You
may recall earlier in the semester we watched the Woody Allen film Crimes and Misdemeanors. Allen has become "persona non grata"
in many circles these days, and perhaps justifiably so, but it's a shame
that his movies are now viewed as politically unfashionable as well, because
they offer an insightful glimpse into the modern mind that should make all of
us a little uncomfortable. At any rate, Crimes
and Misdemeanors is considered by
many to be the best of his movies, and it raises all sorts of philosophical
questions about morality, "privilege," art and its relationship to
culture, religion, meaning…it's an ambitious film, with a provocative
conclusion.
In case you've forgotten, it tells two overlapping stories about two marriages. One story, that of Judah Rosenthal, is about adultery and its consequences. It's a serious story, in which Judah decides to cover up an affair by having his mistress Delores murdered before she exposes their relationship and destroys his marriage and reputation. The other story is about Cliff Stern, a mediocre documentary film director who wallows in the misery of his loveless marriage, until he falls in love with the producer of a TV series for which he is directing an episode. Allen jumps back and forth between both stories, using clips from old films to mark the transitions… and to make a powerful point about just how much our assumptions about life are shaped by the entertainment we consume. Whatever you think of Woody Allen the person, it's a great flick.
There is a particularly interesting scene in the film in which the rabbi, Ben, tells Judah that he could confess his adultery to those he hurt, and ask forgiveness. The dialogue contains an interesting verb choice- Ben seems to assume that Judah's family has already been hurt by him even though they don't know what he has done, whereas Judah seems to believe that "what they don't know can't hurt them"; so long as his secret remains a secret, no harm is done. This is why Judah wants Delores silenced- If she doesn't reveal the affair, Judah keeps his family, and keeps his "wealth and privilege," as he calls it. Everything is the same just because it looks the same, because the "appearance" is maintained.
[Here's the scene]
Implicitly, two worldviews are being contrasted in this scene, whether Allen intended it or not. Each of those worldviews is rooted in metaphysical assumptions that inform the choices of those who hold them, right down to the intimate day-to-day decisions they make about how to interact within their own families. There is a relevant life lesson in this: Two people with different worldviews can see the same situation very differently, both reaching equally rational but radically different conclusions about that situation, and about how best to act in response to it. Only if they are aware of those assumptions and the possibility that they are not shared by others can they make sense of how someone else's response might be so very different, yet worthy of being taken seriously. With a little humility, one might even come to see the other's perspective as better, or (gasp) Truer. I capitalized that word on purpose. It's worth noting that the film doesn't just make this point by contrasting the perspectives of Judah and Ben in this scene- it's also made through repeated references to comedy and tragedy, and how each can be understood as appropriate responses to the same situation ("Comedy is tragedy plus time," as Lester says).
At any rate, here is why I find the scene so interesting- It exposes the latent consequences of the very different ways in which we can understand the phenomenon to which we have given the label "love." [1] And that is interesting because, as a Catholic, I believe that ultimately our very purpose for existing is to love, and to be loved. So needless to say, how we understand what love is and whether we are correct in that understanding is of great significance. I'll even go so far as to assert that love is the thing all of us (have been created to) really want the most, and those who would deny that are, I am convinced, just fooling themselves. They are either afraid of the risk of love (maybe because they believe they've been burned by it in the past) or skeptical of its possibility, but it is, behind the indifferent façade, really what they want, regardless.
But there is a problem with this, which is that to love (and to be loved) requires an extraordinary amount of honesty. If you pretend to be someone you are not in order to lure someone into loving you (if you hide your flaws, or assume that your past choices are "nobody else's business," or deceive a loved one through infidelity as Judah did, for example), you will inevitably be faced with the probability that if you succeed, the person you have deceived doesn't really love you at all, but rather the illusion of who you are that you have created. And then there is the risk that they will only continue to love "you" to the extent that you are able to perpetuate that deception. You wind up in a trap of your own making: You may know that you've found someone who loves the deception you're perpetrating, but you cannot know if they will really love you without admitting the lie, and revealing that you are a liar in the process (which now becomes part of the complete picture of who you really are, and who they must be willing to accept in order to love the real you).
This leads to a conclusion that is inescapable: No one who ever even partially deceives others can ever be fully loved by them. Complete love requires complete honesty. Anything less is a compromise, and that compromise is like a flesh wound- if deep enough, it must either be treated (with the truth), or it will fester, and given sufficient time, it will ultimately kill its host. The moment Judah is unfaithful to his wife he becomes someone other than the person she believes him to be, and it is no longer the real him that she loves. The person she thinks he is doesn't exist; the object of her love is a phantom. Conventional wisdom says she is the victim; Socrates says that the opposite is true- it's better to be lied to than to be a liar, and Judah, by lying, becomes the victim of his own choices: By concealing his true self, he makes it impossible for his wife to love him. And if he's not bothered by that prospect, then he doesn't really want her love, and he's no different from Delores- he has used his wife to satisfy his own needs, just as he and Delores have mutually used one another, and Delores is no more "needy" or "emotionally hungry" than he is. Not only does his choice make it impossible for his wife to love the real him- if Socrates is right, he's also corrupted his own soul by choosing injustice, making the real him less worthy of being loved in the process.
To clarify my position, let's dispense with a key misconception about what love, actually is (okay, bad joke): It simply cannot be merely a feeling or an emotion. I understand this misconception, because there is one feeling that is generally characteristic of love, which is the feeling of attraction. I say generally characteristic because attraction is also characteristic of lust, which is outside my present scope, and if you can be honest with yourself you probably already know the distinction I'm making anyway. But a little reflection should make it clear that love cannot be just attraction, and that attraction isn't even essential to it. If I were to learn that my daughter had suffered the accident in my infamous exam question, I would feel just what the question describes- fear and anguish. I would feel it precisely because I love my daughter. And there are other times when I have had other feelings, like anger and frustration, because of choices my daughter has made that I thought were foolish, short-sighted, or just plain wrong, that I wished she hadn't made because I love her. I suspect your parents have felt the same way in similar circumstances, and you will too, if/when you become a parent yourself. So, if love is just a feeling, which one is it? Attraction? Fear? Anger? Frustration?
In the Catholic worldview, love is not a feeling at all. It is a choice- the conscious decision to put another person's well-being before one's own, to "will the good of another." And as such, it is understood to be a lens through which one's view of reality is brought into focus (rather than a filter that alters or distorts that view), because it shifts the locus of that reality from the self to the other- to someone else…and, in its most perfect form, to everyone else, including those who might consider themselves your "enemies." So love is not, and cannot ever be, something that we "fall into" or surrender to, as if we have no control over it, and as it is romantically understood. We must have complete control over ourselves for the choice to be truly free, and authentic. But when that choice is made, it alters the way we perceive everything else.
It is important to note just how different the Catholic understanding of love is from how it is more commonly understood, especially given the prospect suggested at the beginning of this, namely that popular culture (specifically, entertainment such as film) has the power to shape our assumptions about what matters to us. It is our beliefs about such things as who we are, why we are here, and what potential -if any- there is to find meaning and significance in life and the cosmos that set the imaginative horizon for our ability to make sense of phenomena such as love (or beauty, or truth, or justice, or death, or free will, etc.). And in turn, it is the worldview we inherit as a result of the particular time and place into which we are born that shapes those beliefs. Nowhere is that worldview more potently and perhaps brazenly displayed than in the relentless onslaught of entertainments produced in the contemporary West. Music, film, television, streaming services, YouTube and social media...we are so saturated with messages about who we are, what we should want, and what to believe that it would seem impossible to process, if not for the fact that it is often so redundant.
Consider specifically what our media culture seems to tell us about the concept of love. There are the numerous reality shows all assuming that a potential spouse or partner can be chosen in a manner not unlike comparing cars at a dealership; there are the countless romantic comedies with plots so recycled and sentimental that they should [] What do they all have in common? A view of love ultimately rooted in modernist assumptions about the world we inhabit: That we are ultimately constructors of our own meaning; that there is nothing that really matters much more than feeling good for as long as we can []
You can choose to think that the alteration is a distortion of "the way things really are," if you want, but that is also to assume that your perception of reality without the "lens" of love is closer to the truth…and how do you know that? How would you prove that? I might put this another way, and suggest that love is just as valid as a metaphysical "fundamental principle" for understanding all of reality as any other principle proposed by any philosopher we have studied…and I might also mention that at least one "philosopher" actually did propose it, when he left as his only commandment to his followers to "love one another," even to the point of loving your "enemies."
The prevailing view -the romantic idea that love is something to which we surrender- is also devastating to Theology, because it distorts the concept of divine love in a way that severs the link between love and virtue as completely as it erases the essentiality of unclouded reason to free will. To see my point, consider that, in romantic relationships, the person who is more "in love" is always less "in power." The more in love, the more you need the other person to perpetuate the feeling to which you have become addicted, and if they are not as in love with you, they may become aware that your need gives them a degree of control over you. You know this if you've ever had someone tell you that "if you really love me, you'll do X," with X being whatever it is that they want and that they know you would otherwise not choose to do. If you don't do X, so your lover is telling you, they will interpret it as an indication that you don't "really" love them, and you will risk losing them. It's a manipulation -a threat really- based on the implicit control they have by being less emotionally invested in the relationship than you are (unless, of course, you are the one doing the manipulating…), and therefore knowing that they have less to lose, and less to risk. Children do this to their parents as well (and vice versa)- they can demand forgiveness from their parents for whatever transgression, or demand the fulfillment of any wish, by saying that if mom and dad don't comply, "you must not love me." An insecure parent who needs the approval of their child to validate their self-perception as a good parent will inevitably comply, out of fear that their child will "feel unloved" if they don't.
Extrapolate the essence from this model, and you get the fundamental problem with misunderstanding love for understanding God: It gives you a God whom you can guilt-manipulate. If He really loves you, so the reasoning goes, he must forgive your every transgression, without demanding anything of you that might make you "feel bad," like the humility of confession, or the difficult change of authentic repentance. So why not indulge? Love-as-feeling is your Get Out of Jail Free Card. This is such a distortion, it is almost the exact opposite of the Christian philosophic notion of divine love. If God loves us, and to love us is to will our good, then a personal God will be angry with us, and will punish us, precisely because He loves us, if that is what it takes to draw us closer to Him and to actualize our own self perfection.
But a God who loves us perfectly must also ultimately respect our freedom to choose to love Him (freedom again being essential to love) or to not love Him (thus, if Hell is the absence of God, it follows that there must be a Hell precisely because God loves us, and not despite it). The God-as-indulgent-parent model gives us in Theology exactly what it gives us in parenting- a God so needy and lacking in self-esteem that he can never be respected, much less obeyed. And ultimately, believers in such a God do so out of opportunistic utility rather than rationality. The Modern model of love-as-feeling has arguably done more damage to belief in God than any Atheist philosopher or any scientific theory.
And speaking of opportunistic utility, it's possible that this [] the relevance of our mistaken cultural concept of love to the current phenomenon of "identity politics," an umbrella term for any number of ways in which the postmodern person becomes convinced that the self is completely socially constructed, and can therefore be de-constructed and re-constructed in accordance with those aspects of one's consciousness that are perceived to exist on the "internal" side of a dividing line that can only ever be arbitrarily drawn, given that by the logic of any of these positions requires one
So…by now, you're probably starting to worry a little bit about the time you have to read this and answer it, right? Okay. I'll "get to the point," which is simply to draw out the implication of what I have already said: There is no possibility of real love without the courage to be honest about who you are, and to accept the risk that you might be deceived or rejected or otherwise taken advantage of by someone who uses you and your willingness to trust for their own ends. You have to accept this, and walk that path. Take the risk, embrace the potential pain, embarrassment, humiliation, hurt, and rejection. And if love is what you want in return (and you should), you can never do anything that will compromise the freedom of another person to freely choose to love you just because it is what they want. So- no guilt, no manipulation, no force or control. Nothing that causes someone to say they love you just so you can delude yourself with the lie you forced them to tell. That lie is not real love, and it will blossom into resentment, and inevitably, hatred. That's what Judah was saying to Delores when he asked her if her idea of love was "stupid threats and slander," and why I suggest that Delores had already lost him, if she was having to resort to guilt or shame to keep him. "If you love someone, set them free," so the saying goes.
Does that make sense to you? If not, then I'm afraid I can't offer you much more. But if it does make sense, then there is an additional point that follows from what I have been saying: God is love. I'm not just making that up- it's a claim about God found in the Bible, in 1 John 4:8, "Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love." The apostle Paul describes the kind of love I'm talking about, in 1 Corinthians 13,
If I speak in human and angelic tongues- but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing. For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Look, I know that by this point in your life there's a real chance that when someone starts quoting Bible passages to you, your mind switches into "Yeah-yeah-yeah-Jesus-wants-us-to-be-nice-to-each-other-blah-blah-blah-I-get-it" mode. But if you read that description and take it seriously, you'll see it is a fundamentally different understanding of love from one rooted in feelings or emotion. In fact, Paul claims in that last paragraph that love is, in effect, the maturation of the human capacity to reason. It's not a delusion to fall into or an intoxicant with which to self-medicate, rather it "rejoices with the truth." It is what clears away the delusions, and clarifies the mind. It's what the Greeks called a virtue. Again, it's a lens, not a filter.
If it's true that God is love –and I believe that it is- then our flawed, imperfect experiences of love should nevertheless offer some insight into the nature of God. Each experience of love should point beyond itself to Love Itself (Love Actually? Uhg.), like particulars pointing to a Platonic Form. We glimpse God (or recollect him?) with every experience of love, however imperfect it might be, so every experience provides an opportunity to refine our understanding of what it means to be loved by God, and therefore to love him in return. And if God truly loves us, he wants us to freely choose to love him in return- so no dropping down out of the sky and making us believe out of fear or awe…rather, we must seek him out and want to be loved by him…otherwise it's just not the real thing. He must, paradoxically, remain hidden from us, in order that we remain free to choose to find him.
You might call that the paradox of faith, and it has a parallel in the "faith" required in the love we have for one another- in marriage, for example. A faithful spouse is not just one who is sexually exclusive- that concept of fidelity is so objectifying that it essentially turns a spouse into property. Rather, a faithful spouse is uncompromisingly authentic- someone who hides nothing about who they are, accepting the risk of rejection that comes with such openness, and uncompromisingly trusting, recognizing that fear, doubt and suspicion are what cause us to conceal the most important parts of ourselves, in order to protect those parts from the pain of betrayal, and in the process of that concealment, to tell the very lie that destroys the genuine love that we sought in the first place. Again, to love fully and be fully loved, you must dive in, you have to be real, and you must trust completely. It is an extraordinary risk, and it takes great courage. If you think of love as sappy, or sentimental, or mushy, or irrational, you've simply got the wrong idea.
Of course, as Paul suggests, it takes a kind of philosophical maturity to think about love in this way, and it can often require stumbling through a lot of (youthful?) mistakes to arrive at such insight…all of which one must be honest about when such insight is acquired, and authentic love is at stake. Let's be honest- this is why the Church takes the stance that it does on so many issues regarding human sexuality and the consequences of treating it "casually." Empty sex of the metaphysical significance it has in the expression of authentic love, treat it as an act whose meaning can be relative to the circumstances in which it happens, and it cannot conveniently reassume its objective meaning and its unitive purpose just because you want it to later on in life, when you decide that such an understanding serves the purpose of imposing an obligation of fidelity on someone by whom you do not want to be deceived…because of the very fear of betrayal I mentioned earlier.
But suppose I'm right (and the Bible is right), that God is love, and love is our purpose, and love is a lens through which all of reality can be seen differently and perhaps more clearly, rather than a filter of emotion that clouds our judgment, that takes control of us, and that deludes us. Rather than being antithetical to knowing, love might be a different way of knowing, maybe even a deeper way, like the difference between knowing how to make a musical instrument, as opposed to knowing how to play one…if I "do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal," as Paul says. What's the point of knowing how to make a violin, when no one knows how to play it? One is a mechanistic, material (scientific) kind of knowledge, while the other is a purposive, intentional, philosophic kind of knowledge. But are not both necessary? Is not one dependent on the other?
Then there's this: Speaking of science, you know that the Modern period, whose twilight you and I are possibly witnessing, is typically characterized by a triumphalist view of the accomplishments of the natural sciences, the Scientific "Method," and the cross-pollination of that method in other academic disciplines -pioneered by Rene Descartes- in the effort to purge them of error in the pursuit of knowledge…as Modernism has defined it. It's an inspiring story (myth?) we've been telling ourselves for centuries now, in which Science triumphs over Superstition in the name of Truth, and Descartes' "method" offers us the assurance that we are liberated from the repressive power claims of those who would seek to control us for purposes of preserving that power.
And yet, is it not possible –just maybe- that the Modern obsession with science and scientific thinking is rooted not in systematic doubt, but in a kind of systematic fear, as in the fear of being deceived? After all, was fear not what Descartes was trying to assuage with his "Method"? A worldview rooted in "systematic doubt" holds out the promise of liberation from living a lie that serves the purposes of others, but it also produces a "systematic suspicion" that any truth claims not laundered through the "method" are likely to be just such a lie…and in the height of historical irony, it appears that the transition to the Postmodern worldview has simply extended that suspicion to include the authority of science itself.
But what about a worldview rooted in systematic fear…what promise does that offer? To hammer my point home, try to imagine approaching any relationship in which one hopes to experience love as I (and the Bible) have described it with the kind of systematic doubt or suspicion that Modernism (and, really, Postmodernism) has exalted. Imagine telling your spouse that you cannot trust their claim to love you or to be faithful, until such claims are "proven true." The very suspicion would render the hope absurd. If it would undermine the possibility of authentic love in such a relationship with another person, how could it possibly not undermine the possibility of a relationship with the God who is love?
So riddle me this: Is it not at least possible that love itself (as I have described it, not as it is portrayed in popular culture) constitutes evidence of God's existence? Is it not equally possible that belief in God has declined in the West not because such belief is irrational, but because we are immersed in a worldview that has systematically taught us to approach the very experience of reality in such a way that it rules out the possibility of belief in the first place? Have concepts like God, faith, love, and truth been redefined for us in a sort of cultural Newspeak dictionary whose existence is so pervasive that it has become invisible, precisely because it is everywhere?
And if it is possible that belief in God is rational, if -and only if- viewed through the reality-focusing power of the lens of love as classically understood, what more convincing proof would there be of God's love for you than his emptying himself, by coming in the form of a powerless servant, and sacrificing himself, by dying on a cross, in order to show you that love is what he is? What happened to Jesus on the cross is the ultimate realization of self-exposure and rejection, the perfect example of the courage required to risk offering love and having it rejected. And as such, it provides the necessary insight to realize both what we must be willing to do to get what we want (if love is what we want, as I suggested at the start of this), and why it is worth doing (and why love is worth having) in the first place. I know Descartes thought that what he was doing would strengthen Catholic belief by providing a rational basis for it rather than assuming its truth on the authority of the "powers that be," but I wonder if, in the end, he lost sight of the most important and authentic manifestation of Jesus' perfect love- his willingness to die on the cross at the hands of the "powers that be." Maybe his method of doubt was as much about the fear of being like Jesus as it was about the fear that he was being deceived by those who claimed to speak in His name.
Well, I guess it's time for some sort of "prompt." Look at the essence of the gospel story, and examine it philosophically rather than scientifically, and tell me:
What exactly is the real difficulty with believing that God exists, and that he came into the world in the person of Jesus, and that he died on the cross out of love for you, so that you could come to know how to love him, and to fulfill the very purpose for which you exist? Where am I "wrong" on this? What is the "flaw" in my logic? More to the point, why has belief in God become such a problem in the Modern world? Is it not at least possible that it is because we have effectively collapsed our understanding of love into a mechanistic and biological understanding of ourselves, redefining love in an Orwellian fashion, so that it rules out the possibility of belief in the God of Classical Theism from the outset? Answer as you see fit, but put those philosophic skills to good use in doing so.
[1] Yes, this is a thinly veiled reference to my infamous test question.
