Christian Living

As a recovering romantic, I have realized that, although God created a wonderful world and gave us gifts, they mean nothing outside of God. Being created in His image, He gave us the gift of poetry to reflect on His creation. 

Poetry, according to Romantic poet William Wordsworth, "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility".  Romanticism is about fuzzy feelings. These feelings have no basis, and are just subjective feelings rooted in self.  

The pagan, religious aspect of yoga makes the self, not God, your center. In a yoga class I took, we chanted: 

"May the long time sun 
Shine upon you, 
All love surround you, 
And the pure light within you 
Guide your way on." 

The teacher also prompted the class to “bow to the teacher within.”  This says that we are basically good. As a sinner saved by grace, I disagree. 

Of course I didn't take the chants seriously. As the class chanted, with hands drawn together, something like "SiiiiiiirNaaaaam," with my hands together, I would chant "Vietnaaaaaaaaaam." 

Left to our own devices, our human flaws, we don’t know how to treat others and love them unconditionally. For me, when God is my captain and follow his rules I can feel good about myself. When we bond with God, we can show people the love God gives. 

In poet, orator, and Anglican priest George Herbert's poem "The Pulley", Mr. Herbert writes that God realizes that, speaking of humans:  

"He would adore my gifts instead of me, 
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature" 

But seeing the vanity of the gifts for their own sake, humanity returns to God and the issue is resolved: 

"Yet let him keep the rest, 
But keep them with repining restlesnesse: 
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least, 
If goodnesseleade him not, yet wearinesse 
               May tosse him to my breast." 

Romantic relationships, not based on mutual respect and caring, usually end bad. My lady friend pointed out that "the fizzle" - those fuzzy, effervescent feelings – are not a good basis for a relationship and fizzle out. As pastor MaxLucado has written, when couples don't wait until marriage for sex, it becomes about what selfish desire each one satisfies. It becomes mercenary, Max wrote. 

This played out in 1978 in Bucks County, PA, when a high school girl was murdered. Months before the murder, the girl got pregnant out of wedlock. The baby was placed up for adoption. Theguy who knocked her up "was punished by his family", according to the article on Levittownnow.com.  Two weeks before the murder, the girl told the guy she thinks she was pregnant again and would tell his parents.  

The pregnant girl's boyfriend told his friend about a plan he concocted to kill the girl. And he acted out on it.  He and his friend carried out a brutal murder, first beating the former girlfriend within an inch of her life with a two-by-two board and metal pipes, then returning to finish the job by dropping a 220-pound piece of concrete on her head.    

"The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, But the mouth of the wicked conceals violence." Proverbs 10:11 

If you don't have Jesus in your heart to guide you by his light, but rather havethe sun and your own goodness – that light within you, disaster willcome sooner or later.  

"Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path." Psalm 119:105