More than a Hallmark holiday

That mad rush you hear as you read this column is many husbands running to the local drug store to quickly pick out a card and some flowers and chocolate for their wives. You may think that Valentine’s Day is a mere sentimental Hallmark holiday, a conspiracy for the greeting card companies and the chocolate manufacturers to make money. You’d be right. And yet, take some advice from a happily married man of 23 years that you likely don’t want to take this approach with your wife.

Historians are not sure where the holiday originated. Many believe it was in honor of two Christian saints, both put to death on Feb. 14 by Roman Emperor Claudius II in the 3rd century. It was first tied to romantic love by the poet Geoffrey Chaucer in the Middle Ages. In America, it was an enterprising artist named Esther Howland in the mid-19th century who began selling romantic cards. By the early 1900s, a chocolate magnate, Richard Cadbury, saw a potential market and the modern Valentine’s Day was off and running.

Whether you love Valentine’s Day or think it’s a useless made-up holiday, it is a good time to emphasize the Bible’s beautiful vision of romantic love, even if as an antidote to the world’s distorted view. While pop culture pumps out a message that love is mere attraction or desire, the result of two people “following their hearts” to a predetermined destiny, Scripture portrays romantic love as a beautiful gift from God, uniting husband and wife in a covenant commitment for life.

Marriage is grounded in the creation order. “For this cause,” Genesis tells us, “A man will leave his father and mother and will cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh (Genesis 2:24).” Marriage is a signpost of God’s relationship with the church, a mystery embedded in creation (Ephesians 5:30-32). Tertullian, writing in the 3rd century, said it this way:

How beautiful, then, the marriage of two Christians, two who are one in hope, one in desire, one in the way of life they follow, one in the religion they practice. They are as brother and sister, both servants of the same Master.

This doesn’t imply that romance and attraction have no part of what brings a man and a woman together. Isaac, for instance, saw that Rebecca was “fair to look upon” (Genesis 24:6). Attraction is part of the chemical makeup in which God designed men and women. Yet a relationship bound only by sexual attraction will not sustain itself over the long haul.

Marriage requires commitment, sacrifice, and two hearts knit first to God and then to each other. Deitrich Bonhoeffer said this, “It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.” The commitment preserves the love, it forces both husband and wife to deny themselves and serve the other, the husband leading with understanding, love, and self-sacrifice, the wife responding with respect and honor. Both submitting themselves to God. Good marriages don’t merely happen. They take investment and nurture and follow the healthy relational cycle of repentance and forgiveness.

We live in a world that increasingly sees marriage as archaic and inconvenient. A generation raised on the pain of no-fault divorce now increasingly favors cohabitation, an arrangement that enjoys the sexual benefits of marriage without its commitments. Tim Keller rightly called this “one long audition.” Marriage offers instead a binding commitment through the best and worst times. The act of physical intimacy was designed by God as a symbol and celebration of that oneness, not as a proving ground for love.

And it’s not merely Scripture that makes this case, but social science data. Brad Wilcox, the University of Virginia researcher and scholar, makes this case in his excellent book, Get Married, demonstrating the tremendous social value of life-long marriage between men and women. This kind of family is the best environment for a child’s development across a range of factors. What’s more, the happiest people in America, the data shows, are married men and married women. Christians should not be defensive about the beauty and importance of traditional marriage. Those who oppose it go against God’s design for His creation.

This doesn’t mean marriage is always happy. Many struggle, and this is where the church must provide help, helping weave families and troubled marriages back together with gospel hope.

But if you are reading this and are married, don’t roll your eyes at Valentine’s Day. Celebrate it. Nurture it. Invest in it. Say with me, this word from Proverbs 18:24, “Whoever finds a wife finds a good thing.”

And yes, go get that box of chocolates for her. You won’t regret it.