Episode 018 – Unring the Bell of Choice
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In this episode we talk about the infant de-baptism article that Montana posted earlier in the week.
I think you might find this episode interesting because we cover some interesting themes related to this topic.
The only show notes I have is that Zac quoted David Bentley Hart’s, Christ and Nothing
David Benley Hart, “Christ and Nothing”, In The Aftermath: Provocations and Laments. 1-19
I know we said we would talk about the Da Vinici Code but we are waiting for a special guest to join us, so that episode has been postponed.
Here’s this week’s episode is one hour and four minutes:
Play this episode:
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In my defense:
So…nobody has yet to comment on the whole “choice” discussion, so I will start the discussion off with some further clarification on what I was trying to get at with my “critique” of choice.
Montana pushed this issue to its modern, Jerry Macguire (“You Complete me”), climax: “love”. Montana asks, “Isn’t what makes love beautiful the fact that you “choose” to love the one that you are with?” This, I believe, is at the heart of the discussion around choice and it is here I wish to dwell.
Is it, in fact, choice that makes love beautiful? Well, if we are to understand “choice” to be defined by a particular process of “selection” whereby the chooser observes the many “options” and then decides, based upon preference, as to which option is “best”, then I conclude that in fact, this is not the heart of what makes love beautiful. On the other hand, I do not therefore believe the opposite to be true either, namely that love is only a mysterious force that attracts us, against our will, to the beloved, such that we would say, “I could not NOT love you for you are “perfect” for me”. I conclude that this is also not the heart of what makes love beautiful. For, as we should all be able to admit, we are prone to, on the one hand, observe those around us through the lens of prejudice and preference and on the other hand, we are prone to be “swept off our feet” by that which ends up being a farse or an illusion. If either of these methods are the ways through which we are to love, then we must, in my humble opinion, conclude that love is violence to the other to whom we decide is not worthy of our love or the other whose “charm” was not able to sweep us off our feet.
I can hear your objections already…”There are different kinds of love”, you say. Perhaps….perhaps when it comes to erotic love the factor of “chemistry” or “attraction” is (obviously?) important. But…to speak of “love” or divine love as being based upon “attraction” or “chemistry” is to deny that God COMMANDS that we love our neighbor, that is, everyone.
Soren Kierkegaard, the great negative theologian, had much to critique about preferential forms of love. He saw love, while not necassarily not also guided by some sense of attraction or “taste”, to be primarily (especailly in relation to what divine love requires of us) guided by the “COMMAND”. Love is not what I do because I want to, or because it suits me, but because I have been commanded: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Kierkegaard said the following of love:
“It is in fact Christian love that discovers and knows that the neighbor exists and, what is the same thing, that everyone is the neighbor. If it were not a duty to love, the concept of “neighbor” would not exist either; but only when one loves the neighbor, only then is the selfishness in preferential love rooted out and the equality of the eternal preserved.” – pg. 44, Works of Love, ed. Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong, Princeton University Press, 1995.
My professor once commented on a Kierkegaardian critique of love by summing it up this way: “For Kierkegaard, there are always three people in the bedroom, you, your partner, and God….oh wait, four people….we can’t forget the neighbor.” Of course this is a humorous way of putting it, but the point remains that no matter what relationship we are in, we are never in it apart from God and neighbor; whatever we do and however we act affects each party.
So…back to “Choice”. What comes first, the command to love, or the choice to love? This, for me, is what is important, especially in an age where the very word “choice” is used to denote the absolute sovereignty of the private, personal will (and this is the connecting point to the whole “de-baptism” thing). Said differently, what we think is most glorious about our society is that we believe (albeit on the basis of much delusion) that we are most free because we have the limitless option to choose whomever we want to be and whatever we want to buy and are limited by no “command”. The very idea that our love should be directed towards someone not because we choose to do so but because, no matter what our desire we are commanded to love, is an offense to modern liberal ideas of freedom.
I am not saying that we should live in a dictatorship where the government forces us to love people, but is our modern capitalist alternative ultimately the only option? Is it ultimately best to believe that the highest good is our own choice and no command should tell us otherwise. What if there were a third option, and it is that of the Church. The church, when it acts faithfully, believes it has been commanded by God to love all without preference; without “taste” because to do so is in fact, to love God. Is choice what makes love beautiful, then? Perhaps if choice is understood as obedience to the command to love all without preference, then yes.
Is any of this making sense? Do you catch the nuance I am attempting to draw out?
Z
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