Christian's Corner: On Love

I have become more and more convinced that narrative is the most basic object of study. The stories that we tell, especially the ones that fly in under the radar screen of consciousness, give shape and orientation to our world. They guide us so that we might find our way within it.

Advertising knows this, which is why the plotline of commercials follows a very simple three-step path: observation of problem, introduction of product, and solution to problem. It teaches us that every problem has a solution (located on aisle 4) that you can buy. Even scientific laws tell a story: it too has characters (such as atoms), a setting (such a field of force), and a plot (such as a change in the position or traits of the characters due to some interaction).

In the spirit of this past Valentines Day, I thought perhaps I could embark upon an investigation of the stories we tell ourselves about love. I am fully aware that as a male philosopher, I am quite likely to get it all wrong. Love is, after all, a notorious trickster.

Nevertheless, love seems to be important to examine here in The Weather Vane because while on the one hand EMU is selling education, a good case can be made for the fact that we are actually selling a safe "fishing pond" from which any catch can be presented to parents with the reasonable expectation that it will meet with favorable responses.

So, now…love! Love is a realm in which Christianity has found it difficult to make itself clear. Appealing to some mysterious plan and "the one God has for me" seems oblique at best. It seems to me that a reasonable place to discover the story of love is, instead, at the movies.

Take, for example, "King Kong." This is a three-hour tragedy of operatic proportions. It is the sad story of the great ape who, to his detriment, falls in love with a hot blond. Before love, Kong is lonely, but free; after love, Kong is in relationship, but bound. In a desperate attempt to regain the freedom he once enjoyed in the wild, he dies a hero's death: shot down by the armaments of society. Perhaps college is not a jungle, but I think the parallel is hardly subtle. I might be accused here of only telling the male side of the story, but I can point to another three-hour tragedy of equally operatic proportions that resonated powerfully (lucratively?) with the American teenage girl: I am thinking here of "Titanic."

These two movies are not unique. You will find it in "King Arthur," "Shakespeare in Love," and in the upcoming summer hit "Tristan and Isolde." The story is the same whether we are in a jungle, on a boat, or in London at various times in human history: love yields (sexual) passion, disappointment, separation, and finally death. Sometimes, of course, we are only presented with the passion, which is fun and exciting even though it too is predictable (find each other, loose each other, and find each other again). Here we might think of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and any number of romantic comedies, but we all know that this is only the beginning of the story and that tragedy is inevitably right around the corner. It is like playing the first couple of notes to a familiar song; the rest is implied.

At this point, the discussion can go several directions – Is this the true story of love? What other stories are possible? and so on – but I will leave that work to the reader. I would, however, like to point out one thing: "Brokeback Mountain," which is now in the theatres, conforms to that same archetypal story of love. As such, its claim is that we recognize the love between the two male characters as just that, love. And what we make of that claim is an important discussion for Christians to have.

Contact Christian at christian.early@emu.edu