From the Moody Standard: Guards vs Gardeners

THIS is my recent Opinion Piece for the Moody Standard on Relationships:

“Guard your heart,” advice thrown into the books of Christian dating wisdom as if it were a proverb.  Yet it is never used in the context that this Proverb furnishes. To guard our hearts from affection is not a godly behavior. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Guard your heart, for it is the source of life.”
Once in high-school I became infatuated with a football player. It was then that my mum first told me, “Tirzah Lee, guard your heart.” It was also then that I read C.S. Lewis’s “The Four Loves” for the first time. I was not in love. Honestly, that instance and many that followed were mere limerances, long-suffering infatuations. It wasn't until more recently that I considered the discomfort I felt from hearing “guard your heart,” when I wanted to give it away to a worthy knight.
For another friend, “guard your heart” was advice from her dad to “keep watch” because there are more risks than rewards in romantic relationships. This hits closer to the mark presented in Proverbs 4:20-27, however the passage does not mention any relationship, let alone a romantic one being a risk to look out for. Instead it is focused on living as a man responsible before G-d. He is guarding his heart from evil and immorality, not affection.
Strong feelings of infatuation can very quickly become idolatry. Expecting a human to be a god will leave you very dissatisfied, but so will the notion that you can understand your heart enough to be a worthy guard for it.  Lewis writes the iconic paragraph beginning in “The Four Loves,” “To love at all is to be vulnerable,” and your heart might be broken. Lewis goes on to say, “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… The only only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
The haunting notion is we have accepted loving someone as a monstrous commitment rather than a noble commandment. Instead of risking disappointment, we mangle our hearts inside ourselves toward isolation. A good friend of mine once said, “We turn and gaze into our own navel, in a state of utter self-preoccupation. Doing so, we gaze at that which reminds us we were and are dependent on another for life.”The problem lies, for myself, not in isolation but in another line of defense. I am a proud woman, and rejection does not make me hide. Rather, I draw my sword and fly at all dangers, seeking glory in battle that I might win a mighty death and take no man’s pity. Patience terrifies me, but she is not my enemy, she is a friend. It is as much a sin to rage as it is to hide. But it is never a sin to love, provided we know how to love apart from seeking satisfaction for the self.
Often the very actions we take to “guard our hearts” from loving one another are the same actions that drive us into sin: selfishness, bitterness, and apathy. We are told “know your heart” yet Jeremiah 17:9 says “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; who can know it?” The notion that we can be good guards of our heart and that they are something we are waiting to give to one lucky person stems from pride. Philippians 4:7 says “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Peace guards ours hearts because we have given them over to God’s jurisdiction. He alone knows them and therefore can guard them.
Guarding our hearts from love merely because we are attracted to the beloved means someone will have to cave for a relationship to flourish, one needs to be vulnerable and let down his or her guard; someone needs to take the risk of rejection. Otherwise, the two stony hearts will always be divided.
Yet, we have allowed the narrative of the closest possible relationship to be written by people who don’t know the very basics of it. The outcome is that which is holy and “very good” has been dragged in a mire of lust rather than permeated with Agape, the self sacrificing and undemanding love. “Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.”
Friendship has been elevated as a love that is more holy than Eros, romantic love. A misunderstood idea that “kingdom relationships” means “just friends”; forgetting that the Kingdom of God is repeatedly referred to as a marriage, and the church a bride. The Lamb does not “friend-zone” the Church. He risks everything for her, enduring agony and an excruciating death because He loves her and wants to win her to Himself.
Lewis concludes, “We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.”

Brothers, you are commanded in scripture to love as Christ loved the church because the author of it dwells within you and can empower your willing heart to do so. Don’t settle for what is comfortable when you believe in a God who made Himself very uncomfortable for you. Yet if you chose to protect your sisters from this love or not, our job is to entrust our hearts not to you, but to the one who truly can guard us, Messiah Jesus. No one needs their spouse to be a god, just a servant of one; a servant full of Faith, Hope, and Love; the greatest of these is Love.

I wanted to make this available to my Bubbe who follows my writing as closely as she can.
Much of this was inspired from reading Lewis but also from a scene in J.R.R. Tolkien's Return of the King, when Eowyn is in the Tower of Healing and Faramir woos her. It takes a long dialogue for her to realize the true state of her heart, but that is a concept that deserves its own post.

A friend of mine also pointed out to me that it is important to not treat love (Eros) as so freely and easily won as Friendship. He is right to warn me on this point, and I want also to warn you. There is a high fear in dating/romance that is unmatched to any other generation, we wait longer than any other generation to get married and also have few if any children. Not all of this is because we are taking too long, we don't have so high a practice of fidelity, which means we are experiencing more heart ache than most generations. Consider how common it is to have an Ex?

Breaking up with someone is not entirely an evil, it is sad and reminds us that this world is not as it should be, full of ruptures, yet I wonder if I can explain to you how much is learned?

Most likely you know what I mean, I wrote this article for a group of women who are strong and brave and fell in love but were abandoned. Yet the love that resided in our hearts for those men killed bitterness every time it arose to choke us. Also, I don't think any of us had any solid notion to blame the men, can you blame someone for being afraid or discovering in himself an inadequacy whether or not you agree in its existence?

I could not. my friends could not. And our hearts beat on, tenderly, painfully tacked with splintered hopes, but not as defeated organs. For myself, I am so glad to have gone through both the joys and the pains of a beautiful misadventure with a good and growing man of G-d. I hope I helped him in his future rather than hindered, he certainly has helped me in finding many of the fears I nursed to be proven groundless. I am a more courageous woman for having known him, which proves the pains were never in vain.

"King of Israel! your model of a woman is a worthy model! But are we, in these days, brought up to be like her?" Charlotte Bronte, Shirley