Line upon Line

“Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair” (G. K. Chesterton).

I am not qualified to speak or write about love. That isn’t false humility; I am calling it as it is. The only things I feel remotely qualified to speak with any authority upon are the Texas Roadhouse menu and The Lord of the Rings. No, my musings on love are out of yearning, not out of authority. I long to express what I have experienced, not mastered. I genuinely believe the Lord intends our religion to be a love affair, not a board meeting.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is infused with romantic imagery. Furthermore, romantic love is part of the character, perfections, and attributes of godliness. Elder Boyd K. Packer said, “Romantic love is not only a part of life, but literally a dominating influence of it. It is deeply and significantly religious. There is no abundant life without it. Indeed, the highest degree of the celestial kingdom is unattainable in the absence of it.”[1] Romantic love, therefore, is not the fruit of adolescence but the sign and echo of Heaven.

If Elder Packer’s statement is accurate, and I believe it is, then he’s clearly at odds with the Westminster Confession of Faith, which many Christian theologians maintain. It states God is a being which is “a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions.”[2] The restored Church is indeed peculiar in that we believe “the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22). But, apparently, that truth has many more profound implications than simply God’s tangibility. The body of flesh is truly the temple of the Holy Ghost in mortality (see 1 Corinthians 6:19-20).[3] The body is a gateway of heaven, for the temple is the axis mundi between heaven and earth.

One of the most comforting principles in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth that nothing will be denied humble seekers of Christ. Those who never had an opportunity to experience the fulness of gospel light will have the opportunity hereafter (see Doctrine and Covenants 137:7-10). Anything that is “virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy,” will be available to those who were denied them in mortality. Such truth applies to all things good, true, or beautiful because they are part of God’s character, perfections, and attributes—including romantic love.

Perhaps in pure Socratic tradition, we must define our terms. By romantic love, I mean what the Greeks termed Eros, or romantic love, you know, the thing Valentine’s Day celebrates. To clarify, Eros is “that state which we call ‘being in love’; or, if you prefer, that kind of love which lovers are ‘in.’ Sexuality, “may operate without Eros or as part of Eros.” Sexual desire without Eros, wants pleasure and stimulation, whereas Eros wants the Beloved.[4] Romantic love flits and flirts with all the feelings that excite, draw, entice, and yearn for the Beloved. While romantic love exists independent of sexual expression, to those walking the covenant path, sexual intimacy is a “sacrament,” a crown of consummation that is part and parcel of romantic love motivated by and a desire for complete union.[5]

As an illustration, take Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy. Our illustrious, debonair, and unflappable gentleman had his trousers all twisted in knots at the thought and memory of Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Austen described Darcy’s state like this: “Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her. He really believed, that were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he should be in some danger.”[6] Wait a second. “Danger”?! If Darcy found Lizzy’s influence bewitching and dangerous, why persist? Get outta there! Yet, he persisted until, in the end, he proclaimed to Elizabeth, “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”[7] What’s with all this bewildering bewitching?! Is there any truth or goodness to the whole thing? Does God intend us to feel such things? Does such rapturous delight emanate from him or is it the product of a “fallen world”?

I remember the first time my heart was truly broken in wonder and smitten by romance. Cupid first began peppering me with arrows in the form of palpitating twitterpations on my elementary school playground. She let me teach her the fine art of scaling the monkey bars and . . . oh, how she turned my wee smitten heart upside down alright. Those monkey bars transformed from a playground to Cupid’s firing range. By high school, I recognized the strange phenomenon known as a “crush,” but that in no way prepared me for what came bursting on the stage—quite literally.

Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac hit like lightning from a clear sky. I was visiting the Utah Shakespeare Festival with my family in Cedar City, Utah. I sat with my brothers and parents on the balcony level looking down on the stage. Tears flowed freely, my heart burned, and my throat ached. The power of language, circumstance, and injustice of Cyrano’s unrequited love burned with a white heat that would not subside. I knew, felt, and aspired to something higher, holier, and hotter than school-hall romances. Cyrano convinced me of that when, from the dark recesses of balcony seating, I heard:

She is a mortal danger to all men. She is beautiful without knowing it, and possesses charms that she’s not even aware of. She is like a trap set by nature—a sweet perfumed rose in whose petals Cupid lurks in ambush! Anyone who has seen her smile has known perfection. She instills grace in every common thing and divinity in every careless gesture. Venus in her shell was never so lovely, and Diana in the forest never so graceful as my Lady when she strides through Paris![8]

Who in the heck was Diana?! I had an idea about Venus from my Dungeons and Dragons days, but Diana?! Yes, Cupid truly lurked in ambush, and he wasn’t using field tips anymore; he’s got broadheads attached to those arrow shafts! I was pierced, ripped, and left blithering and scrambling for something to mop up my tears. I was wooed, I was smitten, and I was waking up to love, but, with whom?! Venus, Diana, Roxane (Cyrano’s love interest), or someone else, somewhere, out there, but where?! Like other virtues, the romance brought me further up and further into deep heaven.

I reflected upon the moment then, and I have many times since. Why would the Lord create such yearning, such painful desire, and longing in us? God’s love is many things, but I believe it is also romantic. He desires her, longs for her, and finds comfort cleaving unto her. Jesus taught, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). The word “know” comes from the Greek ginōskō, which has a wide variety of expressions in the ancient world, part of which suggests an intimacy with another. The Hebrew of the Old Testament is yâḏa’, which is the equivalent of intimacy. For example, “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain” (Genesis 4:1).

The Lord desires to be one with us (John 17:20-24). When we enter into a covenant relationship, the nature of the promises draw the two separate parties together until they become one. To know someone or something is to have intimacy in that the two distinct parties are no longer independent but have become one, bound, and sealed (see Moses 7:18). “Love is not blind,” Chesterton wrote, “that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”[9] Thus, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Perhaps, this is why the Lord invites us to “cleave unto me with all your heart” (Doctrine and Covenants 11:19). The word cleave in the Old Testament is much more expressive in that it means to be joined or glued together. Naturally, none of us desire to be stuck in a close relationship with someone we do not know. Therefore, we have the mandate to learn of him, listen to his words, and walk in the meekness of his Spirit, so we do come to know him (see Doctrine and Covenants 19:23). To have someone invade our personal space—our bubble—is incredibly disconcerting unless we know and trust the individual entering sacred space.

So it is with God. All the loves find consummation in God’s character. What the Lord initiates, Satan imitates. When love turns to lust, love is ultimately lost. Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce, “‘Love, as mortals understand the word, isn’t enough. Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country [Heaven]: but none will rise again until it has been buried.’”[10] Inherent in all loves is the giving of oneself to his or her Beloved. Such a proposition is risky, but such are the unblushed promises embedded in the pull of romantic love. Lewis wrote,

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket–safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.[11]

G. K. Chesterton observed, “Man cannot love mortal things” such as words, banter, ideas, good drinks, and friendship. “He can only love immortal things for an instant.”[12] However, we have the sure promise of the Lord that our love of immortal things will expand from the instant, fleeting, and momentary to become infinite and eternal. Romantic love excites, draws, and entices us to seek oneness and wholeness; to bring the Beloved into a relationship wherein “they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh” (Mark 10:38). Therefore, to quote William Temple, “Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose—and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.”[13]

In conclusion, I’ve been around many high school students in my days. I have heard Valentine’s Day recast as “Single Awareness Day,” and we all have a good laugh at the irrational exuberance and adolescence of youth. Valentine’s Day is the day where we are reminded there is love pulsating with wonder and rapturous joy. It is a reminder that any joie de vivre will become regenerated, renewed, and resurrected one day. If we are yearning, desiring, and aspiring, we will find fulfillment in the arms of one who sets our hearts on fire. This relationship echoes heaven because, in eternity, the One who causes our hearts to burn is the Bridegroom seeking his Bride.[14] May we be “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2). May our romance be the echo of the romance of redemption.

[1] Boyd K. Packer, BYU Fireside, Nov. 3, 1963; cited in Bruce C. Hafen, “The Gospel and Romantic Love,” Ensign, February 2002.

[2] See chapter 2: “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” https://www.opc.org/wcf.html.

[3] See also Boyd K. Packer, “Ye Are the Temple of God,” General Conference, October 2000.

[4] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 117, 118, 121.

[5] See Jeffrey R. Holland, Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments, Devotional address at Brigham Young University, January 12, 1988; https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland/souls-symbols-sacraments/

[6] Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, chapter 10.

[7] Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, chapter 34.

[8] Cyrano to Le Bret, in Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act I, Scene V.

[9] G. K. Chesterton, “The Flag of the World,” Orthodoxy.

[10] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Revised Edition (New York: HarperOne; 2015), 105.

[11] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2017), 155-56.

[12] G. K. Chesterton, Heretics.

[13] William Temple, Readings in St. Johns Gospel, 68.

[14] See Luke 24:32; Doctrine and Covenants 9:8.