7 Brides for 7 Brother to Kim Kardashian to Twilight
(Disclaimer: In the write up below, I have tried to do something men generally do badly - analyze a woman thoughts/motives using her spoken words as a guide. The questions I raise in the post is not gender specific though, they are more about general culture. I don't claim to have the answers to the question I raise up on the post... I am just as confused as most millenials I think are. My long write-up below is my attempt to wrap my mind around something that is confounding - love between a man and his woman.)
Over the past few weeks, a few of my friends who love musicals told me that I should watch the 1954 musical "7 Brides for 7 Brothers". I did. It is a very funny romantic comedy. I have the habit of taking something that is funny, and making something 'dead' serious out of it. When I do this, I risk destroying the best part of silliness. Well, I guess you got to break some eggs to make some omelets, hopefully the omelets are worth it. :)
Over the past few weeks, a few of my friends who love musicals told me that I should watch the 1954 musical "7 Brides for 7 Brothers". I did. It is a very funny romantic comedy. I have the habit of taking something that is funny, and making something 'dead' serious out of it. When I do this, I risk destroying the best part of silliness. Well, I guess you got to break some eggs to make some omelets, hopefully the omelets are worth it. :)
"7 Brides for 7 Brothers" is a movie about how 7 brothers living in a farm out in the remote farm in Orgeon end up finding 7 brides for themselves from the city. Now, what does "7 Brides for 7 Brothers" have to do with, of all people, Kim Kardashian? We'll get there... soon. Hopefully, I can make the connection...
In the movie, the eldest of the 7 brothers, Adam, has a bright idea. He decides to marry a wife so that the house would be kept clean and his brothers will have better food and standard of living. He goes into town and looks for the most 'industrious' woman. He finds her, the beautiful Milley - a woman working in a tavern who does everything from cutting firewood to cooking to serving food to milking cows. Adam stalks her. He proposes that he wants to marry her, right away. He hasn't time like most people do, to call and court and and cuddle around - he has a farm to take care of.
Upon seeing Adam, Milley falls into a 'love at first-sight'. Milley's friends are very circumspect of the strange Adam. They advise Milley against marrying Adam. It is now upon Milley to justify her reason for wanting to marry him. Here are her words, "I have been proposed to by many men many times. Every time I said 'yes', I got an awful sinking ‘feeling’. But when I said 'yes' to Adam, I felt fine. I was waiting for the sinking feeling, I never got it. I feel so fine, I could cry." None of her friends say another word. Hey, who dares argue against a 'feeling', especially when one is just 'following one's heart'??? None objects and the preacher pronounces them man and wife.
It is Milley's 'following one's heart' into love part brings me to the Princess of Reality TV, Kim Kardisian. Kim married Kris, and then has decided to divorce him after 72 days. The speculation was that she married just to increase her show's ratings. In her interview to justify her marriage and then her decision to divorce she said, "First and foremost, I have to follow my heart". In our life, all of us have a Chief 'value' which we live by. To mother Teresa, her chief value was to see Christ in the other person and serve that person as she would Christ. To Hitler, his chief value was to work towards the ultimate supremacy of the Aryan race. Kim's chief value apparently is to 'follow her heart, no matter what'. She followed her heart into a marriage with Kris, and then followed her heart right out. Steve Jobs said in his famous Stanford Address, "As in all matters of the heart, you'll know it when you find it". From Steve Jobs to Kim Kardisian, from career advice to relationship advice the chief value that people espouse is 'following one's heart'. The Bible on the other hand says...
Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
But then, we live in a Post-Christian culture where people think they know better than the Bible. When Milley saw Adam she thought her heart was right. But after marriage, Milley realizes how her heart had misled her. Adam doesn't quite love her. She works hard to please him, makes a home of his shack. She gives all she has and gets no affection in return. One evening, she overhears Adam advising his younger brother on finding a wife, "if you don't get this, another will come along. One woman is pretty much like the next". Milley realizes that she isn't any special to him than any woman that is a good caretaker. Hot tears stream down her cheeks. In spite of a loveless marriage, Milley tarries on because she feels bound by 'traditions'. Good for Adam, the jerk.
Milley is no Kim. Milley does not divorce Adam. Milley is a woman of the 50s. Kim is a woman of the 2010s. Yet, there is a similarity. They both 'assess' their love for a man based on 'feelings'. They decide to follow their hearts. The difference between Kim and Milley is that Kim decides to divorce, whereas Milley stays married. I submit that this difference is a difference that is only circumstantial, meaning if both of them had lived in the same society, given their 'feeling' based decision making rationale, they would probably have acted similarly... I'll try to substantiate my claim.
Marriage has two parts.
1. Start loving a person.
2. Continue loving the same person forever.
Kim and Milley use 'feelings' as a basis to start loving a person. Kim goes one step further and uses 'feelings' as a basis to continue (or discontinue) to love the person. Milley on the other hand, shifts her decision making rationale after marriage. After marriage, she uses 'traditions' as the basis to continue loving Adam, even though he acts like a jerk. 'Traditions' die hard, at least in the 50s, back when individualism didn't matter as much as it does today. Both Milley and Kim use 'feelings' as a basis to start to love. But because they were living in societies that differently value individual freedom, their post-marriage decision making has different manifestations. Milley, living in the age entrenched with traditions, 'sucks it up' and continues in the marital relationship, whereas Kim, living in an age of radical individualism and experimentation, decides she deserves to have a better life with someone else and decides to break-up.
Most of us, the millennials, can't imagine getting married to anyone we didn't have the 'right' feelings for. Kim is just taking it a step further and saying she can't continue in marriage with a person if she hasn't the 'right' feelings. The point here is that we the Millennials don't need to be so hard on Kim, we ALL live in an era where we assess love through the 'lens of feelings'. Whether it is the 1950s or the 2000s, we are all on the same slide of being driven by 'feeling' based decisions. It is just that as we get closer to the bottom, we feel the increasing acceleration. We sense something is dead wrong. Celebrities living out the 'feeling' based philosophy to its logical end in a rather public way confirm our belief that something is wrong. The problem is we don't know what to do about it. Feelings are important. Feeling good matters. But what to do marriages that fail left, right and center?
C.S.Lewis says in 'Four Loves' that in the middle ages people feared 'instinctive feelings' they were afraid that giving into to instincts would ruin the individual and the society. In fact this distrust of the human heart was the reason why the Founders of America wanted a very limited government with adequate check and balances. If we would move back a few centuries, marriages were mostly 'arranged'. 'Feelings' were not unimportant, but they did not get to be the decision making factor. Decisions were made based on morality, then feelings followed. As civilization 'evolved' from this 'overtly Christian' middle ages, we moved into the age of Enlightenment rationalism. When this rationalism broke down, unable to substantiate its claim that reason was powerful enough to transform human race, we moved through the age of Romanticism. Romanticism idealized 'feelings' as ultimate in life. People said, "Hey, if ‘thinking’ doesn't get us anywhere, let us at least enjoy the how life makes us 'feel'”. I was speaking with a friend about life, I asked him what he thought about life, He replied, “I don’t think about life anymore, thinking doesn’t get me anywhere. My philosophy of life is to enjoy life as we living the present”. This trend of making feelings as the ultimate value in life isn't new, in Ancient Greece, on the heels of breakdown of Platonic rationalism, the Epicurean philosophy of living for feelings of pleasure flourished.
Around the 19th century Romanticism and the exhalation of feelings, I think writers like Jane Austin played a pivotal role in the shift into 'feeling-based-love' marriage. The usual plot in Jane Austin novels goes like this… It is setup in a society where Social traditions acts as an innate match maker of predetermined marriages. But then, there is a woman and a man who have special 'feelings' for each other which goes against the grain of the society's match making tradition. The (high) society becomes the villian, the 'feelings' become the 'good force' that perseveres until the 'lovers' are united and then live 'happily ever after'! Emily Bronte's work too was deeply feelings based. Then there were Shelley, Lord Byron and their likes who made feelings as the basis for good poetry. What started with romanticism, had now reached its zenith with the Twilight series. In the Twilight world it takes more than a man to make the jaded sense of a girl in her teens to ‘feel’ loved and special. It takes someone strong, manly and exotically alluring as a vampire or a werewolf. Anything less wouldn't sweep her off her feet.
As the western civilization moved from Romanticism into present day Existentialism, 'feelings' have taken greater and greater roles in life decisions, which is most egregiously manifested in starting and ending marriages. 1950s used 'feelings' as the starting point of love but used traditions to hold love together. Men and women of 2000s have gone one step further to use 'feelings' not only as the starting point of love but for continuing to be in (or out of) love too.
The point of this post is not to make feelings as the villain and the root cause of all problems. Feelings are important. Feeling good matters. After all, God created feelings. God grants the desires of our heart Ps 37:4. People who see 'feelings' as being ultimate have good reasons to do so. In fact, Paul uses their rationale to make a bigger point in the scriptures, "If there were no afterlife, then eat drink and be merry!". The point being that if this life is ALL there is, then 'feeling good' IS the chief value of life.
Going by Paul's rationale, every man has two options…
1. 1. Feeling good in this life
2. 2. Feeling good in the next life.
A person who denies the possibility of the next life has only this life to be happy in. People who do not believe in afterlife, will want to make sure that they ‘feel good’ in this life. If they can’t feel good in this life, then they have lost their ONLY chance to feel good. So to them, ‘to follow their hearts’ and feel good about this life is the chief value of life. What makes one feel good changes from person to person. In one episode of 2 ½ men, after Al and Judith divorce, Judith explains her reason for divorce to her son Jake, “Jake, Mom has a right to be happy”. To one person, marrying makes them feel good, to another depending on who they married separation may make them feel good, to one social service may make them feel good, to another taking a swig of beer and watching NFL would make them feel good.
On the other hand it is an irony that a person believing in the Truth of Next Life, may still be too preoccupied wanting to feel good in this life. How often have we heard people say, “I know I am going to hell, let me as well enjoy what I am doing now”. Illicit sex/romance may make some people feel good, at least for a little while. But it reduces the possibility of one ‘feeling good’ in next life. The Bible is clear that people who are sexually immoral have no place in Heaven. To say no to illicit sex/romance may not make one ‘feel good’ in this life. But it will make us feel good in the next life. Resisting temptation may not always be an easy pill to swallow, but one who sows with tears in this life will reap with joy in the next one. Proverbs 11:18 One who sows righteousness reaps rich rewards. There is nothing wrong in trying to be righteous with an expectation of future reward.
Hebrews 12:
1. 1. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2. fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Even Christ endured the cross for the ‘joy’ that was set before Him in Heaven. Feeling Good matters. Feeling Good is important. But the key question is whether we want to feel good in this life or the next. The wise choose to do things that make them ‘feel good’ in next life. The foolish choose to do stuff that make them ‘feel good’ about this life.
So, the point of this post is not to condemn our wanting to feeling good, but to question which life one should want to feel good in. In other words, the real question is about the ultimacy of this world. As Christians, meditating on the Word of God day and night is the only way to escape the allure of everything from novels to TV shows to Opinion makers, that imbibe a deep sense of ultimacy of this world and incite us to pursue the desire to feel good in this life. What we see and think about WILL define us. The only way to live this world with other worldly values is to have a regular quite time in which we commune with the Triune God.
Psalm 1
2 but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Those who meditate on the Word of God will be rooted in timeless Truth. They will feel good in the Timeless world of Heaven. On the other hand, those who life by the Spirit of this age, whether it be Romanticism or Existentialism, they will be like chaff blown away into oblivion.
Just to summarize…
1. 1. A love that starts as feelings-based-love will continue as feelings based marriage that can break anytime unless those involved are willing to work hard to not allow feelings the driver’s seat.
2. 2. From Steve Jobs, to Kim Kardashian to the Twilight series, we live in a world entrenched with feeling based assessment and decision making.
3. 3. The best attitude to escape this cultural-conditioning is to look forward to the joys of the Heavenly life and wisely use that as an inspiration to forgo the petty ‘feel good now’ distractions of this life.
4. 4. The only way we can live this life with heavenly values is by having a regular quite time and meditating on God’s Word day and night.
From ‘7 Brides for 7 Brothers’ to Jane Austen to Twilight, I have broken a few eggs, perhaps even misrepresented some of them by over analyzing some specific parts. I will incur the wrath of the ardent fans. But in the process, we have life-giving omelets – the importance of the Word of God. The importance of being immersed in the Word of God cannot be stressed enough, even at the cost of breaking a few eggs.