Brothers and sisters,
by pastordan
Sun Aug 10, 2008 at 05:06:55 PM PDT
With your indulgence, I thought I might take this opportunity to give a more considered response to the revelation this week of John Edwards' infidelity. Few things hit closer to home, or seem to bring up more religious context, than the marital bond. If God doesn't have something to say about this, then what good is he?*
pastordan's diary :: ::
The earliest prohibitions against adultery in the Old Testament reflect male privilege. Women were a form of property, and infidelity was a form of theft. That's more than a metaphor. Children were expected to care for their aged parents - that's what "honor thy mother and father" means - so stealing heirs was literally stealing a man's retirement plan.
Later Jewish and Christian thought relaxed the rules against divorce to a certain extent. Jesus preaches that "Moses gave you divorce for hardness of heart," and Paul counsels early Christians in mixed marriages to stick it out.
By this time, the sacredness of marriage was located not in communal duty to deal justly with other members of the tribe, but in covenant. As God is faithful to humanity - so the theory goes - humans should be faithful to one another. A covenant "is a contract under seal or an agreement by deed," oriented to future behavior. This is why even today couples promise to love one another in sickness and health and so forth, following the covenantal formula.
It is also the basis for Jesus' and Paul's objection to divorce, and the continuing religious objection. Contrary to what some people might tell you, it has nothing to do with preserving the family or wives submitting graciously to husbandly authority. It is simply: as God is faithful (and loving), so you should be.
By his own admission John Edwards has been unfaithful to the covenant promises he made to Elizabeth when they wed. What led him to that betrayal isn't actually our concern, nor is the state of their marriage or how they intend to go about reconciling the breach of trust.
There is also an implied covenant between a leader like Edwards and the public at large. The leader promises to behave like a responsible individual, and the public consents to support his or her work.
Though this implied covenant is often used by prurient interests to sniff around the privates lives and understandable personal failings of elected officials and (yawn) rock stars and athletes, it is no small thing. Thomas Hobbes' "social contract" is a version of this covenant, and we certainly should not surrender our right to self-government lightly to a politician who can't keep it in his pants.
That caution is much more important considering the parlous state of the union. As Meteor Blades memorably points out, only an ******* would jeopardize a Democratic win this fall for the sake of sexual gratification.
But the implicit bond between leaders and followers is also a dangerously tentative covenant. For one thing, can anyone point me to any place where the promise not to sleep around is spelled out by America's leaders? It doesn't take long to think of nations around the globe where an affair is considered no disqualification for public office. For God's sake, Francois Mitterand's wife and mistress mourned him hand-in-hand.
The idea that marital fidelity equals the ability to govern appropriately is almost entirely an American one, and even then inconsistently. We could be here all night talking about the affairs of famous politicians. It is not necessary to assume that the most faithful presidents are also the best, in marriage or religion or anything else, for that matter. In fact, if history is any evidence, it's sometimes the least faithful sonsabitches who make the most effective leaders.
And that points us to the real problem here, the issue behind the issue, as it were, and the real source of grief. It would be so much easier to be cynical, but our hope gives us away every time.
Because even as we understand the ordinariness of human fallibility - even as we understand that sooner or later, every leader disappoints - there is a part of us that stands with God (or Diogenes, if you prefer) scratching our heads and wondering why it is we can't find at least one of them who will keep his word.
Pray** for John and Elizabeth Edwards, then, for their marriage and their children. They need it.
But pray for our own needs as well, that we might find consistent and faithful leadership, and that we might have the strength to remain true to our covenant even when our partners cannot.