Transcript: Lesson 5 - The Story of Individualism

Lesson 5 – The Story of Individualism transcript 

Welcome friends! We are thinking about sexuality and God's story. Understanding who  we are and how we in our own lives are called to embody God's story. In this unit we are thinking about our culture stories and understanding how those are acted in the images,  and the symbols and sort of the ways of life that we're interacting with on a daily basis.  And so the last video we thought about the story of individualism and how that story is  

really crucial to how many people in North American culture think about themselves and think about their singleness, their sexuality, and their marriage.  

In this section I want to talk a little bit about the story of romance, resting in romantic  love. And when we think about this particular story, this, this is a strong one especially I  would say in Christian sub-cultures as well. I teach at Kuyper college, a Christian  college where we have the majority of people who come there are students in kind of the 18 to 24 year old range. And it is so interesting when I talk to those students about this in particular, you know one of the things that happens is they go to a Christian college and  when they come back home or they come back to their home church people will ask  them you know, “well did you meet somebody? Did you met the significant other?” And if they do happen to be dating or in a relationship with somebody, you know it is always  “when are you going to get engaged? When are you getting married?” And it's really  clear that even if for a lot of Christians this notion that the end goal of life is marriage. Is finding that person that I connect with, where there is a romantic connection. See what  that leads to in terms of marriage and, and so this again is not just stories that are out  there in the broader culture. These are stories that are often interwoven with our lives as  Christians. And so it is really important to be reflective about this.  

When we dig into the story, I want to in this context do a little bit of background. Think  a little bit historically and maybe depending on where you're at when you're watching  this, I would love to just hear from different students, in different context in different  cultures around. You know what are the expectations for marriage. How do people think  about that in your time and place because again, what I'm identifying here comes  especially from very much a North American culture a way of thinking about things. 

But when you look back even in European, in American History, it's really interesting to  see how marriage is thought about especially before the Industrial Revolution. And, and  part of what is different about that is if in certain times and places, throughout history  and especially even today in a lot of ways the household is actually the center of the  economic life of the family. In other words, where you live and the place of your family  dwelling is not fundamentally different from the place where you work. So you see this  in bible times pretty clearly that people's households is oftentimes the place where they  do their work, both to maintain the household itself and to maintain their life in the  broader economic scheme of things.

I think, for example, read Proverbs 31. Proverbs 31 talks about this from the perspective  of Proverbs ideal wife. And what you see is, this is a woman who is working within the  context of her own home to keep her home going. But that part of what that includes is  economic life and trade and producing the things within the home, uh, to be sold by  things as well as just working hard to maintain the life and integrity of the home. 

And so, what's different about that is that in North American culture there is very much a divorce between the home as a place of dwelling for for family and this is the place  where marriage gets embodied and work, which is something that happens in a totally  different space. And so, what that means is that in in many times and places and  cultures, marriage is actually a key component to household economics. That, that the  house is just not a place where people live and are entertained. Where they watch Netflix together and kind of hangout, but that there's something about marriage and family  where people are actually working together in their household. 

I see this, I saw this uh, most evidently uh, in farm communities growing up in Iowa  where it's just expected that the whole family is working together to maintain the farm,  to maintain the life there. Um, and so what happens is that in the Industrial Revolution,  as I've alluded to a little bit already, what happens is that there is this divorce from so the daily necessities of life and and marriage is, in a lot of ways, a partnership devoted to  maintaining the life of the household together and working together. 

The Industrial Revolution essentially says uh, in the beginning, primarily men but  women and children as well, go work somewhere else. You do your work primarily for  money and then you come back to the household as a place where you spend your  evenings together, where you spend some time there together. Uh, but with the rise of  the Industrial Revolution and the rise of larger and larger cities to where where people  work for money, they don't to just uh, uh, provide what they need for sustenance. 

Uh, you see, uh, I think the, the start of a transformation in how people think about  marriage and how they think about family. And so, kids and family life, it's not that  people are so much producers, partners in maintaining the household, but people are  primarily, consumers. Uh, that production is something that we do and in our jobs and in another place for somebody else and what we do at home. Home is a place of  consumption. And so, because of that, how we think about marriage starts to shift. 

Um, right, if you think about previous generations where you know the idea of marrying primarily, maybe even solely, for romantic love, that would have been at least not as  much a factor as it is for us today. Part of it would have been, can the spouse actually  help provide for me? Can they help, be an integral member of the household that is all  working together as this economic unit to, to maintain and sustain our lives?

And so, with the rise of the Industrial Revolution, you also get this notion that especially marriage is primarily about emotional and romantic connections. Marriage is not about  what's practical or it's not about what's pragmatic or in what's going to be, in a lot of  ways, sustainable for a household. It's about do I have some kind of emotional and  romantic connection with somebody? That this is a person that you know if you watch  romantic movies and listen to the kind of language used there it it's does this person  strike a chord with me? And it's almost I think a very mystical thing where we just  somehow for some reason this person just strikes a chord with me and so that's why we  have this relationship. 

Uh, in fact, in a CNN article from a couple years ago called the Marriage Apocalypse  it's interesting, part of the point of this article is that people in a lot of ways are  abandoning marriage. It's focus was on a European context but even in North America.  And part of what they observed is they, they looked and they listened to different people  is that over an over what you hear is that marriage is about this kind of emotional and  romantic connection. And people just weren't sure that that was something that they  could have or that they could, they could be sustained. So one person actually says,  “Marriage should be for love, not a matter of expectations, routine and everday  practicalities.” I read this and I think as somebody who has been married 16 years, a big  part of marriage actually is expectations, routine, and everyday practicalities. 

In fact, part of what's interesting about this quote is that it almost seems to divorce love  from everyday practicalities. In my experience, I think that it would be pretty foolish for  me to say to my wife, “You know, I just want to, I just want to love you. I just want to  have this emotional romantic connection with you. I don't want to be worried about  routine and everyday practicalities.So, you know, could you please stop asking me to  unload the dishwasher?” Right? As I think about that, actually what I've found is that in  marriage and in the family life together, it's actually in the everyday routines, everyday  practicalities, that's where you actually learn to show love to people. That, that  oftentimes uh, I think about having children. It's like, wow, to have a child is this great  amazing thing but it means that everyday you have to get up and you have to worry  about the same thing especially for a young child or a new infant it's, is this child being  fed? Are they adequately clothed? Are they being taken care of? Are their needs attended to? Uh, it's not really romantic. It's not necessarily this amazing mystical experience all  the time. It's this kid has a diaper that needs to be changed and that's how I show love.  

Uh, and so when you think about this story. The story of romance, the story of  individualism, a lot of times in our culture, we place this huge expectation on our  romantic relationships that, that this is really going to complete me. That this is going to  fulfill me and make me sort of authentic in who I am when I find this emotional and  romantic connection. It actually misses the way uh, that love uh, gets embodied in daily  routines and daily practices. And so, what happens then is when the sort of the initial 

romantic spark or connection that kind of initial feeling kind of dies down. People are  left kind of scratching their heads like, is this relationship really what I want because it  doesn't have that doesn't have that spark and so they're on to the next thing. They're  looking for something or somebody new and miss out on what love really is. And so it's  important to recognize the way that, that the story of romance works. It's deeply  embedded in our culture. Deeply embedded in our expectations around marriage and  how marriage can be a fulfillment and a finding of our true self as I find the spark of  emotional and romantic connection with others. But this of course, stands in contrast to  the biblical story of suffering love. That love is not just about what we can get. It's not  just about this spark that's there. But it's about entering into this relationship with  somebody that is deeply self-giving. That it is oftentimes sacrificial. And making the  story of Jesus real in that way as it does that. So this is the second story that we've  looked at the story of individualism, the story of romance. In the next section, we're  going to look at the story of naturalism and think about what that story says to us and  how that influences how we think about ourselves and our bodies. So until then,  blessings.