February has always struck me as profoundly romantic and entirely whimsical. Cynics and naysayers will brush off Valentine’s day as a commercialized day to keep Hallmark rich and disappoint daydreamers. Yet, my chronically single self has never seen love as confined entirely by matrimony and lover’s quarrels. I’m the kind of Anne-of-Green-Gables character who thinks sunlight dancing on my wall in the late afternoon is romantic. I smile on long road trips when I watch cloudy skies over vast cornfields shift into purple dusk sunsets. Authors of classic literature throughout the ages have tried to define romance. Some say it’s a feeling of wonder, mystery, or excitement that comes with love. Others characterize it as the admiration that awakens when gazing upon beauty. Yet others say it’s the experience of being wooed by a lover. I say romance is so much more than that.
I’m tempted to believe God agrees because He created a world filled with beautiful things. I often think about how colors are rather useless, and yet He gave us so many. He made a multitude of beautiful things in this world whose only function is to be beautiful. And amidst each layer of beauty, He placed intersections that produce friction and dissonance. It’s the contrast of each that highlights the majesty of both.
Marriage is like this. God created marriage as a gorgeous and participatory picture of the relationship between Christ and His Church. The depth and breadth of that symbolism astound me to no end. However, the Church sometimes wants so desperately to esteem marriage in a culture that does not, that we sometimes lose sight of the broader beauty within. Marriage is a beautiful picture of God, just like parenting. We learn to understand God better through these analogies He’s given. Isn’t it tragic, then, that we so often place our worth, significance, and security in a union that cannot fulfill our deepest desires? Our churches become segmented out by age and life stage. Have you ever stopped to wonder if our segmentation distracts us from the beauty God invited us to?
When I look at the Church, I see an entity with a supernatural capacity for unity that exists nowhere else on earth. The beauty of dissimilar creatures joining together to worship one God in harmony is a seemingly impossible phenomenon that should overwhelm our hearts with wonder. Yet, if we were to embrace the words of John 17 as a mantra that fills every interaction with love, benevolence, generosity, and curiosity, we would become a community that astounds every onlooker.
And though our culture is obsessed with creating systems to produce more in less time, this mode of constant striving is not what we were created for. Of course, there’s a part of us that perks our ears up when we hear we could make more money, produce more work, or amass better results. But at our core, I think a much deeper part of us is drawn to beauty – Not the aesthetic beauty of artwork but the soul-transforming beauty of relationship and love. When we see the thing that we long for, we are drawn to it.
The epitome of relational beauty is found in the Trinity. God himself pours out self-giving love in a mysterious triune unity. And as God created humans, He wanted us to experience the thing that makes Him so transcendent. As creatures made in His image, it’s almost as if our souls won’t feel fully at home until we are fully known, fully loved, fully seen, and fully at ease. In every human interaction, we want that.
It’s why we smile at a “thinking of you” text, and it’s why we feel sad when someone forgets to invite us. And at the risk of sounding cliche, this is why I love Valentine’s day. The desire to be loved and seen and known is both the most human and the most transcendent part about us. So a holiday celebrating love is not sappy – it’s remarkably significant.
In a culture filled with counterfeit definitions of love, Christians have an opportunity to exude the thing everyone wants and doesn’t know how to get. Rather than arguing with people over apologetics or persuading people with debate topics, I think the most human part of all of us just wants to find love.
Every hallmark movie and romantic comedy tells us the way to our hearts is a sappy meet-cute. And when the lonesome souls on dating apps and barstools don’t find one, their disappointment and desperation lead to cheaper and cheaper versions of love. These versions require so much cognitive dissonance that people must convince themselves this is what they’ve been waiting for or this is the best they can get. As a result, people settle every day for tinder dates, abusive ex’s, or last ditch fiances just to procure a match. True love seems so outlandish that many believe it’s just a fairytale.
I grew up believing that fairytale love was out there (thanks, Disney!), and I’m not about to bash the joy of romance now. But I don’t think Adam and Eve’s highest call was each other. The reactionary overcorrection the Church made to the sexual revolution made marriage one of the highest moral objectives for young Christians. So much so that purity culture preached a gospel that made many frustrated teenagers believe marriage was the answer to all their problems. Dating was replaced with courtship, and romance was replaced with fear. And once young believers “leveled up” life stages, they realized that the ultimate relationship all their hopes and dreams had been built upon was just another relationship. Matrimony does not replace community.
The best improv actors know how to transform a scene by saying, “yes, and…” I want to propose the same simple line to you. What if the invitation God has for us this February is “yes…AND”?
I’m single….Yes, and
I’m dating…Yes, and
I’m engaged…Yes, and
I’m married…Yes, and
I’m widowed…Yes, and
I’m divorced…Yes, and
When I think about love, the deepest part of my soul believes that the most transcendent part of us can be most beautifully experienced within community. Because of this, Jesus’s vision for unity in John 17 enthralls my heart more than any Disney flick could. The paradoxical intersection between children and elders, men and women, nationality and ethnicity sounds like the most gorgeous display of transcendence I can imagine. And I believe if we devote ourselves to pouring out our love and adoration on the Church, the world will want to crash the wedding.
Humans aren’t allured and enchanted by facts or reasoning. Just knowing Jesus is God’s Son doesn’t make a Christian. Even the demons know Jesus, and even the Devil quotes Scripture. The Devil doesn’t draw us to the dark side with a Forbes article or a pie chart. Instead, he entices us with empty promises of beauty, luster, abundance, and pleasure. His temptations taste sweet and look charming.
The horror of a hostile church doesn’t compare. Would you be drawn to a group of people constantly at each other’s throats? Would you be enticed by an empire of leaders hungry for power and platform? Would you be allured by a religion with constant sex scandals, abuse allegations, and religious trauma casualties? No wonder even the faithful feel like walking away sometimes. The Bride of Christ has become a Bridezilla.
Oh dear Church, hear me when I say this: God’s heart is so grieved by us. He is deeply in love with His bride but so deeply heartbroken by our division and idolatry. We have forgotten what it is to be in love with our groom. We have become so distraught, arguing with bridesmaids and mothers-in-law over napkins and tablecloths, that we forgot this wedding is meant to be a celebration. The day is coming that we will feast and dance and gaze upon the beautiful face of Jesus. We should be exuberant about that and invite everyone we know to the party!
So often in church I was taught formulas for evangelism and discipleship. But did you woo your lover with a formula? Relationships cannot be simplified into an equation. If they could, we would not have so many authors of classic literature exasperated over how to put the intricacies of love and desire into words. Instead, our churches are meant to be havens of hope, joy, and peace where weary souls find healing and rest. The first chord of the guitar is meant to feel like coming home. The first droplet of wine or grape juice on your tongue is meant to make the tension leave your body as you exhale the worries of your week.
That beauty will nourish our souls and lift our eyes. It will catch the glance of people passing by and ignite their curiosity. It will engage people in relationships they’ve been searching for their whole lives. And even though it’s not quite the meet-cute at the coffee bar, it will catch the eyes of people looking for love because it will be so different that they won’t be able to get it out of their minds for days. Like the suitor who can’t stop thinking about a captivating woman, the bride of Christ will attract people with her beauty. Think about the best meal you’ve ever eaten, the hardest you’ve ever laughed, or the longest you’ve ever danced. That’s how church unity should make us feel. If it did, people wouldn’t be able to stay away. It would be the wedding everyone wants an invite to, and it would be so fun to invite people.
Will you join with me in praying that our hearts become so captivated by the beauty of Christ and so devoted to His bride that people wouldn’t be able to look away? Let that be our focus this February.
