Does Marriage Complete You?

I recently attended a film festival at Union University featuring the work of students.  One of the first films shown was a thirty minute story about a young couple.

The plot was simple and touching.  A young man expresses his romantic interest in a waitress at a diner.  They fall in love and marry to the disapproval of her parents, who don’t think much of the young fellow.  After a brief period of happiness, the two lose their jobs and fall upon hard times.  Indeed, they become homeless and are forced to live in a tent and steal baths in the swimming pool of a local apartment complex.

I won’t give away the ending, which was nicely done and brought about a big, appreciative response from the audience.  Instead, I want to focus on the main idea presented in the story.  The primary thought expressed throughout is that even if a young person has nothing else, it is enough to have the sincere love of a husband or wife.  You can be homeless and desperate.  You can be almost without food or access to taken for granted resources like bathrooms and showers.  But if you have committed, romantic love, then you have everything you need.

I am certain that this thought, put over in a very charming and inspiring way is what caused the students to cheer as they did.  The film deserved their applause.  It demonstrated talent and imagination.  It did what films are supposed to do which is to inspire us and make us think.

But despite my admiration, I disagree with the message as nicely as I possibly can.  Thinking in the way the film suggests is right and ideal strikes me as a recipe for unhappiness.  Marriage is beautiful.  Romance is one of the most delightful experiences in life.  Commitment is a rock in life which makes many great things possible.  But marriage, portrayed in the film as the ultimate in romantic love which abides no matter the challenges, is not enough.  The line from Jerry Maguire (“You complete me.”) is not true.

My wife complements me almost as much as it is possible for another person to do so.  She is scheduled and organized. I am not.  She is scientific and quantitative. I am in love with the arts and humanities.  When we married I was a fairly new Christian. She had been a committed believer for many years.  She plans activities for the children.  I am more fun and spontaneous.  I could add more examples.  The most notable, of course, is that she is female while I am male.  She is the other with whom I am designed to make a pairing.  But she does not complete me.  She cannot be the sufficient reason for my happiness or my soul satisfaction.  To put that responsibility upon her would be intolerable and unfair.  She cannot do it, no matter how wonderful I think she is (and I do).

The kind of fulfillment and completion suggested by the student film is not truly possible with another person.  The only way to find it, I believe, is through a relationship with God.  Only God holds the possibility of true fulfillment and completion.  He has given me a purpose in life and an eternal destiny.  He is my only hope for knowing the deep truth beneath all things.  I love Ruth.  I only love her more now than I ever did before.  But I recognize that I only have her because of Him.  And the things she can never give me, He can.

The feeling almost all of us know so well, the feeling of complete romantic and psycho-sexual immersion in a person of the opposite sex is a type of spell or chemical haze.  Our hormones take legitimate feelings of love, attraction, and appreciation and turn them into an all-consuming obsession for the other person.  College students are probably more apt to feel that than almost any other age group.  But the chemical haze eventually disappears and the view ahead becomes clear once more.  And if we are looking in the right direction, there He is, looking back at us . . .  offering our soul’s true and rightful desire, greater (amazingly perhaps) than even the love of our natural other.

Socialism, Secularism, and Social Leveling

In a recent piece for Religion & Liberty, a publication of the Acton Institute, I took on an analysis inspired by Bill Buckley’s old contention that the struggles between atheism and Christianity and socialism versus capitalism were ultimately the same conflict.  While I don’t go quite that far (though I think the idea has some merit), I group socialism and secularism together as different species of the larger genus we might call social leveling.

Here’s a clip:

I have argued that social leveling achieves a wrong result in the sense that it ignores things like merit and virtue in the form of socialism, and truth in the form of secularism. That alone is good reason to oppose it, but there is a bigger problem than that. The social leveling that is achieved by socialism and secularism can only be engineered by one entity in a society. That entity is the state. Thus, the state will become the effective owner of all property and the state will determine what manifestations of religion (if any) are acceptable to itself.

Read it all here.

 

Leaders Do What They Do, Including Political Ones

Every leader worthy of notice has had some signature success, some achievement for which they are known.  Except for the truly exceptional ones they will spend the rest of their careers following the same strategy they used in the original effort.

Machiavelli wrote about this in his Discourses.  Leaders do what they do.  If their plan coincides well with the circumstances of the moment, then they will succeed.  But if the plan with which they are comfortable does not mesh with the current operational reality, then they will fail.  This is the operation of fortune about which Machiavelli often wrote.

Because of this dynamic of leadership, the next president must be a leader who has made a name as a budget cutter.  There are moments when a builder of institutions and programs, a visionary, is the right person, but now is not that time.  Now, the cutter must have his due.  In other eras, the cutter would be too conservative, too careful to take necessary risks.  Today, the cutter is in position to become a hero.

We must find a leader who has grown used to bucking the resistance of petty empire builders, bureaucrats, interest groups, unions, and legislators who count on drawing concentrated benefits from the public at large.  Destiny calls.  And those of us in the public must not miss the opportunity to elevate that person.

Interviewing Grace Baker at Age Six

Grace, you turned six today for the first time.  Do you feel any different?

No.

Do you think anything changes when people get older?

They get taller.  They grow.  They have to wear glasses sometimes.

What is your favorite food?

Banana.  Because it tastes so good.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a ballerina teacher.

But you often don’t want to go to ballet practice . . .

That’s just because I want to be a ballerina teacher.

Where do you want to live when you grow up?

With Gramm.

What is your idea of a perfect vacation?

With Gramm.  Playing with her.

If you were the president of the United States of America, what would you do?

I would tell people about God.  I would tell them about God saving the world.  He saved Nineveh when Nineveh was going to be destroyed.

What is your favorite thing about the members of your family?

Because they love me.

We had a birthday party today.  What did you think about it?

I loved it.  It was so fun.  We had balloons.  Because there were decorations and games.  And crafts!

You spend a lot of time with your cat, Felix.  Why do you do that?

I love him.  And I love to play with him.  He is so friendly.  And he likes to play with the cat toy.

What do you think about school?

I don’t like it.  Because it is not fun.  We don’t usually get to go to recess.

Do you like your teacher?

Yes.  She is nice and friendly.  She does stuff for kids when they get sad.  I like how she cooks.  She’s cooked green eggs and ham, stone soup . . . Hey, are you sending this to everyone in the whole world?

Yes, well, everyone in the world can see it if they want to . . .

(Walking away . . .)  Well, then I don’t want to say anything else!

Interviewing Andrew Baker (Age 8)

This is derivative as I’ve seen it done before, but I was curious to ask Andrew some questions and see what he’d say.  Here are the results with my comments in parentheses.

What is your earliest memory?

I do remember that when I was two years old I thought I saw a machine coming in my room.  So, I hid under my blanket.  And when I looked up, it was gone.

(Interestingly, I had a memory like that from a similar age except I thought there was a bull in my room with glowing red eyes and two Mexican guys narrating his mood.)

What is your favorite thing to eat?

Pizza!

Good, so you mean with green peppers and onions and black olives, right?

NO WAY!  (Vomiting sound)

What do you like best about each member of your family?

Dad plays video games with me.  My sister is very friendly.  Mom’s pretty smart.  My cat Felix is good for when it gets lonesome.

What is your opinion about school?

I probably think it’s a seven hour place for education.  Why does school have to be so different from my old school?

(Daddy’s heart breaking here wondering what he will say about what he misses or what was different.)

How was your old school different?

We didn’t wear uniforms!  You had to wear spirit shirts on Fridays.  And the mascot of the school was an alligator instead of a lion.

(Whew!)

What is your opinion about girls your age?

Interesting, a bit chatty, but I wouldn’t make girlfriends with one or I’d be laughed out of school.

What is the one thing that the president of the United States needs to do right away?

If someone said there should be a school outdoors, I think the president should sign a veto on it.  It might rain or you could get stung by bugs and there’s poison ivy out there.

(A reasonable attitude in favor of tradition.  As a conservative I’m proud.)

If you could wear any clothes you want, what would they be?

Shirts and pants with pictures of Pokemon on them.

What would be the perfect vacation?

A vacation to the place that has all the things you want.  Video games, Pokemon TV shows, 555 feet tall elevators, and lots of friendly people.

(This replaces his answer from last year which was “a place you can relax, you know, where they put pickles on your eyes.”)

What is the meaning of life?

Using it in the best way you can before it’s gone.  Like do whatever you feel like should be done.  There should be something done about pollution.  And someone should eventually make a Superhero Squad DS game.

A Response to “What Would Jesus Cut?”

Jim Wallis and a number of other Christians involved in politics are trying to gain attention for the question, “What would Jesus cut?” The answer to this question is supposed to be as obvious as it is in other moral contexts. For example, would Jesus lie about the useful life of a refrigerator he was selling for Best Buy? No way. Would he bully a kid into giving away his lunch money? Not a chance. Would you find him taking in the show at a strip club on interstate 40 in Arkansas? Unlikely to the extreme.

Would he agree to a 2% cut in the marginal tax rate for income made above $250,000? Would he EVER accept a cut in welfare spending? Those take a little more thought. Jim Wallis and others think it’s a no-brainer. Let us reason together.

As I look over what Wallis wrote, I see several things worth noting. For example, he complains that some Republicans want to cut domestic spending and international aid, while they support an increase in military spending. The implication is that this is obviously a sub-Christian position. But is it? Probably the most essential purpose of government is to protect the life and freedom of citizens. The government achieves this goal through military means. Unless one takes the position that Christianity implies corporate pacificism, then it is unclear the Republicans have blundered according to Christian ethics. Now, match the question of military spending versus international aid and/or domestic spending. Are the latter obviously superior to the former? No. It depends on not only what the stated objective is for the different types of spending, but whether they actually achieve their purposes. To simply state that the Republicans want to bolster military spending while cutting international aid and domestic spending is to achieve nothing at all by way of an indictment.

Here’s another example. Wallis complains bitterly that tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans add billions to the deficit. He is referring to the extension of George W. Bush’s cuts in the marginal tax rates that existed under Bill Clinton. The first question I have is how does Jim Wallis know that the level of taxation was just to begin with? And why take Bill Clinton’s tax levels as the Platonic form of taxation? Maybe they were too high or too low. The highest marginal tax rates have fluctuated drastically in the United States during the last century. John F. Kennedy made a big cut, with impressive economic effects, as did Ronald Reagan. Is Wallis sure that by cutting taxes those men robbed the poor and gave to the rich? Maybe a lot of poor people got jobs because of them. And we aren’t even getting into the question of whether rich people actually have an enhanced duty to pay taxes. If there is a community need, is it righteous to grab a rich person and employ the power of legal coercion to extract the needed funds?

Still another problem with this redistributionist attitude about taxes and spending is that it assumes a zero sum state of affairs. For example, one could assume that the most people would be better off under a system like the old Soviet Union that spread resources out to citizens in a way that prized equality of rations. The United States system didn’t do that nearly as much, not nearly at all. But which of the two systems provided a better life for people? The answer is easy. The United States and its emphasis on liberty did. Why? A more free economic system produces far more wealth than an unfree one. If your equality system produces a little, bitty pie, it may give you a lot of philosophical satisfaction, but it doesn’t do as much actual good for people as the system that prizes free productivity and success over equality.

What Jim Wallis is saying comes from a good heart. He is worried about things like fairness and, of course, about helping people. But the reasoning he employs in doing so assumes that federal programs actually achieve what they set out to do, which is far from obvious, and that they don’t create incentives for behavior that results in greater problems, which often happens. He also assumes a zero sum society. It is entirely possible that economic thinking that concerns itself more with productivity than with equality will actually leave the great majority of people better off.