Many of us are deeply concerned about the erosion of commitment in our culture. Some of us want to confront this situation directly with a chorus of moral indictments of the culture of self-gratification. These persons have a point: surely we need to preach the moral duty of putting commitment keeping over our private pursuit of self-satisfaction.

It seems to me, however, that our culture is not divided simply between people who, like pit bull terriers, fasten their teeth in the commitments they make and never let loose of them, on the one hand, and, on the other, people who, like wandering mongrels sniffing from garbage can to garbage can, move from relationship to relationship in ceaseless search of private satisfaction. There also are a lot of people who are not devoted only to their private fulfillment, and who nonetheless are afraid to make commitments or are losing the struggle to keep the commitments they have made.

So I suggest that besides cursing the selfishness of our age, we ask how we might be able to help nurture a climate of commitment-keeping. To this end, we might do well to be a little less confronting, less indicting, and more indirect, more encouraging, and more concerned to know some of the needs people have in their struggles with commitment.

Here, I think, is a point at which Christian ethics, pastoral ministry, and psychological therapy converge, and where they can be allies in the nurturing of commitment keepers. So let me pass along some thoughts I have about people in their struggles to make and keep commitments.

1. Some people need help to overcome understandable fears of commitment.

Not everyone who avoids abiding commitments is a moral butterfly. Some of them are intimidated by scary aspects of life that could put long-term commitments into serious doubt.

Some people are afraid that there may not be a long-term future for any of us. The majority of younger people assume that the nuclear arms race is going to finish the human race. So why should they make commitments for a long haul?

Some people are afraid that they will be let down, deserted, dangling, the way their parents let them down early on.

Some people are afraid of themselves; they fear that they may not have the staying power for long haul commitment-keeping.

2. Some people need hope.

Some people give up on their commitments, I suspect, when they give up on hope. And most of us give up hope too soon. We catastrophize our problems prematurely; we assume that because we cannot see a solution to our problem today, there is no solution at all. And so we pronounce too soon the death of our marriages, our families, our friendships. We are like my middle son who was a histrionic hypochondriacal problem-catastrophizer. When he was a little boy he cut his cheek once and, seeing the blood drip on his shirt, screamed “I’m dying, I’m dying,” and then, all hope lost, he croaked, “I’m already dead.” What he needed to see was that he had a problem, not a catastrophe.

Hope nourishes commitment; commitment nourishes hope. But the cycle begins with hope. I believe that what some people need more than moralizing is a reason for hope that with God our problems need not have catastrophic endings.

3. Some people need realism about things they cannot change.

There are some things that do not change and the best we can do is cope with them. Life everywhere is difficult. Sometimes survival is a terrific success, and coping with unchangeables is a highly creative act. Pearls are made because oysters can only cope with an irritant they cannot get rid of. And coping is easier if we plug into the reality that some of the bad things in life don’t go away, and that life therefore can be intractably hard.

A wife cannot change the fact that she has had a double mastectomy, and she may not be able to change the fact that her husband snores in decibel output roughly equivalent to a blasting tuba. A husband may not be able to change the fact that his wife is depressed or paranoid, and he may not be able to change her penchant for nagging. But coping can be creative, and if we know at the start that we cannot change some of the negative qualities in our spouses we will have an advantage in the coping handicap.

4. Some people need to settle for commitments sufficient unto each day.

“Do not make this commitment lightly, or ill-advisedly,” the liturgy cautions, for it is forever. True enough. But for some people the very thought is paralyzing and self-defeating. The burden of forever is too heavy. They can make it for the long haul only if they commit themselves to the short haul of today, one day at a time.

They cannot make a promise for a lifetime. They could say the words, but the words would not express a commitment until death doth them part. But they can and do manage to renew a real commitment, as they are able, in their own way, each morning. And many mornings eventually become forever.

5. Some people need to believe that God is Lord of new beginnings.

A commitment failed can become a prelude to a new commitment kept. A second marriage, for instance, can be a new commitment better kept than the first, in terms of quality and duration. The most important thing about a second commitment is not that it is second, but that it is a new one.

There are moral absolutists who, for the sacredness of a first marriage, would sacrifice the second. This is something like burning down a village to save it from the enemy, the enemy here being the illegitimacy of remarriage after a divorce. I think we do better as Christian communities to support people in second commitments than to fret about the failure of their first. The Pauline style of forgetting the past and focusing on the future applies to the past of failed commitments and the future of new commitments. And people who failed the first time need to be helped to forgive themselves, and to rejoice in their second chance to make good on a new commitment.

6. Some people need to see that no one has an inalienable right to be satisfied with life.

Not everyone who fails to keep a commitment is a devotee of self-gratification. But some of us are, and for these, the cult needs to be demythologized. Two articles in the creed of personal entitlement that are crucially false are: (1) Every person has an undeniable right to private fulfillment, and if she doesn’t get it someone must be at fault. (2) Sexual fulfillment is the key to human fulfillment.

I believe that sex is one of God’s better inventions; I also believe that more people than we suppose find deep fulfillment without a voluptuous sex life. And I believe, too, that while personal fulfillment is a most human longing, it escapes precisely those who make it their ultimate concern.

To prepare the soil of commitment, we need to wean people away from the mythology of sexual satisfaction as the key to human fulfillment.

7. Some people need to remember that overcommitment is an enemy of quality commitment.

Only God has the whole world on his hands; we need to be selective in what we take on ours. To be committed to many people is to be well committed to none. In fact, people who overcommit themselves to too many people are usually not committed to the people at all; they are committed to commitment, or to their run at praise for being highly committed people.

8. Some people need to know that some commitments should be broken.

There is no value in keeping bad commitments. When Albert Speer came to the end of his wretched life as architect for the Third Reich, he wondered: How could I have given my life to this evil, this monstrous evil? And he supplied his own answer: I committed myself early on and never allowed myself to examine or criticize my commitment. Commitments are not holy; they are good if their purpose is good, and no one is morally bound by a commitment to evil.

It is also true that good commitments can be turned into bad commitments by the person we are committed to. If a woman is committed to a brutal person, her commitment feeds his brutality if she stays within his reach. Her commitment is nullified by his brutal misuse of it. She should withdraw it and leave him.

9. Some people need courage to trust.

It is good to mention trust after talking about times to break off commitments; to do so demonstrates how fragile and dynamic is the keeping of commitments.

Trust is the receptive side of commitment-keeping; trust is the reliance factor. When I make a commitment to you, I need to trust you not to abuse my commitment. And when you make a commitment to me, I need to trust you to keep it.

Trust is our only security in committed relationships. If we want the security of legal contracts, it is because we cannot trust enough. Where we live in relationships cemented by a will that can be changed, all we have to secure it is a courage to rest in trust.

But it is trust that makes us free. “Each partner trusts the other with his or her core self, trusts that that self will not be ridiculed or violated, trusts that it will be nurtured and protected—safe. And in that safety (that unsecured safety) lies a special kind of freedom.”¹

When trust is betrayed, one hardly dares give it again. Being a fool does not make one a good commitment-keeper. And yet the courage of trust must be nourished again and the gamble of trust be taken. Without trust, commitment dies. So we must find ways to enable people to trust again.

1. Francine Klagsbrun, Married People: Staying Together in the Age of Divorce (New York: Bantam, 1985), p. 288.

>> Conclusion