​​Ordering Desires and Love
 
Thomas Jay Oord

 
The recent reference by JD Vance to ordering our loves caught me off guard. The idea comes from a venerable tradition that includes Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and Vance aligns himself with it.

We should keep separate two meanings to “ordering loves” to avoid confusion, however. And we must not allow our special obligations to trump our obligation to the common good, especially the least privileged among us.

On way to understanding “ordering love” pertains to our obligations, as finite creatures, to promote overall well-being.[1] This task assumes the meaning of love common in the Bible, which points to love as promoting abundant life, flourishing, and shalom. In a world of limited time and resources, to order loves means we sometimes help some instead of others, in the sense of promoting the well-being of some over others.

We should admit, for instance, that we have special obligations to help our own children or life partners more often than obligations to a stranger, kangaroo, or insect. Affirming special commitments does not mean we should neglect strangers entirely or unnecessarily harm other creatures. But our current locations, past commitments, and various relationships mean we are sometimes rightly promoting the good of one or some over the good of others.[2]

As an example, consider a mother’s obligation to love her newborn. She should help her child in ways she is not obliged to help others. This specific infant relies upon this specific adult, and specific responsibilities follow.

Acting for the good of one or a few, of course, often overlaps with promoting the common good. Raising a socially mature child, for instance, is good for the child and for society. In an interconnected world, the good of one often coincides with the good of others.

Of course, we do not love if we act to benefit a few at the great expense of the many. Nor are we loving if we heap good things upon some but neglect the needs of those who are especially hurting or in need. “Ordering love” should not be an excuse to ignore the least, the last, or the relatively powerless.

This first approach to ordering love, therefore, understands love as trying to promote well-being. Ordering loves pertains to whose well-being we should intentionally promote, given various limitations, relations, and commitments. We can’t do everything.
 
The second way to talk about ordering loves is better called prioritizing desires rather than ordering loves. This is the way Augustine and Aquinas typically use the phrase. According to them, we sometimes rightly desire or devote ourselves to friends more than a complete stranger, for instance. We might rightly desire friendship over isolation or devote ourselves to children more than video games. We are rightly devoted to God rather than idols.

This work to order our desires and devotion means orienting our lives around that which gives life and does good rather than around whatever destroys or harms. Ordering desires and devotion is an ongoing adventure.

Ordering desires, however, isn’t the same as ordering love… when love is understood as promoting well-being. And ordering devotion isn’t the same as asking whose well-being we should promote.

Desiring God or the good is not the same as acting to promote overall well-being. We can desire God but kill our enemies. We can “put God first” while simultaneously destroying the creatures God cares about. We can intend to be devoted to God above all else but harm trans people, create worse conditions for the impoverished, destroy creation, or endorse authoritarian leaders.

The Apostle James points out the difference between desire and love. He criticizes those who say they desire what is good but fail to love by helping the needy. “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (2:15-16)

The Apostle Paul argues similarly. To praise God in utmost desire, we may “speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels” (1 Cor. 13:1). But if we do not love in the sense of working for shalom, we are “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” In utter devotion, we may “give away all [our] possessions” or “hand over [our] body to be burned.” But if we do not love in the sense of helping, we “gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3).

To desire or be devoted is not the same as promoting well-being. True love aims to promote flourishing, especially among the weakest, poorest, and most vulnerable. Ordering love should not be an excuse to ignore our greatest problems.


​For more on the meaning of love, see my book Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being. Many of the paragraphs above are found in this book.

[1] For instance, Garth L. Hallett, Priorities and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Stephen J. Pope, The Evolution and Ordering of Love (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994).

[2] Gary Chartier makes this move in The Analogy of Love: Divine and Human Love at the Center of Christian Theology (Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2007). See also Chartier, Loving Creation: The Task of the Moral Life (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2022).