Bonnie Eslinger willingly gave her heart “the intent of his question,” she insists, but not to marriage. Her explanation is straightforward — she has no need of “a piece of paper from the state” and is not a believer in any religion that would demand that romance, sex, and “committed love” be restricted to marriage — a couple’s “joint allegiance to God.”
In one sense, the column is not shocking. Rates of heterosexual cohabitation are growing annually. Marriage has been subverted by easy divorce, pummeled in the mass culture and in entertainment, confused through debates over same-sex relationships, and sidelined by a generation that is extending adolescence past age thirty.
In another sense, Bonnie Eslinger’s column is surely noteworthy for its candor — and its evasions.
Read it all and the whole Newsweek article to which it refers.
The whole tone of Bonnie Eislinger’s column and it’s focus on “I, I, I” and her needs and desires, e.g.:
[i]I don’t need a white dress to feel pretty, and I have no desire to pretend I’m virginal. I don’t need to have Jeff propose to me as if he’s chosen me. I don’t need a ring as a daily reminder to myself or others that I am loved. And I don’t need Jeff to say publicly that he loves me[/i]
reminded me quite a lot of this, though on perhaps a slightly less egregious scale. To be sure, cohabitation is not murder…, yet the fundamental attitude and focus on self-fulfillment is the same:
[blockquote][A] few years later, I did have an abortion. I was a single mother, working and pursuing a path to ordination in the Episcopal Church. The potential father was not someone I would have married; he would have been no better a candidate for fatherhood than my daughter’s absent father. The timing was wrong, the man was wrong, and I easily, though not happily, made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.
I have not the slightest regret about either of these decisions, nor the slightest guilt. I felt sorrow and loss at the time of my abortion, but less so than when I’d miscarried some years earlier. Both of my choices, I believe, were right for me and my circumstances: morally correct in their context, practical, and fruitful in their outcomes.[/blockquote]
Source:
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/8464
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/12/06/abortion-as-a-moral-choice
A couple of things stand out.
1. There is no mention that she ever had children. Shocked I am.
2. There is no mention of what happens when the rich, good life become brutal and hard. It’s easy to stay committed through the “better and richer and in health” parts. It’s the “”worse, poorer, and sickness” parts that catch people up. That’s when people start thinking it might be in better to just walk out the door – especially when nothing binds but a private unenforceable pledge.
People always assume they will be the actor; that they require ultimate freedom to act. They never envision that such autonomy might be used to their own detriment – until its too late.
carl
This simply breaks my heart. Years ago a student nurse told me the same thing: She didn’t need a piece of paper to show the commitment she and her male partner had one to the other. Likewise, she didn’t need rules for the nursing program she was in: She bent them, broke them, and was soon out of the program. I have often wondered where she is with her relationship with the man of that hour.
Mohler has said before–and those of us on this list (and elsewhere, I’m sure) would agree: The Church has done a LOUSY job of promoting and enhancing marriage. I thank God for the Godly attempts throughout Christendom. Would that we would spend less time on MDG’s and more time on the importance of marriage in the Christian tradition. (Ephesians 5:31ff)
… and then there are all those studies clearly revealing the damage done to children with these arrangements … Maybe they won’t breed.
Brian
#3 drjoan: “Would that we would spend less time on MDG’s and more time on the importance of marriage in the Christian tradition.”
There’s no reason at all that we cannot do both.