Entries in this series:
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions (Part 1): Just Friends --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-part-1.html
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions (Part 2): Fear Of Intimacy --https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-part-2.html
I will continue directly where I left off in part two, which ended my commentary of chapter one of Dan Brennan's book Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions. This part will begin to examine chapter two. With that, I'll continue! In the second chapter of his book Brennan confronts the fallacies and destructiveness of what he calls the "romantic myth":
"Idealizing romantic passion as the unique, one-and-only, exclusive form of love between a man and woman has created a pervasive romantic myth in our contemporary world when it comes to male-female paired relationships." (34)
This myth is the belief that relationships between men and women are only natural (outside of family relationships) when they involve dating, sex, or marriage and that male-female relationships outside of this model subtract from or weaken the stability of romantic relationships. I have no idea how many deep, enriching, empowering friendships between men and women have been thwarted by belief in this narrative, or even just by the social pressure generated by it, but it pains me both as a rationalist seeker of truth and as a Christian when I see the romantic myth believed by others. It brings only untruth.
"Many people--Christian and non-Christian--wrestle with their self-esteem and self-worth if they are not participating in a romantic relationship." (34)
It is unfortunate that people struggle with this, for their value lies in the fact that they bear God's image, having nothing to do with their relationship status. The American church has implicitly endorsed the cultural idea that most people should get married in its focus on marriage over singleness. This can stir up a gratuitous sense of incompleteness in some Christian singles that otherwise might not even exist. The Bible does not teach that everyone needs to or must get married. In its zeal to defend a (sometimes misinterpreted) Biblical concept of marriage, the church has often laced its teachings with errors, and destructive errors at that. Truth can hurt, but it brings freedom and healing at the same time, whereas lies may seem to fulfill at first but they inevitably sow avoidable difficulties.
"But, it doesn't stop there. The romantic myth ironically undermines self-esteem and worth among those within romantic relationships, too." (34)
Here Brennan means that living according to the romantic myth can place a burden on someone that most people cannot bear--being the near-exclusive social outlet for one's partner can be exhausting, frustrating, and could wreak devastation upon the health of the relationship. Such a sheltered kind of relationship can breed unfulfillment, anxiety, and, ironically, a sense of solitude and isolation. What was never intended by God to fulfill all of our social desires, including desires for sociality with the opposite gender, cannot deliver what some may promise it will. The romantic myth may seem attractive to short-sighted people, but it's premise is just that: a myth.
Brennan tackles the first sub-myth he associates with the larger narrative of the romantic myth, the belief that "one flesh" satisfies all of our yearnings for oneness with others:
"In a culture where romantic love is a multi-billion dollar business with no end in sight, it is a challenging but necessary calling for Christians to affirm that the 'one flesh' of marriage holds deep meaning. But while affirming the passion, love, and fidelity of marriage, we must reject the notion that 'one flesh' justifies a self-absorbed, romantic idealism." (35)
As I said in part one, marriage and intimacy with opposite gender friends are not locked in some inescapable zero sum game, where intimacy outside the marriage, or outside the dating relationship, must by necessity subtract from intimacy within it. This is the fallacious thinking of an insecure, unsound mind, and not the thinking of a mind aligned with logic. Marriage as lived out Biblically is a beautiful expression of mutuality (1 Corinthians 7:3-5) and unity (Genesis 2:24), and opposite gender friendships do not naturally harm marriages and vice versa; they harm each other only if the friendships and marriages are carried out erroneously.
Western Christians and secular people alike often view as sexual things that are not sexual at all (including things not mentioned in this list, like physical beauty and the human body):
"Embodied knowledge, relational depth, emotional closeness, physical tenderness, sensual warmth and play, vulnerability, trust, fidelity, commitment, union, spontaneity, understanding, giving the utmost--these dynamic nongenital relational qualities are romanticized and sexualized under the evangelical rhetoric of one flesh." (35)
It is not the Biblical doctrine of one flesh that is in error, but the irrational, unbiblical, untrue set of ideas that evangelicals might attach to it. Nothing except for sex is inherently sexual, yet my society routinely interprets things in a sexualized way, and Christians in my life often buy into this nonsense and then view nonsexual things as threatening to marriages. People in a right relationship with reality will see the nonsexual nature of things like vulnerability, emotional closeness, spending large amounts of time with someone of the opposite gender, and so on.
Next Brennan acknowledges a tendency that is borne out of an irrational understanding of intimacy, a consequence of the sexualization of nonsexual things:
"Some Christians who see these dynamics in in male-female pairs presume this 'couple' must be on the path towards romantic and genital intimacy." (35)
Hell, it's so annoying and irrational when people assume that or joke about how my best friends, who are women, and I must be inevitably going to date or marry. I would love to get married. I do recognize that marriage, properly lived out (without legalism and with mutuality) can be unspeakably fulfilling. But marriage is not the only way to legitimately express deep intimacy between men and women, and I have no interest at all in marrying someone who is legalistic, emotionalistic, insecure about cross-gender relationships, and who views members of the opposite gender largely as possible romantic or sexual partners. None of my best friends, who are all women, will be the one to go during a dating relationship; an irrational dating partner is. This is an issue that, like others of high philosophical and personal significance, I would address very quickly if I was dating.
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