Mark Sanford's Dilemma and the Quest for the Good: II

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Andrew Bard Schmookler (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Andrew Bard Schmookler - Writer

HOW SANFORD'S CHRISTIAN ADVISORS SEE HIS SITUATION

In the previous entry on this theme, I suggested that --judging from
his statements about his relationship with the woman in Argentina--
Mark Sanford had found something of importance, something indeed
connected with the sacred, in that relationship. Whether or not
Sanford would be wise to abandon that relationship and rebuild his
marriage, I said, it would be good if the decisions he makes could be
based on a full understanding of the meaning of what he discovered in
that "forbidden" relationship.

But it is not clear that the conservative Christian culture in which
Sanford is embedded is equipped by its worldview to help him in this
quest for wisdom and understanding.

One "spiritual group advisor" "thinks his friend, South Carolina Gov.
Mark Sanford, was caught off guard by 'the power of darkness' when he
started an affair with an Argentine woman." [quote from msnbc.com news
article]

"The power of darkness." To see the relationship simply in these
terms is to focus only on the forbiddenness of the relationship.
It is "adultery"; it is a violation of his marital oath.

These are not unimportant aspects of the situation. But it gives
no attention at all to the other, very powerful and also very positive
aspect of the relationship. Sanford says he found a "soul mate,"
and his words indicate that in that bond he experienced, all together,
a loving connection of bodies and hearts and souls. As I said in
the earlier post, "It does not get much more whole than that."

But this conservative Christian worldview does not stress
wholeness. It stresses a top-down kind of order, in which the
part of the order that is below is regarded as of value primarily in
terms of its being subordinated to the order imposed by that which is
above.

"God hates lawlessness and is tireless in His desire
to dissuade man from his fascination with lawlessness," reads a paper
[by Sanford's apparently most valued spiritual advisor, "Cubby"
Culbertson]. "Our hearts are lions' dens of devouring lusts.
Lawlessness torments righteous souls every day."

The relationship with the wife is within God's law, and that with the
Argentine woman is a violation of that law. So, in that
worldview, the paramount consideration seems to be that the Sanfords
are bound by a promise made to God. And in that worldview, the
relationship with the Argentine is seen, by contrast, as a reflection
of "the power of darkness."

Again, I do not question the validity of those considerations. It
is their adequacy I question, because the top-down view of things fails
in crucial ways to capture the centrality of Wholeness to the sacred
and the Good. (It is not GOD's good that can be paramount;
the God of Christianity is already perfect, needing nothing. It
is the good of needful, suffering human beings --including of course
Sanford's family-- that God's law, if it is to be of value, must serve.)

Culbertson is quoted as saying this about marriage, and the Sanford's in particular:

For most Christians, at some point in your marriage,
if you're married long enough, you do it because that's what we're
called to do - out of obedience instead of out of passion. And I think
that's where Mark and Jenny are right now.""

There are two possible readings of that statement. One possible
interpretation it admits of is this: "After a certain point in a
marriage, you stick around because you SHOULD, not because you FEEL
like it." But perhaps that's not the intended meaning.
Perhaps it is, rather: "In the course of a long marriage, a
couple may well go through a time where it is duty rather than desire
that keeps people together."

The second meaning is unobjectionable: a marriage may well
require working through difficult times, using the COMMITMENT of
marriage to hang in there together in such times and break through to a
better place.

But if it is the first meaning that's intended, what a travesty of what
a marriage should be! To make it a virtue to preserve a marriage
without heart and soul, all in the name of duty, is the kind of
pathology of purely top-down thinking about the good that (I would
suggest) is at the heart of a great many of the pathologies of the
Christian right in our time. (Because when the needs of the human
creature are treated as unimportant, those needs are apt to break out
into expression in disorderly ways.)

1 | 2

Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.