What is Lost When We Abandon Ordo Amoris #52
I can’t remember if it was my freshman or sophomore year of college, but I vividly recall sitting in the classroom closest to the school’s office in “the castle” early one morning. I don’t remember how the conversation began, but a group of guys in class started pushing back against something our professor said about women in ministry, raising a family, and the boldness of men like William Carey, who left their families for God. The discussion grew so intense that she eventually broke down in tears. Given that our school was charismatic/Pentecostal, it was shocking to her to see some of the men so openly resistant to not just women in ministry but “abandoning everything for Christ” as she put it.
I had mostly stayed quiet, listening as the debate escalated. But as tensions rose, I tried to find a middle ground. “Do we really have to choose? Can’t we talk about raising a family while doing ministry?” I asked. My professor dismissed the question, pointing to countless Pentecostal ‘heroes’ who had left their families behind for the sake of missions (there are a lot of them). “We, too, need to be ready,” she insisted.
I sat there, stunned. Did she really believe that fulfilling the Great Commission could require us to abandon our families or even break our marital covenants?
Throughout the rest of my schooling, I ran into this perspective again and again. I’m convinced it’s embedded into the very core of Pentecostal identity. And all of the conversations circled the same ideas:
“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”
“But whatever was gain to me I count as loss for the sake of Christ. / More than that, I count all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ.”
“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for the sake of My name will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”
These were the words of Scripture. I had bound my life to following them, and it made sense that if the love of God came first, followed by the love of neighbor, then I had to be open to a radical expression of that love—one that prioritized the things of God above even familial and personal bonds.
It wasn’t till I read good ole’ C.S. Lewis for a class that I finally found out why I didn’t believe this properly represented the full counsel of God;
“St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ordinate affections or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.”
I wrestled with this tension for a long time, but everything came to a head in 2007 when I nearly had to use a gun to defend myself during a domestic dispute (you can read about that here). I had been immersed in a theology that had mostly rejected ordo amoris—the proper ordering of love (read here if you need a primer)—and instead taught that my primary duty was to love God first and then my neighbor, without qualification. But when I failed to defend my neighbor the way I would have instinctively defended my own family or close friends, the guilt and remorse were overwhelming. Worse, most of the counsel I received only deepened my shame—much like Job’s friends. In a framework that denies ordo amoris, intervention—ironically, for many, only through nonviolence, which never made sense to me—was seen as a biblical mandate.
To be fair, some of my more thoughtful friends later reassured me that I had, in fact, loved my neighbor by finding a nonviolent way to help—that I had fulfilled the law of Christ through my actions. While that perspective was more comforting, I still struggled with how it fits within their broader theology. The reality remained: if it had been my family or a close friend in danger, I would have instinctively put my body on the line. But for a relative stranger—someone who was quite literally my neighbor—I didn’t. And for many, that was considered a sin and disordered love.
In 2009, I found a great Christian counselor who helped me work through the night terrors and trauma of that experience. He had me reread Lewis’ The Abolition of Man and introduced me to ordo amoris. Through those sessions, my crippling shame was finally replaced with a rightly ordered love. I began to see that my core reaction reflected a larger, creative order—one that fully embodied the grace and mercy of the Creator. I came to understand that I had, in fact, been the Good Samaritan to my neighbor. I had put my body on the line for her—by standing up in court to defend her. In the end, I had followed ordo amoris and Christ’s commands to love God and love my neighbor but it was only through finding the ancient Christian, Jewish, and even Greek idea of ordo amoris. And ultimately I accepted that the shame I was feeling was rooted in a gross misunderstanding corrected by embracing ordo amoris.
I’ve studied this topic for a long time, and so far, I have yet to find an alternative to ordo amoris that is both faithful to Scripture and practical in the real world—though I remain open to the possibility. Over the past week, as online discussions have debated the subject, many who reject or abandon the idea seem to do so primarily because a political opponent espoused it (an interesting thought for another day). Almost universally, they fail to offer a viable alternative, or their rejection is rooted in modern deconstruction or a kind of baptized relativism that I simply can’t embrace.
As I experienced firsthand, when these alternative philosophies and interpretations collide with the real world, they often lead to the same results: guilt, shame, and hopelessness. I’d rather be free of those burdens through a centuries-old framework—one I’ve come to see as rooted in Scripture, upheld by our Christian forefathers, grounded in reason, and, ultimately, one that makes sense of the world we live in. Because we lose too much and ultimately embrace disordered rudderless false love, when we try alternatives.