Love Actually? Thoughts on our culture's response to the "L" word...

I am not an expert on love by any means (I'm almost 37, single, and grow more clueless about women by the day! :-D). But I am getting really tired of western culture's portrayal - at least as represented in the popular media - of love.

Case in point: recently I watched, with some friends, the movie "Love Actually." (Warning: spoilers ahead) Ostensibly a Christmas movie, the film consisted of several inter-connected stories about people dealing with "love" during the holiday season. The premise, as stated at the very beginning of the film, is that the world is filled with love. Well, if the examples in the movie are supposed to be the norm, then I'll pass, thanks.

I admit, there were some enjoyable moments - we can smile at the youthful energy of an 11-year old boy trying to get the "love of his life" to notice him, and the idea of an aging musician who realizes that his friendship with his manager is a more real love than all of his shoddy relationships built on fame and pleasure. But by and large, the films' depictions of "love" are both shallow and unrealistic, and connected to the popular notion that once we find that other person who really makes us happy, we will have found true love. While this is quite appealing, it also is the perpetuation of a dangerous myth. I'll explain why in a minute.

This is not limited to one particular movie; it is - I would suggest - THE most prevalent theme in "romantic love" movies, and has been for some time. And not just movies... the notion exists, throughout our culture, that love is a magical experience where two people each find their missing half, or realize that the other person is "the one" they've been looking for all along. It's an idea that sounds amazing (who doesn't want to find their true love?!), but I think it misses the point of love entirely.

What is the point of love? I think, as cheesy as it may sound, the simplest answer is found in John 3:16: "God so loved... that He gave..." Love is giving to another for the sake of that other. Love is first recognizing the value of the other person, and then responding accordingly. When we really examine this idea, we find that it is completely different, and opposed to, the "movie version" of love.

First, true love always starts with the other. This is really easy to say, and extremely difficult to practice. In romantic love, it is almost inevitable that we will see the other person as somehow appealing to us. This is to be expected, of course, since (like it or not!) a big part of what we call romantic love is, in fact, biological and chemical attraction. Even if we add in psychological factors, "Eros" is still primarily a love based in selfish desires - not necessarily bad, but selfish in the real sense of the word, in that I am thinking about how wonderful the experience will be for myself.

This is no doubt necessary, because if there were no physical or psychological attraction, no one would want to be in love! But, herein also lies the danger of the myth perpetuated by our culture's version of love: It confuses the natural attraction people experience as "true love." Movies like "Love Actually" imply, in the way the stories are told, that the experience of "falling in love" is the same as real love. But that's not true. At best, it is only the first step. And when we mistake the first step for the destination, we will end up going nowhere. This, it seems to me, is precisely the fix much of our society is in, when it comes to love.

True love, as most people will readily admit, requires time, energy, and overcoming challenges. Love develops and grows, and does not reach its apex in 1, 5, or even 50 years. That is, if it is truly love. Too often love stagnates and dissipates with time. The movie had the opportunity to deal with this situation in the story of a wife who is attempting to deal with her husband's infidelity; unfortunately that story never really gets off the ground, it is swept away by the "magic" of happy Christmas love stories. (Or, more likely, the producers didn't want to delve too far into that vignette; after all, this was supposed to be a happy holiday movie!)

If real love is not something that we find, but something that we develop (or, rather, it develops us!), then the way we approach potential romantic situations will have to change drastically. I may be giving the impression that I understand this; in fact, I'm caught up in the "love movie" idea of love as much as anyone else. In fact, I think that the Christian culture may be even more guilty of romanticizing love than the world-at-large. Why? Not only are we greatly influenced by our culture (perhaps more now than ever before?) but we also have the misappropriation of Scripture to deal with.

How does that happen? It happens when Christians take the "one flesh" passages and combine them with a Hollywood-picture of romantic love. We then assume that what God wants is for each of us to find our "true love" so that we can live happily ever after. And, we should do it by the time we're in our mid-twenties so we can make sure to have plenty of time to have lots of babies! After all, we are to "be fruitful and multiply." The problems with such misappropriation of Scripture are numerous, but the most obvious one ought to be that such a view of love is just as stunted as the view represented by the movie - it mistakes the first step for the ending. It sees true love as a magical "coming together" created by God, with everything else as an afterthought.

I admit, I want to find "the one" and fall in love and live happily ever after. But I also want my love to be real. And that may mean having to let go of all my preconceptions about love, especially those that have been given to me by my culture, and that includes the "Christian-ized" versions of those myths. In the end, true love may have nothing to do with whether I find "the one." It may have everything to do with how I give my life to others as an act of service, in the same way Christ gave himself to us, as the hymn says, "emptying himself of all but love..." I pray for the grace to understand what that means, and live accordingly.

ch-ch-ch-changes...

So, haven't had much to say in the last few days... but changes are afoot:

1) I have finished all my PhD applications. Now I wait to hear back from the schools...
2) I have to move out of my apartment. My housemate/landlord and his wife are expecting their first child, and apparently it will need the entire basement! :-)
3) I have found a new apartment, but since I am in limbo (at least until April) with regard to PhD programs, I will be boxing everything up, moving in Jan, and keeping it all packed up until I hear back, at which time I'll either unbox and figure out what to do if I'm not accepted, or...
4) I will remain packed up until August, at which point I'll be moving to some other part of the country, starting a PhD program, and a whole new phase of life will begin. So, needless to say, the next several months will be quite interesting.
5) Prayers appreciated!

a different kind of power...

"[T]he Jesus in whom I believe allowed himself to be beaten up, and mocked, and spat at... and when one of his followers tried to defend him, he told him 'we don't do things that way.' That story is precisely the story of how the world is saved..." - N.T. Wright

deconstructive philosophy for advent... :-)

"Faith is waiting and anticipation. It cannot under any circumstances count on the temporal exactitude of correspondence between an assertion and its verification... Deconstruction and messianicity are bound up closely with each other, inasmuch as the deconstitution of the sign brings about a total openness to how God can reveal himself, or does reveal himself, in a concrete setting. The Christmas story - God having been born in a stable - is a complete deconstruction of all the texts of messianicity that had preceded it."

- Carl Raschke

Is logic necessary to reality? I wonder...

I have been having a random, but very interesting, discussion on another blog, and I thought I'd post some of my thoughts here, to see if there's any feedback... feel free to point out any inconsistencies in my thinking; I'm sure there are many!

My main point (as a good Kierkegaardian ;-D) is that any discussion of God inevitably falls into the realm of the "illogical." Faith, being a leap into the "absurd," implies that God is beyond any human reasoning. God is, for us, the ultimate paradox (especially the God-man, Jesus Christ). But what does this mean?

To quote another theologian-blogger (who is far more advanced than me!), the problem with classical metaphysics, when speaking about God, is that "it begins by speaking about a human attribute (power or potency) and then raises this attribute to the Nth degree and applies it to God. But then we are actually speaking about ourselves first, and not God. And when we start by speaking of ourselves, it is never clear that we ever end up actually speaking about God."

I agree with his point, but I would take it one step further: This inability to perceive whether we are actually speaking about God also applies to logic itself. Since logic, as traditionally understood, is fundamentally a human endeavor (of the mind), logic is insufficient as a final arbiter of God's reality.

It is said that reality is always logically consistent. This seems to be the case up to a point, but in some recent areas of study (quantum physics, for example) people are finding that what we call logic starts to break down. Phenomenologically, logic also runs into serious trouble. I think that must be infinitely more true with God...

Now, it could be that we just don't grasp some deeper consistency of logic that has yet to be discovered, but I don't see much difference between saying something is illogical, and saying something is logical, but we just have no idea (yet) how it can possibly be logical.

In fact, I see two dangers in making the latter statement -- not only are we potentially talking about ourselves rather than God, but if we say that reality (including God) is always logically consistent, then we are also implicitly making God dependent upon logic, whether we intend to or not.

Logic does not cause reality. But if we assent to that, then we should not assume that reality is limited to logic. I would say, instead, that reality causes "all the true axioms that logic depends on" and more. Maybe that's a cop-out, or maybe I'm arguing semantics; I don't know.

I suppose it really comes down to whether logic is necessary to reality. I'm not convinced that, at least when speaking of human logic, this is the case. Though I'm not sure what other kind of logic there might be besides human logic.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

Zizek on the current economic crisis...

This excerpt from a recent article by Slavoj Zizek is, I think, quite intriguing:

"The financial meltdown has made it impossible to ignore the blatant irrationality of global capitalism. In the fight against Aids, hunger, lack of water or global warming, we may recognise the urgency of the problem, but there is always time to reflect, to postpone decisions. The main conclusion of the meeting of world leaders in Bali to talk about climate change, hailed as a success, was that they would meet again in two years to continue the talks. But with the financial meltdown, the urgency was unconditional; a sum beyond imagination was immediately found. Saving endangered species, saving the planet from global warming, finding a cure for Aids, saving the starving children . . . All that can wait a bit, but ‘Save the banks!’ is an unconditional imperative which demands and gets immediate action.

The panic was absolute. A transnational and non-partisan unity was immediately established, all grudges among world leaders momentarily forgotten in order to avert the catastrophe. (Incidentally, what the much-praised ‘bi-partisanship’ effectively means is that democratic procedures were de facto suspended.) The sublimely enormous sum of money was spent not for some clear ‘real’ task, but in order to ‘restore confidence’ in the markets – i.e. for reasons of belief. Do we need any more proof that Capital is the Real of our lives, the Real whose demands are more absolute than even the most pressing demands of our social and natural reality?"

A bit about Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire: Part 3

So, back to Rene Girard and mimetic theory... (which I just realized I misspelled in my previous posts! Whoops!)

Previously, I briefly described Girard's theory and the explanation it provides for human violence. Now, I want to look at Girard's description of the manner in which the biblical narrative, culminating in Christ, actually represents the reversal of violence. Again, my source is Depoortere's Christ in Postmodern Philosophy.

Girard claims that the Bible describes a "gradual exit" (to use Depoortere's words) from the cycle of violence that is interwoven within ancient myths and religions, and, in fact, all of human culture. While this may seem spurious, given the amount of violence contained within the Bible, Girard asserts that unlike other ancient stories, violence in the Scriptures is presented as worthy of condemnation rather than praise. In Greek and Roman mythology, for example, murder is seen as simply part of the destiny of relationships between gods and men. In the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, however, murder is roundly condemned.

What's more, the Bible consistently describes God as taking the side of the victim. Remember that Girard has hypothesized that the "scapegoat" is understood by human beings as a necessary sacrifice to alleviate violence. This does not, however, mean that the scapegoat was necessarily understood to be innocent. The victim's innocence was connected less to the victim, and more to the alleviation of the violence, or evil, or curse. The innocence of the victim her/himself is actually an idea that owes a great deal to the Hebrew understanding of violence, as it is described in the Bible. Rather than simply resigning to the need for the victim to exist, the Bible undermines violence by pointing out that the victim has done nothing wrong.

This is seen most clearly, of course, in the prophecies alluding to Christ (Isaiah 53, for example). Jesus' death and resurrection are a fulfillment of these prophetic messages describing God's immanent reversal of the violent system imbedded within human culture and human hearts. In Christ, God is telling humanity that the way to life involves abandoning violence and vengeance, and surrendering fully to God's love.

However, Jesus' message was not well received, to put it mildly. Rather than responding to Jesus' call to renounce violence, people actually turned their violence upon Jesus, making him into the ultimate scapegoat! It is this travesty - God as the ultimate innocent victim of violence - that reveals the root of human violence. So, the crucifixion is not just an event that reveals something about God, it also reveals something about us. It reveals our captivity to violence. This revelation of the structure of violence is, for Girard, a sort of evidence of Christ's divinity.

The resurrection, in turn, is not only Jesus being raised to new life (which is available for humanity as well), it is also the paradigmatic example of freedom from violence. When even death cannot succeed, violence has been stripped of its power. There is much more to say about this, but I want to stop and make a few brief observations:

First, some will no doubt question Girard's interpretation of Scripture. Clearly there are examples in the Bible where it appears that God either condones violence, or outright commands it. Girard's mythologically-oriented view of Scripture allows him to brush these aside as anomalies. This is a weakness, I think, but I will let you take that up with Girard by reading his books for yourself... ;-)

Second, and more pressing, I think, is the following issue: violence still exists - perhaps now more than ever - 2,000 years after Christ's death and resurrection. How do we deal with this? Girard seems to think that, in spite of continuing violence, the message of the Gospel is slowly working its way out in human history. He states, for example, regarding the longing for vengeance: "... longing for real vengeance is a luxury which can only be afforded in a society in which violence has already been curtailed..." However, I am not sure this is really the case.

It is extremely difficult to quantify how much violence may or may not have been alleviated by the Gospel versus the traditional cultural method of scapegoating. Certainly I prefer the Christian message of non-violence to other approaches. But it seems to me that if Girard's theory holds any weight, than we must also admit that most Christians have rejected, and continue to reject, the message of Christ's Gospel, which calls into question the validity of that Gospel. How transformative can a message be if no one cares enough to really take it seriously? This leads into questions of human will and agency, which I will not address here. Of course, this also leads us back to the ultimate question of hope: Do we believe that, in spite of everything we see around us, God really is in the process of redeeming the world? How we answer that is the surest description of the status of our faith.

At any rate, Girard's theory is quite impressive, and intriguing, and deserves further attention, if only for its expansive effort to account for the whole of human behavior and culture. That it is also a profound theory of religion is the icing on the cake, so to speak. :-)