By: Kyle Thorp
Love in the Movies
Actress Scarlett Johansson, in an interview talking about her second divorce, said, “I don’t think it’s natural to be a monogamous person. I might be skewered for that, but I think it’s work. It’s a lot of work. The fact of that proves that it is not a natural thing.”
Think of the last movie you saw in the theater. Did it involve a love story? Chances are, regardless of whether it was an action flick, a comedy, or a drama, romance was a part of the plot.
Our culture is obsessed with love. And it makes sense. The relationship between a man and a woman is special. After all, men and women are quite different from each other. They think differently, they act differently, and they care about different things. Sometimes those differences can be frustrating. But there is something heart-warming about the idea of two people learning to live with their differences and choosing to spend their lives together. It makes for a beautiful story — being different for each other, not from each other.
These days, that kind of story seems more and more like a fairy tale. It is common to have multiple romantic partners before settling down. Even when you think you have found Mr. or Miss Right, too many marriages end in divorce. Makes you wonder, is marriage so great after all?
the Biblical View of marriage
According to the Bible, humans were designed to be monogamy. In Genesis 2:24, we read, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This was God’s intent for man and woman since the beginning of time, just as Jesus affirms as he quotes from this very passage when teaching about marriage. Paul also anchors his teaching on marriage from the Genesis narrative, “But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:2) Marriage is God’s gift and mechanism for allowing men and women to express their love for each other, through service, adoration, and of course sex.
The foundation for godly sex and marriage is the gospel. Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Christian marriage reflects the story of Christ’s love for his people.
Beyond Happily Ever After
Mainstream media glorifies the idea of falling in love and finding ‘happily ever after’, that it undermines the sacrifice that is involved. It’s no wonder so many young Americans are frustrated. We are looking for that perfect someone who checks all our boxes while accepting us just as we are. This is the fallacy that leads so many into promiscuous lifestyles. We think that love, sex, and marriage are about us. Every time we have sex with someone, we feel good about ourselves. But it’s only a temporary feeling, so we continue looking for it in different partners, becoming frustrated that none of them seem to meet our expectations or make our dreams come true.
Living love
True love — God’s love — is, at its root, submission. Rather than helping us find ourselves, love requires us to lose ourselves, by choosing to put someone else first. The more two people choose to put each other first, the less they look like two individuals and the more they become a unified pair. That is becoming “one flesh.” Scarlett Johansson was right that this takes work. We must constantly deny ourselves when we feel the need to assert our individuality. Choosing to fight for and submit to another person only makes sense in light of the gospel, just as sacrifice only makes sense when you have hope that is bigger than just yourself. Otherwise, Scarlett is right, love isn’t natural.
Christ taught us a revolutionary way to love by giving up his right to rule mankind in order to be with and serve mankind. Jesus gave up his right to save himself so that he could save those he loved. Jesus is the perfect image of marriage because He has wed himself to us. Looking at that image, we can have meaningful, godlike marriages. Dare we say, even the kinds of marriages that exceed what we see in the movies.
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Kyle Thorp holds a B.A. in Communication Studies from Grove City College. He currently resides in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he is pursuing an MDiv at Liberty University’s Rawlings School of Divinity and working part-time. He plans to enter full-time ministry after completing his degree.