CHAPTER ONE
ATTRACTION
If you watch little boys and girls from birth to around age two, they are rarely aware of each other’s differences. But gradually they begin to notice their unique distinctions, and by preschool or kindergarten, they are keenly aware that they are different. Around this time, children tend to split off and hang out with their own sex. They will occasionally shove one another or argue, but for most, the preference is to run with their own kind.
Most boys like to wrestle and climb, and they like to build and then destroy whatever it is they built. This behavior is of course unacceptable to the majority of little girls who play more relationally. I have two daughters, and both of them when they were this age would make any two objects friends. A pencil and a spoon would have conversation and laugh together. The friendship between the pencil and the spoon wouldn’t last long in the world of boys where destruction is always imminent. Mr. Pencil’s leaden guts would be spilling out, and Mr. Spoon would be laughing his silver face off.
As boys and girls get a bit older, they begin to mingle a little more but still stay predominantly with their own kind. The first bit of flirtation will be disguised as dislike. When boys playfully begin picking on girls (and vice versa), it is usually a kind of first “Hey, something is changing here” moment. The teasing and pranking are basically fourth-grade-ese for “I have weird feelings for you but don’t know what to do with them.”
And then it happens: Somewhere between fifth and ninth grades, depending on a variety of factors affecting development and awareness, what I like to call the “Day of Epiphany” occurs. Up until this moment, a child has been largely indifferent to the opposite sex or even thought they were “gross.” But on the Day of Epiphany, something changes.
Do you remember that day? You woke up that morning for school, got dressed, put on your shoes, slung your backpack over your shoulder, saw your friends, and then as you were walking toward your crew, you saw him or her, and all of a sudden he or she wasn’t gross anymore. The indifference and repulsion had vanished. A particular member of the opposite sex caught your eye in a suddenly different way, and, well … you kind of wanted one. This is the Day of Epiphany.
I served in youth ministry for a decade, and I witnessed firsthand the marked change between most sixth graders and ninth graders. For instance, if you gather together one hundred sixth graders for three days, by the end of that third day, the environment will smell like body odor and cheap cologne. But by the time they hit ninth grade, the boys are taking showers and styling their hair. All of a sudden they care about the kind of clothes they’re wearing, how they look, and how they smell. What happened to those funky-smelling sixth-grade boys? The Day of Epiphany.
What seemed to matter very little before now matters immensely. Boys in ninth grade now care very much what ninth-grade girls think about them. Boys go from wanting to appear repulsive to wanting to appear impressive, especially to girls. The Day of Epiphany changes everything. After the Day of Epiphany, boys begin to pursue and girls begin to want to be pursued.
There are certainly exceptions to everything I’ve outlined above, but by and large, this smelling and teasing, wooing and pursuing is the typical trajectory through the onset of puberty for boys and girls. And the important thing to remember is this: it is all by God’s good design.
Attraction
Attraction is a strange, ambiguous force. The Psychology Dictionary defines attraction as “the natural feeling of being drawn to other individuals and desiring their company. This is usually (but not necessarily) due to having a personal liking for them.”1 That’s a little vague, but then again, so is attraction. We feel ourselves drawn to people, whether romantically or not, because they have “a certain something.” It’s usually not just one thing, but a variety of characteristics or impressions, that attracts us to one another. There are lots of beautiful people in the world, of course, but most of us feel drawn romantically to members of the opposite sex we find physically attractive plus something else.
And yet, when it comes to romance, there is something physical that typically draws us to someone else. When we say we find someone “attractive” today, this is basically what we mean: we find that person physically appealing. He or she is good-looking. For both men and women, but especially for men, our initial attraction may have little to do with the person’s character or competency but rather emerges simply from liking the way he or she looks. This is only logical, because physical appearance is the first thing we notice, and it takes a while longer to get to know someone’s character. For the moment, we look across a room and see someone who is physically appealing.
It ought to go without saying, but it doesn’t, so I’ll say it: There is nothing wrong with this process of being physically attracted to someone. It’s completely natural. In fact, the Song of Songs begins this way: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine” (1:2). The woman in the Song saw Solomon, and she liked what she saw. She wanted him to kiss her, and just looking at him made her glad. He was what we might call “eye candy.”
Over and over, in fact, the Bible doesn’t just describe physical attraction between the sexes; it sanctions it. From Adam’s love-at-first-sight song about Eve in Genesis 2 to Jacob’s immediate attraction to Rachel in Genesis 29, where verse 17 tells us she was “beautiful in form and appearance,” we do not see the Scriptures opposed to physical attraction. Certainly, the Bible’s wisdom on God’s design for romance is more than physical attraction, but it’s not less than that. Nor is it even something we are advised to outgrow. Even as your love for your spouse deepens and takes on the character of more thorough knowledge of your spouse’s weaknesses, wounds, and sins, the instruction to pursue physical attraction throughout the years remains. Thus, the father advised his young son in Proverbs 5:19 about his wife: “Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.” Note the word “always.”
Nearly all of us will always be physically attracted to what we consider beautiful. Our tastes and interests might vary, but the instinct itself is fairly common across the billions of human beings in the world: we are attracted to those we find possessing of beauty. Beauty is that particular combination of qualities that especially pleases the sight. It is, as the saying goes, “in the eye of the beholder.” Men find beautiful a woman’s particular shape (curvy or thin, according to taste) or style of hair or dress, and women may find beautiful a man’s particular eye color (blue or brown) or physique (toned or burly). We naturally notice these qualities across a room, and even if just mentally, we are drawn to the people we find “beautiful.”
The fact that we all tend to have different tastes when it comes to physical attraction proves how creative and versatile our Creator’s artistry truly is. And the fact that we all tend to find somebody physically attractive proves how brilliantly our Creator has embedded in us the very appreciation of beauty (which is to say, more deeply, the appreciation of glory, of which his own is the pinnacle). The natural and biblical reality is that most human beings are going to be physically attracted to the opposite sex. This is a good and right thing. But according to the same Word of God that sanctions physical attraction, we must be very careful with it.
Beauty Is Vain
As I’ve noted, the Bible has much to say about physical beauty. But we should expect that God’s Word on beauty is not as one-dimensional as our own. Although the very reality of beauty presupposes the nature of attraction, we also see that beauty, according to the wisdom of God, can be deceptive.
For example, in the book of Proverbs, there are warnings given to the male reader about being unduly captivated by a woman’s beauty. In Proverbs 6:25, we read the caution, “Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes.” Is the Lord speaking out of both sides of his mouth? Are we supposed to be attracted to a woman physically but at the same time not?
In a way, yes. The key phrase related to desire in Proverbs 6:25 is “in your heart,” with the added helpful context of the word “capture.” This is not the same as being “captivated,” which can be a good thing. What the Bible repeatedly challenges us toward is getting beyond mere external appearances and wisely considering beauty of the heart.
Another well-known biblical warning is found in Proverbs 31:30: “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” For beauty to be vain means it can be superficial—preoccupied solely with the external. For beauty to be deceitful means it can trick us into missing a deeper, darker reality. We can be mistaken by the lure of beauty into being captured—namely, by sin.
In the Bible we see a reflection of a pervasive cultural recognition: it is very often the more physically attractive who prove to be more spiritually deceptive. We can be easily baited by our attractions down the wrong paths. In Matthew 23:27–28, Jesus admonished the Pharisees for their superficially religious behavior:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
The old saying that “beauty is only skin-deep” is rich with biblical truth. It is true of the attractive harlot in Proverbs. It is true of David’s sinful pursuit of Bathsheba. It is true of Samson’s lurid relationship with Delilah. And it is certainly true of the deceptive schemes of the evil one himself, whom we are told often masquerades as “an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14).
This is not to say, of course, that you ought to marry somebody you find unattractive! It means only that our romance—sense of beauty itself—must run much deeper than physical attraction. Certainly in marriage, the ongoing nurturing of attraction must endure the changes that come with the years, affected by the bearing of children, the slowing of metabolisms, the weathering of skin, and even the ravages of illness and hardship. Romance in marriage, for it to be truly a mingling of souls, cannot simply be a mingling of body parts. No, we must acknowledge both the blessing and the danger of beauty.
The Evolving Ideal
Another reason we must be careful with the concept of physical attraction is because of how arbitrary it can be. Tastes vary person to person. But they also vary culture to culture and age to age. Indeed, attraction that is rooted simply in the physical is culturally determined and changes depending on where you are in the world and where you are in history. We are all subject to the evolving ideal of beauty, which Reischer and Koo outline in detail in their article “The Body Beautiful.”2
My sister and her husband have lived in Asia for close to eight years. Whenever I visit, I notice the ideal for beauty is different there from where I live in Texas. For instance, women in Asia seemingly desire light skin; the stores there proliferate with creams and lotions that will help women bleach their skin to increasingly whiter shades. I must have seen twenty commercials for these products and another hundred or so billboards. In the Dallas area, the opposite is true. Women long for the summer months when they can lie by the pool and soak up the sun’s rays, transforming their white, wintery skin by roasting it, basically, until their flesh resembles that of a bronzed goddess. This is just one of hundreds of cultural examples of different beauty standards around the world. Which culture is right? Is bleached or tanned skin more beautiful?
When we look at the vast trajectory of history, the cultural landscape gets even more complex. The “ideal woman” throughout the ages has morphed over and over again, sometimes quite dramatically.3 From more ancient times through the Middle Ages, in European cultures especially, women with pale skin and more shapely figures were considered exceptionally beautiful. When we look at paintings of beautiful women from these time periods, we may think they look fat and unattractive. And yet what passes for “hot” in today’s culture would have been considered sickly back then. In the early twentieth century (especially in the 1920s), women cut their hair very short into “bobs” and wore dresses to conceal their figures. In the 1940s, the introduction of tan skin and longer, flowing hair became the standard of beauty.
And on and on the ever-changing standard goes.
Today there seems to be a hodgepodge of styles that cover the full range of history in defining “beauty.” Perhaps one of the best examples is the popular Barbie. One researcher provides a summary:
Even our toys are undergoing “the knife” in the name of beauty. In 1997, Mattel’s most famous toy, the Barbie doll, emerged from the factory operating room with a “wider waist, slimmer hips, and … a reduction of her legendary bustline” (Wall Street Journal 1997). This reconfiguration of the West’s premiere icon of femininity after nearly forty years suggests that the image of femininity embodied by the original Barbie of the late 1950s has undergone a radical transformation of its own. Beauty, though highly subjective, is more than simply a matter of aesthetics or taste. Cultural ideals of beauty are also an index and expression of social values and beliefs—so much so that “the history of [society] is in large measure the history of women’s beauty” (Jury & Jury 1986).4
Feminists lament what they call the oppressive “male gaze” that has objectified the female form since the beginning of time, and they are not entirely off the mark. The idea is that feminine beauty exists for male pleasure and is in fact determined by male pleasure. Generation to generation, it seems, the incessant but unstable feminine ideal, driven largely by males, has shaped the very generations themselves. Can there be any doubt that especially in our advertising age, sex sells, and that this superficial commoditizing of beauty and sex has made us both a more visual culture while also a more vulnerable one? Aren’t we simply objectifying each other to dullness?
Our understanding of beauty in relation to men has not evolved the same way it has for women. Making the comparison between the Renaissance and today, the idea of what is considered physically attractive has not changed all that much for men. Men have been and are still considered attractive based generally on their height and the broadness of their shoulders.
The more recent struggle for men is the evaluation of “true masculinity.” There is a growing crisis about the meaning of masculinity itself, a crisis that points to the betrayal of men by the very hypermasculine ideals that they are meant to embody. On the one hand, coming out of the hippie movement of the sixties and seventies, men were expected to become more sensitive, more “in touch with their feminine side.” Then there seemed to be a revolt against this perceived effeminacy in the late seventies and early eighties with the rise of the free-swingin’, macho types and the rise of crass jock culture.
Ideals for men have vacillated back and forth ever since, as the eighties and nineties gave us the sensitive grunge rockers and the sex-hungry party boys. From the beginning of the twenty-first century onward, we have seen the rise of “metrosexuals,” the protohipster males, and now we seem to be witnessing a revival of the swaggering alpha males with their beers and beards. Is it any surprise that in the dizzying lust of the broken male perspective toward women we wouldn’t become confused about what it means to be a man? Should we be sensitive or tough? If both, when? How do we display sensitivity in a way that doesn’t make us effeminate? And how do we display toughness in a way that doesn’t make us chauvinistic or stubborn?
This pervasive cultural gender confusion has complicated the so-called ideal of beauty for both men and women and turned us all into a confused mess.
The Real You Is the Inner You
We’ve established that the force that grabs our attention and pulls us like a tractor beam into relationships is more than likely physical attraction. And we’ve established that this is not a bad thing; we simply must take great care to not let it drive us into relationships that are toxic and ungodly (or drive toxic and ungodly ideas into our relationships).
I recently sat down with a non-Christian who attends our church. He wanted to discuss some of his doubts about the things we teach and to ask me pointed questions. By all physical indicators he would be a good catch. He is in his midtwenties, single, handsome, attends church regularly, and is quite wealthy. During our conversation he told me that one of the reasons he attends our church is because the type of woman he wants to marry can’t be found in the clubs he frequents. He wants to marry a church girl.
Here I am sitting in a room with a guy who goes out on the weekends to “hook up” with women, then gets up, showers, and comes to our church to look for a young woman to marry. I felt my heart getting angrier and angrier the more we talked, and I informed him that he couldn’t hunt at The Village. The world is filled with men and women who have a veneer of relational health and godliness but underneath are driven by selfishness, lust, and the need for control. That’s why the second line of dialogue in the Song of Songs is so important. The woman liked looking at Solomon, but she knew something else too: “Your anointing oils are fragrant; your name is oil poured out; therefore virgins love you” (1:3).
Not only was Solomon handsome, but he was also known to have great character. He was upright and wise; the word on the street was that he was a good man, a godly man. The other women didn’t think he was a dog. He wasn’t known as lazy or incompetent. He hadn’t played around with the hearts and minds of other women. His name was like oil poured out—like an offering, in other words. When people heard Solomon’s name, it “went down smooth.” It was pleasing, fragrant.
Now we are going deeper than the surface. What good is it in the eyes of the Lord, whose estimation matters most, if we look great but our reputations are lousy? Only one of those things will last.
Therefore, our physical attraction should always be held in check by the character of the person to whom we are attracted. In Proverbs, we find valuable instructions given to King Lemuel by his mother. As king, Lemuel could have had his pick of the fairest beauties in the land. But his mother’s reminder was wise: “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (31:10).
This translation actually does not do justice fully to the verse. The NET Bible reads, “Who can find a wife of noble character? For her value is far more than rubies.” In the translation of “noble character, it is the same word used in Ruth to describe her as a ‘woman of valor.’”5
Now we are seeing how much more complex attraction ought to be when guided by the Word of God. Physical attraction is good but only outwardly important; character, on the other hand, is a matter of internal importance and should be valued as greater than jewels.
We see something similar in 1 Peter 3:3–4. Here, Peter encouraged wives in the way of prioritizing inner beauty over outer beauty, and wrote:
Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.
As this passage was written directly to wives, it can be somewhat ambiguous for dating and initial romantic attraction, and bear in mind that when this was written, most marriages were arranged, and physical attraction was not of the highest concern. However, by examining this passage fully, we can clearly see that the idea of beauty for the wife should be focused more on the internal. External beauty is fine, but we must move past it and see what’s in the soul of a person, who he or she actually is, and what that individual is made of.
Several years ago I saw a television show called Caught on Camera. It featured clips of people being secretly filmed doing all manner of horrific things, precisely because they thought they were alone. In one scene a man urinated into a pot of coffee that had been brewed for his coworkers. In another, a cook in a restaurant spit into a meal he was preparing for customers. And in yet another scene, a woman threw a puppy across a room. The show was disgusting, but it revealed that a lot goes on in a person’s heart and head that simply can’t be seen. In our brave, new surveillance culture, we catch the real character of people all the time, as “nanny cams” capture abuse of children and the elderly, and security cameras film employee vandalism and cruelty.
It is certainly true that the measure of a man’s character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out. Or character is, as Bill Hybels said, “who you are when no one’s looking.”6 Everyone has a public face and a private face. As a friendship begins between you and some handsome man or beautiful woman, you need to see if there is real depth of character. When the beauty fades, what integrity will remain?
We can always adjust our outer appearance. Our culture has advanced in the ways of makeup and hairstyles and beauty products, but we’ve also added cosmetic surgery, health-food culture, and fitness programs bordering on cults. We don’t all look great, but we can all look a little “better” with a little work. But the inner us? That will come out. We can’t hide it forever. In times of intimacy, in times of stress, in times of struggle, there’s no putting makeup on a terrible personality. There’s no cosmetic surgery for poverty of character.
You can’t hide that inner you. It’s the real you.
Physical attraction, then, is not a substitute for knowing somebody, for being in relationship with him or her. And this is why relationships built on physical attraction never last and tend to be superficial, self-absorbed, and legalistic.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Character was like a tree, and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree was the real thing.”7 The first way we can look to see if the person we’re attracted to has solid character is by evaluating his or her reputation. What do people say about her? Is he known for his godliness? (Remember that church attendance doesn’t always equal godliness. There are a lot of “neat” Christian boys and girls but far fewer godly men and women.) Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches.” Reputation is the shadow of a person’s character. If a person’s reputation is poor, more than likely so is his or her character.
Let reputation be one of the green or red lights that leads you toward or away from a person you are considering dating.
Solomon’s reputation, the shadow cast by his character, was so celebrated that the people watching his romance blossoming in the Song of Songs celebrated it. They were pleased by it: “We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love you” (1:4).
What do you look for in a person’s reputation? Is it enough to see that people are impressed? What if he or she is merely a flatterer, or simply rich or powerful? What are some marks not just of impressive character but godly character?
For these, we have to look counter to the way of our culture once again. What the Bible lays out as the marks of godly character are so often diametrically opposed to the expectations and celebrations of the world. And one of the first aspects the Song of Solomon presents as commendable for a romantic relationship is one of the most despised by our broken culture.
Submission to Authority
Is there any arguing that in our world there is an abominably low view of authority and submission? Modern society, which actually relies on the dynamic of authority and submission to survive, seems so often emotionally allergic to it! The air we breathe is this: “No one tells me what to do. I do what I want to do. No one is the boss of me.”
Every generation’s pop music has become increasingly antiauthoritarian. (You could, of course, say that rock-and-roll music itself subsists on a spirit of rebellion.) One example comes from the most influential rock band of all time, the Beatles, who characterized the need to change the world with their song “Revolution.” The Beatles’ leading cultural revolutionary, John Lennon, gave the world a song called “Imagine.” It’s a very pretty song, but the whole thing is about how the world might benefit if there was no religion, no government, no borders, no hell, no heaven, nothing but “peace.” There has probably never been another song so simultaneously high-minded and low intellect. But it struck a resonant chord for those coming out of the countercultural sixties and seventies.
The eighties gave us “Authority Song” by John Mellencamp. “I fight authority,” Mellencamp sings, “and authority always wins.” He goes on to say, “Well I’ve been doing it since I was a young kid, and I always come out grinning.”
The philosophy of antiauthority is so pervasive that it has driven major movements in arts and entertainment, politics and culture. The most recent cultural example is probably what the media have dubbed the “Occupy Movement,” which is predicated on the idea that the few people who are said to own 99 percent of the wealth in the West need to be divested of all their “ill-gotten” gains. But the sentiment runs so much deeper than wealth inequality or social status. Each of us, deep down in our hearts, has an antiauthoritarian streak a mile wide. And the idea of submission makes us nervous, fearful, stubborn, and even angry.
Of course, this resistance to the idea of authority and submission is totally informed by the reality that many people throughout the ages have abused their positions of authority. When a sinner is in charge, his leadership is influenced by his sin. There are no exceptions to this. And while many virtuous leaders by God’s grace have employed their authority in honorable ways, none of them have done so perfectly. For the rest, however, the abuses of authority, toxic leadership, dictatorial excesses, and exploitation of power have complicated and soured the general culture of authority and submission that the Bible establishes as an inherently good system. It’s good for government, good for the church, good for the home. But when those in authority abuse their authority, those in submission suffer. And it makes submission more and more a scary prospect.
We should say without hesitation that when a person exalts himself or herself beyond all authority and tradition, he or she is walking outside of God’s design. Authority is not bad; abuse of authority is bad. God gave us institutions and authorities to help shape us and protect us. So we have to ask, as we consider a member of the opposite sex for romantic relationship, what is his reputation as it pertains to authority and submission? Is she in glad submission to any authorities over her? Has he placed himself under the authority of a local church? Is she in covenant with other church members? Does he submit to his pastors? How does she treat older men and women?
Look to see if your prospective significant other is his own authority. See if she bristles or blossoms under proper authority. If you can’t tell, or if it doesn’t seem as though he has any authority at all, I would pump the brake on the relationship.
A woman who is functionally her own god won’t have the ability to hear from others about blind spots and errors in her life. A man who cannot gladly submit to his leaders likely cannot be expected to exercise a humble authority in his home. A woman who rebels against leadership cannot be expected to practice honorable submission in her home.
Continuing in Song of Solomon chapter 1, we see something peculiar in verses 5–6:
I am very dark, but lovely,
O daughters of Jerusalem,
like the tents of Kedar,
like the curtains of Solomon.
Do not gaze at me because I am dark,
because the sun has looked upon me.
My mother’s sons were angry with me;
they made me keeper of the vineyards,
but my own vineyard I have not kept!
There is some complexity to these two verses, but essentially, the woman was expressing some insecurity about the darkness of her skin. She had not, in her estimation, had much opportunity to care for her complexion—to keep up her “beauty regimen,” in other words—because she spent a lot of time outdoors. And what was she doing? Tending to the family business, apparently. Some Bible scholars debate whether the “mother’s sons” who are angry with her are the woman’s actual brothers or her cultural kinsmen—other potential suitors, actually—who did not desire her because of her sun-darkened complexion. In other words, she may have been saying, “None of the other boys have been attracted to me because I have spent more time working in the fields than in tending to my beauty.”
In any event, we see two primary things about her character here: she was a hard worker, submitting herself to the needs of her family above the desires of vanity, and she had a humble insecurity about her appearance. She was not vain.
Commitment
One of the things I noticed when I was in college ministry was the large group of students who wouldn’t commit to anything—a college major, a gym, a church, a place to live, a group of friends. The only thing they seemed committed to was being noncommittal. Every semester the talk would turn to another school they might transfer to, a new major they were going to try out, or a new part-time job they were interested in (because, you know, their current one was lame). This group was always holding out for something better and didn’t want to miss out on anything that might be happening somewhere else. They were unstable. And this instability cost them the joy of knowing and being known.
In Song of Solomon 1:7, we read this: “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon.”
The woman is equating “love from the soul” with a commitment to her partner’s presence. Wherever he is pasturing his flock, wherever he is providing a place of rest and nourishment and provision, that’s where she wants to be. There is an indication here of the desire to commit.
Obviously, when you are first attracted to someone, you don’t make inappropriate commitments, but you do want to see before you pursue someone in a potentially romantic way if he or she is inclined toward commitment. The woman in this Song wants to commit to her suitor’s pasture; for her, the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.
As you consider the person you are physically attracted to, look for evidence of commitment in his or her life. Has he joined and become committed to a local church? Does she have a deepening relationship with a group of friends? How is his relationship with his family?
I think that church membership is a huge consideration, precisely because there is no such thing as a perfect church, and in our day and age in the West, we have so many options to choose from. Churches are full of sinners, so there will always be some messiness in a church. Churches are like families that way. So when a person stays in a church for a long period of time, there is evidence that she has been able to see that everything’s not perfect, but she nevertheless said, “I’m going to stay. I’m going to try to make this work. My commitment is more important than my desire to run away.”
If you find someone who is rootless, always looking for what’s next, always looking for “better than”—better job, better group of friends, better church, better hobby, better whatever—you should be extremely cautious.
What you’re looking for is a deep rootedness, or at least a deep capacity for rootedness. Obviously among young adults there is much that is in transition in relation to school and jobs and so on. But despite the transient nature of that particular stage of life, are there signs of deep commitment? If there is no evidence of commitment in his or her life, I would caution you to move very slowly into any kind of serious relationship.
Because the Bible tells us we need to go deeper than physical attraction in our relationships, and because we know that what we find physically attractive has been for the most part culturally informed, it is wise to acknowledge that God has hardwired us for the commitment of companionship over and above sexual attraction or physical pleasure. Companionship brings deeper joy and greater pleasure than the mere physical could ever bring by itself.
If you have physical attraction and no companionship in your relationship, you’ll eventually be miserable; but if you have deep companionship with each other, physical attraction isn’t as important and becomes less and less so as time passes.
In the movie Cast Away, we see a stark depiction of a person’s innate hunger for companionship. The main character, Chuck Noland, is involved in a plane crash. He survives but ends up stranded on a deserted island. As his loneliness wears on him, Chuck finds a volleyball that floated ashore, draws a face on it, and has conversations with it over the course of his time on the island.
After a number of years of isolation and a failed suicide attempt, Chuck builds a raft to try to get off the island. Following his successful launch, he encounters and overcomes a great storm. The next day, once the waters had calmed, his constant companion, Wilson, the volleyball, falls off the raft. In perhaps the most powerful scene of the movie, Chuck begins to weep uncontrollably because of the anguish of losing his only “friend.” Through this brief scene, director Robert Zemeckis laid bare the undeniable ache in every human heart for companionship. It is a beautifully powerful portrayal of a need, which supersedes the mere desire for sexual gratification or “attraction.” It truly is “not good that the man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18).
In the end, of course, it is Jesus who provides this perfect companionship for his children. “No longer do I call you servants,” he said in John 15:15, “but I have called you friends.” Through him we see that the commitment we make to our brothers and sisters in the church far outweighs even the good gifts of marriage and sexual fulfillment. Marriage and sex will pass away (see Matt. 22:30), but our commitment as friends—as family!—with the saints of God will endure forever.
Can your prospective partner commit? His or her physical attractiveness is a good thing, but it’s not an enduring thing—the ability to commit may carry the weight of eternity.
Suffering
Embedded in a person’s ability to commit is his or her ability to endure in suffering. You can look for evidence of someone’s “commitment ability” by observing how he or she handles times of stress, hardship, or brokenness.
Helen Keller once said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved.” The apostle James put it this way:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (1:2–4)
Most people are pleasant when the world is going the way they want. But a person’s character can be seen most clearly when the brokenness of the world has invaded his or her peace, when the way he or she thinks things ought to be is interrupted, disrupted, and dismantled.
How does your partner respond to betrayal, to drama in her family, to arguments between friends? How does he behave when he is stressed, sick, frustrated, or tired? You’re not looking for perfection, of course, because everyone except Jesus has responded to difficulty in ways that are out of step with the gospel. We are all sinners, and over time we engage in responses that are less than godly. But in times of challenge, does the person you’re attracted to circle back around and own her sin? Does she repent for her ungodly responses and seek forgiveness? How prone to anger is he? There is a reason why when a church is looking for leaders, it specifically excludes the quick-tempered (see Titus 1:7).
In times of stress, the fractures in our projected images appear. The real us—the one inside—is revealed. Speaking about suffering, the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” The image here is one of a fragile container broken open in hardship. When we are broken open in suffering, what we truly treasure (what we worship) is revealed. Paul continued:
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. (vv. 8–10)
When the person you’re attracted to goes through something difficult, it is evidence of her humanity if she is sad, stressed, or wounded. But what she does with that sadness, stress, and woundedness makes all the difference between someone who treasures Christ as supreme and satisfying and one who is her own god, who lives with a sense of entitlement and worships comfort.
If you are seeking a romantic relationship, be wise and keep things with a prospective partner in the “friend zone” until you have seen how he handles the stress of a broken and fallen world. Because there is no avoiding the stress and fallenness of the world, especially in the covenant commitment of marriage! When we commit to a spouse for life, we are agreeing to enter a sacred union between two sinners and Jesus, and when you’ve got two sinners walking together over the years, you will see just how sinful he or she—and you—can be. Tim Keller said, “Marriage is the Mack truck driving through your life, revealing your flaws and humbling your reactions.”8 Yes, and in fact, marriage can itself sometimes be the “suffering” that breaks us open to reveal what we truly worship.
After surveying the character of a potential partner, if you find out that his reputation is not great, she isn’t very godly, he seems commitment-phobic, or she does not handle stress well, yet you’re still attracted to this person, you should ask yourself why. What is it that you are worshipping that would draw you toward romantic intimacy and potential commitment with someone of unhealthy character? Is it possible you are thinking superficially? Are your values tied to things that don’t last?
If you can say yes to any of those questions, there is great hope for you.
One of my fears in writing this book is that by pointing out the wisdom in the Song of Songs, many of us who are guilty of foolishness might feel condemned and lose heart. But I want to end each chapter of our journey through the Song by looking at how the gospel’s call to confession and repentance enters our mess and removes the weight of guilt and shame by pointing us to Jesus. We read about one of the biggest relational disasters in the Bible in 2 Samuel 11, where King David saw Bathsheba bathing, was compelled by her beauty, and with no thought of the repercussions of his actions, sent for her. He coveted another man’s wife, abused his authority by having her brought to him, and committed adultery with her.
If that wasn’t bad enough, he then arranged to have her husband, Uriah, moved to the front lines of battle to increase his chance of death. Uriah was killed, and David, by intention, became a murderer. In the aftermath of sin upon sin, David took Bathsheba as his wife.
In 2 Samuel 12, Nathan confronted David, and David erupted in tears under the weight of his conviction. He repented of his sin against the Lord. Although there were plenty of circumstantial consequences for David’s rebellion against God (see 2 Sam. 12:10–12, 14), David was forgiven by God and was still called a man after God’s own heart (see Acts 13:22). What a thing to say about a man guilty of lust, adultery, deception, and murder—and those are only the most obvious of his sins! That this kind of person could in the end be declared a man after God’s own heart is a testimony not to the greatness of David but to the greatness of God.
There is no sin—past, present, or future—that has more power than the cross of Jesus Christ. Whatever darkness from your past or trouble or guilt from your present bothers you as you progress through this book, please know that you haven’t strayed too far that there is no redemption for you. Full reconciliation and healing are abundantly available for you in Christ Jesus. The man who knew no sin took our sin to the cross so that we might be clothed in his perfect righteousness and completely justified before God the Father. God has seen our unloveliness—the deep brokenness and rebellion in our hearts—and instead of withdrawing, he pursues us to the beautiful end. He made an eternal commitment to sinners because of his great love for us. And because grace is true, you can face the world with all of its dangers and troubles, knowing you have been established forever as blameless by the holy groom, Jesus Christ.