Human Beings Before Sexual Creatures: Pay Attention to the Rear-Mirror
Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16
Situation ethics works for those who want to preserve their lives themselves, because they don’t need to ask questions about the Creator of life. Situationists need to keep shifting grounds on occasions because nothing is permanent and nothing perdures, including themselves. For them, all is temporal, and every situation needs new sets of rules to live by. Old age is the revealer of how wrong they are: I once asked an old retired priest, “what are your plans for the future?” His answer took me off guard, he said: “I no longer look ahead, I only look backwards!”
For Christians, looking backwards is to see one’s future or destiny because it has been built into our existence – “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). It is all written down, it waits to play itself out, to the degree to which our rear-mirror remains functional and useful. Today, we return to the story of our beginnings, according to the book of Genesis: “The Lord God said: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” How considerate, how lovely for God to want the happiness of human beings! But does the human person want the happiness of God or doesn’t God need happiness or fulfillment in his creatures? Before erotic definition of the human person, his social dimension is God’s focus because individualism is not of God. Yes, individual decisions may matter, but God and one’s neighbor must feature prominently for such a decision to be of God.
Human beings were created by God to live in community, first, as brothers and sisters, before becoming husbands and wives. The dignity given to them is above the ordinary, they have the divine in them, and must honor and respect the divine in them, if they must achieve their full potential. It is the divine in them that connects them to their origins, the need to constantly look into the rear-mirror to see that God who created them, and to keep looking at him so as not to be conformed to the world in which they live. What appears in the rear-mirror is the real destination of Christians. Imagine the GPS we use to find our destinations: it is because the GPS had already arrived at the destination we seek, that it is able to lead us there; we are the one’s on the journey, not the GPS; the whole itinerary is already downloaded from the satellite unto the GPS. God is the beginning and end of the human history, a reality already present in the rear-mirror, it only unfolds for the creature and not the Creator.
The moral crash and collapse experienced today is a consequence of either a broken rear-mirror or no rear-mirror at all to look into. Individualism is the collapse of the collective, and selfishness the reason for divorces, and eroticization of human nature the origin of gender confusion. For our 21st century culture, God is dead and buried; in fact, his tomb is unmarked. To still make reference to God in a discussion is to be subject of ridicule and laughter. Wars are fought to further disintegrate human beings, marriages are broken and divorces on the increase because people could be used and dumped, and gender makes no sense because technology can fabricate spare-parts for human nature. As long as the markets are in the positive territories and not in red, humanity rejoices because it is a capitalist product.
The first and gospel readings underscore the need for companionship and not that of individualism, the blessing in marriage and not the disgrace in divorce. What is important today is the fact that there is never an excuse or pretext under which divorce is acceptable, neither the first nor the gospel reading permit it. Of course, the “hardness of human heart” is the reason for every divorce. Before a marital divorce, a divorce from obedience to God’s commandments precedes it. Prior to the legalization of divorce, there is a social breakdown and the installation/institutionalization of individualism. The autonomy (when we legislate for ourselves and refuse God’s legislations) of our social interactions is the source of the disintegration of our polity and togetherness.
Today, God makes us to understand that we are his children not on the basis of our perfection but on the grounds of his mercy and love. The point is that there is no need to be ashamed of an unfaithful or drunken spouse, because she/he remains a human being despite those weaknesses. The second reading makes the case that Jesus Christ is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. As a matter of fact, Jesus accepted a temporary demotion of being made little less than the angles, so that he might identify with the human family. The logic of God is to create a human family rather than a biological family. It is the recognition of our common familihood in God that helps our corporate existence.
The tripartite themes of our readings today, man, woman and children, are lessons in the meaning of family and humanhood. Our gender roles is our division into male and female, no more no less. Our humanity, according to our first reading, is man and woman; and our family responsibility is being children. In the human family of men and women, some go on to become male and female in order to procreate. However, the point of unity is that every creature, male and female, man and woman, are children of God. This is the point of the concluding part of our gospel: “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.”
The building up of a “kingdom of God” is the creative vision of God. The participation of Jesus Christ in this project, so much so that he shares the same “source” with human beings and calls human beings his brothers and sisters proves beyond reasonable doubt that biological needs of the human person are not the primary concerns of God, but the kingdom of God is. “The Kingdom of God” is built on sufferings and sacrifices, that is why there can never be any divorce between God and ourselves and among ourselves: “For it was fitting that he, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering”. Adultery goes beyond sexual infidelity to one’s spouse; it is every vitiation of God’s project of building a kingdom upon earth. Every infidelity is a departure from God’s plans for the human person.
“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” It is not true that we can redefine what God has ordained, we can only flaunt his rules and regulations. When our point of reference for our actions are not God, we simply break our rear-mirror and the consequence is sure – “Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” Human beings have freedom of choice, either to build and belong to the kingdom of God or to resist it and cast themselves out of it. Pay attention to the rear-mirror, your destination awaits you!
Assignment for the Week:
Say some prayers for married couples and family life this week.