A Different View of Valentine’s Day
“Danny’s easy going nature was a mask and was the result of his fears. Fear of not being good enough, fear of failure, fear of not being loved. That’s what drove him to always be nice, so that he would always be liked… But Danny had anger in him. A darkness. The fact that he wore a mask to disguise it didn’t make it any less real. In fact, it made it all more explosive when it finally came out. Because he thought of himself as unworthy so he tried to compensate by lying, cheating, pretending to be something he wasn’t. He fought with the darkness and lost again and again because he stopped trusting in God. Without trust, there is no faith… Yes, we do have free will. Yes, we do make mistakes. Yes, we all experience darkness. I want you to consider something. Perhaps it will help you to understand the power of forgiveness. You can remain angry at Danny. You can hate him, you can hope he rots in hell, punished for the rest of eternity. That’s your choice. But then you stay trapped in your anger and imprisoned in your own emotions because of a desire to see another suffer. Ask yourself something. Do you want to be guided by hate or by love? Danny, like all of us, he was a sinner, but his father loved him nonetheless and brought him back home. God does not view sin in different levels. That was a creation of man.”
-The Ravine (2021).
Hate is loud. Hate discriminates and shouts insults and curses. It is so loud we are unable to hear hearts breaking in others sometimes. Love is louder, though. Love sings; love rejoices! Love is kind and heals broken hearts. Love is loud, joyful, belly- aching laughter – it reunites and forgives. How easy it is to be discouraged when we witness and experience the horrific ugliness that hate inhibits. But where there is hate, there is also love, and not just any kind of love, but Jesus’ pure and almighty love. It is the love of Jesus that outweighs all the darkness and hate that live in this world.
Ultimately, we all want to be accepted and loved. We want to know at least one person in this world of millions accepts and loves us in spite of our flaws and mistakes. Knowing we are loved makes this broken and fallen world just a bit more bearable. Love has the power to release and free us from the loneliness and hopelessness caused by hurts and struggles. As Paul wrote in Galatians, there is freedom in trusting in the love of God.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1, NIV).
Love comes in all forms: love between spouses, love between siblings, love between parents and their children, love between grandparents and their grandchildren, love between friends, love between boyfriends and girlfriends, even love between strangers. The most powerful form of love is from Christ. His love doesn’t discriminate nor does His love come with strings attached. His kind of love saves the broken-hearted, the lonely, the forgotten, and the condemned – His almighty and unconditional love even saves the hardest, darkest, and most violent of people.
Sometimes we struggle with applying the love of God in all the ways that He would apply it. For instance, one of the most difficult controversies in our society today is expressing love and forgiveness to criminals who have committed such horrendous acts of violence against others. As someone who was sexually abused as a child, and as someone who was abused as an adult, showing restraint from hating or wishing harm on my abuser is definitely something I can’t do on my own but can only do through Christ. As hard and as grueling as it is for me to even fathom, my abuser also wants to feel loved. I have to trust God that He will not only be just but that He has love for my abuser as well. I have learned that if it takes me every single day of my life to forgive and unleash any hate for my abuser, to let go and let God bring justice and even love to my abuser, I must do so in each single day of my life because Christ loves each person put on this earth, even my abuser. Even prisoners and criminals need His love. Christ doesn’t discriminate, and part of trusting in God is mirroring His love even to those we deem difficult or undeserving of love.
I try to imagine the lives of prisoners before they committed these violent acts. What type of home did they grow up in? Were they also abused and mistreated? Did they suffer in the hands of those who were supposed to love and protect them? Asking these questions also helps put into perspective my response to the abuse I endured. Although I have never committed such violent crimes against anyone, my responses have been no different than those who committed violent crimes. My heart still grew cold, and I mistreated others too. For a long time, I wrestled with feeling loved or even welcoming love into my life. For me, love was merely passively tolerating one another and hoping for some grand result. I think my conclusion about love affected the way I approached my marriage. I didn’t care. I was simply going through the motions with zero intent to connect or love. It affected my husband and our marriage, and due to my pride, I didn’t see any problem with how I was “loving” my husband. He was the problem, not me. Pride is a heavy thing, but, see, I wasn’t aware of why I was numb and cold in my marriage. I did know I simply wanted to be loved and to be validated, but my hurt and my trauma from years of abuse caused my heart to harden. I resented loving others, but I longed to be loved. I was fearful of getting hurt and being crushed, and so I resisted loving others or even being kind to others while I demanded to be loved. What a backwards way to approach love.
Thank God for bringing me to my knees and humbling me enough to see how blind I truly was. He gently took me on a tour of His love, His greatness, His grace, and His mercy. My dear Heavenly Father restored my broken heart and renewed my story of love. It is only through Him and what He has done for me that I am now able to understand the significance of loving every single living human being. Loving even those who have committed some unimaginable, horrendous crimes against others, loving the broken, loving the prideful, loving the criminal – only a very intelligent and powerful being leads us to love those difficult to love, and that being is God.
When I allow Christ to help me humanize those who have done great wrong, I am more able to empathize and perhaps even love on them as Christ does. Imagine if early on someone loved on them as Christ does before they committed such crimes. A breakthrough of simply love and hope may have entered their already fearful and broken hearts, and the revelation that they aren’t forgotten or condemned would have possibly freed them from any evil or hate they carried. The beautiful and glorious thing about this is this isn’t coming from me; this is God! This is all Christ! Christ has simply revealed this to me – He has opened my heart to this kind of love. His love is real. Christ ate with the outcasts, and He loved on those society considered unworthy and unlovable. To God, each of us is worthy of His love. It doesn’t matter the sins we have committed; to Him we are worthy of His love. Christ didn’t come to be served (Mark 10:45); but to serve and heal the sick (Mark 2:17).
Therefore, let us love on each and every single being in spite of their sins. May we not simply love on our friends and family or those who are easy to love, but may we love on those we find difficult to love. May we eat with and love those who are angrily or hatefully glared on. Take some time to show kindness and grace to each person, no matter their gender, no matter their sin, no matter their race, no matter their political view – God doesn’t discriminate, so neither should we.
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8, NIV).
For many of us, we may have never experienced love. The word itself may seem alien to us. However, when we look to God, He illuminates so much adoration and love that is gentle, peaceful, and oh so powerful. God validates the importance of love, and He also teaches us to love one another no matter the circumstances: “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19, NIV).
To God, we are worthy of His love to those who follow Him. As He’s loving us, may we love all those who are difficult to love because I’m sure many of us were once a difficult person to love. I know I was. May we not be blinded by the crimes, sins, fears, or circumstances of others that may hinder our love for them.
I know this isn’t the typical view for Valentine’s Day. I also know for most, Valentine’s Day is celebrated among couples, but I think it should be celebrated among all those you love and care about. Expressing love in kindness to a stranger can make a big difference to anyone going through a rough time. Expressing love can be calling your parents or answering their phone calls, or even visiting your grandparents. Love isn’t just an intimate, romantic connection between a man and woman. Love is kindness. Love is a sweet conversation between friends. Love is a phone call to your parents, love is even expressed by taking the time to genuinely learn another culture or learn their language. But love is universal, and I don’t believe it should solely be a romantic kind of love. I believe Valentine’s Day should also be for all those we hold so dear in our hearts and for those who simply need to feel loved.
In a world mostly driven by hate, discrimination, and evil, may we, as God’s children and followers, stick out like a sore thumb and be the light and the love for others. May our eyes center on the love that is present and overshadow the hate and fear that occurs. Love conquers all. God conquers all.
When I think about this concept, I think of a movie where it was stated pretty well, “Whenever I feel gloomy with the state of the world I think about the gates at the Heathrow airport. General opinions starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed. But I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere often. It’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the twin towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board weren’t messages of hate or reveng —they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.”
-Love Actually (2003).
References:
The Ravine. Directed by Keoni Waxman, Performances by Eric Dane, Teri Polo, and Leslie Uggams, Hope Messenger Media, 2021.
Love Actually. Directed by Richard Curtis, Performances by Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, and Liam Neeson, Universal Pictures, 2003.