Unka Glen

h1ddnchrist asked: Hi Unka Glen! I’ve been dealing with something for the past few weeks, and I received two tidbits of advice. Can you explain them, or help me to understand? 1) “Romance is something the devil made up” and 2) “there is a difference between love and infatuation.” I understand rom-coms give us a distorted picture of love, but is it possible to desire both love and infatuation? And is it shallow to want to be attracted to the one you marry? I’ve been struggling with what I want and what God wants for me.

Unka Glen answered: As for your first bit of “advice” I can’t make heads or tails of it. Sure, romance can be fleeting, the emotions can be overwhelming, it can sometimes be distracting, and for sure God’s love (agape love) is an infinitely better foundation to build on. But to say it’s from the devil, is to say that romantic love and God’s love can’t fit in the same space.

But I would say, by contrast, that God’s love has moved me to be more romantic, more tender and charing, to make the grand gesture, to do and say whatever it takes to make by beloved feel like the most special person on the planet. Someone once told Jesus that His disciples were being too loud in their praise, Jesus said that if you shut them up, the stones would cry out. 

This is how love works. It just can’t shut up. It has to speak up. It demands to be heard. 

Anyway, if you think romance is if of the devil, maybe take some time and read Song of Solomon. Sometimes people say things in an extreme way to try and make a larger point, and they kind of over-do it. I’m assuming that’s what’s happened here. 

That leads us to infatuation, there are two ways that people use that term. The first way is to describe an overwhelming attraction. The second way is to refer to being attracted to a quality of a person, rather than the person themselves.

You might find that you’ve become attracted to someone, only to find that you really just liked their looks, or their popularity, or whatever. That isn’t love, that’s infatuation. But your question is, can you be in love romantically, and agape style, and really, really be turned on by certain qualities in that person?

Heck yes.

Is that too much to ask of God?

Heck no.

However, the deeper wisdom you’re looking for is this: marry the person that you’d like to grow old and wrinkly with.