Down Bad? Good.
redeeming our romantic desires
This article is part of the Claritas spring 2023 issue, Love. Read the full print release here.
By; Christine Shi
I wonder if he knows how good his hair looks messed up like that. How I feel when he acknowledges my existence, when he looks at me when we talk. What intrigue and depth of person lies behind those—quick, he’s looking, be cool and mysterious! … I wonder what made him smile to himself at the meeting last week. He was falling asleep during class today. Maybe he was up late last night… I hope he’ll be at the meeting next week. I just want to be in the same room as him. I feel like I could just talk to him forever… Agh, I’m so distracted! I shouldn’t be thinking about him this much. But I can’t help myself!
Even though we’ve all probably been down bad before, we might feel embarrassed to have these kinds of thoughts, thinking they’re “of the flesh.” We might even pull out our go-to Bible passage on romance: “The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.” [1] Surely distractions like crushes have no place in the mind of someone who wants to give their undivided attention to the Lord.
Is that really what the Bible has to say about romance? That it’s unholy and unproductive? Are we who want to let the Word of God inform our romantic lives destined to just suppress all thoughts and feelings of love or attraction and brute-force our thoughts towards “the things of the Lord”? Pastor Jacob Gerber offers a more nuanced view: “He’s not saying that the married life is unholy, and the unmarried life is not,” says Gerber. “He’s saying that they are different circumstances, in which all of us are called to pursue holiness.” [2] Taking into view all of Scripture, Paul’s statement is not meant to turn us away from romantic love completely, but to ensure that we are not naïve about the (good) complications of lifelong love in marriage, and that whether married or single, our first desire is to be holy and devoted to the Lord. In another one of his letters, the same Paul that wrote the verses above states that marriage represents the covenantal sacrificial relationship between Christ and the church, suggesting a high view of marriage and the love it embodies. [3] Finally, if we really want to challenge the idea that the Bible dismisses romance as a distraction, there is no better place to look than the Song of Songs.
The book of Song of Songs is an erotic poem (gasp!) that falls under the wisdom literature of the Bible. There is debate about its author, but many attribute it to Solomon, king of Israel circa 960 BCE. [4] There are three main characters: an unnamed young woman, an unnamed young man, and an audience of friends and family, the “daughters of Jerusalem.” The song is all about the love between the betrothed couple, capturing “the joys, insecurities, sorrows, and frustrations that accompany the journey of love.” [5] And lest we think that it is just an irrelevant side story in the Bible’s God-centered narrative, Harvey reminds us that “God is there . . . superintending it all.” And it’s not just Christians that see Song of Songs as having everything to do with God—Rabbi Akira, one of the greatest Jewish rabbis of the late first century, said that “while all of the sacred writings are holy, the Song of Songs is the holy of holies!” [6]
In chapter 5 of this love poem, the woman’s friends and family ask her, “What is your beloved more than another beloved?” [7] Her response is a poem of praise for her lover:
My beloved is radiant and ruddy,
distinguished among ten thousand.
His head is the finest gold;
his locks are wavy,
black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves beside streams of water,
bathed in milk,
sitting beside a full pool . . .
His lips are like lilies,
dripping liquid myrrh . . . [8]
Behold, the “holy of holies” of the sacred writings, going on and on about how beautiful the face of a man is! And this is fairly mild for Song of Songs. After praising her beloved’s facial features, she makes her way downward, visiting every part of his body with vivid imagery. He pours back to her praises of her hair, her lips, her breasts, her naked belly, her hips, the allure of her “garden,” and “at least allusions to the genitalia” (I’ll leave the discovery of those as an exercise for you, dear reader). [9]
So, if God wanted the Song of Songs, with all its uncensored passion, to be in His holy Word, there must be a good way to delight in our and each other’s physical beauty. Our desires, in themselves, are good and given by God. Just think about it: there’s something so powerful about the way our world changes when we have a crush on someone. We notice them all the time. We dwell on the things they say or do. We dream of being closer to them, and do everything we can to make that dream come true, even at the expense of other things. Attraction can so effortlessly bring out an attention, adoration, and zeal that no amount of intellect or brute force could ever conjure up.
The woman in the Song of Songs knows this very well: “love is strong as death,” she sings. [10] Death is the strongest thing known to man: no one can overcome it. So too is love. You may know this power very well, too. But have you ever considered why it has this power?
The woman tells us, when she goes on to call love “the very flame of the Lord.” Love is a fire, the flame of the Lord. God created love. He is love. [11] That’s precisely why love is so strong: it comes from the very character of our infinitely strong Lord. And because it is from Him, it is also for Him. Just as a helpful campfire can rage into a devastating forest fire if not contained properly, love becomes dangerously destructive when it is directed away from God, who alone deserves our worship.
That is why, amid all the expressions of longing and delight throughout the Song of Songs, the woman repeats this warning:
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
that you not stir up or awaken love before it pleases. [12]
Fully aware of the strength of love, she knows very well that if we get too deep in love too fast, our desire can become bad for us. The New Testament book of James gives greater insight into why this is: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” [13]
There’s nothing quite like high school drama to illustrate desire giving birth to sin. In the classic teen comedy Mean Girls, the new girl Cady develops a crush on Aaron, one of the hottest and most popular guys in the school, who was dating Regina, the mean, manipulative “queen bee” of North Shore High. In her efforts to win over Aaron and bring down Regina, Cady devises various plots to sabotage Regina, including telling Aaron that Regina was cheating on him. Cady’s tactics, which were rooted in jealousy, betrayal, and the destruction of relationships, came straight out of Regina’s playbook. Unsurprisingly, when Cady finally succeeds in breaking Aaron and Regina up, she fails to obtain what she really wanted—Aaron’s love—because Aaron sees how Cady lost who she was and became just like Regina. We see the above verse playing out in this story: Cady’s desire for Aaron causes her to sin to get what she wants, which ultimately leads to the “death” of losing herself.
Furthermore, sin isn’t just negative actions that we do. Thoughts of a person and how they see us can consume our minds and crowd out thoughts of loving those around us, our sense of God, and our sight of important spiritual realities. Our attraction can take hold of us and have authority over our reasoning and actions more than God’s Word (or just common sense!). When this happens, we begin to make compromises, become divided in our loyalties, and ultimately worship someone other than God, which is sin that leads to spiritual death. None of us are immune to the dangers of desire: even Solomon, the putative author of the very Song of Songs, to whom God gave “wisdom and understanding beyond measure,” beyond “all other men,” was led astray by his wives to worship other gods, causing the downfall of himself and all Israel. [14]
In conclusion, we should eradicate all our desires and commit to celibacy for life… is absolutely not what I am saying.
Martin Luther says, “You cannot prevent the birds from flying in the air over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair.” [15] We cannot help but experience attraction and temptation. But even though the consequences of unguarded desire are severe, we’ve seen that our desires in themselves can be good. So what do we do when the birds fly over our heads? Instead of shooting them down, I submit that we should recognize our feelings of attraction as given by God, pray and watch that they do not give rise to sin, and channel them toward the One who created them for Himself.
First, when thoughts of attraction first arrive, our view of attraction as God-given frees us to not immediately repress them but to be curious about them. As we are deliberately, intricately “knitted” together in our wombs by God, [16] what we are attracted to in a person tells us about ourselves, and we can thank God for how He made us and the person we are attracted to. Even better, we can consider how the attractive aspects of a person reflect the perfect character and love of Christ, the “prototype for anything truly admirable you’ve ever admired in anybody.” [17]
For example, mystery. Nothing gets me more than someone who doesn’t feel the need to bare their whole selves to the world. I like to think this is because of how God created me, reserved, low-key, observant. But if I am drawn towards mystery, I need look no further than my Lord. Consider what Paul says of Him in Romans 11: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” [18]
Still, we must guard these thoughts carefully, knowing how easily they can bear bad fruits. Martin Luther explains, “We cannot help but suffer attacks [temptations], and even be mired in them, but we pray here that we may not fall into them and be drowned by them.” [19] It may be easy to read this as an exhortation towards self-control. But the word “pray” is key, because it necessarily involves the help and presence of God. Without God, trying to control our desires won’t work. Why would we even want to not give into them? Trying to avoid sin without having a foundational understanding of God’s goodness and sovereignty will at best trap us in cycles of repression, guilt, and resentment. But when we turn our hearts to God in prayer, His glory and love become bigger in our sight and more weighty in our hearts, giving us greater desire and strength to overcome temptation. So, preventing our desires from leading to sin is inseparable from turning our desires instead towards God.
This requires admitting that sometimes we are attracted to the wrong things. Sometimes, these things are obviously problematic (e.g., meanness, entitlement, mental illness). Other times, what we most admire is not bad, but it is not what is most beautiful in God’s eyes. In Proverbs, we see that physical beauty is not as praiseworthy as the fear of the Lord, which reflects one’s character and right relationship with God: “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” [20]
This may seem to invalidate the overly physical focus of the woman’s song about her beloved. But if we take a closer look between her poetic lines, we see that although she’s praising her beloved’s body, this points “not at any extraordinary beauty of [Christ’s] body (. . . he had no form nor comeliness, Isa. 53:2); but his divine glory.” [21] What we are attracted to can and should be molded to Christ and the things that make Him glorious. This is not His looks, money, or status (of which He had little), but His character, His sovereignty, and His love for us.
As we pray for the spiritual eyes to see as God sees, God applies His transforming grace to us, changing us and what we love. Coming full circle, loving God first and foremost also changes how we love. Godly love is driven by commitment and patience in God’s timing, not by impatience or volatile feelings. Godly love is not self-centered but seeks to serve the other. With it, we see those we are attracted to for who they are, created and loved by God, with their thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants, not through the lens of how they can satisfy our desires. Rather than spending time with or seeking affirmation from them because of how it makes us feel, it seeks the interests of the other before our own. [22] Pursuing godly love requires us to examine whether our love is based in selfish desires or in the selfless love of God. If it is selfish and objectifying, loving our crush can even mean consciously not pursuing them in order to keep a risky, off-base infatuation from growing. But insofar as our love comes from and takes after the perfect love of God, let our love abound more and more, leading to abundant joy and fullness of life, to the glory and praise of God. [23]
In summary, our thoughts of attraction do not have to keep us from loving God. Just think of the strength of attraction expressed in Song of Songs, which beautifully captures how we love as humans, and ultimately how Jesus loves us. Our attraction, with the vitality of the desires they conjure, can actually fuel our love for Him and love for others.
Lastly, there is a component of attraction that goes beyond someone’s appearance or personality. It seems to be a fundamental law that we are more attracted to people when they show attraction or care for us. If it is true that another’s love and desire fuels our own, then Jesus Christ should be the most attractive person of all. While we showed no interest in or love towards Him, Jesus loves us with the strongest love, the love that the woman in the Song of Songs sings of, “strong as death”. In His love, Christ died for us to save us from the rightful wrath of God, because that’s how much He wants us to be in a relationship with Him. So let’s look upon Jesus, our beautiful Savior. Let’s love Him “because he first loved us.” [24] Let’s say together with the woman in Song of Songs to our beloved Jesus and anyone who will listen, “This is my beloved and this is my friend.” [25]
This article appeared in Claritas’ spring 2023 Love Issue
Sources
[1] 1 Corinthians 7:32-34 ESV
[2] Gerber, Jacob. “‘Undivided Devotion to the Lord’ (1 Corinthians 7:32–40).” Harvest Community Church (PCA), October 27, 2019. https://harvestpca.org/sermons/sermon-undivided-devotion-to-the-lord-1-corinthians-732-40/.
[3] Ephesians 5:22-32
[4] “TGC Course: Introduction to Song of Solomon.” The Gospel Coalition. Accessed April 30, 2023. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/course/song-of-solomon/.
[5] Harvey, James L. “Why Study the Book of Song of Solomon?” Crossway, June 8, 2018. https://www.crossway.org/articles/why-study-the-book-of-song-of-solomon/.
[6] Mishnah Yadayim 3:5
[7] Song of Songs 5:9
[8] Song of Songs 5:10-13
[9] Shanks, Andrew. “What's the Difference between Erotica and Song of Solomon?” The Gospel Coalition, May 15, 2013. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/whats-the-difference-between-erotica-and-song-of-solomon/.
[10] Song of Songs 8:6
[11] 1 John 4
[12] Song of Songs 8:4
[13] James 1:14-15
[14] 1 Kings 4:29-31
[15] Luther, Martin. Martin Luther's Small and Large Catechisms. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2019.
[16] Psalm 139:13
[17] Ben Hutton, “Made His Own” (message to Cru Cornell, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, April 21, 2023).
[18] Romans 11:33
[19] Tappert, T. G. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1959.
[20] Proverbs 31:30
[21] Henry, Matthew. 1706. Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible (Complete). Vol. 1. N.p. https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/matthew-henry/Song.5.9-Song.5.16.
[22] Philippians 2:3-4
[23] Philippians 1:9-11
[24] 1 John 4:19
[25] Song of Songs 5:16