Lesser Loves--October 27, 2021

Lesser Loves--October 27, 2021

"Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep you lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, 'I will never leave you or forsake you'." [Hebrews 13:4-5]

At first blush, these verses might just seem like a final catch-all of random religious rules being lobbed at us.  No cheating on your spouse!  No sleeping around!  No obsessing over money!  You almost might expect old chestnuts like, "Wait an hour after eating before you get in the pool!" or "Brush and floss twice a day!" or "Always get the extra insurance when you are renting a car!" To our ears, these verses might seem like they are unrelated instructions.  And of course, with the mention of God reserving the right to "judge" when we break those commandments, it surely might sound like these verses are just here to scare us into good behavior in some attempt to avoid going to hell for having had too many dates or too much money.

But I hope by now we've gotten to know the writer of Hebrews well enough to realize he doesn't just toss out thoughts at random in disjointed rants.  He sees connections where we often don't, and at least on this point, I'd suggest we give him the benefit of the doubt in seeing connections rather than just the barking of rules.  And in particular I want to ask us to consider that the common thread here is that when you've encountered the unrelentingly faithful, unfailing love of God for us, it is a damn shame to settle for lesser loves of any kind.

From that vantage point, both the matters of loving money and of casual sex are two pernicious weedy stems from the same root: they are both matters of settling for lesser loves rather than the harder work of loving people faithfully.  In a sense, they are both forms of treating everything else around as an object for our own gratification.  Money, after all, is simply a means of getting what you want--its power is in what it can get you, what it can buy you, and how it can make you feel (secure, important, comfortable).  And casual sex--whether it is cheating on someone you have made promises to, or with people you are just using for your own gratification--is another way of turning people into objects, rather than doing the hard work of loving them faithfully, even when you don't "get" anything out of it at the time.

It's not that God is opposed to human happiness--this isn't about saying material goods are inherently sinful, or that God wants everybody to take vows of celibacy.  But rather, it's that God knows the ways hearts get broken and people get hurt when we use people and love things.   And God loves the people whose hearts we would go trampling on when we treat them like disposable objects, or when we live our lives simply to get richer.  For that matter, God knows how empty we end up feeling, too, when we spend our lives chasing after more money or sex, only to find that it was in giving ourselves away and seeking the good of others that we really are fully alive.  God knows that the other places and people we go to in order to feel fulfilled will let us down. They'll all bail out on us at some point, or reveal they never really cared about us in the first place.  What we need, most deeply, is a love rooted in the personal promise, "I will not leave you or forsake you."

I think that's the key to figuring out how these seemingly unrelated verses from Hebrews fit together.  It's that promise of God never to leave us or forsake us that shows us what we've been missing when we have been spending our lives seeking after casual sex and made money our love.  Without the commitment of promises that we make and then keep, there's always this fear in the mind of a would-be romance, "Does this person actually love ME--or just the benefit I can give them?"  There is always the doubt, "Will this person stay with me and care for me even if I can't give them something in return?"  It's the promise and the faithfulness that make the difference.  Sleeping with someone apart from promises can't help but leave the other person wondering, "Will I be thrown away like a consumer good when I lose my looks, or the thrill fades, or when a newer model comes along?"  And that turns out to be one more way of loving things and using people.

The world around us, and the cultural and economic systems we live in, may not understand why that is a problem.  After all, it's easy to say, "As long as everyone is an adult and consenting, you can choose to do what you want in life," and then you don't have to think too hard about who gets hurt when someone moves on to a new romance or the next shiny thing that comes along.  It's easy to treat all of our relationships as consumer experiences, because we live in a land that assumes everything is for sale, and the customer is always right. And over against that, I am convinced that the people of God are called to resist defining ourselves merely as consumers--always needing more money to buy the next thing on our wish list, and always using people as means to our pleasure and then discarding them when it gets difficult.  The people of God are meant to build our lives on something different than endless consumption. We are meant to build our lives on promises of unfailing love: first God's, and then by extension, our own. And when we build our lives on the quest for money and casual sex, we're settling for lesser loves.  God wishes our joy--and the joy and dignity of those with whom we are in relationship--that God says a loud and clear "No" to all the ways we try to objectify other people and all the ways we try to give our hearts to bank accounts.

In a culture that teaches us endlessly to want more, in a society that gets outraged at the suggestion that we should want less rather than accumulate more, and in a time when even a lot of Respectable Religious folks have given a pass to public figures who serially objectify women and revel in their impunity, we are called to be something different.  We are called to be people who pin our hopes on the love that will not abandon us, and then to become people who do not abandon others, because our love is not merely another form of consumption.

The bottom line, I think is this: don't settle for anything less than the Love that will not let you go.  That means saying no to building your life around money, which will never love you back at all.  And it also means saying no to the kind of casual sex that treats other people like they are consumer products to be used up and thrown away, too.  It means living our lives by promises, and seeing our lives as being held in the promises of God.  

Dear friends, let us allow ourselves to be loved fully by a faithful God, and then allow that love to transform our own love for others.

Good Lord, love us in your own good and faithful way, so that we will be done with commodifying other people whom you love just as fiercely and faithfully.