Love Behaves

"Over-rated, over-commercialized, pretty much pointless as well."

This is how Sam, a student of International Relations from the University of Nottingham described how she felt about celebrating Valentine's day.

Certainly, not everybody would agree with Sam. Many more would vilify her for being such a "spoilsport." Not with the fun, the flowers, the flurry of emotional exchanges, which often spiral into very ecstatic experiences of momentary bliss.

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Sam is right to say that Valentine's day is over-rated and over-commercialized, but I wouldn't discount it as pointless. Of course, it's evident how popular culture has cashed in on the moment. Red, the symbolic color of the event is manipulated to create a sensation that drives people's feelings and actions around the day.

The frenzied atmosphere created by the messages mediated by the media and social media sets the tone for the fun and fiesta - the shopping spree, the eating out (of overpriced junk food ), the clubbing, the hook-ups, and break-ups too, which are features of Valentine's day.

In all of these, what I find distasteful is the innuendo prompted by pop culture that Valentine's day is an occasion to misbehave. It's a grand opening for the display of all kind of lasciviousness. Vulgarity becomes elegance. Lewdness becomes grace. This imagery is in itself an unsavory anticlimax of the celebration of love, which Valentine's day is supposed to commemorate.

Love "does not behave itself inappropriately..." (1Co 13:5, NHEB) To behave inappropriately or unseemly means to conduct improperly, or disgracefully, or in a manner to deserve reproach. When the attitudes and actions of love become offensive to the harmony and beauty it should contribute to the social order, then like Sam bemoaned, "it is pointless."

Love seeks that which is proper or becoming in the circumstances and relationships of life in which we are placed. It is not inattentive to civility and propriety. This is the Christian love

There is much that is indecent and unseemly in the way society marks Valentine's day, in fact, in the way the popular culture defines love, that Christian love should correct.

As the world longs for improved humanity, society needs to embrace Christian love. It is love that doesn't violate but validates, it is love that seeks what is true, good, and beautiful. It is the antidote for the disorder in the social order.