The Philosophy of Love
Man, Woman, and Sacred Marriage
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... what lies in the human heart is a desire to love and to be loved. What we desire is not some significant other today. (They will, statistics tell us, very likely become an insignificant (and possibly even despised) other tomorrow.) What we desire is a real hero (for women, a knight in shining armor straight off his white horse, and for men, a good lady with a noble heart, regardless of whether she comes from a royal line or the cinders). We want a hero of faith who will commit him or her self, without reservations, to loving us just as we are. We want that one person who was made especially for us, our genuine love, the beloved who will demonstrate that fact by giving him or her self to us totally. That today’s society fails to understand something so simple and obvious (except in the pages of gothic romances and romantic comedies) and counsels us to pursue what can only be termed “inauthentic” relationships, “inauthentic” love-affairs, and “inauthentic” marriages, indicates that its grasp of both psychology and anthropology is inadequate. Even worse, however, these failures have caused what Rabbi Heschel observed, as far back as 1968: the creation of a society of men and women with vast but shallow experiences, and no way to really ensure their independence for they are not really in charge of their lives any more. (Heschel, 276) Still, what more could be expected from a society that embraces a worldview in which men and women are nothing more than purely determined, mechanistic creatures who are at the mercy of whatever external forces push and pull at them? How could such creatures ever be in charge of their own lives? They could not. And what more can be expected from an anthropology that hypothesizes that the divine is an invention, a fiction composed by primitive man. It’s more likely that human beings (and the hearts and souls, the wills and minds that we feel in ourselves and observe in others daily) are a creation of a sophisticated, advanced being - God - for each of us can somehow feel in our innermost heart the call of God that beckons us to love.
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About the Book
With a history that of “open marriages”, staggering divorce rates, single parent homes, shacking up with “significant others” and “living together”, and often troubled “blended families”, it seems that the option of a happy, life-long marriage no longer exists in today’s secularized, feminized world of radical individualism.
Yet hidden under this shabby veneer, most persons still long for something, still desire real meaning, still feel the pull towards permanence - a romantic ideal to be completed. It just won’t go away. This ideal - real marriage - survives as a dream, though this joyful state cannot be found in any of the alternatives available from a secular world that’s devoid of absolutes and allows any unhappy permutation.
Is there any hope?
There is! But it doesn’t lie in constantly trying to redefine “marriage” (and consistently failing to make anyone’s life better). It lies in returning to what Sacred Marriage was always meant to be - a sacrament of Life. That, however, can only be found if we return to being what we ourselves were always meant to be: spiritual beings that are larger than the material world and actually grasp what it means to love - and risk loving.
Want to know how? Look inside.
About the Author
Michael Pendergast is a retired B-52 aircraft commander and acquisition engineer, as well as a former instructor of philosophy at a well-known Mid-western Christian university, where he taught logic, introductory philosophy, and ethics. A philosopher and theologian, Major Pendergast holds degrees in engineering (with a minor in astrophysics), administration, philosophy, and international affairs. Now widowed with three grown children, this graduate of Cornell University, Siena College, and the Air War University lives and works in Maine, where he devotes much of his time to writing. The method to his writing is to establish a gestalt to understand that science, philosophy, and theology are ultimately one -- with the goal of finding the real meaning of life.