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The Forum > Article Comments > Updike! > Comments

Updike! : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 11/8/2014

Updike was a churchgoer all his life. He studied some divinity at Harvard and read Karl Barth. He said the Lord's Prayer with his children at bedtime. However, his Christianity did not seem to comfort him or rein in his adulterous behaviour.

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"However, his Christianity did not seem to comfort him or rein in his adulterous behaviour."

Why would anyone assume that it would?
Posted by GlenC, Monday, 11 August 2014 9:28:32 AM
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Glen C. Good question. I am not fond of the utilitarian approach to Christianity, the "believe in Jesus and you will feel better", approach. I think that is a tempting but flawed promise. On the other hand I think there is genuine comfort to be had but not to our prescription. In other words we find comfort where we least expect to find it, not in grasping for something but in letting go of something. The self has to be de-centered and that is very uncomfortable.

The other point about morality is similarly not straight forward. For example, the ten commandments are a good guide to behaviour but they are useless unless the habits of the heart remain untransformed. In Updike's case his adultery points to a certain immaturity and a fragile understanding of what it means to be married. The commandments about adultery and coveting ones neighbour's wife are warnings that this way lies disaster. The tragedy is that we do not hear the warnings and reap the consequences of marital failure and all that that means for our partners and our children and ourselves.

I think that Updike has done a great thing by exposing the sexual revolution for what it is, immature, narcissistic and naive. We need to learn that falling in love outside of marriage may be a common experience but that we must not take the bait. It is not good enough to simply follow desire, the bait hides a hook of consequences that will destroy us. Your question implies that we should not even try to live ordered lives and that Christian faith is impotent in that ordering. Perhaps we should live for the moment, grasp the day, take the risk. But nothing remains hidden as Updike found out in his first marriage.
Posted by Sells, Monday, 11 August 2014 10:39:11 AM
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Sells < " Your question implies that we should not even try to live ordered lives and that Christian faith is impotent in that ordering."

No Sells, to me, the question implies that one does not have to be Christian to hold good morals, and neither is a non-Christian person any more likely to 'commit adultery' than a Christian person.

The 'sexual revolution' was an inevitable part of our history in that women were finally able to take more control of their own fertility and enjoy the sexual freedom that men have always enjoyed. I see no problem with that.

Certainly, adultery has been with us since the dawn of time, and will certainly always be around.
I do agree that married people (or de-facto) with children at home, who play around outside the marriage, do cause enormous damage that impacts on society in many ways.
But none of this has anything to do with a being a Christian or not...
Posted by Suseonline, Monday, 11 August 2014 12:04:21 PM
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Susan,
I do not believe that Christians should claim the high moral ground and that non- Christians are incapable of living moral lives. Indeed, my atheistic scientific friends often are more
pre-ocupied with morality that I am. As far as morality is concerned I think we are all in it together. However, the Judeo-Christian tradition is based on a unique analysis of human experience that produced varieties of texts that reflect that experience. It seems to me closed to ignore such a resource. It is empirical! Dogma is derived from lived lives and amounts to a map of the human heart. It is the faulty rationalism of the Enlightenment that hides this and robs us of a unique cultural resource for understanding the what being human means.

As far the the sexual revolution is concerned do you you really think that letting women practice their sexuality in the same way as men was really a step forward? The number of single parent families, the fatherless children, the destruction of marriage all give witness to the failure of the sexual revolution. Sexual freedom is not freedom, it is a distraction from there real game which is raising the next generation in a stable environment.

The mayhem produced by the sexual revolution has everything to do with the loss of the Christian tradition. It is only at the altar that vows of taken that set the stage for the formation of families of human flourishing. The Church has been the big defender of marriage. I would have thought that was obvious.
Posted by Sells, Monday, 11 August 2014 1:02:19 PM
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There is no reason to presume that being a Bible reading, church going Christian leads to any kind of superior morality, sexual or otherwise.

One of the factors that triggered off the Protestant "Reformation" was the wide spread decadent immorality of the "catholic" ecclesiastical establishment at all levels. A classic example being the infamous Borgia's - did anyone see the recent TV series?

Then there is the behavior of the popes themselves, who are oft-times touted as the "vicars of 'Christ'" and/or "icons" of 'Christ' too.
Their wall-to-wall criminal behavior is described in great detail by Tony Bushby in his book The Criminal History of the Papacy.

Why not also google the topic the sexual lives of the popes.

Christianity has of course always been an entirely utilitarian religion. Indeed the reason that christian-ism become the world dominant political "religion" is because Christians (both individually and collectively) systematically and deliberately broke all of the ten commandments - including, and especially, the first one. To be fair, much of that was in some sense understandable due to the extraordinary pressure just to merely survive in most times and places, and taking into account the fact that humankind has always been in a state of perpetual psychosis. And caught up in the march of folly as it was being dramatized in their time and place.
This was/is especially the case with Western man.
Posted by Daffy Duck, Monday, 11 August 2014 1:06:30 PM
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Perhaps Updike was permanently of the horn and a damned fornicator because he WAS a man of God, he WAS a promiscuous Churchgoer and scholastically too close to the choirboys of Harvard?

As the Archbishop of Dapto uttered to Linda Lovelace "waste not want not".

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 11 August 2014 1:52:10 PM
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Daffy,
"There is no reason to presume that being a Bible reading, church going Christian leads to any kind of superior morality, sexual or otherwise."

I know that you would like this statement to be true, but is it? Surely it is open to sociological analysis. It seems to me you are operating with a stereotype of the Christian and that you actually have no idea what one would be like. Is there any reason to presume that secular ethics that relies on the obscurity of rights and is sexually free would lead to superior morality, sexual or otherwise?
Posted by Sells, Monday, 11 August 2014 2:37:10 PM
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Who is to say that Updike was a Christian?

A Christian is someone who follows in the footsteps of Christ, thus willing to be crucified if necessary, or whatever equivalent is required, for the love of God and all others. Foregoing certain sexual experiences is surely not as hard as going on the cross.

According to this article, it seems that Updike was ASPIRING to become a Christian, that he struggled for it, but was not there yet.

For a good, yet entertaining, reading about the struggles of people that aspire to be Christians against the forces of sin, I earnestly recommend the Starbridge series of books by Susan Howatch.

<<Sexual freedom is not freedom, it is a distraction from there real game which is raising the next generation in a stable environment.>>

Indeed, sexual freedom is not freedom: it is enslavement to our genes. However, raising the next generation (in a stable environment or otherwise), is not the real game either. It too is a form of enslavement to our genes, merely employing different tactics.

The only "real game" is coming home back to God. For that we should cut off our attachment to our body and its selfish genes, along with their relentless and perpetual desire for procreation.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Monday, 11 August 2014 3:02:37 PM
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Sells < "The mayhem produced by the sexual revolution has everything to do with the loss of the Christian tradition. It is only at the altar that vows of taken that set the stage for the formation of families of human flourishing. The Church has been the big defender of marriage. I would have thought that was obvious."

What rubbish. Many people are married away from a church and have successful relationships, as well as those who never marry at all.

Those days went out with the 1950,s Sells, and will never return, thank goodness.
You may mourne the loss of the time when men were 'real 'men and women did as they were told, but I don't.
Don't forget, there were fathers involved in the making of those sinful single mother's children, and this behaviour has been going on since the beginning of time also.

Contraception and single mother's support in our society is the best thing to come out of the sexual revolution, whether the old boy's clubs like it or not...
Posted by Suseonline, Monday, 11 August 2014 3:16:30 PM
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"After all, if we damned artists who did not live up to theological or moral standards where would we be?"

Pretty much where you are now, I imagine, Peter -- up the creek without a paddle.
Posted by Jon J, Monday, 11 August 2014 3:45:54 PM
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'Contraception and single mother's support in our society is the best thing to come out of the sexual revolution, whether the old boy's clubs like it or not... '

very typical self centred feminist dogma Susie. Ignore the fact that 90% plus of men in prison either grew up fatherless or hate their fathers. Fascinating how people who claim not to believe in God hold to such absolute dogmas. Susie cries freedom but only by for a few self centred feminist who despise the natural order of things for varying reasons. Funny enough those 'depised' housewives of the 50's that lived to enhance the family could not of been possibly as self centred and full of as much bitterness displayed by modern day feminist. No wonder they need to rewrite history.
Posted by runner, Monday, 11 August 2014 3:48:23 PM
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Susan,
Calling me old fashioned is a very weak argument! I see the point of feminism and applaud the fall of patriarchy. However, the extent of marital breakdown in our time has got to be caused by something, perhaps it is because we do not understand marriage like we used to. I found it difficult to fathom the causes of the ending of Updike's first marriage. There seemed to be no grounds other than to trade up.

There are real reasons for marriages ending but it is easier to end a marriage these days than it is to get out of a phone contract.
Posted by Sells, Monday, 11 August 2014 4:26:10 PM
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Sells and runner

Nice try attempting to pillory woman including Susie.

That is typical of doddery but evil old men of the Church.

You are irrelevant and old fashioned while disregarding the mounting evidence of pain and suffering that the Churches inflict on trusting congregations and kids in their care.

I suppose you excuse Pell?

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 11 August 2014 4:38:53 PM
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"However, the extent of marital breakdown in our time has got to be caused by something, perhaps it is because we do not understand marriage like we used to."

I don't think we are far enough along yet to really have a handle on that but some thoughts.
- We are still in transition, it takes quite a lot of time to establish new patterns and for them to work well.
- It is difficult to tell from afar just how good those marriages were for those in them. Just because people could not get out of a bad marriage does not imply that substantially more succeeded into turning those marriages into a healthy place to be.
- We are not yet free (and perhaps won't be for a long time) of the churches influence on perceptions of morality, sexuality, guilt etc. Influences that may once have played a largely beneficial role in primitive societies without birth control and where stability was important for survival. The choices people make have changes but elements of those past influences still distort the way people deal with it. Sex is still used for power, to hurt, people may engage in sex outside traditional boundaries and yet feel an unacknowledged guilt based on old values rather than any actual harm done.
- Perceptiins of what marriage can be are still very much influenced traditional values even when its not what people actually live, that disconnect is damaging and its not necessarily the different choices people make thats the real problem.

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Monday, 11 August 2014 4:47:01 PM
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Runner, can you ever post anything without using your favorite word 'dogma'?
Gee it get's boring...

Sells, men have been trading in women for a 'new model' (younger) forever, not just these days.
It just seems like there is more of this sort of behaviour now because there is a much bigger population and society seems to accept it more.
The difference now is that if women are unhappy in their relationships then they too can move on and not have to leave a marriage with nothing, like the good ol' days.

Even so, if the woman leaves her husband for another man, well she must be a slut, whereas if the man leaves, the wife must have done something wrong.
We still have some way to go towards equality in society yet.
Posted by Suseonline, Monday, 11 August 2014 4:49:13 PM
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One thing the article doesn't mention - mainly because it wasn't the article's intent to do so - is that Updike loathed women.

As with all philandering men, his gynaphilia was driven by a combination of contempt for women as the inferiors of men (thus deserving of men's sexual and domestic exploitation of them) and an intellectually crippling fear of women's untapped power.

As hatred and fear of women are the two pillars of all monotheistic religions, it's a no-brainer that Updike would be a paid-up, card-carrying member of the universal order of god-botherers.

In case anybody here has failed to notice, I absolutely detest the writings of John Updike!
Posted by Killarney, Monday, 11 August 2014 5:16:19 PM
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Killarney,

Interesting slant, that philanderers hate women. As a wishful-thinking philanderer, I LOVE women: if there actually is a God, I have no trouble believing that they are Her/His most wonderfully perfect creation.

As for adultery, it's not illegal, one can be one if one has the opportunity and inclination. It's a bit like being a bigot or a drunkard: it can't be legislated against. But in that sense, to paraphrase, George Brandis, everyone has the right, by default, to commit adultery.

That doesn't necessarily mean that a person should commit adultery, I'm sure it causes more problems than it's worth. But as so many novelists have discovered to their material benefit, how (and why) should it be prevented ?

Sorry a bit OTT: Updike wrote some very entertaining material, and seems to have striven to atone for his weaknesses as we all should, but I don't think he was any better or worse than the average Joe.
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 11 August 2014 6:15:39 PM
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loudmouth

'I LOVE women: if there actually is a God, I have no trouble believing that they are Her/His most wonderfully perfect creation.'

In my view, that actually CONFIRMS my point about philanderers despising women. That's classic objectification.

In fact, all the philanderers I've known DO see women as perfect and beautiful creations, which is why they are repeatedly drawn to having serial love affairs with them.

Then, once the passion subsides - and it always does because it's based on shallow illusion - the philanderer goes into full-fledged retreat, lamenting that the object of his affections became 'too needy', 'too demanding', 'too insecure', 'too possessive' yada yada.

These of course are all euphemisms for 'too human', which is the one thing a gynaphile will NEVER allow any woman to be. Serial philandering is really all about control.

Certainly, some women are serial philanderers (and I've know a few). However, as patriarchal societies are based on male control over women, the overwhelming majority of serial philanderers are men.
Posted by Killarney, Monday, 11 August 2014 7:14:17 PM
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Bit of a long bow, Killarney :)

So ....... to be attracted to women, to enjoy being in their glorious presence, is actually to hate them, or hold them in contempt ? Peanut butter is actually strawberry jam ?

So how should one act if one actually likes women as friends, as companions, as work-mates ? Should one act as if one doesn't want anything to do with them ?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Freud wrote: you should take his advice.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 11 August 2014 7:54:02 PM
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Killarney

I rejoiced in the term gynophiliac, suspecting I am one and applauded your smiting the god-botherers.

But I feel your theory is too exclusionist of us mere mortal men who like women for any number of reasons, usually complex and beyond dissembling.

Like Joe-Loudmouth I feel one can't be too doctrinaire because we 100% hunky-dory males would die out for lack of breeding.

Leaving only the knuckle-draggers like Sells and runner to populate the Earth, making it a Planet of the Apes.

And we wouldn't want that.

Regards

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 11 August 2014 8:28:01 PM
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Plantagenet < "Leaving only the knuckle-draggers like Sells and runner to populate the Earth, making it a Planet of the Apes."

Oh my goodness NO! Save us girls from such a fate!

Killarney, I doubt Joe Loudmouth meant womenkind any harm, and I am sure many men do actually like women : )

As one of the OLO hated 'feminists', I can honestly say I really like men in general.
I just hate those who dislike all women....
Posted by Suseonline, Monday, 11 August 2014 11:29:52 PM
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Fear Not Susie

Being a cross between Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Flashheart* in my imagination - I'm at your service m'Lady.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Flashheart#Lord_Flashheart
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 12 August 2014 12:07:29 AM
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.

Dear Sells,

.

You wrote:

« As far as the sexual revolution is concerned do you really think that letting women practice their sexuality in the same way as men was really a step forward ? »

.

That is what is called a revealing question.

.
Posted by Banjo Paterson, Tuesday, 12 August 2014 6:39:59 AM
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loudmouth

Referring to women as God's 'perfect creations' and revelling in 'their glorious presence' does not indicate much respect for women as equals.

Putting women on a pedestal is just another form of sexism.

'Freud wrote: you should take his advice'

Thanks, but that guy was one helluva screwed-up dude when it came to women. He only ever had one word to describe them and that was 'hysterical'. He's the last person I would ever take advice from.
Posted by Killarney, Tuesday, 12 August 2014 9:13:35 AM
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Hi Killarney,

Whether "Referring to women as God's 'perfect creations' and revelling in 'their glorious presence' does not indicate much respect for women as equals....."

is something I'm happy to defer to women about :)

So, what do you think of Psychology I so far ? It gets more complicated in Semester 2.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 12 August 2014 9:20:49 AM
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Joe,

As a suggestion in order to obviate any potential offence, I've edited your original sentence by adding five words:

"As a wishful-thinking philanderer, I LOVE women: if there actually is a God, I have no trouble believing that they are in all ways equal to Her/His most wonderfully perfect creation."
Posted by WmTrevor, Tuesday, 12 August 2014 9:38:55 AM
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The word equal is a nonsense when speaking of men and women. In case anyone did not notice they are different. Generally man is stronger physically and woman are designed to have children. Funny how so many men haters want to be 'equal ' to man. The truth is that many of them want to dominate and be above man. It works vey well when man loves his wife and wife respects/submits to husbands. NO better recipe has been given yet.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 12 August 2014 9:44:19 AM
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Hi Wm Trevor,

If you mean 'equal to' something with superfluous hair in all the wrong places, unable to think of two things at once, and a bit on the nose, I can only respectfully suggest that, as the joke goes, God made a rough prototype first, before he came up with Her/His most brilliant innovation.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 12 August 2014 9:44:56 AM
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One important thing seems missing in this discussion, the fact that God or Evolution, pick your fav', designed the CHILD to be raised in a familial/group situation, with focused love, support and education, and preferably with siblings/peer group.
That's simple genetic FACT.
With Western development came the breakdown of the extended family, and now even the nuclear family is imploding.
The results are there in the media daily, an increasingly callous, unemphatic society, especially the younger generations, it's an exponential growth in self-centred isolationism, we're raising monsters by genetic standards.
Feminism, the Sexual Revolution, Multiculturalism, they're all symptoms, not causes, and Religion is suffering too, without that personal grounding in love and a sense of being a part of something bigger than oneself God just can't survive the competition from this hedonistic NOW world we've allowed to be built.
Even Islam's tortured terrorism is a direct response to the world we've let grow around us.
The answer, cure?
Sorry, beyond my pay grade, that, all I see ahead is Armageddon of one sort or another, God help the children!
Posted by G'dayBruce, Tuesday, 12 August 2014 1:37:00 PM
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"The word equal is a nonsense when speaking of men and women. In case anyone did not notice they are different. Generally man is stronger physically and woman are designed to have children."

Runner, you said 'equal' in your first sentence but you assumed 'identical' in your second. Nobody is claiming that men and women are 'identical', only that they are are of equal value. And women were not DESIGNED to have children, much as you would like to believe they were; they evolved to be child bearers. When you use 'designed', you want us to believe that it was god, not men, who decreed that women should be regarded as less important and valuable.

You make a similar unwarranted assumption that we were designed when you say that no better recipe has been given yet. Humans can, and should, work out right ways to behave for themselves. Why do you assume that we are incapable of working out how humans should behave to produce harmonious societies without deferring to 'recipes' handed to us by imperceivable gods? Those presently following such recipes in the various religion riven conflicts throughout the world are not doing too well at it.

You must know that where Christianity is concerned, when rated on such measures as social harmony, freedom from crime, narrowness of the rich-poor gap, etc., the least religious countries score best and the most religious score worst. And that even within a very religious Christian country like the USA, the most religious states have much higher crime rates, murder rates, teenage pregnancy rates, and general social disadvantage rates than the least religious.

It is bewildering that, given this, Christian apologists persist with the fiction that those not steeped in the so-called Christian ethic can never aspire to the same level of morality, or derive the same level of satisfaction from their life choices, as those who are.
Posted by GlenC, Tuesday, 12 August 2014 11:40:52 PM
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Speaking of exoteric Christian-ism being entirely utilitarian, I am half way through reading the book by Jeff Sharlett titled The Family Power, Politics and Fundamentalism's Shadow Elite.

The kind of applied politics and "culture" that the highly influential Family promotes on a world-basis is entire utilitarian - all the way down the line.
It is even deliberately brutal. Even while they pretend to be promoting the "lordship" of "jesus".
Posted by Daffy Duck, Wednesday, 13 August 2014 8:37:07 PM
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