Why Do Institutions Tie Us Up in Knots?

It happened again, this past week. I went to Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing. I was there to make a presentation with Christy Berghoef on how one goes about writing a spiritual memoir. We had fun. The seminar was well attended. People seemed to enjoy it.

Walking around campus afterward, however, I felt disquieted. I’m not sure I can pinpoint why. Maybe it was because I am very introverted. I don’t enjoy floating like a butterfly in a big crowd.

But some of my disquiet also had to do with my deep emotional attachment to Calvin College—and even more so, the Christian Reformed Church. Or rather, I should say my disquiet was rooted in no longer being attached to those institutions.

We all know the legal fiction that makes corporations—institutions like the church or its college or seminary—people. The law generally treats institutions as if they are persons. The law treats institutions as independent centers of will and action. They can earn profit, make donations, pay taxes, sue and be sued, and so on—even though they are not flesh and blood.

But there is actually more going on here than the necessary legal fiction. The truth is we often become deeply attached to institutions, just as we become attached to real people. Attachment to people is a basic human need. Adam needed a helper who could be a partner. Children are born pining for mothers. We need friends and community to thrive. And institutions, like people, can partly fulfill that need for attachment. Mostly through their human proxies, institutions love and nurture, accuse and forgive, embrace and reject. People are deeply affected by such actions and respond emotionally. Thus they often become deeply attached to their institutions.

Being back at Calvin disquieted me because it brought home with great emotional force the injury I’ve suffered by abandoning my lifelong attachment to the Christian Reformed Church.

The best analogy I can think of is a story that a former parishioner told me, years ago. This older person had been married for over thirty years but was abandoned by his wife. They divorced. They had no children. While married, they had also moved around a lot, often far from family and old friends, never putting down deep roots.

The parishioner told me that his thirty years of marriage now seemed, to him, a big black hole. There was no one to talk with, anymore, about those thirty years. No one could recall with him his mountaintop experiences or triumphs. No one would remember with him the pain or defeats that punctuated those years. Without anyone to speak to who was there those thirty years, it was almost as if they had never happened. “Sharing memories, good and bad, is how we process things,” this man said to me. “But I can’t process. It is as if someone imposed a press blackout on half my life. No one will ever know what happened.” He had become "unattached," as they say.

Now, I’m sure that leaving an institution behind isn’t as painful as leaving the one person you were daily and deeply attached to behind. Besides—I still have a spouse I’m happily married to, family is an important part of my life, and I’ve got many good friends of long-standing both inside and outside the Christian Reformed Church. Still, much of what I believed in and worked for in the Christian Reformed Church seems insubstantial now, thin and watery, like soup stock. Thinking back on it alone isn’t fulfilling. It makes the past thirty years seem, if not a great black hole, then at least a long excursus. An emotional loss.

Some readers will wonder, then, why I left. Why not—like a couple in crisis—get some counseling, work on the relationship, and repair what was going wrong? But here institutions are utterly unlike people. They cannot negotiate relational issues. Where people can engage in self-examination, change their habits or even their minds, confess sins and make promises to do better next time—institutions rarely do any of these things. When they try, only herculean and time-consuming effort will lead to change. There are, after all, bylaws to follow, creeds and confessions to uphold, and conflicting factions to balance and appease. I’m reminded of what a former Anglican Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, wrote in his autobiography, Leaving Alexandria. “All institutions over-claim for themselves and end up believing more in their own existence than in the vision that propelled them into existence in the first place. This is particularly true of religious institutions. Religions may begin as vehicles of longing for mysteries beyond description, but they end up claiming exclusive descriptive rights to them” (p. 151).

My problem with the Christian Reformed Church—which I loved—is that I have changed my mind about those mysteries beyond description. And the church isn’t about to change its mind. The thing is, when potential change in a relationship can come only from one side, counseling and repair isn’t an option. The relationship is over.

Just so that no one misunderstands—I recognize that my new denomination, the United Church of Canada—is as hide-bound an institution as any other. This is especially true when it comes to its government and administration. The great difference, for me, is that the United Church is also institutionally committed to not “claiming exclusive rights” to any specific mystery, unless it is the mystery of loving neighbors (however imperfectly we actually succeed). Right now, the wide-open space my second church relationship allows me is also perfect for me.

But still, I was very sad at Calvin this past week. I’m reminded of something (a bit naughty) that my great-grandfather is reputed to have said, long after both of his wives had passed away. “When you remarry, you go to bed with your new wife. But you always sleep with your first love.”

Institution-wise, at least, I think I know what he meant.

Get Married or Move In?

            A few months ago I put a sermon suggestion box in the narthex. One person suggested that I answer this question in a sermon. “Is marriage a better choice than moving in together? And why?”

            As I thought about the question, I realized that I had to address a more basic issue, first. So while I’ll get back to which is better—marriage or living together—before the end of this blog entry, I want to start with that more basic issue. What is the valuable, precious thing that we shoot for when we enter into a couple relationship?

            That precious thing is “attachment.”

            “Attachment” isn’t a word you find in the Bible. But the Bible has many stories that recognize the importance of attachment, including the one we read today, from Genesis.

            God says, after creating this human person, Adam, that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone—unattached, so to speak. So what does God do? Well, he brings all the animals of creation to Adam. Maybe, thinks God, one of the animals will help Adam with his loneliness. But, says the writer of Genesis, none of the animals turns out to be a suitable helper for Adam. Adam was still alone.

            So next, according to the story--a lovely, true myth, actually--God puts Adam to sleep, takes out one of Adam’s ribs, makes a woman out it, and brings her to Adam. Maybe the woman can help Adam with his loneliness.

            And what does Adam say when he sees Eve? Well, listen. He says this woman is, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” He immediately feels completely and absolutely attached to her. In fact, Adam and Eve are so tight with each other, so into each other that it is as if the two of them share the same body. That is why the writer of Genesis says that when a man leaves his father and mother, he is “united,” to his partner, and they become one flesh—words that are used several times in the New Testament to describe marriage.

            Now here is an important truth behind all this Biblical language about attachment. Humans have evolved to need other humans.

            Consider children. They are born absolutely helpless. When my youngest son David was born, at home, I saw, first hand, how quickly he embraced his mother. Having spent nine months in her womb he seemed, in those first few moments, to reach for her with all his soul and mind--and especially his eyes and mouth. Being outside the womb was an incredible adventure for him, but one that he could cope with only by keeping the connection with his one safe place, his mother, physically and visually alive.

             No wonder. Babies are born absolutely dependent. For years they can't feed or protect themselves. They can't move about and don't understand their environment. If it is cold, they freeze. Unless they are fed, they'll starve. Although babies don't understand any of this about themselves, their brain comes equipped to seek whatever they need from their caregivers. In short order, the baby extends his or her search for comfort and connection from just the mother to a small group of people: father, siblings, perhaps a godparent or babysitter.

One more example of attachment. We’ve all also seen this need in young children, too. Imagine a little girl exploring a slide on the playground, for example. Dad is sitting on a bench a few yards away. The little girl, even after successfully negotiating the slide once, with dad's help, constantly keeps an eye on dad to make sure that he remains close and available in case of trouble. The little girl wants to make sure dad is available to her, and feels more comfortable—more adventurous, even—so long as she knows his protective embrace is just a step away.

When babies or children don’t get that loving, emotionally rich bond—when parents are absent due to neglect, or an accident, or terrible long-term illness—many, many studies have shown that children often suffer lifelong consequences. They may become apathetic or have behavioral problems. Such children have a harder time connecting to others as adults, and with being empathetic.

As humans, we never lose this need to be attached to others. When we lose someone we’re attached to it is a tragedy and we’re injured. Think, for example, of Jesus on the cross. One of the saddest aspects of that death were the words he screamed out to his father, his abba, just before he died: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Jesus' loss of his attachment to God was at the heart of his suffering. But we all have Adam’s need and Jesus’ need: for attachment, for people who will be safe harbors for us, for people who will have our backs no matter what, for people who, in the swift and raging river of time, will for us immoveable, dependable rocks we can safely stand on.

            And a couple’s relationship, at its best, thrives to the degree that this sort of deep, emotional, attachment is real and dependable.

            By the way, there is a great book on attachment I’m going to suggest that all of you who are in a committed relationship buy. It’s a bestseller called Hold Me Tight, by Canadian therapist Sue Johnson. Hold Me Tight is easily the most readable and best book on attachment available.

            But now, having explained, in a few words, the biological and spiritual basis of attachment, I need, finally, to get back to the question I started with. Get married or move in?

            Well, first, don’t forget that according to the story of Adam and Eve, they were deeply attached without a wedding—though I am not sure who they would have invited, should they have wanted one! But actually, what is true for Adam and Eve is mostly true all through the Bible. While we know that people were married because the Bible describes people as husbands and wives—we know just about nothing about how people became married. Jesus went to a wedding reception where there wasn’t enough wine, but what happened at the wedding ceremony itself isn’t known. Maybe, back then, they just moved in with each other. At some periods of Israel’s life, this was almost certainly how it was done. What I mean to say is that the Bible doesn’t prescribe that church weddings or civil registrations are how marriages have to be done. It is the idea of marriage or union that matters, not how it comes to be.

            Second, if you are looking at a life partnership, making a promise to your partner that the partnership is exclusive, that it is for life, that it is unconditional—making such promises are good for attachment. Making promises cultivated deeper attachment. And of course, promises are what make a marriage ceremony a marriage ceremony.

            Two people could do their wedding on a beach instead of a church; they could do their wedding dressed in bathing trunks rather than tuxes and gowns; they could do the wedding during lunchtime at work rather than at two o’clock on Saturday—as long as those two people make their promises to each other, it is a wedding.

            So while I’d never say that living together is wrong—I’d add that making promises is beautiful, and great strategy for nurturing attachment.

            Of course, you could make those promises in private, and many people do. There is nothing wrong with that. But making promises in public increases the weight and visibility of the promise. Making promises in public holds you accountable to the whole community of your family and friends for keeping those promises. And, making promises in public also offers, both before and after, a great opportunity to celebrate those attachment promises with friends and family.

            Finally, beware of one danger of “just” moving in. Moving in without promises—whether public or private—moving in without making a commitment to each other, moving in to see if it will work—all these things make it much more likely that you will be moving in for just a little while. Recent research, reported on in the NYT for example, makes it abundantly clear that when two people drift into a live-in relationship—because it's cheaper, because they are staying over more often—when two people drift into a live-in relationship without the benefit of promises their relationship is less likely to last and less likely to develop strong attachment than a live-in relationship or marriage where the commitment that goes with making promises is front and center.

            So, get married or move in? Both can be great. But which ever you choose, remember that if you’re looking for long-term, loving attachment, making promises is a great strategy.

Why Get Married, Anyway? (I Don't Know)

We all know that the Bible, while recognizing the institution of marriage, says nothing substantial about how one becomes married. Jesus went to a seven-day wedding celebration, but we don’t know what the ceremony itself looked like. The bible doesn’t prescribe specific kinds of civil or religious ceremonies. We don’t know what promises brides made to bridegrooms, or visa versa. We can be sure that the presuppositions of those entering into marriage were more sexist than we'd be comfortable with. The law of levirate marriage, for example, which required the brother of a deceased man to marry his sister-in-law should she be childless, sounds like legalized rape to us moderns—even if it was meant to protect the widow back then. I mean, what if they hated each other? And it is interesting how some people take the Old Testament’s condemnation of homosexuality seriously, but not the levirate law about marriage--which, after all, touches on one of the cornerstone institutions in their view of the world. And then there is the Apostle Paul, who suggested that single people never get married, since Jesus was coming back any time now! Well, who is listening to Paul now?

The Bible doesn’t have much to say about the institution of marriage. Does what we think of a common law marriage now count as marriage in the Biblical sense, for example? What if people can’t afford to get married? What do we make of David's or Abraham's multiple marriages or couplings or whatever you call them? 

We can know something of the qualities that a marriage should have by the sort of things God’s prophets say about Israel acting like an unfaithful spouse. We can know something about the qualities a marriage should have by extrapolating from the Genesis story about Adam and Eve. Though not a story about marriage, per se, it does suggest that attachment (to use a contemporary marriage-therapy buzz-word) is a positive quality—most of us want other people in our lives who will be “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh."

So why this musing about marriage? Well, basically, this coming Sunday I am preaching on the theme, “Ever Thought of Getting Married?” I’m preaching on this theme in a context where marriage (as culturally defined, today) is definitely not thought of as something the Bible demands. People live together and no one thinks anything of it. Nor do I--morally, that is. But in this context, why might something like marriage as we understand it today be advisable or user-friendly or wise or beneficial or fun for today’s young people?

Help! Let me know, please!