In every community, small or large, marginal or mainstream, one can find a few individuals who stand out from the rest of the pack. They are not necessarily colossuses or colossi who tower over the others like giant trees that dwarf little saplings; they are not heirs to great wealth or noble lineage; they are not the scions of the rich and the famous; they are just ordinary individuals.
They are probably from the same modest backgrounds like most members of the community, but unlike those who stop growing at a certain point in their lives, these few outstanding men and women look upon life as a process of continued growth, and a learning experience; an evolutionary process that guides us from the less to the more, a mountain that challenges us to climb, a mystery that beckons us to unravel. So they set goals for themselves, they aim high, they accept challenges, they seize opportunities, and by dint of hard work, dedication, discipline, and determination, they accomplish what others can only dream of. They are the success stories in a community, role models, wise men and women in a crowd of middlebrows and mediocrities.

The person I want to introduce here is such a wise man, an exceptional individual who has written an exceptional book: Marriage and Morals in the Third Millennium.

Dr. John Mathew Thekkel, also known as Dr. Sunny Ezhumattoor, was born in Kerala in the last century. The fact that he was born in the last century does not make him an old man. He is, in fact, an energetic young man just past the minimum age for AARP membership, but never one to lament, like the man who wrote during a bout of middle age crisis:

"My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone."

Dr. Thekkel was not only born in Kerala; he also spent some of the most formative years of his life in Kerala. Most of my readers, I imagine, will have
no problem locating that small sliver of a state on the edge of the Arabian Sea in South India. The geographic location of Kerala, its checkered history, its
closeness to the Middle East, its contact with the closed societies of the Arab World, its relative isolation from the North and from the advanced civilization
of the West, its enduring spirit of adventure and innovation, its crowded condition which makes people a little too close for comfort, its absence of the
nuclear village system, its native intelligence, envious progress in education,
Its eclectic morality that combines Christian moral values, Hindu ethos, and Islamic Sunna, its mild attachment to the old Manichean dualism, its sexual mores that promoted prudishness-all these and other elements have conspired to create the unique culture of Kerala which in turn has greatly influenced, for good and bad, the character and outlook of Keralites.

As a young man, like Dr. Ezhumattoor, I spent the most impressionable period of my life in Kerala. When I think of those days, the image that springs to mind between bouts of nostalgia is the image of the legendary Greek goddess, Circe, who was the daughter of Helios, the Son-God, and lived on the Greek island of Aeaea. The remarkable thing about Circe is that she cast her spell on those who visited the island and turned them into swine. Forty years ago, the late Bengali writer, Nirad Chaudhuri, wrote a book on India, which he titled, The Continent of Circe.

The image of Circe somehow seems to fit Kerala. She, too, by her natural charm and breathtaking beauty, casts a spell on the people and transforms them. But the analogy limps. It does not go far. Circe is thought of as a vindictive sadist who took pleasure in people's misery, whereas, Kerala is never thought of as an evil genius that turned men into morons. She is loved and cherished like a mother, especially from a distance, by "children" who are no more living with her. She is picture perfect when looked at from the outside.

The picture is not, however, perfect from within. There are dark spots. This latter day "Circe" has affected her children variously. She turned some of them into nature poets, romantic novelists, and mahakavis. She turned some others into moralists and mystics; idealists and agit-props; reformers and revolutionaries; she created legendary heroes, pliant milksops and fawning minions. She also turned some into cynics and xenophobes; peasants and pessimists; close-minded individualists; babbitts and boorish political leaders; cultural illiterates with little self-respect and less respect for others; dissenters and dissidents who raised dissent into a political pastime; political fence-hoppers, and narcissuses who admired their own reflection.

Kerala is a unique bundle of contradictions. Its origin is shrouded in myths and legends. According to legend, it came into being as a special act of God. Keralites proudly call it "God's Own Country", but after creation, God seems to have left it to its own devices. Another moniker by which she is popularly known is "Paradise", but she has often looked like a "Paradise Lost". Kerala compares favorably with every developed country in the world in literacy and education, but the benefits of education are conspicuously absent. The only visible sign of advance in education is the lengthening unemployment line. In Kerala, religion and revolution co-exist peacefully and Christianity and communism forge political alliances. Christianity, which is, by its nature and mission, a unifying force, is riddled with divisions. The Christian churches (denominations) often compete with each other and some of them are in perpetual confrontation. Kerala was the first state in the world where communism came to power through the democratic process. Communism preaches equality, but in Kerala among the communists, "some are more equal than the others", to borrow a line from George Orwell: "While the proletariat suffer privations, the party bosses enjoy a lavish lifestyle.” One of the veteran Congress leaders in Kerala makes a huge spectacle of his frequent visits to temples to pray and to propitiate the deity, but he is so notorious as a corrupt "leader", that when a university decided to confer an honorary degree on him, the students of the university organized a mock assembly in which they honored the "leader" and Veerappan, the notorious brigand, on the same stage.

Anyone who has sampled this cornucopia of contradictions and endured the ironies of the culture would find it hard to escape some of their deleterious effects. As a matter of fact, many people who migrate from Kerala (everyone there, seems to want to go somewhere!), particularly those who missed the sobering interlude in North India, display at least for a while, signs and symptoms of having lived in Kerala. But even among them, there are people who eventually change and adapt without losing their essential identity. The ones who really find it hard to shake off the symptoms, even after a long time in their adopted country, are the ones who tote their culture as necessary paraphernalia. For them "NRK" (Non-Resident Keralite), has a different meaning. For them it means "Never Relinquished Kerala"! As a group, they are generally speaking, close-minded, clannish, hidebound, and under-educated as far as liberal education goes, or what Gandhi called "sachi siksha" (real education). They gravitate towards their own kind, employ excessive zeal in promoting their own culture and language, and try to raise their children into their own image and likeness. They do all these from a vague sense of patriotism. As a consequence, they live a marginal life, on the fringe of a society they want to enter, but cannot, because of their own xenophobia, and remain "put on and pathetic", ever aliens in self-imposed isolation.

Dr. John Mathew also migrated from Kerala relatively young, carrying the burden of all that is negative in his culture. But he followed a different route and a different "drummer". He went first to North India where he spent a few growing years. He completed his Masters Degree in Economics and then set out for the "Promised Land" or the land of promise. In Houston, he found an ideal locale for his dreams and ambitions, and indeed, to live out his commitment.

Dr. Thekkel had accepted, at the indiscriminate age of nine, Jesus Christ ("the different Drummer") as his personal Savior. He hardly knew what this acceptance meant at the time, but under the guidance of his inspiring father, the late Mr. John Thekkel, he came to understand the implications of a life-long commitment to Jesus Christ. To accept Jesus as one's personal Savior means to accept Him as the Way, the Light, and the Life. It means to be guided by the Way, to be enlightened by the Light, and to be energized by the Life. It means to strive to become Christ-like; it means to transcend the narrow confines of country and culture, and become a "universal" person, open to new experiences, new realities, and new inspirations. It means to preach by the example of one's own life and bear witness to Jesus Christ. Dr. John Mathew's commitment to Jesus made all the difference in his life. That commitment helped him to turn the impact of his native culture into a power, strength to help those who labored under its burden. His new book: Marriage and Morals in the Third Millennium can be properly understood only in the light of this commitment and his effort to live it. For marriage is treated here as a life-long commitment, in which the marrying couple commit themselves to each other and then both together to God.
Marriage is not treated here as one of the lifestyle choices. Morality is not treated here as a synonym for good taste, or simply, as the Greeks described it, as a non-religious attempt to achieve a rationally coherent system of conduct based on man's reaction to his daily experiences. Morality is treated in the book as conformity to the will of God as expressed in the twin Testaments of the Bible.

In order to understand the book better, it is also important to have a clear notion of the background of the people whom the book is mostly addressed to, namely, the immigrant community from India, particularly from Kerala, whose moral values differ considerably from those of the contemporary American society. An ample description of the moral values of contemporary American society, furnished in the book, helps to avoid biased judgment.

Immigrants from India, particularly those who are close-minded among them, often identify the whole with one of its parts, by which I mean, they identify the whole of morality with one of its parts, namely, sex morality. They also tend to often be judgmental, and their judgments are moral judgments. They condemn frankness and absence of inhibitions as sexual licentiousness and promiscuity. They tend to think of a frank discussion on sexual matters as obscene and immoral. Latent in these loud condemnations, however, is a brazen hypocrisy; for those who claim to possess a moral superiority are no more moral in their private lives than those who make no such claims.

The forthrightness with which delicate moral issues are discussed in this book is a wake up call to those hypocrites who still think of a frank discussion of such issues as taboo. Dr. John Mathew Thekkel is proof of how an open mind and a well-rounded liberal education can overcome the vagaries of a native culture that creates close-minded loyalties in her willing votaries.

When man's primary needs, such as food and shelter, are met and secured for the future, there is a tendency in him to seek recognition. Plato calls this tendency "thymos" or "spiritedness". This tendency, according to Plato, is one of the three parts of the soul, the other two being the Desiring part and the Reasoning part ("Republic"). Thymos in itself is good and legitimate, but using this dynamic tendency only for self-promotion and self-aggrandizement is less than praiseworthy. While many of his compatriots are engaged in seeking recognition in various ways, Dr. Thekkel has directed his own "thymos" to self-enrichment and selfless service.

During the last twenty-five years that he spent in Houston, he nurtured and strengthened his own Christian marriage, raised his three sons in the ways of the Lord, worked as a conscientious employee at the Texas Commerce Bank, and devoted his spare time to the acquisition of knowledge and skill for the greater service of the Lord in his fellow-men. He devoted a great deal of time to counseling, in which he later took a Ph.D., established prayer groups, played a leading role in his own Brethren Assembly and the Malayalee community at large, published about two hundred articles and ten books (this is his eleventh book, his fourth in English). He is now engaged in a very worthwhile project of making the public familiar with the works of Mahakavi K. V. Simon.

The first set of songs from Simon, recently published in CD form, reveals another interest of Dr. Thekkel: the preoccupation with not only what is good and true, but also what is beautiful. Truth, goodness, and beauty are all manifestations of God, and discovering these in the world is discovering God in the world. There is much beauty in the writings of K. V. Simon, as expressed in the very first song in the recently published set. "Amba Jerusalem" sings the beauty of the heavenly Jerusalem:

"Thou heavenly, New Jerusalem
Vision of peace in prophet's dream,
With living stone built up on high
And rising to yon starry sky."

This song written by another poet expresses the same sentiment, the same longing for the beauty of God.

From the wide range of disciplines and liberal arts subjects that he has mastered, Dr. Thekkel has been able to discover truth, goodness, and beauty wherever they are found and share them with others, particularly with those who are close to him in communion and culture. The philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas
Says, "Bonum est diffusivum sui," which means, "Goodness is diffusive of itself," or goodness, by its very nature is to be shared. What we see in the efforts of Dr. John Mathew is proof of this principle, this great dictum.

Marriage and Morality in the Third Millennium is Dr. John Mathew's most important work in English. His first book, Capitalism dealt with how the needs of developing countries could be met efficiently by introducing the principles of "compassionate" capitalism. It was prophetic in scope as India eventually adopted the principles of capitalism and made great strides in economic development. After a long courtship with Fabian socialism, India has now emerged as a potentially powerful nation with a new middle class that is almost as large as the total population of the United States.

In his present work, Dr. Thekkel tries to address another crucial problem plaguing the developed countries. Economic prosperity and unlimited freedom can dull the edge of morality and ethical conduct. Marriage and Morality in the Third Millennium tries to address the modern predicament, pithily described by a writer in the advice column of Ann Landers. The writer called it "The Paradox of our Modern Times". She says: "We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values . . . We have higher incomes, but lower morals . . . We have cleaned up the air, but polluted our souls . . . split the atom, but not our prejudices . . . There are times of steep profits and shallow relationships . . . We promote world peace, but ignore domestic warfare . . . We have more leisure, but less fun; two incomes and more divorces . . . It is a time when technology can bring you a letter in seconds and you can choose either to make a difference or just hit 'delete'."

"There is a moral sense and there is an immoral sense," said Mark Twain with his characteristic humor, “history shows us that the moral sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the immoral sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it."

Dr. John Mathew, in trying to address the paradoxes of our modern life, and the moral dilemma facing society today, refers us back to God our Creator. God, in creating us, has become the very ground of our being; we are "God-anchored,' or, as the modern expression goes, we are "wired for God." That is the reason why Catholic thinkers hold that man is basically good and that evil is the absence of good. God has created a basic moral sense in our nature, but this inherent sense of morality is smothered when evil takes over. Hence the book contends that only a return to God can restore our moral nature to its original state.

A cursory glance through Marriage and Morality in the Third Millennium will give the impression that it has been written from a Christian point of view, by a Christian, and mostly for Christians. But a closer look will convince us that, despite the generous use of Biblical quotations, the topics treated in the book have direct bearing on the moral malaise that afflicts the contemporary American society. They are burning issues that engage the attention of social scientists, religious leaders, and concerned citizens. Every aspect, except the historical development, of marriage and morality has been discussed in detail with chilling forthrightness and, at the same time, with due respect. The intention of the author is clear; it is not to titillate, but to teach; not to entertain, but to inform. It is not an effort to trivialize, but to invite serious discussion.

While discussing marriage, Dr. Thekkel begins appropriately with creation, with the first man and woman. The story clearly illustrates the Creator's intention in creating the first couple. Woman was created not like a mere organism designed for procreation. She was given to man as a companion. "It is not good for man to be alone." In Greek mythology, man and woman were one entity. Then an angry god cursed and separated them and ever since they have been longing for each other.

Man and woman were created to complement each other. Since this idyllic beginning, marriage has undergone many changes. Monogamy remained the rule for a long time, bringing stability and harmony into family life. The twin purpose of marriage was well understood and upheld. The celebrated Chinese sage, Confucius (fifth century B. C.), echoed the mood of the time: "When wives and children and their sires are one, it's like the harp and lute in unison. When brothers live in concord and in peace, the strain of harmony shall never cease. The lamp of happy union lights the home, and bright days follow when children come."

Later on, in some places, economic motives introduced polygamy, which broke up the tranquility of monogamy. From being a companion to man, woman was reduced to the status of a lucrative domestic animal who served her man with labor and sexual favors. Man was the master and he could do as he pleased with his wife or wives. Divorce was very easy as it is even today among the followers of Islam. In China, it is said that a man could divorce his wife for being a chatterbox.

When Christianity entered the picture, the scene changed radically in places where Christianity spread. The role of religion became vital. Monogamy was reinstated and made to look like the only choice. Divorce became rare and not easily available. Following St. Augustine and other teachers, the church taught procreation as the sole purpose of marriage. In our own day, Mahatma Gandhi also held the same position.

Now enter the age of reason and with it, the winter of discontent. Protests erupted from different quarters against a rigidity that was unnecessary. Some of our modern day problems in marriage as well as morals can be chalked up to the intransigence of yester-years. Some branches of Christianity relented under provocation. Love and companionship were added as purposes of marriage. Pronouncement against the use of contraceptives were somewhat modified.

When we consider today's situation, which is dealt with extensively in Dr. Thekkel's book, it is hard to say whether the evolution of marriage has gone forward or backward. From a moral point of view the course has been regressive. Part of the reason for this is that morality itself has undergone changes. In moral relativism there are few absolutes. When norms differ from individual to individual the only norm is that there is no norm. So every aspect of marriage is called into question. Monogamy is discussed as restrictive; fidelity to one person is dismissed as old-fashioned and quite harmful as it denies the freedom to enter into new relationships; love is worthless unless it is spontaneous and there is no such thing as growth in love; and the very idea of monogamy is distasteful, as it chains you to one partner even over a short haul. Shelly has written:

"I never was attached to that great sect
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead?
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go."

I do not intend to discuss further the problems faced by marriage in contemporary American society. They are set down in much greater detail in Marriage and Morality in the Third Millennium. What I have written is only an introduction to and an incentive for reading what Dr. Thekkel has written. I want, however, to make a final point: today, marriage is under attack and the attack is somewhat subtle. We don't hear anymore such searing, radical comments like "marriage is legalized rape," or "it is good for men, but bad for women", etc. Instead we hear "marriage is just another lifestyle choice"; married life, same sex partners, opposite sexes living together are all considered different lifestyles belonging on the same plane. People believe that traditional mores do not apply anymore. Easy availability of contraceptives in our day "freed" women from traditional roles and gave men more ways to be irresponsible.

As I hinted before, evolution in the thinking on morality has directly influenced the change of attitude towards marriage.

Moral code differs from people to people, from society to society, from country to country, especially in the case of sexual morality. What is considered immoral in Western cultures, for instance, may be considered amoral or a virtuous act in other cultures. Among the Aborigines of Central India, an unmarried young woman who proves herself capable of child bearing is in great demand for marriage. German anthropologist, Ivar Lissner, who had accepted the hospitality of the chief of a Siberian tribe that he was studying, was on his first night at the chief's house, horrified to find a young woman in his bed when he went to sleep. He ran out and complained to the chief about it, and the chief told him nonchalantly that it was their custom to give the best in the house to their guests. The young woman in the guest's bed was the chief's beautiful daughter.

The question arises then, whether there is an absolute morality. A universally accepted absolute morality may be a debatable point, though; a reverence for a superior being and respect for one's own kind could be stated as fairly common among all peoples. But in individual societies it is generally accepted that objective norms of behavior that bind each individual, are necessary and do exist. The problem is in identifying such norms, especially, in the realm of sexual mores. The present work is a valuable guide in identifying and applying these norms.

The thinking on morality has undergone radical changes in the Western society. Morality has its main roots in the Bible. Early Christian teachers adopted codes of conduct from the Greek and Jewish teachings. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, provided the basis for Christian ethics and philosophy. Plato and Plotinus influenced the thinking of St. Augustine, and stoic philosophy exercised some influence on the thinking of later Christian moralists. For a long time, Western morality was influenced by the "School Masters of Europe', namely, the monks and priests who defined moral life briefly as "conformity to the will of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and the Scriptures". With the emergence of secular humanism, positivism, and rationalism, Christian influence on moral thoughts waned considerably. When man was declared "the measure of all things”, codes of conduct were rewritten with the guidance of "natural philosophy".

In the "live-and-let-live" morality, God and religion played no role at all. Even in Christian ethics there was a crisis in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Objective morality was called into question. The doctrine of probabilism, which flourished in Spain, held that moral decisions should be guided by individual consciences. Probabilism was probably the inspiration for today's moral relativism, which may be defined as the view that different groups of people have different standards and that the same act may be thought right by some and wrong by others.

There is little scope here for a detailed examination of the history and development of the Western moral thought. What I aimed at doing is to find the "raison d'être" for today's moral chaos and unbridled individualism.

Dr. John Mathew's treatment of today's moral dilemma is somewhat descriptive and his prescription for the malaise is, as I gather from the pages of his book, a plea for a return to God. In the absence of a concluding chapter, one can only surmise that his panacea for the problems of our day is a return to God. Pope John Paul II, in his message to the World Day of Peace also arrives at the same conclusion. The Pope said, "A culture which has no reference in God loses its soul and loses its way, becoming a culture of death."

I have read this well-researched book from cover to cover, every one of its 180 pages. It is not a manual on marriage and morality, as one might expect. A comprehensive treatment of the topic of "marriage and morality" would fill volumes. Hence here the scope is very limited. In fact, the author deals with only one aspect of the topic, namely, the questions concerning marriage and morality asked and answered in counseling sessions. From that point of view, the book is encyclopedic in scope and one can easily recognize a well-informed and experienced author who treats his subject with authority and vision.

The book, however, is somewhat incomplete because its scope, avowedly, extends far into the future, and one would expect old questions and old problems to be treated in new ways. Catholic moral thinkers, for instance, have abandoned the old ways of dealing with moral questions. They used to be philosophical, abstract, negative, responding to the demands of human nature. A disproportionate amount of attention used to be paid to matters of sexual mores. Today, morality is more Biblical, more positive, and is treated as a personal response to the divine call. Emphasis today has shifted from chastity to charity.

A morality for the third millennium should guard against the pitfalls of an obsessive preoccupation with sex, which is outmoded and filled with caveats. "The Puritans in their determination to avoid the pleasures of sex," says Bertrand Russell, "became somewhat conscious of the pleasures of the table." As a seventeenth century critic of Puritanism says:

“Would you enjoy gay nights and pleasant dinners?
Then must you board with saints and bed with sinners".

A morality for the third millennium will be based more on charity than on chastity. Jesus came to give us a new covenant. He did not come to abrogate the old covenant; He came to fulfill it.

In the old covenant, as expressed in the Old Testament, God is portrayed as the God of justice. He inspires awe and fear, punishes the wrong doers, favors His own people, and destroys His enemies. On the other hand, in the New Testament, God is portrayed as the loving Father, "Abba", who is kind, compassionate, merciful, and forgiving. We have the image of the Father in Jesus as Jesus Himself testified. The Old Testament God and the New Testament God is the same God, as the two sides on the same coin. He is described in His two attributes separately to help our limited understanding.

The New Covenant is embodied in the two commandments Jesus reiterated: (1) Love God and (2) Love your neighbor. These commandments are already found in the Old Testament (Deut. 6:4-5 and Lev. 19:18) where it has only a limited application. They were Jewish in the contexts. Jesus extended them to all mankind and made them normative in all moral acts. St. Paul in Romans 13:10 says that charity contains all the laws and all the prophets. He calls "Love of God and Love of the neighbor" the law of Christ. The law of Christ encompasses the whole of morality, so we can safely say that every sin is a sin against charity.
The objects of the love that Jesus Christ taught are: God, one's own self, and the whole of God's creation, which includes the environment. St. Augustine understood the extent of Christian love when he said: "Ama et fac quod Vis" (Love and do what you will.)

"In America today," says Francis Fukuyama, "what they eat and drive, the exercise they get and the shape they are in have become a far greater obsession for people than the moral questions that tormented their forebears." Among the same people, I see also a greater degree of tolerance, a willingness to forgive, a disposition to accept others as they are, and more importantly, greater respect for others as compared to their forebears. They seem to be more disposed to accept the law of love than their forebears.

This long introduction reminds me of the books of George Bernard Shaw whose introductions sometimes ran into more pages than the books themselves. My only reason to write such a long one is because there is so much to say about this book and its gifted author. This book is a very useful guide for those who deal with people and their problems. My only suggestion for improvement in future editions is to shift the emphasis from chastity to charity and emphasize, in the definition of morality, the element of man's response to God's call.

George Kampal
May 6,2001