'Humdrum matrimony'

RJ. Budziszewski’s On the Meaning of Sex (ISI Books, 2012; paperback edition, 2014) shoots down Hollywood clichés when he points out that “the natural habitat of romantic love isn’t the fly-me-to-the-moon escapade, but humdrum matrimony. So far is the married state from putting an end to romantic love that for many people, the first experience of it comes only after they have been married a long time. … Perhaps they have been going about the everyday business of loving each other for years—and now this celestial gleam.”

The scholarly Budziszewski waxes wonderfully lyrical when he notes that many mature men experience in the presence of a lovely woman not sexual fantasy but “the suggestion of another world, a divination of unseen things … the feeling that the air has become fresher, delight in what meets eye and ear, enjoyment of her differentness.” It’s sad, though, that some women are not “allowed to be themselves. If they are punished for their feminine qualities, or if they self-censor them to beat men at their own game, they may think they don’t want to be themselves. Feminism has brought about a terrible fear and hatred of everything womanly.”

When People magazine about 14 years ago listed a top 100 (mostly adulterous) romances of the 20th century, its editors showed their immaturity. Budziszewski notes accurately that “the sexiness of his wife reminds a husband of his joy in her, and confirms him in his faithfulness. … The most compelling and believable signs of being a nice person to marry, make love with, and have children with are the ones that arise spontaneously. They are an outward glory given off by an inward and invisible reality. A beautiful woman cannot help giving off such radiance, because it is an effect of what she really is.”

I’ve stressed paragraphs that particularly appeal to me after 38 years of marriage, but this is also a good book for college-age students pressured to separate the sexual from the spiritual, and to young marrieds who buy the lie that “by avoiding the so-called burden of children, they can somehow enjoy a deeper intimacy. It doesn’t work that way … for children change us in a way we desperately need to be changed. They wake us up, they wet their diapers, they depend on us utterly. Willy-nilly, they knock us out of our selfish habits and force us to live sacrificially for others.” If we willfully refuse the gift of children, “we merely change from a pair of selfish MEs to a single selfish US.”

Short stops

Thomas Miller’s Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? (Crossway, 2014) marshals well the evidence that He did. Josh Moody and Robin Weekes’ Burning Hearts: Preaching to the Affections (Christian Focus, 2014) is essential reading for pastors and scholars who are too abstract and unemotional. Heaven, edited by Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson (Crossway, 2014), includes 10 useful expository essays on how various books of the Bible describe heaven, and a rousing last chapter on “The Hope of Heaven” in which David Calhoun reaches the affections.

In The Devil’s Alliance: Hitler’s Pact With Stalin, 1939-1941 (Basic, 2014), Roger Moorhouse analyzes the 1939 shock that opened the door to World War II, and the 1941 Hitlerian overreach that eventually closed it. The infamous pact also shows why the real political spectrum is not fascists on the right and communists on the left: It’s big government on the left (with Stalin and Hitler as extremes) and libertarians on the right (with anarchists at the extreme). What should be in the center? Try Wilhelm Ropke’s A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market (1960; 2014 paperback edition from ISI Books). Phil Ryken offers the deeper alternative to power-seeking in Loving Jesus More (Crossway, 2014), and Scott Todd offers ways to love those who are poor in Hope Rising (Thomas Nelson, 2014). —M.O.