THE LOST IDEAL
A Sermon by the Rev. Peter M. Buss
Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so (Matthew 19:8).
Although our text speaks of divorce, yet its spirit breathes of the smaller and more common problems which sully marriage, and make it unlike what it was when God ordained it in the beginning. This is the subject of our sermon. In the beginning of almost every marriage within the church the ideal of conjugial love holds sway; but when the hearts of married partners become hardened, one against the other, the ideal becomes dimmed, and then forgotten. Our text speaks of the lost ideal, and in so doing it speaks a warning to every married couple.
The work entitled Conjugial Love states the ideal as it was in the beginning, in the intention of the God who created it. It does so in order that what was so then may become so again at the end. Conjugial love is celestial, spiritual, holy, pure and clean above every love from the Lord (Conjugial Love 64). It is the fundamental love, and every joy takes its spring from it (Conjugial Love 65-68). Its states are described, from inmost to outmost. The first is innocence, a living trust in the Lord. Then there are peace and tranquility, the quietness, or rest of mind which from time immemorial men have acknowledged as a heavenly blessing. There are friendship and complete confidence; and no one who has lived in a world where distrust is a necessary armor will fail to appreciate the benefit of having one whom we trust with all things of our minds. Finally, in the lower mind and body there is the heartfelt desire to help and bring joy to the other in every possible way. (Conjugial Love 180).
All these things spring from conjugial love, because in the total communion between two, in which love of self becomes a servant, and love of the consort is the master, in which two hearts go outwards, and do not turn in towards themselves, there is the perfect resting place into which the love of God can descend.
Most of the world accepts these ideals, for a time. When two people fall in love, and during the first days of marriage, nothing seems more natural to them than that all the happy states of life will spring from their love. If there has been some order in their preparation for marriage, especially through the teachings of the Writings, then in those first days they are moved by the greatest reality in creation. A window has opened in heaven; through it they have caught a glimpse of eternal happiness, out of it has poured a measure of conjugial love.
The lost ideal is something that we see a few years later, when the first excitement has worn off marriage. We are not speaking here of the lack of love patent in ill-formed marriages, nor of these unions which are no longer of love, but are a partnership for the sake of the children. But it is necessary to speak of the many people who say they are still in love; but love to them is very different from the ideal of which the Word speaks. That is a lost ideal; love has become something far more earthly, far less uplifting, far more cynical, far less pure.
As the honeymoon wanes, many partners find that affection between them is absent, sometimes for long periods of time. Often, unfortunately, they draw their own conclusions as to the causes of this state. But the Word for the New Church gives the cause, in a passage which begins its treatments of cold in marriage. There is a spiritual sun, and a natural sun. The spiritual sun sends out its warmth through the universe, and that warmth is the Lord's love. It pervades the universe, gives life wherever it is received. From it comes conjugial love. The natural sun, whose warmth is physical, material fire, nevertheless is the agent through which all the things of this world live. We delight in the things of this world, and so earthly delights are symbolically said to come from the natural sun. When the warmth of the sun of heaven governs earthly delights, conjugial love can be received, in increasing measure. But when the minds of two people become occupied solely with the things of the world, then the order is inverted. The love of marriage is being made to serve selfish wishes; it will not do this, so spiritual warmth from the Lord's sun in heaven withdraws, and the result is a lack of love - a coldness towards the consort (Conjugial Love 235).
Coldness in marriage comes from this source alone, from the lack of religion (Conjugial Love 239). (We are tempted to ascribe it to differences of opinion, or annoying habits, of the challenges of life, but it is the lack of charity making these unbearable which is the true cause.) This does not mean primarily a lack of doctrinal beliefs, or a difference in beliefs. It is partly that, but it is also a lack of interest in and attention to the goods which religion teaches; and an interest in and attention to things that may lead to the evils which religion forbids.
As the business of marriage settles in, people tend to turn their minds from thinking about the need to love each other forever, to care for each other forever, and start thinking about themselves instead. They start to expect and demand things of each other, instead of waiting for them to be offered, and offering in return. They plan their future together, as is necessary, but now, instead of their love and its uses being the primary things, they are interested in what they are going to acquire, what they are going to accomplish so that they can be proud of themselves. Ambition, acquisition, popularity, just ordinary enjoyment, become uppermost in their minds, and the things for which the sun of heaven shines brightly, fade, and become darkened in their minds. Intrinsically there is nothing wrong with concentration on the needs of this world; it is the totality of the concentration that matters. Then there are also the challenges of life, the tragedies or the problems which at times overwhelm us. Feeling overwhelmed, we are tempted to seek solutions based on the present, rather than on eternity.
In this sphere the vision of love is obscured. Quarrels arise, or with those of more mature dispositions, tense discussions. Solutions are not always found, for each insists on the portion in which he or she is in the right; and so a lingering sense of resentment exists against the person whom, above all other humans, we are supposed to love. Even the physical expression of love can become a selfish thing, serving rather to disjoin than to unite.
This is not a picture of an openly unhappy marriage. Perhaps every couple goes through these things, in small ways. There is impatience with the other's perspectives, a wish to win an argument, the little remarks which put the other in the wrong, a wish to get one's own way when each wants something different, a feeling that we are not being honored and are putting more into the marriage than the other is. We could add insensitivity to the states of the other, a preoccupation with our own issues, spending too much time at work or with other friends, attending to the children to the exclusion of the spouse. The list is long. And attitudes like these, because they partake of this world only, and because they are excluding the thought of an ideal love for another, exclude also the warmth of the sun of heaven, if we allow them to dictate to us.
Cold arises. But because people are loath to admit to themselves, let alone to someone else, that their marriages are not happy, they continue to tell themselves they are in love. And unconsciously, or even consciously, they lower the ideal of love, to fit their own feelings into it. They try not to think of the ideal that the Word has described. Love is not something high in the sky, they say. They think of their own relationship, one of friendship in some things, tolerance in others, one in which certain things seem as though they will never be solved, one of alternate cold and heat, one in which marriage is just a general feeling of comfort and well-being and at other times of frustration, as love. They even begin to talk of marriage in terms of this world only, giving little thought to the fact that while on earth we are supposed to be developing a relationship which will have ties in heaven as well as on earth - and that means the bond of a heavenly principle which is shared, for this alone unites people in heaven. They may even avoid these thoughts because they are not particularly affected with the thought of living forever with their partners.
So, the ideal can become lost. We could come to pay lip-service to it, and no more. We could stop aiming for it, feeling in our hearts that it does not exist, that the description the Writings give is just not practical, in the light of our own experience. Then although we may not agree in words, yet in spirit we would concur with the nine companies of spirits from the European world who were asked to decide on the origin of the love which belongs to marriage. They said this love comes from the desire for an orderly society, for a home in which to educate children; that it springs from the physical desire for one particular person; that it comes about when people think of the delights and comforts of marriage; that it arises from the desire to have a legal heir for ones possessions; or that it is merely the response between two harmonious natures. Then an African spoke, and said, You Christians deduce the origin of conjugial love from the love itself. But we Africans deduce it from the God of heaven and earth ... Love truly conjugial is known only to the few who are near to God (Conjugial Love 113).
What a contrast! How obviously true what the African said; how it sweeps away all the other mechanistic theories! Yet how easy to deny it by looking to various physical solutions to problems as our source of marital happiness. There is no way around it, there is no sidestepping the problems; we cannot enjoy conjugial love if we neglect our spiritual duties. What we have will be of this earth; it will not give inner peace of mind; it will not breed complete trust in our consorts; it will not permit true friendship; and it will not at length produce the full desire of heart and mind to do whatever will bring joy to the heart and mind of the other.
Conjugial love is from the Lord, not from ourselves. Through the sun of heaven, He sends out His warmth, which joins together the souls and minds and bodies of two people who worship Him, in their words, and in their deeds. They cannot build that love, He builds it. They cannot even know its power, until it moves them. This is the tragedy, that so many couples feel that they build marriage by their relationship with one another, that the power to create a love between them is theirs. Then they must lose the ideal, for they must see that they are both human, limited, frail in vision as well as in will. So they feel that marriage can at best be an affectionate accommodation between two normal, fallible people. And if they try to build marriage, they are right! They will miss its life. But the Lord builds marriage. The love inflowing from Him is real, the greatest reality in the universe, the one power which can stir two hearts, move them with a tenderness towards each other that they could not before have believed possible, make them believe that a total commitment to each other is possible and must be sought. Only those things which are the Lord's doing are truly marvelous in our eyes, for they are living, as no creation of mans can be. And this is so of marriage, which is the more interior reason why the Lord said, when ordaining Christian marriage, What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
The fire of many marriages burns low, threatens to go out, and cold remains; and the danger is potential in all marriages. But from the beginning it was not so. The beginning of anything is the intention. So, when the Lord brings two people together, it is never His intention, nor is it then their desire, that their hearts should be hardened one against the other.
The beginning, what God ordained and intended, that is important. And the end, what we actually do become, that is very important. If through re-dedication to the ideals of marriage love we strive to let the Lord soften our hearts with love towards each other, so that the end is the same as the beginning, then what has happened in between does not matter. The ideal we see in the beginning of our marriage is bound to fade, because human beings are what they are, but the most tragic thing of all is that many then accept the lost ideal as the reality. They resign themselves to the idea of marriage as a friendship, a partnership, not an everlasting bond of love. They cease to strive, when through striving, through clinging to the memory of the love in its purest phases, they could have enabled the Lord to return them to that love; but to that love refined and purified through temptation and through living instruction.
Nor does the Word merely assure those who are in states of cold that the ideal is ahead. It abounds with ways in which we can return to the ideal. In the teachings on acting as if from love though it appears to be absent; in the reflection on the nature of the little faults which assail marriage; in all the teachings about mediate good and the way in which the Lord's mercy leads the natural, unregenerate man who loves the things of this world too much, into better states, we may find ample consolation, encouragement, and understanding. The wisdom of the Lord would hardly be infinite were He to ordain an ideal, a dream set on high, without pointing out to ordinary people how they may climb up to it. But the wisdom of the Lord is infinite; the pathway is there; and the dream can become the greatest reality.
Lessons:
1. Matthew 19:1-11
2. Conjugial Love 280
3. Conjugial Love 235
Matthew 13:44-46: Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.
Matthew 19:1-11: Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these sayings, that He departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them there. The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? And He answered and said to them, Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate. They said to Him, Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away? He said to them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery. His disciples said to Him, If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry. But He said to them, All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given.
Conjugial Love 235: People experience spiritual warmth and spiritual coldness; and spiritual warmth is love, while spiritual coldness is the absence and loss of love. Spiritual warmth originates from no other source than the sun of the spiritual world. For the sun there is an outpouring from the Lord, who is in the midst of it. Since it is from the Lord, that sun in its essence is pure love. It appears to angels as a ball of fire, just as the sun of our world does to human beings. It appears as a ball of fire because love is spiritual fire. From that sun emanate both heat and light, but because it is pure love, the heat from it in its essence is love, and the light from it in its essence is wisdom.
This makes clear the origin of spiritual warmth and the fact that it is love.
The origin of spiritual coldness, moreover, will also be briefly explained. It originates from the sun of the natural world and its heat and light. The sun of the natural world was created so that its heat and light might receive into them spiritual heat and light and by means of its atmospheres convey them even to the lowest elements in the world. ....This is what happens when spiritual heat is joined to and contained in natural heat.
The contrary happens, however, when natural heat is separated from spiritual heat, as is the case in people who love natural things and reject spiritual ones. In them spiritual warmth becomes coldness. In this way these two kinds of heat, by creation in harmony, become opposed to each other, and the reason is that the master heat then becomes the servant heat, and the servant heat the master. So to keep this from happening spiritual heat, which by right of its origin is the master, withdraws ; and spiritual warmth in these recipient vessels then grows cold, because it becomes opposed.
It is apparent from this what spiritual coldness is - that it is the absence and loss of spiritual heat.
