Something I noted recently that makes sense but didn't cross my mind until now is that I tend to really hate romanticism. The beautiful stories of two people getting together, the wonderful tragedy of a spurned lover, destined to marriage to the warm haze from a bottle of whiskey, the lone hero sticking to his beliefs despite the whole world being against him. Yeah, all that stuff is good and well I guess but I have an admittedly very cynical view of it all.
I really doubt there are hobos that handsome. (Side note: I literally just opened up my Facebook and saw this at the top of my news feed. This is not helping my cynicism.)
The cold, bitter, logical part of me would just like to throw all that out. To be truthful, I have and it's not treated me well because of it. Perhaps it's the sheer number of times I've seen people caught up in some false romance, be it a flurry of emotions worked up to take place of a real relationship with God or be it one of any number of immature, tempestuous relationships. The thing I just now got is that it's not the romance that's bad, but rather how it's handled. Romance is an emotion in a way and just like any other emotion, it needs to be properly handled. In my banishment of the romantic ideals, I've replaced the relationship with a stoic acquisition of knowledge which has only gotten me so far.
The moral? Lewis pointed it out well in The Screwtape Letters when he essentially said that any extreme, save for extreme dedication to loving God, is bad. My dedication was to approaching God through logic, not through His Son. There are certain personality traits, negative things we gravitate towards, that we will all have to overcome in our pursuit of God, but that doesn't make those things inherently bad. So I suppose the moral is look to God and don't let anything distract you, which includes looking at and analyzing things that may inhibit your relationship with God. We can get caught up in anything, especially things that aren't inherently bad.
I started writing this with the intention of disdaining romanticism, but I ended up with a strange, sappy feeling in my heart towards my Savior who chooses to love me despite my constant refusal to love Him. Of all the ways He could speak to me, He chose to have me listen to a song that I really needed to hear, despite my cynicism towards signs like that. As I drove down Clinton Highway on a cold Sunday morning with the sun hitting my face, I cried as the weight of a loving Son weighed on me with the gentlest of touches. I could and will go back and forth forever on what actions to take and what mindsets to assume but I'll never really get that far with that. Only God.
and he turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
and steadied me as I walked along.
3 He has given me a new song to sing,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
They will put their trust in the Lord. 4 Oh, the joys of those who trust the Lord,
who have no confidence in the proud
or in those who worship idols.
5 O Lord my God, you have performed many wonders for us.
Your plans for us are too numerous to list.
You have no equal.
If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds,
I would never come to the end of them.
6 You take no delight in sacrifices or offerings.
Now that you have made me listen, I finally understand—
you don’t require burnt offerings or sin offerings.
Psalm 40, NLT
Part of me wants to be the handsome hobo who gave everything up for love. A really big part of me.
Love,
Colton
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