An Argument for Singular Love

As I grow older, I'm struck by the number of things I've re-thought. And the number of things I committed to and then re-thought that turned out to be true. Life forces us to experiment with our ideas, and tests them by hard experience. 

I used to argue, with no small measure of my own teenage passion, the prevailing wisdom of my age--that there is only one person out there for each of us, and if that love is missed then all hope is lost. One would after that merely have to settle. This passion, set to flame by every film and every song of my youth, impelled me to look carefully for "The One." Then when I failed to find said person, as do many, I started to heed more mature voices. "Be the person anyone can love, and then you will find true love. And that person could probably be just about anyone." 

Perhaps I should confess that I wish I had been wiser; that I was less foolish in my youth. I was taken in by an ideology that turned out to be wrong, and by a desire to be useful, and by a foolish reaction to the passions of youth, merely because in my impatience there were no immediate results while I was in college. I didn't hold out for a goddess because I no longer believed in goddesses. I exchanged the futile hope of finding and worshipping a Venus of my own for being a nice fellow who could attract someone who could help me finance a mortgage and be a respectable minister in the vaunted Wesleyan Church of America. I was an adult and it was time to start acting like one. 

But I was propelled to this renunciation of foolish youthful fancy by emerging "wisdom," which after 21 years of miserable marriage resulted in divorce and devastation. This experience of course taught me only that love, defined by the romanticism of youth, and then by the mature and sober wisdom of my betters, were both wrong, and so I was probably too much of a fool to even know what I was looking for when it came to love. I had been too muddled by romanticism and pragmatism. The poetry had died, and I could no longer pay the mortgage. And I was alone, doing my part to raise three girls whose lives were now fractured by divorce. 

And then the answer found me. As in my entire life, any understanding of love had to be furnished by forces external to me. I have been quite entirely passive when the best things in my life have happened. My parents showed me how to love others, how to be in a family and sacrifice for the greater good. God loved me in the midst of my rebellion against Him and gave me a life of undeserved blessing. And then, after all this, at the age of 47, I met her. I met "The One!" 

She simply descended miraculously into my broken life and saved me in so many ways. Obviously, I know the dangers of such effusive language. I feel as C.S. Lewis did when he said of his wife Joy that he probably "loved her too much." I think if my love for Amy is excessive, then I can only lay the blame for that at God's feet, because he designed this angelic woman to be as near perfection as any woman can be. Or at the very least, she is a creation so sublimely fitted to me that I can only see her as perfect. 

Can it be that God built this woman for me, and me for her? We are still awed by the circumstances of our meeting and our marrow deep compatibility. We met as strangers in the large city of Austin after I moved here from California. She lived only a few miles from my first little apartment here. Her beliefs, her interests, her strong mind and playful wit, even her love of sports, golf, hiking, knit our passions together seamlessly from the start. We are not the same person. Indeed, our personalities are quite different, but they are differences that bring needed perspective to the same shared life mission and goals and even hobbies. In that sense, we have become truly trusting friends who listen intently to each other, knowing always that the other only seeks to selflessly enhance the experience of the other in this life. We have not fought, and many would see this as a fault, but we simply haven't found an occasion to be angry with each other. How could I ever speak to Lewis' Sarah Smith with anything but reverence (she is a heavenly woman in Lewis' Great Divorce)?

I certainly didn't deserve to meet her. I don't deserve her now. I receive her daily with surprised, delighted, even trembling gratitude. My failings and sins are significant, but God chose not just to give me a second chance at love, but to plunge me into the fathomless depths of incomprehensible love, and to nearly drown me there. And He chose to give me a woman of soaring attributes, suffusing life with laughter, stimulating conversation, meaningful purpose, and blessing and delight and rapturous pleasure and reverie and all! But perhaps beyond all that, He gave me a woman who can see me and love me and help me heal from the wounds of the past, a truly Christian woman whose profound depth is rooted in the boundless grace of God. She is quite literally the most whole of the human beings I've ever known. 

It is a curious trait of singular love that after five years I can no longer even see other women. (She is so bright that I struggle to see anything else at all.) Or perhaps it would be better to say it this way: In seeing other women, I only see dim reflections of the goddess with whom I am privileged to live! I see them as participating in the category of womanhood, the ultimate expression of which is my Amy. If I see a beautiful woman, I see only a copy or shadow of the most beautiful woman. If I see a woman of kindness, selflessness, intelligence, then I only see a lesser expression of my angelic Amy. In other words, I see her everywhere! And yet there is infinite joy in the discovery of this goddess woman, and infinite pleasure in experiencing our truly wonderful marriage. It would be an idol, this marriage, if it wasn't held gratefully in the arms of two people receiving it as God's most lavish and undeserved of all gifts next to the gift of unmerited salvation in Christ. 

In the end, God has taught me that the romantic was far closer to the truth than the pragmatist. I would never have believed it except that daily I experience it. 

Pickle Ball World Championships (Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Championships)

Costa Mesa, California

During the Ides of March, when fools place bets on College Basketball and there is otherwise a great dearth of meaningful athletic competition to behold on the American sports scene, there is on display some of the great unheralded athletes of our day. 

These gods and goddesses of sport compete for the love of the game, for the purity of sport, without pay or promise of glory.

They wield rackets forged in iron and fire, destined for the conflagration of the ages. They descend upon Costa Mesa with hearts pregnant with honor and courage, virtues the common man only dreams of or views from a distance in pangs of pathetic envy.

Not just anyone makes it to the Pickle Ball World Championships, also knows as the Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Regional Championships. 

After many days of intense competition in the senior division (the only division); of grunts and the smell of liniment, of neoprene knee braces, of matching almost tennis outfits, of fallen heroes, of the crucible of hot battle, the final two emerged. We would be remiss if we didn't offer our sincerest congratulations to the two teams who fell in glorious Pickle battle to the two triumphant teams. Were it not for a sciatica injury to Bill "The Night Nurse" Juroviski (so nicknamed because of his talent for taking out the crap), things might have looked a lot different. But enough unbearable build up! Let us introduce you to the championship teams, each vying for the coveted Pickle Ball Trophy, which is just a whiffle ball made of bronze with names etched in immortality.

Team 1: Rackets of Fire

Captain Janice "The Executionist" Jones and Marvin "The Machete" Smith

Team 2: The Luftwaffe 

Captain Helga "The Howitzer" Heinrickson and Gunter "The Junk Baller" Ackerman

One would think that with the matching socks and head-bands and knee braces, team Rackets of Fire could perhaps be taken lightly. We asked the members of Luftwaffe what they thought of their competition before the game, and Helga Henrickson said solemnly, "We know we have our work cut out for us, but we feel confident we can hang in there with them. We've faced a lot of adversity lately, what with Gunter's tennis elbow, but that has only made us stronger." 

What ensued in this game for the ages was nothing less than the furious energy of the stalemated athleticism of finely tuned athletes prowling the courts, reflexes like jungle cats. It could only be described as a blur of rackets, like long swords in combat, every move countered by an equally dazzling answer, until all players lie exhausted on the court, having moved a total of twenty feet during the entire two hour long match. 

For all their effort, Rackets of Fire fell to Luftwaffe in a game so close it required two instant replay sessions to grant the winning points to Luftwaffe. Unfortunately for Luftwaffe, they were ultimately disqualified for violating the tournaments doping policy, having each spiked the Ensure with performance enhancers. 

Questions Regarding the Matter of Abortion

1. If I identify as a woman, then can my arguments be heard? Or perhaps imagine the same arguments coming out of a woman’s mouth, because I’ve seen that happen a lot, though those women are probably not real women. But perhaps if those women identify as women, then their arguments, which are the same as mine, might be heard? 

2. Is poverty the cause of abortion, or is abortion offered as a way for already poor people to be relatively less poor? And what about all the middle class abortions? And aren't all young women poor, according to relativistic calculus? And doesn't this assume that the men should continue to have nothing to do with the decision to have the child and raise it? (Insert Dave Chappelle's joke here). Or reword this question: Has abortion created an environment in which men feel a greater responsibility for the consequences of their sexual escapades, or less?

3. If a woman who transitions to a man then marries a man and somehow gets pregnant, but then decides to get an abortion, is that then a man getting an abortion? And if that is true, then abortion rights are not merely a woman’s issue, correct?

4. Why not take men and women out of the entire enterprise of messy reproduction? Harvest eggs and sperm from people and make children in labs to fit various tasks in society. Come to think of it, that is a great book idea.

5. How are we going to keep the population pressures of the human parasite under control without abortion? I have an idea. If Roe is overturned, then the childless generation need not stop. Get more guys addicted to porn and more girls addicted to instagram. Make them afraid of intimacy and increase homosexuality and transgenderism, so that fewer will reproduce in the first place. Teach women to kill (pardon the pun) at the office and postpone having children until they can’t. "Castrate (in various ways) and bid the geldings be fruitful!" C.S. Lewis

6. Of the 60 million plus babies aborted since ‘73, I wonder how many of them would have ended up being LGBTQ? 

7. If I have to adopt to show costly concern for the babies of poor women, what do those promoting abortion as a solution to poverty have to do? How is it that all these “advocates for women” care about them enough to see that their pregnancy ends and then do nothing else for them? They accuse pro-lifers of wanting the poor woman’s poor baby born and that is the extent of their concern, but surely they just want the poor woman’s baby killed and that is the extent of their concern. It seems to me that as far as they're concerned the government can take care of all "those people."

8. If we are going to establish an arbitrary age limit before which it is acceptable to kill a child, I recommend we set the limit at 17. That would be exceedingly convenient for many parents of teens and surely would help towards appropriately engineering society. We can start by aborting all the instagram narcissists. 

9. Isn’t this good news for California, which can better express its identity as the leftist utopia it aspires to be? It can be a worldwide capital for abortion, offering to pay for the abortions of all Americans, giving out abortions like Oprah gives out cars. “You get an abortion… and you get an an abortion… and you get an abortion, you poor Texan!” "And for every fifth abortion you get a Teslaaaaaa!!!" (You can kind-of hear Oprah saying it.)

10. Finally, how many logical fallacies can one group of people repeat? My favorite hits: 

* "You don't have a uterus, so shut the hell up." (ad hominem) What in the name of all that is holy does my gender have to do with my argument?

* "Law does not require you to remain attached to a famous violinist, even if his bodily functions are dependent on you." (false analogy) How on earth is this remotely related to a mother's attachment to her child? It's a stupid analogy and anyone with half a brain knows it. 

* "Cells die all the time." (category mistake) A skin cell that sloughs off is not exactly the same thing as a unique genetic entity that, because it is a separate human person, grows and progresses through differentiation and morphogenesis. 

* "The kid will be poor." (red herring) Yes, and should we kill all kids that will be born into poverty? Or all kids that are born into the middle class that become poor? What is the required income level of the woman to whom a child can acceptably be born? What if she doesn't have dental? 

* "Human and person are not coextensive." (Appeal to authority) On whose authority should we believe this nonsense? This is the same logic as believing that sex and gender are unrelated. 

* "This is about reproductive rights and bodily autonomy and women’s rights." (equivocation) Language games are the specialist of many pseudo-intellectuals. None of these games addresses the real identity of the life within the womb. You don't possess bodily autonomy if you choose to kill a toddler in order to assert your freedom. When exactly does the developing human possess its own bodily autonomy? 

* "If you are not ready to adopt, then don’t comment." Or, "you only care about these kids before they are born." (Ad hominem) Apart from the fact that many Christians do in fact adopt, the problem here is that it again neglects the merits ot the argument and simply casts aspersions on the person asserting it. 

* "This will cause unwanted pregnancy." (False cause) There are at least two or three other causal factors in pregnancy. 

* "They will want to outlaw inter-racial marriage." (Slippery slope) In what sense does allowing the states to consider and regulate the issue of abortion have anything whatever to do with the matter of inter-racial marriage? 

* "What about rape and incest?" (Fallacy of composition) It is true that there are a small number of abortions performed for this reason, but the vast majority are not for this reason. To cast the whole as composed of the exception is a classic fallacy. 

I'm sure there are more logical fallacies, but frankly it is hard to keep up. Just report any argument from the left in favor of abortion and I'lll tell you which fallacy it is. 

I think it is manifestly true that if one is to argue on the merits, the pro-life side is winning, and that is surely the most racist and sexist thing it has ever done, because logic is a white male thing. 

A Letter to My Daughter Who Just "Came Out"

Dear Beloved Daughter, 

Perhaps most of what I will say here has already been said, but then again I'm writing it on this blog site, so obviously I mean the audience to be bigger than just the two of us, although I have intentionally buried the article in such a way that only a person looking for it would find it. It is a way for me to work out my own thoughts and feelings on the subject in such a way that I can share it as the years go on. Why would I want to share it? Well, because it seems to me clear that men who affirm the kinds of things I affirm will increasingly be ostracized for those beliefs in modern society, perhaps even to the point of persecution. Some of what you read here is a kind of defense. Some of what you and others will see here is a father's heart, and not merely an argument about things like human sexuality and the moral issues related to it. So here goes: 

You "came out" to Amy and me in August of this year (2024). You obviously knew going into this that Amy and I are devout Christians still doggedly, and to many people foolishly, holding to a--what shall we call it--historically Biblical Protestant/Reformed understanding of the Bible and its teaching. We hold the Bible to be authoritative, even after centuries of attack by unbelievers or modification by progressive Christians today. And it is still obvious that the undisputed winner of the conflict over marriage within the churches is the man and woman monogamous marriage ideal. Perhaps the most elegant spokesman for this in my career as a teacher was Douglas Wilson. He talked about how marriage is not some arbitrary thing, but was instituted by God at creation, so that the differences between men and women, or their diversity, could be brought together in unity, which creates yet more diversity. Their lovemaking is life-producing. The children are literally "in" them, undifferentiated, but then over time children grow into and express their uniqueness. Parents lead children to a point of individuation, and then those children choose to love and honor the parents, leading to a higher and more mature unity. They are trained up in love, and then leave their parents to be joined together with their own spouse and recreate the same pattern, creating still more unity and diversity. It is a pattern of creation modeled after God's own Triune nature of unity and diversity and I believe it to be stunningly elegant. 

As a former teacher of Christian ethics and philosophy, I fully understand all the modern/postmodern attempts to reformulate the Bible's teaching on homosexuality. And I reject them, for many good reasons. But you claim to have read the various articles I've written on this topic in this blog, and I believe you. What exactly did you expect to be our response to "coming out?" We were loving, patient, calm, but also stated that this revelation is grievous to us, and offered a few reasons which I will reiterate later in this letter. But in our day and age, any response other than unqualified adulation is deemed hateful. Then you decided to move out of our home because our response wasn't supportive enough. I want to say again what I said that night: we don't reject you! We want you to continue to have a relationship with us, but apparently our worldview and its moral strictures on this topic are enough reason for you to reject our home and any influence or relationship we might have with you. You say we can get together here and there and that will be the same as living with us, but I know you aren't that naive. 

I ask you, all who are trying to understand my response, to use your imaginations a bit. Use these scenarios to help: 

You are a committed communist and your child tells you he or she wants to work as a stock broker. You'll love her but have some disagreements.

You are a wild eyed naturalist and your child chooses to become a petroleum engineer and drives a Suburban (and not the electric one). You'll love her but won't be able to stop dropping hints about how great Prius' are.  

You are a vociferous advocate for trans rights and your child goes on and on about how funny Dave Chappelle is. You'll love her but won't laugh. 

You are a mormon and your child wants to marry an atheist. You'll love her but probably have to agonizingly disfellowship her. 

You are an Orthodox Jew and your child wants to marry an atheist. You'll love her but ask what is so bad about her childhood friend Bernie? 

You are a liberal and your child wears a "Make America Great Again" hat. You'll love her but probably ask for the hat to come off... for dinner and all. 

Some of these are smaller departures than others, but what do you do when your child departs from your worldview, and almost entirely? Because, please understand, the issue is not simply an issue with homosexuality. It is the entire substructure of presuppositions that lead someone to not merely struggle with homosexuality, but to embrace and celebrate it, and condemn anyone who dares to voice the slightest critique. 

Surrounding you, my daughter, is a sycophantic chorus of praise from everywhere for coming out at age 16. We alone said, "In our love for you we can tolerate this." Far too tepid to remain in your good graces I'm afraid. 

And so you cut us out of your life, and with the full blessing of your twin sister and your mother. 

But why does this grieve us? Why is it difficult for a Christian parent to have a child tell him this and then respond in the way she has? I thought I would go through some of the emotional and intellectual difficulty I'm having with this: 

1. What will become of the legacy of Christian belief in my family? It is looking more and more likely that I will be the last Christian in my family. You twins once asked me what I would think if you chose not to be Christians. I told you only that it would, "break my heart." Christian belief is by no means some default position, but don't parents want to pass on their most cherished values to their children? I believe that in Christ is hope and meaning and joy and grace beyond measure. I want my children to understand mercy and forgiveness, and I can't see them understanding it in a culturally secular framework. Appeasement or accommodation, simply adjusting to the behaviors of others, is not even in the remote ballpark of forgiveness. 

I also wanted to be able to speak of the deep things with my children, but now I will be like so many at family get togethers where religion and politics are off limits. We will engage in that small talk that can fill perhaps one evening, the trivial pablum of every day life, and that grieves me. It grieves me at least partially because the least interesting thing about me is my life. The ideas I love to think about might have some interest, to the extent that I've pondered true and important things, but my life is boringly wonderful and wonderfully boring. 

2. Will that beautiful branch of the Sutherland family tree be the last? Obviously, lesbian women can choose various non-traditional medical means to have children, but surely it is less likely that I will ever see a grandchild from you, my daughter. Am I allowed to grieve that? Am I allowed to mourn the loss of the picture in my mind of children laughing and playing, and parents honoring grandparents with the gift of caring for a new generation? 

3. Is this something to be proud of, a choice, or is it something you were born with? You are among the ranks of the "Pride" community now. I'll grant that this point is more of a philosophical concern, but why pride? If there are two moral positions and you choose the superior one over the inferior one, then one could be proud of that choice, but no homosexual activist claims homosexuality is in itself superior to heterosexuality, nor do most claim it is a choice. If this is a characteristic you are simply born with, like eye color, then why be proud of it? I suppose one could be proud that one has blue eyes, but is it really so praiseworthy as to march in the streets? Perhaps one is proud of the courage it takes to come out. But really is it that difficult when a full 20% of Gen Z claims to be LGBTQ, and the only persecution you get for it today is having to read all the praise you receive on instagram? 

4. Is this even true? Are you influenced towards this through social contagion or is it a real statement of your deepest affections? I have read a good amount on this topic and know that female sexuality is far more complicated than male sexuality. There is a great deal more bisexuality, even plasticity, for example, among females. Therefore, it is plain that many women "choose" to be gay, and many do so because they are wary of men. I mentioned in the last paragraph that the number of people identifying as LGBTQ has skyrocketed. Why? Are we sure that no cultural influence is involved? 

Currently, you, my daughter, are utterly surrounded by gay and trans students and teachers. Each of these people, and your phone algorithms, are no doubt a significant influence in your life towards various outcomes. To what extent can you even know how much these people in your life have led you to this? It grieves me to think that you are being powerfully deceived about what constitutes a good and noble and fruitful life. 

And another thing on the nature/nurture question. You have an identical twin sister whose environment has been identical to yours. If you are born with your sexual orientation, in the sense that it is hereditary, then can we expect her to be gay too? If your sexual orientation is not genetic but deeply imprinted by your childhood environment, can we expect her to be gay on those grounds? In other words, if genetics or childhood environment cause someone to be gay, and thus it isn't really chosen, then obviously both of you will be gay, correct? Or if your sister doesn't become gay, then what can be concluded? I'm genuinely perplexed on this question. 

5. Moral confusion. You came out. Our response was tolerance and not praise for what we deem to be a moral issue within our belief system; which is surely an overly analytical triviality to you. But we affirmed you and your place in our hearts and our home. You then likely interpreted our response as rejection, but in fact you are the one who has created "boundaries" that amount to walls. I don't want this to lead to the moral confusion we see a lot in our day and age. Someone says something that you disagree with. You dispassionately state the disagreement. That person is offended and cuts you off entirely. When she explains it to friends or relatives, she characterizes the exchange as you rejecting her. 

6. We asked you if you have a relationship with someone, and you said, "no." Which leads me to ask another question: If you haven't done gay things can you truly be a gay person? According to ethical systems like the Bible and even Aristotle, you are not "out" yet, at least not in any meaningful sense. You even acknowledged you could be dealing with conflicting desires. A blunt way to put this would be to say that you are not a homosexual unless you act like one. You may have desires or inclinations, but that doesn't count as homosexuality anymore than lust counts as adultery. This constitutes one of the major misinterpretations of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus appears to say that lust and hate are equal to adultery and murder, but that is not his point. He is only saying that desires move people to act, and so being proud one has not acted does not mean that the corrupt desire isn't there, but the two sins are not the same. Think of this in reverse. Is a good intention the same thing as a good act? Is it praiseworthy to want to do the good and not to do it? Can one call himself generous if he desires to give but never does give? 

But of course Aristotle is uninterested almost entirely with motives. He cares only about actions. He would say that any person who claims to be X, but has never done the actions of X is self-deceived, or is only potentially X. 

7. What will it mean for you to embrace Christianity, if you even come to do so? It would either require the hard road of repentance and faith; the path for all Christians. Or it would mean removing the cognitive dissonance by embracing a progressive version of the Christian belief system. 

Recently I heard of a progressive argument that was intriguing. A conservative podcaster by the name of Andrew Klavan has a son who is gay, and his take is basically that homosexuality is simply too hard a burden to place on anyone without some monogamous means of expression. In other words, it is a kind of Pauline "thorn" that causes enormous suffering only to be removed in the final resurrection of the body. 

In other words, to ask gay people to sacrifice human sexual companionship is too great of an ask on God's part. It's too burdensome without some natural means of expression. 

There is a fatal flaw in in, in my estimation. Pardon the logical reduction of this...

a. You are doing sin A.

b. You resist sin A, causing enormous suffering for you. 

c. God, in his mercy, doesn't want you to suffer past a reasonable threshold. 

d. That threshold is personalized to each individual, because each individual suffers differently. 

e. Either you continue in this unbearable suffering, or do something worse, such as suicide or throwing yourself into some other compensating sin, or you renounce your faith. 

f. Those options are worse than sin A.

g. God weighs the options and graciously allows an exception. You can practice sin A and remain a believer and cling to the hope of heaven, where you will be freed from sin A.

h. You are a "Christian," and habitually practice sin A.

I grant this is an inventive argument, which still holds that sin is sin while allowing for a kind of permissive mercy, and on the surface seems better than alternatives like apostasy, but there is a fatal flaw in it that seems obvious. Is it not possible that any sin can be placed into variable A, including some wild ones like pedophilia, bestiality, modern adultery (open marriages), pornography? Or even sins of disposition like rage, greed, pride, foolishness, narcissism? Why resist any sin when it gets truly difficult to the point of frustrating one's happiness? I think the alternatives are as they have always been. Either the Christian standard is true or it's arbitrary. But of course if it's arbitrary, so are all others. 

A final word: I love you, my sweet girl. I remember those years when you were a child and I was given what I now see as the great opportunity to be alone for large chunks of time with all three of my amazing girls. I have been a steady and loving father to you and your sisters. Of course, I have not been perfect, but I have been joyfully and lovingly present through all your 16 years of life. I have fed you many meals, taught you to read, ride a bike, camp in the back yard, and about the glories of creation in the National Parks of the western states. I was the source of much of your affection and joy at home, and you were mine. I played with you, encouraged you, held you when you were scared, praised you liberally, encouraged you, and took you to church and Christian school. We laughed and talked and sang on many a car ride to school, both in Bakersfield and Austin. I've always loved how close I felt we were. I suppose being cut off is the price I pay for violating against the only secular unpardonable sin. 

My hope is that you will see that I don't deserve what you and your sister have done here, and I can't believe it is you acting alone. I fear that voices in your life that are irrational, even vengeful, have led you to dishonor me, but I also fear that such a choice will come with various unintended consequences. But I know if you search your heart, and remember who I am, and who we are as father and daughter, you will find your way back to me.