The Gospel and Romantic Love

As I young man I was aware of the sacred nature of sexuality but, as is too often the case amongst our youth, only obtained a superficial understanding of the subject. In church the topic often came up, as it should, and we were warned of the sadness and affliction that arise when sexuality is abused. Now, years later, as I study the gospel and think about my own life and observe the goings on in peoples' lives around me, the true magnitude of the power and sacredness of human sexuality is coming into focus more and more. I now realize that the love between a man and woman, both in this life and in the life to come, holds power beyond our understanding and is a vital part of what is required to return to and become like our Father in Heaven.

I recently came across a magnificent discourse on the subject by Bruce C. Hafen titled, The Gospel and Romantic Love. This talk was given in 1982 at BYU. At the time Hafen was serving as President of Ricks College. I listened to the talk in MP3 format about four or five months ago and then, just yesterday evening on our way down to San Diego for Sarah's brother Rob's wedding, I listened to it again. Although the whole talk is wonderful, I'd like to share just one excerpt from the talk which is actually an excerpt from something written by D. H. Lawrence:

Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own. . . . The [TV] and the film are mere counterfeit emotion all the time, the current press and literature the same. People wallow in emotion: counterfeit emotion. They lap it up: they live in it and on it. . . .

. . . A young couple fall in counterfeit love, and fool themselves and each other completely. But, alas, counterfeit love is good cake but bad bread. It produces a fearful emotional indigestion. . . .

. . . The peculiar hatred of people who have not loved one another, but who have pretended to, . . . is one of the phenomena of our time. . . .

. . . [But there is a] profound instinct of fidelity in a man, which is, as shown by world-history, just a little deeper and more powerful than his instinct of faithless sexual promiscuity. . . . The instinct of fidelity is perhaps the deepest instinct in the great complex we call sex. Where there is real sex there is the underlying passion for fidelity. And the prostitute knows this, because she is up against it. She can only keep men who [want the counterfeit: and these men] she despises. . . .

. . . The [Chief Thinkers of our generation know] nothing of [this]. To [them,] all sex is infidelity and only infidelity is sex. Marriage is sexless, null. Sex is only manifested in infidelity, and the queen of sex is the chief prostitute. . . .

This is the teaching of the . . . Chief Thinkers of our generation. And the vulgar public agrees with them entirely. Sex is a thing you don't have except to be naughty with. Apart from . . . infidelity and fornication, sex doesn't exist. . . .

[However, the truth is that the Christian] Church created marriage by making it a sacrament, a sacrament of man and woman united in . . . communion, . . . and never to be separated, except by death. And even when separated by death, still not freed from the marriage. . . . Marriage, making one complete body out of two incomplete ones, and providing for the complex development of the man's soul and the woman's soul in unison, throughout a life-time. Marriage sacred and inviolable, the great way of earthly fulfilment for man and woman, in unison. . . .

. . . And this, this oneness gradually accomplished throughout a life-time in twoness, is the highest achievement of time or eternity. From it all things human spring, children and beauty and well-made things; all the true creations of humanity. . . . The will of God is that He wishes this, this oneness, to take place, fulfilled over a lifetime. . . .

. . . The oneness of . . . man and woman in marriage completes the universe, as far as humanity is concerned, completes the streaming of the sun and the flowing of the stars. [D. H. Lawrence, Essays on Sex, Literature and Censorship (New York: Twayne, 1953), pp. 96­111]