Romance.

We might at first be tempted to call it “love,” but it isn’t real love, the kind that cherishes the familiar [...]]]> What is the primary narrative of our time, the theme running through our songs, our literature, our movies, our TV, the story we tell over and over and strive to reenact with our own lives?

Romance.

We might at first be tempted to call it “love,” but it isn’t real love, the kind that cherishes the familiar and hangs on through back labor, mortgage payments, and gastrointestinal illness. No, we in our culture, know that that kind of faithful love is important, necessary for life, like vegetables, but it’s not exciting, it’s not the stuff of fairy tales or the Top 40 countdown. It’s romance that drives us, romance that gives life its meaning for so many millions of real and fictional characters, romance that confirms our worth as human beings. So ubiquitous is our group obsession with romance that we secretly suspect that those who are not wrapped up in its breathless passion are not truly fulfilled, that their lives are lacking in the most fundamental and crucial ways. A single gal may have lots of love, love from friends, love from parents, siblings, church family, but if she doesn’t have strong arms holding her in the night, we feel sorry for her. We may even wonder if there’s something wrong with her. She must certainly be a half-baked, undeveloped, unrealized shell of a person without this necessary and awakening element. Poor dear. (Never mind that Jesus lived the perfect life on this earth and was never “in love” with anybody.)

If we can’t be swept up in the racing heartbeat and warm desire in our own lives, we live them vicariously through romance novels or just the latest yummy chick flick. We feel a sense of entitlement. If falling in love is the ultimate in human experience, shouldn’t we all get a taste?

Until recently, I would have explained all this with platitudes about how it’s in our genetic code to continue the species, and how we naturally have that urge to merge driving us. But then I read a fascinating article, provocatively titled Why Christians Have Lousy Sex Lives. (The title at first made me write the article off because I KNOW it’s not true that all Christians have lousy sex lives. Ahem. But once I read it, I realized that if people were still bound by the lie the article was exposing, they really would have a lousy sex life.)

According to this article, our obsession with romance is not a universal human obsession present with us through all of history. It dates back only to the Middle Ages. Up until then, despite our perfectly functional hormones and the fact that we were able to get married and even procreate, we had other obsessions, other stories we lived. There was a time when people in Europe were actually obsessed with the life of Christ. Fancy that. It is a recent development, this concept of “falling in love,” in which a selfish, at times even destructive, consuming, boiling, hormonal high is elevated to the noblest of all emotions and motivations. “They fell in love,” is used to justify all kinds of evil, impulsive, and foolish behaviors. And our culture has bought it, every bit, and we want to hear about it again, and again, and again.

Once I started thinking about this, I realized that there is almost no mention at all of falling in love in the Bible, except in a few very negative stories in which a man does some pretty stupid things based on lust (Samson and his first wife, David with Bathsheba, and the rapes of Tamar and Dinah come to mind). You could point out that the Song of Solomon is very romantic, but the Song of Solomon is not about falling in love, it’s about feeding a marriage that already exists. It’s about staying in love over the long haul.

The story of our culture, our number one drive, our definition of meaning and purpose, is nearly completely absent from God’s Word. That blew my mind. You could write it off and say, “Eh, it’s just a cultural difference.” But if falling in love is this unimportant to God, why is it SO important to us? Why do we allow singles to be treated like lepers? Why do we allow ourselves to be tempted to affairs, real or mental, when we don’t feel “in love” with our spouse? Why do we surround ourselves with romantic movies, romantic books, romantic music, and feed this ideal that is so completely foreign to God’s Word? Will our minds be steeped in our culture? Will we allow this false God of Twitterpation to have a place on the altar of our hearts, or will we strive to live the culture of the Kingdom?

We need to tell the world a different story, one in which it’s all about God, where He’s the primary passion, drive, motivation, and delight, a story in which we get married (or not) because we want to serve Him, a story in which everyone single, married, in love, or out of love, can all share equally in the adventure of living out the Gospel.

Intrigued? Click on over to Why Christians Have Lousy Sex Lives.