge. The current struggle is an attempt to reunite them…the disagreement is over how this is to be accomplished.

I have a concluding point, but before I make it I want to say that behind all of these innovations (premarital sex and divorce are hardly innovations, but in the past they were lamented because society understood that people get hurt. The reality of divorce is a necessary grace in our fallen world, but it was also seen as a failure with significant consequences) is the elevation of Romantic Love. This is a good thing in so far (according to my Xian interpretation) Romantic Love enables us to see specific persons with all the value, which their humanity affords. In reality, all of Adam’s sons and Eve’s daughters are worthy of adoration. Eros makes that clear to us about a particular human being. Even Hitler was loved by Eva Braun. But Eros is not worthy of worship. He is fickle. He is incapable of providing neither personal fulfillment; nor a continuing foundation for society; and so those who spend their lives in pursuit of him find themselves without a home… or a family. As wonderful as the god’s visitations are, chasing ‘true love’ isn’t the way to happiness or human flourishing. You don’t have to take my word for it. Look around.

In the end this is a failure of imagination. We are unable to see the beauty of fidelity and domesticity- of dishes, and diapers, companionship and warm familiar softness. We’ve traded that for the pursuit of continual roses, horse drawn carriages and breathless passion. Kids, there’s a lot more dishes than carriages in life. If your happiness depends on candlelight, then you’re screwed. I have the electric bills to prove it. The truth is that you can still have the breathless stuff occasionally with a committed relationship, but it doesn’t work the other way around. ‘Always breathless’ is just another way of saying ‘dead.’ And… there are always others along for the ride. Always.

Its possible to say ‘no’- even to Eros, even while appreciating his caress. Can we imagine that doing so can truly be the more beautiful thing?

To say that the imagination of most is immature and shriveled isn’t to endorse the situation; and to say that we have a problem with imagination isn’t to say that we ought to bring our legal code down to meet it.

Marriage as an institution still exists, and there are those who still see the beauty of a committed, loving faithfulness… for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. It is beautiful. It’s as beautiful as your mother, and the gift she is to each of us. You don’t have that gift because your Daddy is a virtual Don Juan. Nor do you have it because there aren’t admirers crossing your hot mother’s path. We have that gift because your mother loves you and your Dad… just as she promised to.

Love you all.

Dad

Letter I- The Discussion

Letter II- Equality

Letter III- Institutions

Letter IV- Human Stuff

Letter V- Children, Love and Sexual Restraint

Letter VI- What I Meant to Say

Letter VIII- Why I’m Not Straight and Hope You Aren’t Either