HOW SHOULD CHRISTIANS APPROACH VALENTINE’S DAY?

Who was St. Valentine? Why do so many people celebrate Valentine’s Day today?

The origins of Valentine’s Day are shrouded in tradition, mythology, and history. There are many stories and legends surrounding St. Valentine and some confusion about exactly how many Valentines there were. But the best-known version of the story goes something like this.

It was 270 AD, and the Roman Emperor Claudius II was a brutal warlord who had vast military ambitions. Warmongering requires a lot of manpower and Claudius resented the fact that so many men wanted to stay home with their wives rather than volunteer to be soldiers for their emperor. And in his efforts to increase his military might, the Emperor passed a law forbidding marriages and engagements in Rome.

Now, Valentine was a priest in Rome. And recognizing the injustice of this decree and the goodness of marriage as taught in Scripture, Valentine defied the Emperor’s edict by continuing to perform marriages in secret. But when Claudius learned what Valentine was doing, he had the priest arrested, dragged before the Prefect of Rome, and condemned to be beaten to death with clubs and to have this head cut off. This sentence was apparently carried out on February 14, 270 AD.

Before Valentine was executed, while he was in jail, legend has it that he left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend. He signed the letter, “From your Valentine.” This was ostensibly the first “Valentine” and February 14 became an occasion for exchanging love messages, poems, and flowers among lovers.

We will likely never be able to confirm the true origins of Valentine’s Day. But Valentine’s Day continues to be celebrated as “a day of love” in many cultures. And it continues to evoke a wide variety of responses among people, some positive and some negative. So, what, if anything, should Christians make of Valentine’s Day, the so-called day of love?

A drawing depicts the death of St. Valentine

C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Four Loves, distinguishes between four different kinds of loves: Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity. For Lewis, Eros was not equivalent to “erotic” love as most people conceive of it today.

In our highly sexualized culture, love has been reduced almost entirely to sexual terms, or at least inconceivable apart from the physical act of sexual intercourse. For Lewis, Eros may or may not include sex. Rather, it is the state of “being in love” or the “kind of love which lovers are ‘in.’”

Lewis describes the difference between Eros and sexual desire in this way: “Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved” (p.87). In its pure and unadulterated form, this kind of love is good and God-pleasing. Sin, however, has subverted romantic love in three closely related ways.

First, our culture’s enthronement of personal sexual fulfilment as an inalienable right, highest-ranking value, and uncontested pursuit of our age means that Lewis’s distinction between sex and Eros has been obliterated beyond reckoning. Our sin, which twists and mocks all things, has inverted romantic love in and upon itself, so that our desire is no longer for the Beloved, but simply for the sensual pleasure they can deliver.

Second, sin makes a crude effigy of romantic love by disfiguring the beloved him/herself in our minds. When we begin to see the beloved as a delivery mechanism for my personal pleasure, they cease to become embodied souls, whole persons who bear the holy image of God. In its most depraved form, like pornography, Eros renders people into automatons, dehumanized instruments to satiate our base appetites. In one of the great ironies of our age, our world’s glorification of sex has stripped it of its God-given glory.

Third, our culture has subverted romantic love as yet another form of self-expression and self-fulfillment. Many people who feel lonely and unloved on Valentine’s Day feel resentful when February 14 comes around, because it seems to validate their sense of self-loathing and every voice that has ever questioned their value. Conversely, people in romantic relationships are often tempted to see their beloved as validations of their self-worth, not precious image-bearers to whom we are called to give ourselves wholly for their good. When relationships become transactional and ultimately self-serving, we bristle when our beloved dares to change us. We fail to embrace them as God’s appointed agent for our sanctification.

The god of this age has blinded many from seeing the beauty of God’s richer, deeper, purer vision of love. Our world, our poor, love-impoverished world, desperately needs this better vision today. So, what does it look like?

The Biblical vision of love begins in pre-history, before the foundation of the world, with a picture of the three persons of the one God relating in perfect love for one another in eternity (Jn 3:35, 14:31). How do we know this? When the Second Person of the Trinity took on flesh and lived among us, He said to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love” (Jn 15:9). Incredibly, astoundingly, the divine, eternal, pure love with which the Father loved the Son has been poured out upon God’s people. Even to this day, the Son is calling his redeemed children into the mystery of the eternal love of the Triune God.

We don’t have time or space here to survey the whole Bible, so let’s fast forward to the end.

The Bible’s vision of divine love finds its grand consummation in nothing less than a wedding. And here is the song of celebration that marks this great wedding:

“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
For the marriage of the Lamb has come,
And his Bride has made herself ready.” (Rev 19:7)

Every marriage between a man and a woman anticipates and prefigures this ultimate wedding day when Christ Jesus the Lamb of God will receive the church as His Bride, when she is finally “holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:27).

This mystery is, indeed, profound and glorious (Eph 5:32). The biblical vision of divine love sanctifies the institution of marriage and imbues it with divine meaning and purpose. It militates against romantic love as an instrument for self-fulfillment and gives it significance that points beyond itself. A biblical vision will help you see your spouse not as the embodiment of a fulfilled and happy life, but as a partner with whom you can powerfully embody the gospel of Christ and His Bride.

Simultaneously, it demotes earthly marriage and romantic love for what it is, a sign and foretaste of ultimate love and marriage, that of Christ and His Church. It is good to enjoy and delight in our “beloved wife” or husband “all the days of our fleeting days” as our portion in life (Ecl 9:9). But we must guard our hearts against the temptation to promote marriage, family, or romantic love as the ultimate good in which we place our hopes. Your earthly beloved cannot fulfill the fiercest hopes of your soul. Your heavenly Beloved can and more.

For married people, the Biblical vision of love provides a proper framework and transcendent purpose for marriage. For singles, the same vision relativizes the goodness of earthly marriage in view of the ultimate marriage to the only one who can satisfy our souls. In the words of Sam Allberry, “If marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, singleness shows us its sufficiency.”

Whether you are single or married, I urge you this Valentine’s Day to reject the many grotesque caricatures of love that only enslave and disappoint, and embrace the biblical vision of love that liberates and satisfies. Give thanks to the God who has loved you before the foundation of the world, celebrate the institution of marriage for all that God has made it to be, and let Christ, the great Lover of your souls, the “fairest among ten thousand” (Song 5:10), quench and quiet the longings of your heart.