Saturday, September 26, 2015
Burning down the house
This past week my oldest son received a Lego Junior fire station
set as an unexpected gift from his cousins.
It is his first Lego set and he is totally captivated by it. He has played with it constantly and shows no
sign of tiring of it like he does other toys.
It was a wonderful gift totally in accord with his desires and longing
to be immersed in the world of firefighters.
Not surprisingly, my youngest son is also completely
mesmerized by the set. He relishes the
few opportunities he gets to play with the truck and station on his own without
his brother around. The thing about it
though is that he breaks pieces off every
single time he touches it! So in
the span of 5 minutes the truck no longer has its ladder, windshield, doors, or
rear seating compartment and the station no longer has its slide, door handle, chair,
windows, antenna, garage, ramps to the garage, upper wall, external hydrant . .
. you get the picture. The gift intended
for his brother is totally in accord with his desires too and he longs to be
immersed in the world of firefighters via this portal. Currently though at his young age, with
imprecise fine motor skills, he cannot help but steadily and predictably
destroy the very thing with which he is enthralled.
I bring it up here because it has struck me as an analogy
for helping to process the SCOTUS ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
So what specifically are the contours of the analogy I am
referencing?
 |
| "Lego Fire Station" by ShadowMan39 is licensed under C.C. 2.0 |
An unexpected gift arrives from thoughtful relatives. It is spot on in terms of fulfilling a
longing we have. This is what God our father
has done in giving humanity natural and sacramental marriage. We all long to love and be loved for, “Man
cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for
himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not
encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does
not participate intimately in it.” (Redemptor
hominis #10)
The possibility of remaining exclusively, permanently and
fruitfully bound to a spouse is a longing proper to all human hearts. St. John Paul II calls it the primordial sacrament,
or the sign that actually makes God present in the world from the very dawn of
creation.
Some of humanity is capable of receiving the surprise gift
in an appropriate way that keeps the gift intact. Some of humanity is not. Here’s a kicker though, we all start out not being able to keep the gift intact, but with time, patience and
training (by God) we develop the necessary skills and finesse to interact
appropriately within the confines of the gift.
After the Fall, all of humanity experiences a wound in our most
vulnerable interiority. We desire things
that do not correspond to our longing for love.
We are attracted by lies, counterfeits and knockoffs. Because of this gaping wound everyone needs
to learn how to grow beyond the ultimate poison to marriage which is “hardness
of heart” (Mt 19:8). So the remedy for any of us being able to live out the intricate gift of marriage well
is time, virtue and God’s grace.
This is why, in part, I’m so displeased with the SCOTUS
ruling. It ignores the crescendo of time,
virtue and grace that humanity has been learning to implement when it comes to the
tremendous gift of marriage down from Adam and Eve, through Abraham, David,
Hosea, Moses, Jesus, my ancestors to me.
But actually, I can’t be too harsh on the 5 Justices that ruled so
wrongly late in June because marriage in America has been consistently ruled
against for generations (if we wanted to try, we might pinpoint the first major
turn with the ruling on contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut).
I am disturbed that so many in our culture remain where my
younger son is, constantly destructing and unable to leave an intact structure
for others.
Spelling it out even more in the terms of the analogy, everyone’s proclivities to all sorts of
sexual sins have been breaking pieces off of sacramental marriage (when two
baptized Christians profess vows) and natural marriage (when a baptized
Christian marries a non-Christian, or two non-Christians marry) for so long
that we no longer have a fire station standing in Western culture. We just have a pile of recognizable pieces,
deconstructed and seemingly read for our own designs. But this will not work for man who must
participate intimately in love in order to fully receive himself.
I’m not angry at the “Gay lobby”, they’re just applying the
same logic that our culture has been applying since even before Margaret Sanger was up
to no good at the turn of the century. The
widespread acceptance of no fault divorce means that marriage is not truly
expected to be permanent for many in our culture and the ubiquitous use of
contraception and sterilization have made intimacy between men and women
unfruitful and closed to the possibility of lovingly accepting children from
the first moment of their conception. So
if men and women are not permanently and fruitfully bound together in marriage,
what would be the rational basis in our courts for distinguishing between
marriage and same sex civil unions now erroneously referred to as “marriage” in
our nation?
I’m disheartened when my sons get overwhelmed by the
intricate details of their Lego fire station.
One of them can play well with the gift, the other can only slowly
destroy it. This realization has enabled
me to process my thoughts and emotions in the wake of June 26, 2015. I long for the time when more of us learn our
lessons and grow to be like my older son, playing in accord with our limits—and
therefore are free to love authentically and be loved fully.
What’s helping you process the SCOTUS ruling?
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)
Posts
