Inordinate Affections

Fay Weldon wrote a short story titled simply IND AFF. The story is a rather strange one and takes place in Sarajevo with frequent "flashbacks" (for lack of a better term) to the detonating actions of World War I - the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (and his wife) by a rebel party. Interestingly the title of the story takes us back even farther than the early 1900's. The dialogue in the story spawns the title to the story itself.

"How much do you love me?"

"Inordinately! I love you with inordinate affection." It was a joke between us. Ind Aff!

"Inordinate affection is a sin," he'd told me. "According to the Wesleyans. John Wesley himself worried about it to such a degree he ended up abbreviating it in his diaries, Ind Aff. He maintained that what he felt for young Sophy, the eighteen-year-old in his congregation was not Ind Aff, which bears the spirit away from God towards the flesh: he insisted that what he felt was a pure and spiritual, if passionate, concern for her soul."

This "Ind Aff" that John sensed for Sophia Hopkey was indeed sinful. So were, it seems, many or most of his relations to other women. His own marriage to Mary Vazeille did not last long and he is said to have referred to it as a "blunder." Much more is written on Wesley's sexual scandals in http://www.newstatesman.com/200210140044 with the article "Son of a Preacher" by Kathryn Hughes (14, Oct. 2002). Or, by Bufford W. Coe, the book John Wesley and Marriage is available for more information.

It is, I'm the first to admit it, sometimes difficult to keep our affections in check. They do seem, at times, to grow rather disproportionate. They are almost too easily inordinate. Ind Aff are dangerous affections. It doesn't matter who you are, how much of a spiritual giant you might be, you are still vulnerable to the inordinate affections of life. That is why the only affection which must be inordinate is the one that is directed to God. If this is the case then all other affections will fall under His providence, sort of like an umbrella.