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| It's possible this very picture hung in my locker. |
Over time, hopeless crushes gave way to real feelings for guys that I had meaningful (or at least some) interaction with. It was at this point that this ethereal "love and romance" of the media felt like it was a real, tangible possibility and mine for the taking with just enough patience.
With a possibility for tangible love and romance comes something that the media doesn't warn you about --- rejection. Oh, yes, these things happen in the chick flicks, but they're accompanied by something better playing out 98 minutes later.
I remember the first time I experienced rejection. Grade 8. After-school dance. It wasn't the first slow dance song came on, but it took a few times for me to work up the nerve to ask Kyle Smith* to dance. Kyle had been flirting with me for several weeks, at least flirting in the way that junior high boys flirt. It felt like this was an obvious conclusion, so I got over my nerves, approached him on the bench and asked him to dance with me.
By now, of course, you know that he said no. I found out later that he had in fact "liked" me, but one of his best friends was mad at me and so there you have it. But it was the first time I awoke to the disconnect between media love and reality.
Time after time after time, I found similar scenarios playing out. And over that time, two significant threads emerged in my life. First, the Christian subculture movement urging us to "just be content" and second, a growing disillusionment with myself, with men and with marriage.
These threads are not at all unrelated. As I was growing frustrated with my own inability to navigate relationships and avoid rejection, I was also finding a pious platform on which to say "I'm content! I can do it myself! I don't need love and marriage!" By having this platform to hide behind, I could avoid addressing the deep underlying issues that were driving a wedge between me and God.
There are two ways to succumb to the idol of love and romance (alternatively named the idol of affection). We can either pour all our hope into chasing it and trying to catch it. We can chase after the wrong relationships in the hopes of feeling love and acceptance, sacrificing our values or our time. We can chase after the right relationships, but put all the weight of acceptance into them - a weight those relationships were never meant to bear.
Or, we can reject love. Now, don't get me wrong here because there are definitely reasons and seasons for singleness. Singleness is a really good thing, and it is a gift from God. That said, singleness because we don't trust God to be enough in our rejection is an idol. Just as there are good reasons to be single, there are also bad reasons. I should probably not admit this, but in the spirit of transparency, I look at my friends who are married (and especially those who have kids) and I think "man, I've got it really, really easy."
And I always thought that this was just true contentment in my singleness.
But coming to rest in the gospel means coming to a place where all my hopes and acceptance are pinned on God. This means that I don't need to pursue a relationship for those things. It frees me up for a relationship because it's what God wants to use to work out his gospel witness in me. It frees me up from avoiding a relationship because I fear rejection. By constantly reminding myself that my affection and acceptance come from Christ and what he did on the cross, I can stop avoiding marriage because it's hard and I fear that I'll put too much weight on it.
And so battling the idol of affection isn't about fighting to be accepted OR about fighting to avoid not being accepted, it is about reorienting everything around God, who is the only one who can satisfy the need for being fully known and fully accepted.**
*Not his real name
**Credit to Jan Vezikov's sermon on Detox: The Idol of Affection, March 11, 2018
