Choosing to Love, Even If It Hurts

I like that. I've been kind of disturbed by recent Christian dating trends that advocate closely guarding your heart. How are you supposed to learn to love somebody if you don't let them in?

Guarding ones heart is necessary at times, I believe. However, it should not be the be-all end-all. One needs to guard one's heart wisely. This means also knowing when to let one's guard down, just as much as it means knowing how to keep one's guard up.

We cannot truly love without making ourselves vulnerable.

True, true. But I just one question. How do we not defraud one another, then or can not defrauding one another be one of the ways to guarding the heart from heartbreak? I don't want to go to the extreme.

I agree with Brooke, but I disagree with one of the points Lauren Winner made. It's true that marriage must revolve around 'agape' love, but I don't believe this should mean that there's nothing more to it than that. Shouldn't a couple work to keep love (in the romantic sense) alive, or to rekindle it if that's failed?

I agree. Fear of rejection is perhaps the number one reason why guys fail to initiate relationships. I suspect that quite often it's why women turn guys down as well. They want to get married someday...but when it comes right down to it they are afraid of getting too close.

I also wholeheartedly agree with the statement that "love is not merely -- or even primarily -- an emotion". Emotions are great...but God never intended us to be ruled by them. Many singles hate that message but it's one that we need to be reminded of often.

Charles, I don't think the case was being made that emotions are wholly irrelevant. We clearly tend to marry those for whom we feel emotional love and a marriage with volitional love and a total lack of affection would clearly be unhealthy. We should do what we can to maintain the romance, but even that requires choosing to keep the fire kindled.

One especially moving scene of volitional love is seen in Dr. Dobson's book "Life on the Edge," in which he recounts the story of his father's proposal to his mother in which he told her that he would never divorce her, that divorce was not an option for him. I think that in our current culture commitments like that, taken after counting the potential full cost of keeping such a promise, are extremely powerful and really do represent a true love.