Rightly Ordered Affections

Dear Gavin,

In my last letter, I pointed to the fact that our variegated loyalties can be hard to define, and difficult to keep straight. As Christians we have a standing obligation to keep them straight, and this leads us into a discussion of the ordo amoris, passed down to us by the great Augustine.

To live in this world is to become attached to different things. These things can be places, periods, or people. We come to love what we are accustomed to, and it can be high or low, which is why country singers like to sing about red Georgia clay.

If the world were not fallen, then we would not have to figure out what to do when our duties under these variegated loyalties collide. But the world is fallen, and so we must constantly remind ourselves of our duty to God. When two objects of your love claim your response, and their claims run in opposite directions, then you must decide which way to go. And the Scriptures are very clear about which way to go.

In short, if someone beloved by you attempts to dissuade you from a faithful worship of God, you must absolutely refuse. They forced the choice, but you must still choose rightly.

Or how about this? The Bible teaches husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church (Eph. 5:25). Scripture also teaches us that if you love your wife more than you do Christ, then you cannot be His disciple (Matt. 10:37). Indeed, this demand is phrased so strongly that it relativizes and categorizes your lesser love for your wife as being hatred in comparison (Luke 14:26). And in the Luke passages, wives are expressly included. Husbands, love your wives, and also be sure you hate them. There is no way to make sense of this apart from an intelligent application of the ordo amoris.

But these examples are (relatively!) simple because they are a choice between our love for God, the supreme being, and our love for finite creatures. We know instinctively that if we are not in fellowship with Him, the divine source of all love, then we are not going to be able to love anybody or anything else truly. We need to be plugged into Him, and we cannot do that unless He is everything to us. Thus, if He is #1 and your wife is #2, then she is going to loved far more genuinely (Eph. 5:25) than she would be if she were #1. Because if she were #1, she would be married to an idolater, and they don’t know how to love truly.

However, the ordo amoris also has to be brought to bear when it is not a stark choice between God on the one hand and a creature on the other. Suppose it is a choice like the one the Lord posed in His parable of the Good Samaritan. In looking at this story, we have to remember the levels of antipathy that existed between Jews and Samaritans. The Lord and His disciples were denied lodging by Samaritans because they were Jews (Luke 9:52-53). The Samaritan woman at the well expressed it well in her surprise that Jesus would even talk to her (John 4:9). And when Jesus told that particular parable, and asked a “certain lawyer” who was the neighbor to the man who had been beaten, this lawyer couldn’t bring himself to say “the Samaritan,” and so he settled for the “one who had mercy on him” (Luke 10:37). The third one.

The man was badly beaten, and he could have been dead. The priest and the Levite, the ones who passed by, if they had stopped to help and he was in fact dead, or if he died on them, that would make them ceremonially unclean. That would mean that they would be unfit for their ceremonial duties to God. God is more important, right? No, He isn’t, not that way, and yes, of course He is, which is why they needed to stop and help.

A right understanding of the ordo will not over-complicate this. Who is my neighbor? Well, most of the time, my actual neighbor is. But I must always remember that my neighbor is also to be defined as whatever person God has placed in my path. So I must love the guy who lives next door to me as myself. I must love the man who went to the same school as I did, who speaks the same language, and who works in the same company. He is my neighbor neighbor. This happens in the ordinary course of events. Birds of a feather, and all that.

But if a person takes a wooden approach to these common sense duties, and does so in a way that excludes or despises outsiders (like blacks, Jews, or Samaritans), then he is a fool. He has completely misunderstood the intent of the Lord’s parable.

So while I have no responsibility to become a gadabout, running around the world to scoop up random people so that I can make them my neighbor, I still have an obligation to the stranger neighbor. There are situations where my common humanity places a higher claim on me than does the closeness of my family. It is the part of wisdom to learn how to evaluate such situations.

For example, suppose a man is walking by a lake on his way home. At home are his wife and three children. As he passes by the lake, he sees a stranger out in the lake, clearly in distress, and about to drown. He doesn’t know anything about that person. Is he black or white? Doesn’t matter. Is he a hipster or a businessman? Doesn’t matter. He knows how to swim, but let us say that any attempt at rescue under these conditions is hazardous. Does he have a duty to risk his life to save this person? Even though a loss of his life would leave his wife a widow and his children fatherless? The answer is clearly yes.

So a church does not need to import a requisite number of Hispanics in order to be a godly church. But if a church makes a rule that prohibited Hispanics from attending, then that church is descending into heresy.

So, like I said, we shouldn’t over-engineer such things. What sums up the law and the prophets for us? Love God, that is the first thing. And the second is like unto it . . . love your neighbor.

Cordially in Christ,

Douglas Wilson

I