Scotch College

Valentine's Day to Easter: Lost that Loving Feeling?

I was tuned to 103.4 Gold FM as Valentine’s Day approached. Romance was a hot topic. To woo listeners the station was using the usual tricks with flowers, chocolates, dinners and romantic getaway prizes. Everyone, it was assumed, was interested in being in love.

I thought about Patrick Rafter, Australian of the Year. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke. Media enthusiasm slowed a bit as people realized that he lives in a tax haven and makes no tax contribution to our common wealth. But then, it’s said he does support charities generously and that’s undeniably in his favor.

My own attitude to Rafter’s preeminent status as honorary citizen was more significantly challenged when I read that his model girlfriend, Lara, is pregnant and that there had been no mention of marriage. Only a girl on talkback radio, oblivious of the niceties of political correctness, asked if he was going to marry Lara. The Australian of the Year will be a role model for many young men. For them too, the love for the mother of their child will not extend to a marriage commitment. Should it matter? It’s a question worth asking because many young men following Rafter into a de facto relationship will provide less financial stability than he will for Lara and the child. Patricia Morgan makes the claim that cohabitation is characterized by fundamental differences from marriage. She claims children of de facto relationships are more likely to experience poverty, educational deprivation and abuse than children of married parents. In addition, men in de facto relationships are more likely to leave the mother on a supporting parent benefit, courtesy of the taxpayer.

In expressing her contrary view in The Age the next day Fiona Stewart did not adequately deal with the issues Morgan raises. Stewart says that de facto relationships are marked by ‘expectations of quality’ that are not present in a marriage. It is this, she asserts, that makes de facto relationships unstable.

In film and media, stable relationships are often portrayed for comic interest only. Marriage, in particular, once understood as the acme of stable relationships, is generally regarded as boring in the extreme. Exploiting this Fiona Stewart defends de facto relationships by reference to Woody Allen’s 1998 film Deconstructing Harry. When Allen says ‘my marriage was droning on’, Judy Davis retorts ‘what you call droning on, most people call working’.

My interest in this sensitive issue arises not primarily because I am married, but more because questions of love are central to the ministry of Jesus. It is important to ask if being in love, is the same as loving. I think there is an important difference. So what is love, as Jesus understood it?

The pattern for Christian love is the example of God. We are invited to understand that love as a pledged self-giving. This active loving is different from falling in love, which is passive and subjective. Being in love is characteristically connected with receiving the beloved’s bounty. This is a wonderful thing, but it is not the same as loving someone by pledged self-giving. From Abraham to Moses, from David to Jesus the scripture theme is the pledged love of God.

The message of Easter is that by his love, revealed at the cross, Jesus invites us to share in a familial relationship with God. The scripture describes that pledged love as a covenant. Jesus says the new covenant is ‘sealed with my blood’. Extravagant and public commitment is the essence of the marriage relationship. Such a public commitment calls for more, and can deliver more, than a merely private arrangement. I wish Pat and Lara all the best. I hope that they marry. I hope their child receives all the good things its parents have benefited from in the families in which they were raised.

Rev Graham Bradbeer
Chaplain