Tina Turner famously asked the question "What’s love got to do with it? What’s love but a second-hand emotion?"
More recently a movie called What’s Love Got To Do With It? is asking the same question in the context of multicultural London.
The movie begins by exploring the different world views between Eastern models (Pakistan in this case) of arranged or assisted marriages and the Western model of the so-called "love marriage". Initially, a strong case is made for arranged marriages, where parents play a key role in choosing a suitable bride or groom for their children. The statistic of 55% of marriages ending in divorce in Britain is compared with the 6% failure rate for arranged marriages.
But as the movie progresses, (without spoiling the plot for you) the notion of Western romantic love wins the day.
One of the joys of being a church minister is to preside at the weddings of young couples who get married. Hope Church is in a season of spring weddings, and it is a delight to see young men and women committing to each other in marriage.
Marriage is one of those institutions which transcends culture, time and place. The basic premise of marriage has long been a man and a woman committing to each other in an exclusive and lifelong union of love.
The Bible affirms that God ordained marriage at the very beginning of time. Before governments, before courtrooms and before armies came into being, marriage was the building block upon which any and every culture was to be built. Given by God for our blessing of mutual care and for the raising and teaching of children, marriage is a union so intimate and so permanent it’s described as two people becoming "one flesh".
Jesus affirmed this when he said: "at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ So, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no-one separate."
This one-flesh concept of two people becoming one points us to a spiritual reality behind marriage. So, what does love have to do with marriage?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said: "You think your love will sustain your marriage; it can’t. Let your marriage sustain your love."
One of the tragedies in our own culture is the relative impermanence of marriages today. The emotional, financial and spiritual wreckage that occurs when families break apart is devastating to experience and observe. I rejoice in seeing enduring marriages celebrated in this newspaper when a couple reach the remarkable milestone of 60 or more years married.
I think Tina Turner got it wrong when she described love as a second-hand emotion. Romantic love, which our culture celebrates and worships, is a poor cousin to the type of love that Jesus embodied and taught about when he walked this earth.
He taught us that "greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends".
This discussion in the 15th chapter of John’s gospel in the Bible is the best description I know of love and the best advice I can offer to young couples about to embark on that beautiful and demanding journey of marriage.
It requires sacrifice. It requires obedience and a willingness to submit your ambitions for the sake of the other. This is the type of love Jesus taught and it’s the type of love he lived; literally laying down his life for the sake of you and me.
Tina Turner asked in her song: "who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?". Well, Tina, that is the risk we are called to make if we want to experience true love.
C.S. Lewis, the great 20th century writer, said the following: "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no-one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
What’s love got to do with it? Everything, because love reflects the very character of God.
●The Rev Stu Crosson is the senior minister at Hope Church, Dunedin.
