Valentine's Day often brings to mind hearts, flowers, and candy, but beneath the surface, it also prompts a deep reflection on the nature of love and commitment in our lives. Join us as we peel back the layers of contemporary romance and examine it through a Christian lens, revealing the stark contrast between society's fleeting passions and the steadfast love central to Christian teachings. We dissect the media's portrayal of love, which can skew our expectations and experiences in relationships, challenging the prevailing narrative with insights grounded in scripture and spiritual wisdom.
In a world obsessed with the pursuit of personal happiness, our conversation takes a turn to spotlight loyalty and the sacred vow of marriage. Reflecting on Ephesians 5 and the profound concept of agape, we stress the importance of selfless love over temporal emotions or societal pressures. Throughout the episode, we offer guidance on how to realign relationship expectations with scriptural truths, providing a compass for those navigating the often-turbulent waters of love and commitment.
Valentine's Day often brings to mind hearts, flowers, and candy, but beneath the surface, it also prompts a deep reflection on the nature of love and commitment in our lives. Join us as we peel back the layers of contemporary romance and examine it through a Christian lens, revealing the stark contrast between society's fleeting passions and the steadfast love central to Christian teachings. We dissect the media's portrayal of love, which can skew our expectations and experiences in relationships, challenging the prevailing narrative with insights grounded in scripture and spiritual wisdom.
In a world obsessed with the pursuit of personal happiness, our conversation takes a turn to spotlight loyalty and the sacred vow of marriage. Reflecting on Ephesians 5 and the profound concept of agape, we stress the importance of selfless love over temporal emotions or societal pressures. Throughout the episode, we offer guidance on how to realign relationship expectations with scriptural truths, providing a compass for those navigating the often-turbulent waters of love and commitment.
on today's episode.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Well, today faced many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges. Hi and welcome back.
Christa Potratz:I'm Christa Potratz and I'm here today with pastors Bob Fleishmann and Jeff Samelson. Today we're going to talk about romance, specifically a Christian perspective on romance. This episode is inspired by Valentine's Day this week, and so we just want to talk about some of these ideas and different things both in our culture, but then also with the biblical perspective on it as well, and kind of where I wanted to start was just this idea of modern romance and what it kind of currently looks like in our culture today. So how would you guys describe what modern romance is?
Jeff Samelson:I think it's a bit of a problem to be asking guys to describe it.
Christa Potratz:If you want to ask me what it is, I'll tell you.
Bob Fleischmann:Why don't we do that?
Jeff Samelson:What do you think modern romance is? How would you define it or describe it?
Christa Potratz:I guess in our culture today too, it really does seem to go to this feeling. You have this romantic feeling, and I think our shows and our society and everything just kind of go to that. It just kind of seems like that. It is about the feeling of it.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, I'd say almost putting a finer point on that. From what I observe is it's a thrill. It's not romance unless there's this kind of shivery, wonderful feeling that comes along with oh, he looked at me or she touched me, or the perfect situation with the sunset and the champagne and everything. Oh, that's romance. Again, it's an entirely subjective kind of thing.
Bob Fleischmann:The one thing I think, just to kind of put an umbrella over all of it as I see it, is that romance today definitely has to be self-serving to some degree. In other words, I'm going to be romantic but I got to get something out of it, and so it's very difficult for people to understand the sacrificial component of romance, and we can get into that a little bit later.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, no, I think that's really a great point, Bob, because that's kind of what I was thinking out to when I talked about the feeling. I think it is very much. I want to feel a certain way and I think that this is how I should feel and how it should happen. A lot of expectations, I think to today, in modern romance as well.
Jeff Samelson:We really wanted to get deep and philosophical about it. I'm not suggesting that we do. Interesting question is to what extent are ideas of romance guided by, influenced by, inspired by literature and media and films and songs and things like that, and to what extent is it the other way around? Because you have these ideas well, is the media reflecting the idea that people have, or are people getting ideas from the media about what should be?
Jeff Samelson:I was just reminded by this conversation about in the medieval era, the Middle Ages, it was not expected, at least among the nobility and such, that you ever got married for purposes of love. It was always a matter of politics or economics or whatever. But the ideal that in a lot of that upper crust of society was that you'd still have plenty of romance. It just wouldn't be with someone you were married to. And the question was always how far would you let that go? Does that influence the whole idea, the fairy tale idea of the knight in shining armor and all of that, and to what extent did people over the years get the idea? Well, that's the ideal, that's what I should have, that's what I deserve, and to what extent today is what we see on Hallmark Channel or Harlequin Romances if those are still a thing I don't remember and in those kinds of things, to what extent is that reflecting what people are feeling and to what extent is that influencing what people come to expect?
Christa Potratz:Yeah, so kind of along those lines then too, taking what the message is that the culture gives us today. What does a modern marriage kind of look like, or a dating relationship kind of in our culture, but does it kind of tell us about those things?
Bob Fleischmann:Because it's become so me-oriented and because the individual has so many different interpretations. Every individual has so many interpretations as to what is the ideal relationship. So romance could be cross-genders. Romance could be just somebody who doesn't want to be involved romantically. For them, romance is I'm living my life, my dreams, and so forth.
Bob Fleischmann:I think the culture today projects an extremely confusing message. Even as we're sitting here, I'm trying to think what shows on television would characterize romance. What would probably be? I can't think of one. I can't think of one that I mean. I think of shows that have romance in it, but sometimes they're so different, like you'll have NCIS and there'll be romantic tension between two officers and so forth. Is that modern romance? I go to Big Bang Theory. All of a sudden you've got a different kind of tension.
Bob Fleischmann:But I agree with Jeff, I think it's a good question which influences what I'm inclined to think, that we're influenced by media. What you see, when my Vicar year which was 1981-82, so I vicarred in Savannah and Mount Carroll, illinois, and at Savannah High School, professor from Platville I think came down, his name was Ray Short and he wrote a book called Sex, love or Fatuation and it was presented to the student body and you're sitting in this presentation and by the time he's done you're fairly convinced you got married for all the wrong reasons. But it was a very thought-provoking and I think he's still alive and I think his book is available on Amazon. But it was very interesting because he was talking about the different reasons why people become interested in someone and I think to some degree that exists today. I think he hit something a little bit more foundational than what you get from a regular television show.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, when I kind of ask the question to and then just throw in kind of the dating relationship and what our culture kind of talks about with that too, it reminds me I saw a video this week of a person who was maybe in her 20s and she had just recently really really strengthened her faith and realized that the way she was living, especially with being intimate with people before marriage, was wrong. But she said it was really hard for her because culturally she had always been taught that that's how you have a connection with someone when you're dating, and so that was what she was taught that this is how you connect with someone and experience like that romance and everything. And so now shifting that thinking was just something that she was just talking about, how that was for her, and it just made me think too along this line that I think in our culture today, yes, that physical intimacy is very much portrayed in media and it is just something that is expected, especially in modern dating today.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, I think a lot of what would be defined as romantic for a lot of people has that idea of physical intimacy and involved with it somewhere, that what in the past might have just been just kind of the situation or it's just the two of us alone and it's a nice location and we have a chance to share our thoughts and feelings Now it's much more okay. We know where this is heading as part of the whole idea of romance.
Bob Fleischmann:There was a government release studies on the shocking rise of syphilis, sexually transmitted disease. Ironically gonorrhea had been dropped but syphilis was on the rise. And there was an editorial I read this morning from Carl Truman where he, carl, writes that we continue to protect kind of this free sex type thing at all costs, define all logic. And I was talking to one of my staff people today about that and she had pointed out she said you know, when the government realized that smoking was bad for you, they didn't tell you well, just smoke safely. They said stop. They want you to stop If you're driving with your arm out the window and they say well, that's how you're getting skin cancer.
Bob Fleischmann:It's all that sun on it. You know you better wear that protected. They don't want you to just be a little safe, they want you to cut it out. You know, don't do that. But then when we get to the drive for sex and sex seems to just kind of like dominate every industry, I mean, even when you watch period pieces of history they seem to feel the need to spice it up with the sexual component and I think that that has transmitted a very distorted view of what romance is.
Christa Potratz:Well, I mean, I think we could talk all day really about the cultural aspects of this, but just shifting a little bit. How does this compare now to what scripture has to say?
Jeff Samelson:Well, scripture has not surprising, a lot to say about marriage. Perhaps surprising to some people has very little to say about dating, simply because that's not the way relationships were formed, particularly marriages were formed at the time the Bible was written. But the things that the Bible says are important about marriage, very counter-cultural these days. One man, one woman until death parts them. It's only marriage between the opposite sexes, divorce only in cases of adultery or abandonment. The idea that marriage and sex are a joined gift. Marriage is the only proper place for such physical intimacy. That's the ideal that scripture gives us.
Jeff Samelson:But scripture also points out to us why there are problems with marriage and makes clear that that's the reality that there are going to be problems. We see that already at the time of the fall, genesis 3, already, with how the perfect marriage that Adam and Eve had was corrupted and therefore every marriage after that is going to have trouble, is going to have difficulty, no matter how romantic it may have started. There are going to be stresses and strains and conflicts. That alone is a message that a lot of people in our society don't seem to get. They go into marriage thinking that, oh well, this is always going to be perfect because we're so in love.
Jeff Samelson:And then, when stresses and strains actually come, whether they're internal or external, they somehow think something must have gone wrong with marriage itself or with their love or something, and they just don't understand.
Bob Fleischmann:We seem to have lost the word commitment as the centerpiece of marriage. It's commitment, but it's always commitment with quote marks Like I'll be committed as long as, and I'll be committed so much if I get this in return, and so forth. One of the shocking things that occurred a number of years ago on the 700 Club, pat Robertson kind of started. It made national news when somebody had written a letter and said my wife's got Alzheimer's for the last few years. I'm wondering if I could just start dating. And I don't know what Pat was doing. But he just said oh, he goes. Alzheimer's is a horrible thing, horrible thing, but I think he should just divorce her and go on. And of course the hostess there said well, what about till death? Do his part. Yeah, I know it was incredible. It kind of acted like that was an unfortunate thing that slipped into the Bible.
Bob Fleischmann:But the point was is that it shifted even in past highs from the commitment to what you get out of it. And for those of us who've been married for a while, the commitment is what gets you through the times when you don't get out of it what you are looking for, the times you have the spat, the disagreement about how to raise the kids, what to do with the kids, where to go, what to do when you're committed. You're not going to get a divorce. You're going to get a divorce. And the other thing that I said this is not a deal breaker, it's just a spamp. But I think most any pastor will tell you the couples will come in and when you sometimes drill down to what's that issue, it's sometimes not to them. But biblically it's petty, it's a disagreement. Somebody was looking for something. They didn't get it and all of a sudden commitment meant nothing, darrell.
Jeff Samelson:Bock, yeah, and your talk of commitment reminds me of what you were saying earlier about sacrifice. Compare what the modern idea is, or common conceptions are, to what scripture says. I mean, what does scripture instruct men about their wives in marriage? It says love your wives, and it doesn't mean just be affectionate toward them, have warm feelings. No, love your wives as Christ loved the church. What did Christ do for the church? He gave up his life for her. That's the standard, that's the ideal that's given for men. Well, take a step back. What could be a more romantic thing for a man to do for the woman he loves than to give up his life for her? I mean, obviously, we hope that's not going to be the common thing going on there, but that is a wonderful ideal to be looking at a way to demonstrate love.
Jeff Samelson:It's the giving, it's the selflessness, and yet our society is so consumed with self that being selfless, it's just a headscratcher for a lot of people. Today and again, it very much influences people, even within the church.
Christa Potratz:L, I think you've kind of touched on this a little bit, but is romance, then, something Christians should expect or work for in their love relationships? R.
Bob Fleischmann:I think it depends on what we mean by romance. I've thought about this when we were preparing for this. I think of a mother and a father's commitment to a newborn child. It's incredible commitment. It's getting up in the middle of the night. When my first children were born I was still a student in college, in the seminary, and I had done a lot of reading. I was already involved in pro-life work and I'd read a lot about SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, and I remember multiple times and I never am a hard sleeper anyways multiple times getting up in the middle of the night checking on the girls making sure they were all right.
Bob Fleischmann:The sacrifices you make we're not staying out late, you don't think anything of it and you get nothing in return, really. But through that whole process of that commitment form, your affection for them grows and then, as it grows and they become older and your relationship with them grows, you begin to find enormous pleasure in doing things for them, surprising them, what would make them happy on their birthdays and stuff like that. And I often wondered when a couple would come in for pre-marriage counseling. And we talk about Ephesians 5, which is the word agape. It's a commitment type of a concept of love, not just a flow or a softer kind of romantic friendship kind of love and Jesus has both for us.
Bob Fleischmann:But if couples started first of all with the idea of a commitment, that this relationship begins with a commitment, you can always get the couple who's going to say, and we will spend the rest of our lives finding out about each other, okay, but have you started from commitment or have you started from well? So far, I kind of like what I see, and a lot of times that's where it is. That's what I meant. When you sit down and listen to Ray Short, you get done. Listening to him, you're going oh man, I'm not sure I did this in the right order, you know man.
Jeff Samelson:My answer too, as to whether romance is being something that Christians should expect is a yes and no kind of thing. Yes, in that romance, it's a gift of God to your marriage. If you are married to your spouse, it's a good thing, it's a happy thing, it's something that's going to make your marriage better and stronger, more productive, make you both more happy and happy in your marriage. And if it's just a dating relationship, romance, it's going to be something that'll help you see and experience more about marriage more, learn more and grow closer as Bob was talking to to your potential spouse and everything like that. And it can even be just kind of a warning sign.
Jeff Samelson:If you're dating somebody for months and there's just no romance, that's probably a signal to you that this is probably not the relationship for me. But the no is if you're taking the outside external cultural ideas of romance and trying to superimpose those on your relationship and judge everything by that. Oh well, I don't have a happy marriage because my husband doesn't bring me flowers as often as the neighbor's husband brings her flowers or something Whatever standard you're using there. That's just a formula for discontent and difficulty in your marriage, and so you've got to work a little bit to keep separate. Okay, what are the real standards that I, as a Christian man or woman, I'm going to be applying here, and what are things that I'm just pulling in from the world, or even from my own sinful flesh, that I'm expecting of the other, or expecting of the relationship that really are things that God has given me any reason to expect or count on?
Christa Potratz:So then, what would you say is fair and wise to expect from your spouse or partner?
Bob Fleischmann:Probably loyalty, I think, just a genuine commitment to each other. I think it's interesting when you look at you know Jeff early on had summarized kind of what breaks up a marriage and you've got to ask yourself, why do those things break up a marriage? It's because they are in direct violation of the loyalty or the commitment between a couple and that really seems to be the bedrock of that relationship. But it's also the bedrock of the relationship Christ has with the church. The church was not very lovable. He still cries out from the cross forgive them. They just got done nailing me to the cross but forgive them.
Bob Fleischmann:So you know, by most standards it's not the establishment of a very healthy relationship. And yet on his side it was about as committed as you can possibly perfectly be and I think that that's got to be it. But my problem is is almost talking this way in today's society just seems like it's a pipe dream. It's just not going to happen. The idea that you marry for romance and for affection and stuff like that that's only a few hundred years old. But a lot of things you read from earlier years romantic poetry and stuff like that that's not how they got married. They got married usually, you know, by an arrangement with the parents and so forth.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I think you know we were talking a little bit before this episode too about sometimes. You know it happens like that people come into pastor counselor's office and they'll just say the romance is gone. I just don't feel the same way. Or my husband or you know significant other could be, the wife just isn't giving me that romance and isn't. You know and don't. And then you usually hear somebody say don't, I deserve to be happy, don't I deserve to have that. What would you kind of say in response to something like that?
Jeff Samelson:I think a lot of pastors at that point are doing a lot of biting their tongues Because you want to say what makes you think you deserve any of this stuff?
Jeff Samelson:You know, haven't you heard any of these messages about how sinful we all are and everything? But realistically, how do we deal with that? We try at that point, help that individual separate what is true and scriptural from what is emotional or cultural. You know what are these expectations you have. By what standard are you saying you expect X or expect Y?
Jeff Samelson:If we can go into scripture, you know, particularly like Ephesians, chapter five, but also plenty of other places in scripture that talk about you know, relationships and how we should love each other. If we can go into that and say, yeah, my husband or my wife is not doing what this is called for, well then use it as a pastor or use a couple. You know what it is that needs to be addressed in a fully scriptural way in terms of law and gospel, sin and grace, forgiveness and repentance and all that. But if there are other things that are just being brought in, it's like well, I think I deserve this, because I deserve to be happy, well then you have to address the matters. Like you know, actually that's not in scripture. It's a common idea, but it's not. You know. There's nothing in scripture that says you're going to be happy at all, let alone that's something you deserve because you're married.
Jeff Samelson:Certainly we're not saying that God wants anyone to be unhappy, but Christians understand that our lives are full of pain and suffering. We all are called to carry a cross, you know, and that's not to say that we should always be miserable or anything like that, but if your standard is an impossible one and one that we, as scripture makes clear, is not something to be expected, well then that's something that needs to be addressed. Obviously, all of us want every marriage, particularly every Christian marriage, to be as happy as possible. We want husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands and everybody to get along and everything to be wonderful. But there is sin in this world and there is sin in every one of us, which means that we have to deal with that reality, and sometimes that means you've got to bring people's expectations down a few notches to that reality, and once they understand that, then there's a lot more room for happiness.
Bob Fleischmann:When you sit down with a couple and you talk about the biblical concept of loving each other, I wonder what they mean by that. I wonder what the couple means by that. When I'm hearing this discussion about deserve to be happy, that almost disqualifies you for marriage because you don't deserve to be happy. I think a cornerstone of a successful marriage is one that says she deserves to be happy and I will do what I can to make that happen. The old traditional marriage right is for richer, poorer, sickness and health till death. To his part, and of course everybody's like oh, yeah, yeah, I'll do that.
Bob Fleischmann:People don't always understand what that means. When I've sat down with couples where one of them's worked in a nursing home or somebody had been a caregiver for a parent or something like that, I feel better about them because I think they understand what it is. It's great. I am deeply, deeply, passionately in love with my wife, but it's rooted in almost nothing that the world values. It's not rooted in sexuality, it's not rooted in always being able to do wonderful trips, because if it was rooted in all that, marriages would be over by the time couples got into their 70s or 80s.
Christa Potratz:And I know a lot of times I mean that's what we're seeing too is just kind of that shortness of marriage.
Bob Fleischmann:And yet it's hard to put my finger on it. I probably could say I love Diane more now than I ever did in my life, and part of it is because she needs me now more than she ever did. And so you devote, you sacrifice. But the thing is is that we do a lot of talking about what she's going through and everything going on, and one of the issues that come out is how you do feel pulled by what the world expects, what the world's expecting romance to be and so forth, and we're crying out loud, we're putting our foot down, saying that's not what it is.
Christa Potratz:Well, talking about the worldly romance, we have this holiday here called Valentine's Day Some people. I guess we'll say it was created by the greeting card companies.
Bob Fleischmann:I know that there is also the and by women who wanted to make men pay up the.
Christa Potratz:St Valentine. But what should Christian couples keep in mind, then, when celebrating Valentine's Day?
Jeff Samelson:Well, I think it's good to set aside a day to celebrate and focus on your love for each other, just as it's good to set a day aside for giving thanks to God or for celebrating your nation or something like that. It's a good thing. It's not that you love each other less the rest of the year, but it's just kind of a day when you can focus on that. That being said, leave those expectations and standards that the world has set up aside and just focus on what we know to be the positive Christian values and the actual love that you have for each other. Do those things that are good and appropriate and desired for you and avoid the other things. I will say that Valentine's Day is a really great day, whether you're talking about a dating couple or a married Christian couple. Good opportunity for couples to communicate their desires and preferences.
Jeff Samelson:This is what I like. This is what I would really appreciate, or this is not my thing at all, and things like that, because a lot of the stories that you hear are I got her this, I thought she'd love it, but she was really upset with me for the whole day, all sorts of things like that, and it's just. You think you hear about it and you're like, well, why didn't you talk about that ahead of time? There are expectations that are unmet because they were unspoken and it's just a wonderful opportunity Obviously not on Valentine's Day, but at least a few weeks before Valentine's Day, particularly early in a relationship. But sometimes it's good to revisit this as the years go by and say, okay, I know this day is coming up, this is what I would really appreciate. Or I know you want to take me out to a fancy restaurant, but really that's not what I'd like. I'd rather just do this other thing and get all that stuff out, and it's going to make the day a lot happier.
Bob Fleischmann:I think what Jeff is saying is that you still are influenced by the world, and not all influences are bad. And the world is saying we got this day that's supposed to be a time to care for the one you love, and so forth. So I think it is a good idea. I have to listen to you. Now I'm going to have to take all my tools back that I bought her for Valentine's.
Paul Snamiska:Day.
Bob Fleischmann:But really it's a wonderful opportunity to communicate really, and I don't know. I think every marriage counseling circumstance I had been involved with, communication usually was the number one problem when things started going awry. Somebody just didn't talk about it. We have a crazy thing around our house and that is we never seem to be able to observe any holiday on the right day, first of all, with a lot of children. Even your major holidays Christmas, Easter you never can do that together and even Valentine's Day and birthdays and so forth the travel schedules right now, this tomorrow, we're going to take off and we're going to just go to the town I grew up in and we're just going to walk around and we'll talk a little bit, I mean. But it's something different. It's going to mean for her the one thing that Jeff's right on that she's communicated to me, and that is I just want to spend some time with you. So that's it.
Jeff Samelson:So come Valentine's Day, you guys can all pay the exorbitant prices and the restaurants and everything, and we'll go a little while after that I was going to say that once you realize that the things that the culture attaches to Valentine's Day, it gets a lot easier to say why don't we go out on the 12th?
Bob Fleischmann:Yes, why don't?
Jeff Samelson:we go out on the 15th, you're not dealing with the crowds. You're usually saving money. The flowers are cheaper, particularly after Valentine's Day, all those kinds of things. If you've talked about it ahead of time, that works out great. That's not a surprise, husbands, for you to spring on your wives on the 14th. To say guess what, honey, I decided we're celebrating on the 16th instead. That's definitely something to talk about ahead of time.
Christa Potratz:Yes, but Valentine's does fall in the middle of the week, so maybe a good excuse to then celebrate on the weekend this year.
Jeff Samelson:Especially this year, since it also falls on Ash Wednesday. That's right.
Christa Potratz:All right well, thank you both for this discussion today, and we thank all of our listeners too. We hope that those of you that are celebrating Valentine's have a good Valentine's Day, and we look forward to having you back next time. Thanks a lot, Bye.
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