Thought of the Day 07.15.08

I’ve always been a fan of something most young people despise: long-distance relationships. I like them because they force people to develop a real romance by sharing their thoughts and feelings rather than just sharing their bodies. But I also like them because they force the young couple to purify their motives and be certain that this is the person they want to be with forever.

To put the matter bluntly, nothing makes you stupider about your relationship than having sex, which is actually part of the point. God built us to lose objectivity about a person and really want to stay with them after doing this. That’s why waiting until you’re married solidifies everything rather than confusing everything.

So, understanding all these elements, I was recently thinking about how in many ways our relationship with Jesus is like a long-distance romance. And as frustrating as it is to be separated from my Beloved and plagued with all the problems we see this side of heaven, I’m pretty confident that the really good stuff is still ahead of us.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Part of love is intimacy, and intimacy means "closeness". It is true, you don't need to be physically close to have intimacy (just as you can certainly be physically close without being intimate), but it sure makes it easier.

I know I would have a much easier time with intimacy toward Jesus if I could physically hear him...

August 4, 2008 at 8:15 PM
Andrew Tallman said...

The loudest scream of every true Christian's heart is just for such physical proximity.

But there is also great value in long-distance relationships...frustrating though they can be...and disparaged though they usually are by well-meaning friends with a cute local girl they want to hook you up with.

August 5, 2008 at 3:49 PM
Anonymous said...

I'm interested in what the "great value" of long distance relationships are (aside from teaching us patience, of course, though that is learned in many other ways as well), since it seems that every person I know that has been in one wishes they weren't.

August 6, 2008 at 8:00 PM
Anonymous said...

Upon re-reading your post, it seems like we may be talking about two different things here. You wrote:

I like them because they force people to develop a real romance by sharing their thoughts and feelings rather than just sharing their bodies. But I also like them because they force the young couple to purify their motives and be certain that this is the person they want to be with forever.

It seems like you're using the term "long-distance relationship" here to mean "celibate relationship". That is a strange meaning that I've never encountered before.

Certainly, long-distance relationships are necessarily celibate (unless you count phone/cyber sex), but celibate relationships are not necessarily long-distance ones; there are plenty of face to face celibate relationships, including those which are still analogous to your believer/Jesus relationship.

Why are you conflating the two?

August 6, 2008 at 8:10 PM

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