Lovin’ in all the Wrong Places

There, the story of the heart becomes the story of the soul.

If you ever kicked or pulled the stuffing out of a child’s stuffed animal, you know how sad it is to look at the result. A cute toy becomes an empty, rumpled-up piece of fabric with plastic eyes. Forlorn and joyless.

That’s the word picture in my mind when I think and read about the declining state of “relationships” in the last five decades.

All across the Western world, relationships are in trouble. Whether it is marriage, family, friends, or professional relationships, the social, cultural, and faith elements that once encouraged and maintained them are clearly fraying apart.

A day doesn’t pass that you turn on the news or scan the internet without being besieged with stories about relationships. How to find them, start them, manipulate them, repair them, avoid them, and of course, end them. Buried in the stories is the faint impression that looks like that teddy bear that had the stuffing kicked out of it.

Believing as I do that country and bluegrass music is as fair an indicator of what’s going on in the culture as any, I wrote an article in 2022 entitled “Whatever Happened to Love” (here) where I lamented the decline of good, old-fashioned romance in country music, replaced by “new” country music where romance is presented as shaking “booty” and such, or slobbering over a girl while pie-eyed drunk. Romance and, by extension, relationships are out. For my efforts, I received scoffing responses. And I didn’t even touch the promoted depravity of more progressive music genres!

Regardless, in our modern day, we now have herds of psychiatrists, therapists, and assorted counselors of every sort explaining, in interminable studies and articles, some approach to relationships. Like “no-fault divorce” did decades ago, most of these articles promote a view of relationships that is to be internalized as an emotional event, whose outcome will be determined by how one feels, with little regard for any value judgment of the relationship to begin with.

As a society, we now launch science at problems as a first practice, not a last resort. About 60 million adult Americans sought inpatient and outpatient mental health services and drug maintenance in 2024. Anxiety and depression were the leading issues, and certainly, most, if not all, involve the status of, or the lack of, a relationship.

Historically, relationships have consistently presented both trials and victories for the human family, and the stories of those relationships have become the fodder for the best literature written. One of the earliest examples we have is from approximately 3,500 years ago, where we find the story of his jealous brothers selling Joseph to an Egyptian-bound caravan. He would later become a powerful official in Pharaoh’s court and, ironically, save the brothers who betrayed him from famine. Wow, talk about a dysfunctional lot!

These stories of relationships weave themselves throughout every age and civilization. They are the language of the heart because they cross a boundary from that which we pretend to be on the outside, to what we are on the inside, our true selves. And our story is never complete until we discover our authentic selves and our purpose in relationship with others. Charles Dickens’ novella, The Christmas Carol, captures this contradiction so poignantly that it remains popular nearly two centuries on.

Now we live in an era that promises that our science can change the language of the heart. The question should be, if it could, why hasn’t it? And even if it could, should it?

No, the tools of relationships have never changed. They are the same for all time. Love, communication, honesty, and respect anchor any relationship. And in marriage, there is spiritual and sexual intimacy and the integrity of joint responsibility. Marriage is not a partnership. It is more of a junction box where the energy and power from a couple are fused and distributed to both the couple and their children, as well as the wider community, by life example.

There are hundreds of teachings all throughout Scripture that have passed the test of time. And nowhere in human literature is there better relationship advice than in the Book of Proverbs and Paul’s letters.

In the Judeo-Christian ethic that shaped the Western world, the concept of doing unto others as one wishes it be done to them is a profoundly central theme in the Torah and the Bible. It shows up in how we love one another, how we value one another, how we sacrifice for one another, and the grace we extend to one another. It becomes a pattern in life as surely as breathing does. It’s the nourishment of relationships.

There, the story of the heart becomes the story of the soul.

No offense to the professionals in the mental health field, but what our culture really needs is people who are looking for relationships and love in all the right places, and keeping them vibrant and healthy with wisdom from the millennia past, not USA Today or Psychology Today.