A Thread on Natural Affection:
In recent years, the Reformed segment of the church has been roiled by debates over natural affection. Interestingly, Scripture has very little explicit material on natural affection (“storge” in the Greek), but it does mention the lack of natural affection (“astorge”) as a sign of apostasy and idolatry in a couple places – Romans 1 and 2 Timothy 3. (The infamous heatmap is used to demonstrate the differences in “storge” between Christians and progressives – a mark of the progressive mind is that it inverts the order of natural affection.)
There is no question the slide of our culture into apostasy has been marked by a loss of natural affection. This is because natural affection (love for people and place, most simply) and what we could call supernatural affection (love for God and his people) are tied together. If you love God, you will quite naturally love the providential realities he assigns to you, eg, your family, your hometown, your nation. If you love God, you will love those who bear his image and you will embrace his design for human flourishing. You will recognize God generally organizes people into families and nations (nation and family are the two basic covenantal categories that God blesses or curses in Genesis 12:2).
There are many evidences of “astorge” in our culture today. Again, progressivism by definition is the absence of natural affection. I want to focus on three areas where the absence of natural affection is manifested: falling marriage rates, falling birth rates, and falling patriotism.
Falling marriage and birth rates are symptoms of the loss of natural affection. The family is the most basic “natural” institution so it is the first and chief context in which “storge” is typically learned and practiced. The impulse to marry a member of the opposite sex, to be fruitful and multiply, to fulfill the original Dominion Mandate/Creation Mandate is built into human nature as created. Of course, now man is fallen so that creational impulse can be corrupted or even rejected. When families do not form because people refuse to marry, when married couples are intentionally childless on a wide scale, when families that should have formed do not (coinciding with things like fornication and cohabitation), when families that have formed break apart through illegitimate divorce, and so on, we see “astorge” at work. And this lack of natural affection has spiritual consequences. It is not just a rejection of nature, but of nature’s God. Mary Eberstadt has argued quite convincingly that loss of natural affection, manifested most especially in the collapse of the family, has been a major driving force in the secularization of our culture. We didn’t destroy the family after secularizing; rather the collapse of the family aided and abetted the rise of secularism.
The loss of natural affection is tied to a loss of social capital and social trust. There is no way to have a healthy, happy, flourishing society without widespread “storge.” Strong bonds of “storge” provide the building blocks out of which a functioning and thriving nation can be formed. A society characterized by “astorge” is on its way to becoming unlivable.
Those who refuse God’s gifts of marriage and family inevitably have less social capital to work with. They have fewer IRL relationships they can count on – fewer parents, fewer grandparents, fewer siblings, fewer aunts and uncles, fewer cousins, fewer friends. They are lonelier and more vulnerable. They are more likely to seek out some kind of identitarian politics in an attempt to compensate for the lack of family and community. They are likely to become statists, treating the state as a surrogate family and looking to Caesar for provision and protection that in the past were provided by the family (and, failing that, the church). We see this play out in contemporary progressivism – the attack on the family as oppressive, the preferring of distant strangers or immigrants to one’s nation and family, the idolatry of the state, etc.
Lack of love for family (both one’s own particular family and the family in general as divinely designed) and lack of love for God are linked. We can add to this lack of love for one’s nation. Patriotism is ordinarily a virtue. Even if/when one’s nation becomes so corrupt and evil it must be opposed from within, that opposition is still driven by a deeper love and a hope for its restoration. The true patriot wants his nation to live under the blessing of God. Love of one’s nation, honor for the civil authorities God has established over us, respect for a cultural heritage and tradition, and so on, can all be seen as out-workings of the 5th commandment. These affections should be natural to all humans. On the other hand, lack of love for father, fatherland, and God the Father are tied to together as well – “astorge” will manifest itself in the same domains and relationships that should be filled with “storge.” Those who are fatherless (functionally and/or actually) choke on the words “Our Father.” They reject God the Father because their earthly fathers rejected them. They have no earthly model of fatherhood to point them to the Heavenly Father. Instead of honoring fathers, they hate fathers. Further, they cannot love their civil and national fathers for the same reason. Their attempts to “smash the patriarchy” are ultimately attempts to smash God the Father. Behind “astorge” is a desire to reject the true God and replace him with an idol. While we define “storge” as “natural affection,” it is actually not all that natural to fallen man. Only as grace restores nature can natural affection in its fullest measure and truest form be restored.
All that to say: Our culture will remain in freefall until we return to God. America is living out the progression of Romans 1:18ff, from idolatry to immorality; the list of vices in 1:29-31 could serve a transcript of our national character today. “Astorge” means a nation is dying. As Wisdom personified says in the proverb, “all those who hate me love death.” A civilization in which birth and marriage rates are collapsing, a nation in which citizens have no deep love for their own people and place and no hope for their future, a nation in which people replace patriotism with its opposite and constantly express embarrassment over their nation and its history/heritage, is a nation committing civilizational suicide. But this is exactly what idolaters do. They seek to kill God, and then kill everything good God designed and created for us to enjoy. The only way to kindle natural affection – love for fathers, family, and fatherland – is to kindle love for the supernatural God of nature, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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