[I'm having a hard time writing this. I'm not sure if it's because my ideas haven't coalesced or because I keep seeing connections everywhere--in a way, I think in writing I figure out what I want to say--I start in in one place with one end in mind and then end up somewhere completely different.]
Holy Not Happy - An Unnecessary and Misleading Dichotomy
"What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?" asks the subtitle of Gary Thomas's book Sacred Marriage.
It's a sobering thought. I suspect it's written as an anecdote to those Christians who divorce because "God wants me to be happy."
However, both these conceptions of happiness seem suspiciously shallow. Surely there is more to happiness than the mere absence of physical, emotional or psychological pain.
If God doesn't just want me to be happy, does that mean he wants me to suffer? So I can be more holy? If that's the case, the more marriage makes you suffer, the better.
I'm taking it a little far, but I think the subtitle in question sets up an unnecessary opposition of holy versus happy, or being a person of character versus being happy (in a deeper sense) with your life.
I also think that this opposition can be twisted into a justification for either perpetrating or enduring emotional abuse.
The Problem with "Twilight" or The Lure of False Submission
I was in an emotionally abusive relationship once, in a professional, not a romantic, context. And there's one thing that the other person would say to me that sticks out in memory: "I believe in you."
He meant to imply that as much as I failed to live up to my potential, if only I would give in to him and do what he said, I could be better. I could be more holy: "Let me control you and everything will work out."
As much as it stings my pride to admit it, there was something undeniably attractive about this offer. I knew I was flawed. That I screwed up. And here was someone honest enough to call me on my crap.
If only I could be better. If only I could stop failing. Maybe if I submitted my will to his, I would stop hurting people and actually become a better person.
It's the "this is for your own good" line of abuse--and there is something subtly alluring about letting go of responsibility for and control of your own life, your own dreams, your own being. I don't know how else to explain the success of "Twilight," which trumpets the kind of all-consuming love that demands the loss of self in the Other. I know only that self-immolation and self-abnegation are a temptation--particularly to those who feel less than whole to begin with.
The Dorothea Effect - It's About to Get Literary Y'all
Dorothea Brooke is a character in the novel "Middlemarch" by George Eliot. At base, she is a crusader without a crusade, a missionary without a mission field, a saint deprived of martyrdom. Being so, she makes her own martyrdom, choosing to marry a dourly pedantic and humorless man (Edward Casaubon) over twice her age, so that she might help him in his great, world-changing work, "The Key to All Mythologies" (as bad as it sounds--worse, actually).
Of course, if she were a man in nineteenth century England, her ambitions and ideals would find an easier outlet. As it is, she makes a disastrous marriage to the wrong man--dare I say because she desires holiness (to serve God by serving Casaubon) over happiness (in the sun is shining, birds are singing, isn't it a lovely day to be married to a hot young artist sense. *Spoiler alert* this happens later in the book).
Jane Eyre faces a similar temptation in the form of the handsome and deeply religious St. John Rivers. He asks Jane to marry him and follow him to the mission field as his help-meet. He does not love her, nor does he find her attractive. He simply sees that she is constitutionally and temperamentally suited for the rigors and challenges of missionary life. How romantic.
Adrienne Rich calls this the temptation of self-immolation--literally burning oneself alive.
Jane is tempted to a living death--sacrificing her life to St. John's missionary calling; denying her need to love and be loved by marrying a man for holiness and not happiness.
Dorothea falls into this temptation. Jane does not.
I would define "the Dorothea effect" as denying your own dreams/art/work/calling to serve the dreams/art/work/calling of another person.
In other words, find your own damn "Key to All Mythologies."
More to come on this later.
Inspirations:
1. This article about the end of a Christian marriage.
2. A talk at church (for women) about submitting to God's will.
3. Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas (which I haven't read in full).
4. Middlemarch by George Eliot
5. "The Temptations of a Motherless Woman" by Adrienne Rich.
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