About Valentine's Day and Love

          The color red. Chocolate candy. Flowers. Hearts. Greeting cards. High expectations. Lots of big-time profits for many businesses selling these products. Dentists anticipating tooth damage from the effects of consumption of Valentine's Day sweets. I know that many people celebrate this day with gusto. Others do not. "This is the day for lovers." Today, I have been seeing one post after another of red images and sayings. And how do we so often show our love on this particular day? Buying sweets! We are in a mode where our traditions for one day mean additional business for dentists everywhere as well as florists and retail outlets.
          But do we know the historical person who is behind this holiday? Do we know what this person was really all about? You may have heard about the historical missionary, St. Valentine, who served under severe religious persecution and was killed for his Christian faith. He served people in need. Indeed, he loved and showed it by the things he did. But what kind of love do we typically focus on during Valentine's Day?
          The love that we focus on during this particular day is romantic love or "eros." Love between two people who are sexually attracted to each other and especially if they are married. Many of us celebrate our friends on this day. Friendship love is called "Phileos." In many households, parents see this day as being "for the children" and buy our candy and tokens for our children. But the love that St. Valentine lived as he served as a missionary is not any of these kinds of love. It is an unselfish, sacrificial, unconditional love known as "agape" love. This is the kind of love that moved God to send His Son to Earth to give His life for us humans, to reconcile us to Him. It is the love that moved Jesus to enter Earth, become the perfect God-Man, live a sinless life and die a horrific death in our place, and to rise again. God, therefore, is the Source of this love and also the Source of all other loves. Therefore, Valentine's Day is ultimately about God. St. Valentine, who was the historical figure behind this day, was only able to live and give this kind of unselfish, sacrificial love because he had a relationship with God through Christ and he drew his strength from God to love this way. Now I'm very sure that St. Valentine knew the other loves, for without these other loves we cannot advance to being able to trust God and love in this Godly way.
          There is nothing wrong with these other, human loves. Parent/child love or "storge" love, is essential to any child's development and well-being and preferably if the love comes from both mom and dad. Sudies show that abuse and neglect, if bad enough and sustained enough, affect and alter the actual structure of a person's brain. And without the comfort, support and love of friends, real friends, loneliness often has devastating effects. I can tell you that from experience! So many suicides are motivated by loneliness, the awful feeling that one is really alone and not among friends, real friends. Romantic love? This is one love that is not essential to life for all people, but without it, we would not be motivated to mate, marry and bear children! We would have been extinct long ago! And this was, after all, God's idea and His way to reproduce and keep the human race going.
          But there is a difference between these love and agape love, God's love. These other loves can fail or end. And they often do. This is the root of so many of our social ills. the failure to love well. Friendships, even real, deep friendships, can and do fail, sour or for some reason don't last. Years ago, I saw on a TV court case a lawsuit between two "ex-friends" who had been very close friends for decades, until one of the friends borrowed money and did not pay it back. Money and gossip often ruin even the best of friendships and other close or family relationships. I have seen this firsthand and it is sad. Monetary inheritances and squabbles over them often ruin family relationships. As we all know, romantic love fails over and over, even ending in betrayal and outright emnity, even murder. I don't think I need to go into the many high-profile marriages that have ended in murder. So many of our popular songs lament the sad fact that romantic love so often fails. An estimated 50 percent of all marriages are said to end in divorce. Parent/child love may be the most enduring love and oftten lasts through great odds. But it, too, often fails when lacks the resources or the maturity for the role or breaks down when the parent or the child does things that are detestable or even criminal.
          But God's love is the love that never ends and never fails. It is first a commitment to do good for another person whatever the person's merit, response, or one's feelings. This love is a choice. It is not often sung about in popular music, which focuses, mostly, on romantic love. If you listen to so many of the words, you get the message that lovemaking is the ultimate form of love and that we can't live without it. There is nothing wrong with romantic love and the Bible even has a small Book in the Old Testament that is devoted to it, the Song of Solomon. This book celebrates the love between a bride and a groom. In the rest of the Bible, however, the the love the Bible talks about is agape love, God's love for us and the love that He wants us to practice.
          There is another historical fact about St. Valentine. Experts on his life tell us that he was the "patron saint" of epilepsy, among other things. He is said to have served the sick and those with medical conditions. During ancient times, the diagnosis of epilepsy didn't exist and there was no concept of neurological conditions but there was much awareness and fear about demon possession. Therefore, it was easy to confuse seizures with the demonic activity. (And yes, I do believe in a personal Devil and in demons). It is unclear why St. Valentine took such an interest in epilepsy and it has been speculated on that he had epilepsy himself. Yes, other missionaries also served people with epilepsy but St. Valentine seemed to have outdone them in that area. Today, we have far more scientific knowledge and resources to deal with epilepsy and a host of other medical conditions and diseases. Therefore, like St. Valentine, we need to all do our part to add our voices to the effort to increase awareness about misunderstood and stigmatized medical conditions like epilepsy.
          When I was growing up, I remember that Valentine's Day was a day when my popular peers got many Valentine's Day cards and other tokens and others of us didn't get nearly as many. I recall one instance where, in a middle school setting, some popular girls got many Valentine Day cars and tokens and made no secret of this. I glanced at it all and sighed, "I wonder how many Valentines I will get." A girl said, "Lisa! You ARE greedy!" Should Valentine's Day, or any other time which celebrates relationships, be about competition and who gets the most of things? I'm glad that, at least in the case of my daughter's school setting more recently, celebrating Valentine's Day has been handled differently in her elementary school setting. Things have been set up so that each child receives about the same amount of Valentine's Day cars and tokens; no one is left out or excluded. And isn't this what love is all about, including everyone?
          There is nothing wrong with celebrating Valentine's Day (or any other holiday or special day) in the traditional, expected way for that particular day. There is also nothing wrong with choosing not to celebrate this day  (or other special days) in the conventional and traditional way. And I wish each and every one of you a Happy Valentine's Day. But do not forget that the real Source of love is God, not Cupid.

http://www.stvalentines.net
This is a fun website with basic information about St. Valentine and fun acts about how this day is celebrated in many other countries. After you access this site, you need to click "St. Valentines. Net" to get into this website.