The great unspoken sin

To most people today, the word "romance" conjures up images of candle-lit dinners, against-all-odds weddings and hand-in-hand sunset beach-walks. It brings to mind a thousand cheesy chick-flicks and good first dates. A romantic is someone who has ideas that aren't in tune with what the world sees as reality. The word is often paired with "hopeless," as if to say that a romantic has no real chance in life. It is unfortunate, but to much of the world, reality isn't romantic and romance isn't realistic. There is a division between the two. What God has joined together, man has put asunder.

A great lie has infected the world. It's all around us. It seems as if everywhere you look, people have turned from the real world and are living in a fantasy. It's not a good fantasy, either. There is no fairy-tale ending, no prince coming to save the princess. Instead, it's all dragons and witches and tall tower-prisons. We ate the poisoned apple and forgot the rest of the story. Cynicism has taken over the heart of the world, including many who take for themselves the name of Christ.

It's easy to see why. This world isn't getting any better. Just look around, and you'll see a thousand atrocities every day. How can we look for anything good to come out of this world? Wars rage, people starve, children are kidnapped and forced to choose between killing or being murdered. It is apparent that the world is a cruel place, full of pain and hate and fear. But it wasn't always this way. It's not meant to be this way.

Once upon a time, the world was free from pain and suffering. The world was free from fear and death. It was a paradise, a utopia where man was free to do as he would, so long as he did not eat of the forbidden fruit. Obedience, freedom and happiness were joined together, but they didn't stay that way for long, at least not in the mind of man. The freedom of obedience was discarded for the bonds of free choice, the happiness of boundaries for the dangers of unlimited freedom. We left the garden behind, and made our way into what we knew would be a better tomorrow.

But our tomorrow wasn't better. Our free choices weren't nearly so free as we had believed. We walked out on perfection, believing that we could do better, and when we found that we couldn't, we despaired. Of course, not everyone believes that we can't do better. Some seem to think that we are moving back to paradise, but they deceive themselves. We are destroying our home, raping and killing our family, and spitting in the face of the one who created us. What other response than cynicism could there be to our predicament?

Left in this situation, we would be right to be cynical. We would be right to lose hope. Despite our best efforts, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Truthfully, it's not despite our best efforts. Our best efforts picked up the basket and took off at full speed. We are a ruined people, rolling toward the horizon, believing that just out of sight, where the tracks converge, we will find our way out.

So this then is where we find ourselves - sliding into the abyss with no way out. On our own, we are hopeless and helpless. The world is right to quake with fear, to tremble and cry out, to despair.

But we are not on our own. The world was created, not full of cynicism, but full of wonder and romance. This life in which we find ourselves is real, but it is not Reality. The world was created, meaning that there was something or someone who created it, and that someone is the great Romantic. He has ideas of how things should be, and they don't line up with what we witness every day. This is not the life for which we were meant. It is not the life to which we are destined.

Just as the prince came for the princess, to save her from the dragon, so the great Romantic came for us, to save us from this sin that entangles and ensnares. He not only raised us from our poisoned-apple death, he ate the apple himself and shattered its power with his life. The witches and dragons have been defeated, and though they still rage and roar, they have no power over us. We have been freed from the chains of fear, death and cynisicm to the open fields of romance and wonder.

While we are still here, the enemy will continue to fight. The greatest lover of all, Christ, has gone on ahead, to prepare a place for our homecoming, but he has not left us alone.

So while we are still in this world, struggling with the powers of the devil, we must not give in to the cynicism that is all around us. Christ did not come and die for us to return to the attitudes and thoughts we had. He came to set us free unto romance and wonder and awe, unto Reality, not as we see it, but as it truly is.

God created perfection. He created hope and romance and ideals. What right, then, have we to settle for anything less? What right have we to lapse into a cynical attitude when Jesus Christ, God himself, took on our sin and died for us, that we would be free from our just rewards? What is more romantic than the lover who sacrifices himself for his bride?

Greater love has no man, and that is the life to which we are called. It is a life in these earthly bodies, serving a heavenly calling, waiting for the world to be returned to the perfection in which it was created. We have hope. We have more than hope. We have assurance that all will be well, that everything that hurts today will one day be set right, that these fallen bodies will be raised and glorified. How then do we become jaded about life?

We cannot hold to this redemption while still clinging to our cynicism in any area of life, whether relationships or churches or anything else. Love hopes all things. This life we live we live in Christ, the great Romantic, the greatest lover there ever will be. He has shown us what it means to live, and it is a life of romance and freedom and wonder and love lived in the flesh. Cynicism has no place in this life, in this romance of flesh and blood.