Better Than Infatuation: An Appeal to Make Cherishing a Movement

About five centuries ago, Copernicus revolutionized our understanding of the universe when he postulated what is now universally accepted: the Sun, not the Earth, is at the center of our solar system. Archimedes, Plato, Socrates, Augustine, and Aquinas all lived without understanding a basic truth that any educated person today takes for granted.

One hundred years later, just four centuries ago, Sir Isaac Newton discovered what we call gravity, a phenomenon that even a contemporary fifth-grader could describe.

The relative youth of basic knowledge is rather stunning. For all his wisdom and brilliant insight, Aristotle knew less of hard science—astronomy, anatomy, and even physics—than most advanced placement high school students do today. It’s remarkable to consider relatively recent advancements in intelligence and understanding.

In fact, a TV series like Mad Men, initially set just sixty years ago, seems like a ridiculous relic of an atrocious past—men treated women like that? People were that insensitive to race issues?

Just as intellect and social understanding have grown, so our love should grow, as well as our view of what marriage can and should be. What was accepted as the highest and truest love in the ancient world of Paris and Helen of Troy, or the medieval world of Shakespeare, or the romantic era of Jane Austen, might perhaps look rudimentary to spiritually perceptive persons today, if we were to apply the same scientific methods to love and marriage as we do to science. Yes, of course, Jesus defined the very highest love for us about two thousand years ago, but how this love applies to the way a man loves his wife and the practical way a wife loves her husband can still evolve, as so much of other human understanding has.

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