Millennial Voice

Ordering a cup of coffee isn’t as simple as it used to be. Tiny details must be straightened out before the barista can hand you your beverage. What size cup do you want? Do you want the stronger or the weaker brew? Room for milk?

It only gets more complicated from there. As a former Starbucks barista, I should know. Blending drinks is one quarter art and three-fourths science. The types and amounts of ingredients make drinks different from one another. So does the order in which the ingredients are incorporated. You could say designer coffee is an example of irreducible complexity.

One wrong detail can ruin a coffee beverage, no matter how small. Likewise, each element required to support life on Earth must be present and in the correct state. Every day at RTB I am amazed to discover more and more particulars that need to be in place for finicky advanced, carbon-based life to survive.

Not only does life require the right amount of liquid water, oxygen, nutrients, and resources, it also needs to inhabit a planet ideally situated in an ideal galaxy in an ideal universe. For example, features like the number of stars in the planetary system must be just-right in order to support advanced creatures. But not just any old stars will do for neighbors. They must have the right birth date, age, metallicity, orbital eccentricity, mass, luminosity change relative to speciation types and rates, and on it goes. In the coffee world, this kind of persnicketiness is on par with a grande, triple-shot, extra hot, completely wet caramel macchiato that needs to be remade three times.

Hugh Ross’s book The Creator and the Cosmos lists 66 such vital features of the “galaxy-sun-moon-earth system,” along with the probability that each parameter will fall into the required range for life. As Hugh points out, these statistics provide “evidence for…fine-tuning,” rather than proof of random chance.

As with fancy caffeinated beverages, the plethora of ingredients for a life-friendly atmosphere must be exact. Of course, the fine-tuning doesn’t stop with the environment. Life itself must be orchestrated to a tee, starting with the exquisite cell’s design.

Normally I’m not a television person, but the creators of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory may be on to something that’ll hold my attention for more than five episodes. The series, which experienced a stop-and-go start due to the writers’ strike, revolves around Leonard and Sheldon, two brilliant, but socially inept physicists who find their geeky science world turned upside down by beautiful new neighbor Penny. Due to my current circumstances—working with four scientists and getting ready to marry a sci-fi geek—not only can I identify with Penny, but I also understand and appreciate Leonard, Sheldon, and friends.

It doesn’t take long for entertainment interests to spill over onto the rest of the women in my home. As Mom and my two little sisters giggled over a downloaded episode of the show, the opening title sequence, featuring the song “The History of Everything” by Barenaked Ladies, prompted Jamie to say:

“But the world didn’t start with a big bang.”

To which Lauren and I replied, “Yes, it did.”

Mom looked up in shock. “What about creation, then?”

“Mom, remember you’ve quoted Dr. Ross to us: ‘If there’s a beginning, there has to be a Beginner.’ The big bang was that beginning. God made it happen.”

“Are you saying He BANGED everything into existence?”

Such is the common misunderstanding about the big bang theory. Although it actually presents a remarkably strong case for the biblical God as Creator, the theory suffers from a bad nickname.

Coined by British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle in the 1950s, the name “big bang theory” was intended to be derogatory (much like the British labeling American rebels Yankee doodle dandies in the 1770s). Good or bad, the name stuck.

Dr. Ross helps clear up this controversial theory’s reputation in chapter 13 of A Matter of Days:

The big bang is big, but it is not a “bang” in the usual sense of the word. Bang conjures images of bomb blasts or exploding dynamite, phenomena associated with chaos, disorder, and destruction. In truth, the cosmic “bang” is an immensely powerful yet carefully planned and controlled burst of creation—a sudden release of power from which the universe unfurled in an exquisitely controlled expansion. In an instant, time, space, matter, and energy, along with the physical laws governing them all, came into existence from a source beyond the cosmos.

Since the first inklings of big bang cosmology entered 20th century science, supporting evidence has piled up as rapidly as shoes in a shopaholic’s closet. Yet it’s old news to the Bible, which Dr. Ross explains in A Matter of Days and an article titled “Big Bang – The Bible Taught it First”.

Far from being a tenet of naturalism, the big bang theory provides some of the most spectacular support for the Bible’s creation accounts. As Dr. Ross puts it, “The worst problem with the big bang is its name.”

One of my fellow RTB editors passed around this YouTube clip opposing Oprah Winfrey’s online course centered on German-born spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle’s latest book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. According to Tolle’s website, the point of this best-seller is to encourage people to take “a radical inner leap from the current egoic consciousness to an entirely new one” in order to “create a new, saner, more loving world.”

What intrigued me as I watched the clip was the segment from a previous episode of Oprah’s talk show. Winfrey asserts that it does not matter what you call God or how you follow him as long as it leads you to the same place. In essence, she claims that all faiths lead, or should lead, to the same destination (Truth, God, inner peace, etc.). To say that your religion is the only path to God, Truth, or ultimate reality is to be intolerant of the great diversity of faiths worldwide. It also puts God in a box.

Aside from being very vague, Oprah’s brand of spirituality and religious pluralism is also illogical. Chapter 12 of Ken Samples’ book Without a Doubt is entirely devoted to the question, “Don’t all religions lead to God?” Ken makes several excellent points about the popular notion of pluralism.

1. There are different kinds of pluralism. Social pluralism is “tolerance of diverse religious expression.” This is the kind of freedom that America has strived for over the course of its history. Metaphysical pluralism, on the other hand, means “that all religious truth-claims are equally valid and simultaneously true.”

2. “The world’s religions are fundamentally different.” Sure they may all spout some version of the Golden Rule, but the core values and tenets of each religion radically separate them from each other.

3. Although Winfrey and others try to reconcile religious differences by concluding that they are simply different means to the same end, religions prove far too complex to withstand this kind of reduction. As Ken explains, “Attempts to reduce all religions to their lowest common denominator usually succeed in distorting them. Homogenizing religions is a costly price to pay to eliminate religious diversity, for in the end the religions must sacrifice the very features that make them unique and appealing in the first place.”

4. Many of the different core beliefs of the world religions “remain logically irreconcilable.” Ken uses the identity of Christ as seen by Christians and by Jews and Muslims as an example. According to the law of noncontradiction, Christ “cannot be both God incarnate (Christianity) and not God incarnate (Judaism, Islam) at the same time and in the same respect.” It is impossible for both ideas to be correct. Yet to say that one is wrong contradicts the notion that all religions are right or lead to the same place.

Unfortunately, despite the incoherence of metaphysical pluralism, it has become the ultimate goal of tolerance. I wonder how Oprah and Tolle would handle the troubled hospital patient in this clip from the TV show E.R.

Ominous grey clouds hang over the RTB building as I write this. Maybe they’ll spout some April showers, maybe not. They can’t seem to make up their minds about it. Meanwhile, southeast states like Kentucky and Louisiana continue to struggle against the forces of nature as rain pours down and the Mississippi’s muddy waters rise. (My heart is with my cousin Danielle as she and her husband weather those storms.) As daunting as these situations are, imagine riding on board Noah’s ark during the most devastating flood in human history.

The tale of Noah and his floating zoo has always been a favorite with children, but it causes a good deal of disagreement between adults. Did the water actually cover the entire planet? Or did God limit it to the Mesopotamian region where all of humanity dwelled? These questions seem so simple, even natural, but unfortunately they cause bitter rifts between fellow Christians.

A week or two ago, my coworkers in the communications department and I were pondering the implications of a global flood. As I child I accepted the notion of water covering the whole globe by default. Now, as I chatted with my colleagues, we tossed around new (yet biblically consistent) ideas that called my old assumption into question.

If the flood waters topped every speck of land on planet Earth, including Mount Everest, how did Noah, his crew, and his cargo survive at that altitude without modern oxygen tanks?

What about the length of time it would take to dry up that much water? And how long before plants could start growing again? (Which would’ve been a massive problem for the natural food chain.)

Think about all the sea creatures, especially those living at the deepest depths. Wouldn’t all that added pressure from the flood waters crush them and wipe them out?

As I said, these were just some questions that popped into our heads as we thought about the traditionally accepted views on Noah’s flood. What are your questions/opinions on this classic story?

Check out these RTB resources for more Flood info: Facts for Faith article “Noah’s Flood: A Bird’s-Eye View” by Steve Sarigianis and chapters 18 and 19 in The Genesis Question by Hugh Ross.

When my sisters and I were children, we woke every Easter morning to baskets of chocolate eggs and Christian mementos. The Easter Bunny had made its annual visit! Chocolates were stashed away (where Dad couldn’t find them), matching Easter dresses and white gloves donned, and it was off to church to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior.

These days Easter morning at my house is much less glamorous. We roll out of bed at 4:30 AM without bothering to change out of our PJs and bundle up in blankets to attend our church’s sunrise service. Though we forgo Easter egg hunts, Mom (a.k.a. the Easter Bunny) still sets out baskets filled with books, new flip-flops, and, of course, chocolate bunnies.

Rabbits play a role, however frivolous, in the Easter season, but they also present an opportunity for skeptics to challenge the validity of the Bible. How could such cute bundles of fur damage the power of Scripture? The passages in question come from Leviticus 11:6 and Deuteronomy 14:7. Both verses say that the Israelites were to consider the rabbit as unclean because “though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof” like the cow. The point of contention for skeptics is that rabbits don’t practice rumination the way that cows, goats, and some other mammals do. Is the Bible stating that rabbits are ruminants, when they actually are not?

RTB addressed this question in an old radio news spot (also answered in an excerpt from Norman Geisler’s When Critics Ask). The Hebrew phrase translated as “chewing the cud” can encompass more than just animals with a four-stomach digestive system. It is also mentioned that “rabbits and hares practice refection.” Refection is a process by which the rabbit produces partly digested fecal matter that it eats again in order to glean the food’s full nutritional value. I decided to pop downstairs to ask RTB’s own bunny expert about this rather unsettling information.

When she isn’t helping coordinate RTB outreach events, Laura Lachelt is busy breeding rabbits for sale and competition. For four years, she’s raised a variety of breeds, from adorably small Mini Rexes to her favorite, Flemish Giants that weigh in at a whopping 15 to 18 pounds!

Upon addressing the subjects of rumination and refection, Laura told me that rabbits don’t possess the capacity to throw up, which would be necessary for true ruminants. However, rabbits do excrete droppings (very different from the hard, round pellets you find in your yard or in fields) called cecotropes that the animals eat directly for the same purpose as cows chewing the cud. Bunnies usually do this in the early morning hours while at rest, thus the common name of ‘night feces.’

Wikipedia’s entry on ruminants points out that English translations of the Bible “use the word ‘cud’ in an expanded sense to indicate food that is re-chewed through either rumination or the process used by lagomorphs [rabbits, hares, and pikas].”

Essesentially, refection is the same as rumination in principle, but different in mechanism. There’s no need to fear that Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny have toppled the inerrancy of Scripture. Although, I may never look at the chocolate bunnies in my Easter basket the same way again.

Last July, I spent four days with my college literature professor and her husband at their 200-year-old stone cottage in County Clare, Ireland. The tiny house sat along a gravel road on a small (and very rural) peninsula between the Shannon River and the Atlantic Ocean.

Besides the peacefulness of the area, the main local attractions include the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren. I saw both, but it was the Burren that stuck out most in my mind. My professor told me that many people describe the unusual topography of the Burren as lunar. From far away the rocky terrain certainly looks like a copy of the moon’s surface, but an up close inspection reveals a place with a strong connection to life.

The Burren is a karst landscape, featuring limestone pavements broken up into clints and grikes. It looks as though a giant had raked the rocks in an attempt to farm. The grikes are a cornucopia of plant life. I was surprised to recognize flowers, like harebells, that I’ve seen in Montana.

In addition to the incredible variety of flora, the Burren also features an abundance of archaeological sites, including the Neolithic Poulnabrone Dolmen. Though much less impressive than Stonehenge, this particular portal tomb is older than both Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Egypt. The limestone, on which the dolmen stands, clocks in at around “340 million years” old. As I studied Poulnabrone, straddling a grike full of grass and ivy, I felt humbled by the age and history of the whole place. But how can we be so sure that the Burren really is millions of years old?

Recent research, dubbed the RATE project (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth), by the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) and the Creation Research Society, called into question the validity of radioisotopic dating results that show the earth to be anything older than about 6,000 years. The work was published in two volumes (2000 and 2005, respectively). RATE project researchers put forth four specific challenges to the currently accepted age of the earth, which were reviewed by Randy Isaac, executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation.

Isaac summarizes these scientists’ points in the June 2007 edition of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith:

“The claim that the earth is approximately 6,000 years old is supported by biblical interpretation and from four areas of scientific study: helium diffusion in zircons, radiohalos in granites, isochron discordances, and the presence of trace amounts of carbon-14 (C-14) in pre-Cambrian material.”

The rest of Isaac’s article critiques the RATE project’s assertions. He notes numerous problems with the authors’ conclusions, among them the problems of intense heat and radiation that would have been produced by the proposed “accelerated decay rates during the Flood.” Heat of the magnitude required to fit the researchers’ criteria would have vaporized the earth without “an extraordinary mechanism of cooling.” Although the authors acknowledge this issue, they assert that such a miraculous mechanism must have existed and is yet to be discovered.

However, even if the heat could be cooled enough, the radiation produced by the heat would have caused considerable damage to Noah, his family, and all the animals on board the ark. (I can’t imagine any fish in the water would have been happy about it either.) Presently, no suggested solution to this problem exists, but as with the heat issue, the RATE group maintains that it will be solved through further research. Additionally, the group’s stance would need to be validated by evidence for periodic changes in the otherwise steady radioactive decay rates.

Isaac’s concern is that the RATE team’s conclusions violate integrity in science. They acknowledge that 1) their results present huge difficulties; 2) therefore, their results are not compatible with currently accepted scientific processes; and 3) they agree that there are mountains of evidence for billions-years-old earth. Yet they still draw the conclusion that their own studies support a young-earth interpretation of both nature and Scripture and enthusiastically promote it as such.

This month Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith published the RATE group’s response to Isaac’s criticisms and his reply to them. They insist that, “To weakly assert the significance of this evidence would not only do a great disservice to Christians but also to the advancement of science.”

Yet Isaac again points out that in the face of the evidence in favor of steady decay rates and the proven accuracy of current radioisotope dating methods, the RATE team continues to “postulate accelerated decay rates to accommodate the idea of a young earth.” It seems to me that this is just as irresponsible as reworking naturalistic interpretations to discount the growing evidence for design.

Though scientific hypotheses may waver or evolve, it is a comfort to know that the God who orchestrated the carving of the beautiful patterns in the Burren’s ancient limestone “is the same today and yesterday and forever.”

It’s too bad 10,000 B.C. doesn’t star the GEICO cavemen. Instinct tells me director/producer Roland Emmerich’s latest effects-heavy epic might have benefited from taking itself a little less seriously. Mind you, I haven’t seen the film. Nor do I plan on it. The trailers provided enough intellectual stimulation for this blog, but I’m not willing to bet a $10.50 ticket that it’s as inspirational in full-length form.

As I was eyeing the 10,000 B.C. poster on the bus stop across the street from RTB headquarters, curiosity tickled my mind: “What really happened 12,000 years ago?” For answers, I turned to The Genesis Question by Hugh Ross.

It turns out the 10th millennium B.C. was an important time in history, not for its hunky cave-dwellers or computer-generated battles, but for the intense environmental changes that geographically separated people groups across the world. A small window of opportunity existed for early humans to migrate from Asia to the Americas. The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans made sea voyages virtually impossible; only a sufficient land bridge would have made such an excursion possible.

About 14,000 to 11,000 years ago, the Bering Strait, a fifty-mile expanse of deadly cold sea between Alaska and Siberia, became the Bering Land Bridge. Hugh notes that that brief period “was especially favorable for human migration.” The window slammed shut approximately 3,000 years later when melting continental glaciers caused sea levels all over the world to rise at astonishingly rapid rates (“seventeen feet per century”). This not only cut off the Americas from the rest of the world until 1492, but also increased the distance between places like Australia and Britain from the Asia/Europe continents.

These drastic environmental transformations gain biblical significance in the light of Genesis 9-11, which contains the story of the Tower of Babel. In order to prevent a recurrence of the extreme Pre-Flood violence, God “confused the language of the whole world…[and] scattered them over the face of the whole earth.” Earlier in Genesis 10:25, Moses noted that Shem’s descendant Peleg was named so “because in his time the earth was divided.”

In The Genesis Question, Hugh points out that Peleg’s life falls within the time period (around 11,000 to 10,000 years ago) when the sea levels were rising to destroy the land bridges that had allowed such extensive migration as the anthropological fossil record shows. (This does not claim that Genesis says how the earth was divided.)

Wikipedia’s entry on the 10th millennium B.C. observes that the change in temperatures around 10,000 B.C. improved the climate on earth, so that about 400 years later, “large amounts of previously glaciated land [became] habitable again.” It looks like God used natural means to provide a way for the migration and geographical separation of humankind in order to encourage obedience to His commands and to limit the evil resulting from human collaboration.

As far as 10,000 B.C. the film goes, the rating on rottentomatoes.com is dismally low. Apparently, not even the stampeding woolly mammoths, freakish terror birds, or menacing saber-toothed tigers can save it from critical extinction. (For interesting info on these legendary beasties see here.)

Personally, I love action-adventure movies (can’t wait for Indiana Jones to return this May), but 10,000 B.C. is an epic; and it seems that in the film world, epic has become synonymous with pretentious and looong.

I’ll admit that I am a little disappointed that 2008 is a leap year. That extra day in February pushed my desired wedding date, October 20, from Sunday to Monday, like too many people elbowing each other for more space on a crowded couch. Happily, there are plenty of other weekends to choose from in October. I figured if I was going to adjust my plans to suit the calendar, I might as well find out what exactly leap year is. My subsequent research unearthed more intriguing tidbits of information than I anticipated. I apologize in advance if this is old news for some of you; it was new news for me. It’s amazing what you can learn on Wikipedia.

The RTB calendar hanging on the wall of my cubicle is a Gregorian calendar. Although it was devised by an Italian doctor named Aloysius Lilius, this revision of the Julian calendar was named after Pope Gregory XIII, who officially decreed it on February 24, 1582. By adding an extra day to February every four years, the civil year compensates for falling almost six hours short of the solar year.

(An exception to this rule: century years cannot contain a leap day unless they are divisible by 400. For example, 2000 was a leap year but 2100 will not be.)

The whole point of Lilius’ project was to realign the vernal equinox with March 21 as much as possible so that Easter could be celebrated on the Sunday after the 14th day of the lunar month that falls on or after March 21. I’m not quite sure how that worked out this year, but I am pleased to now understand why Easter seems to be all over the place.

In any case, despite the corrections made in 1582, the Gregorian calendar clocks in at 365.2425 days, while the vernal equinox year continues to fluctuate in length! This stunned me. I had no idea that the solar year could change. Turns out the gravity of our neighbors (the Moon and planets) contributes to Earth’s slightly irregular orbit around the Sun.

Further research in chapter 16 of The Creator and the Cosmos revealed the rotation rate of the earth changes, too. Appropriate planetary rotation rate is another key to sustaining a habitable environment. If too slow, the difference between the temperatures of day and night would be too great. On the other hand, a faster rate of rotation means a higher velocity of atmospheric winds, such as that of Jupiter. Katrina would feel like a hair-ruffling blustery day compared to the monster hurricanes on the solar system’s largest resident.

Given the disastrous consequences of inefficient rotation rates, why would God allow Earth’s rotation to slow down? If He didn’t permit this phenomenon to occur, the surface temperatures on Earth would not be sustained at levels necessary for advance life-forms. But the rate of change must be exact as well otherwise the weather would run awry. I’m beginning to suspect that we humans are rather delicate creatures.

Wikipedia’s editors came to a radically different conclusion from me:

“The number of mean solar days in a vernal equinox year has been oscillating between 365.2424 and 365.2423 for several millennia and will likely remain near 365.2424 for a few more. This long-term stability is pure chance, because in our era the slowdown of the rotation, the acceleration of the mean orbital motion, and the effect at the vernal equinox of rotation and shape changes in the Earth’s orbit, happen to almost cancel out.” (emphasis mine)

As for myself, I don’t see that “pure chance” has anything to do with the delicate balance between the length of the solar year, the rate of rotation, and the rate of change in rotation. In The Creator and the Cosmos (page 196), Dr. Ross calculates that the probability that planetary rotation period and rate of change in planetary rotation period will fall within the range required for life is .1 and .05, respectively. That’s one unforgiving margin of error.

That’s also one thing I’ll be grateful for while on my honeymoon, drinking in the glorious autumnal weather of Virginia.

As a public school student, I sat through many biology class lectures on the naturalistic origins of life. It made me angry. It contradicted everything I had grown up believing about the biblical creation accounts, but I was unequipped to properly respond to my textbook, teacher, or the class atheist. Consequently, I distrusted science. Things like the ancient fossil records were filed under “F” for “false” in my book. I didn’t know I was throwing away powerful evidences for the validity of the Bible’s testimony.

The prevailing insistence on the separation of faith and science in our culture leads to a circling of the wagons, so to speak. Atheists and others holding naturalistic worldviews huddle around science, leaving faith in God to the ignorant and unreasonable portions of the population. Meanwhile, Christians gather around their faith in “fear that science research may someday uncover some ‘new fact’ about the universe, earth, or life that clearly contradicts the Bible’s message.” In some cases, as in mine, the only science that believers trust is the work of other Christians.

In chapter 18 of his book A Matter of Days RTB’s Hugh Ross outlines the major reasons for disdain of secular scientists and their discoveries:

1. Fallen Man Unbelieving researchers cannot properly interpret the facts of nature because sin clouds their intellect and judgment. Some young-earth creationist leaders, like James Jordan, also include old-earth proponents in this category.

2. Fallen Earth Due to the presence of sin, the earth no longer reflects the glory of God in a reliable manner. The Bible is the only solid source of truth. This essentially flushes all of science down the drain.

But denying demonstrable natural phenomena only denies Christians access to valuable support for the claims of the Bible. As I mentioned earlier, I disbelieved the fossil record though all the while I was missing out on the very equipment that could’ve helped me in biology class.

According to naturalistic origin-of-life explanations, organisms evolved out of a prebiotic soup that contained proteins and other molecules vital to all life-forms from single-celled bacteria to Charles Darwin. However, the fossil record consistently undermines this theory in two ways. First, it displays a glaring lack of transitional forms between species. This was my principal objection to the fossil record while in science class—I just didn’t recognize that meant the very same information supported the Bible! Secondly and consequently, the record repeatedly shows that complex, fully formed organisms, including modern humans, appeared suddenly instead of gradually. This is exactly the picture of the creation process told in Genesis 1-2. (Some evolutionists try to explain this with punctuated equilibrium.)

Hugh concludes, “The work of secular scientists is a blessing, not a curse, to Christians. … [It] must not be thrown away.”

God Himself points out the reliability of nature as a testament of His majesty and love in Job 39-41. He created the natural world and authored Scripture, so there is no reason to fear that science will somehow falsify the Bible.

I only wish I had realized that eight years ago!

Would you believe Valentine’s Day décor and paraphernalia began popping up in stores before Christmas ended? The over-commercialization of February 14th has become a thorn in the sides of many—inducing such backlash movements as Anti-Valentine’s Day and Singles’ Awareness Day (now generating revenue markets of their own). Somewhere underneath the candy hearts and Hallmark cards, the origin of Valentine’s remains a murky mystery. I thought about entertaining you with a summary of the holiday’s back story, but I can’t make heads or tails of it. Suffice to say, the history of Valentine’s Day is a mishmash of Christian and pagan lore, wherein fact and legend blur together. In this case, it may be better to “print the legend.”

This year I’ll be celebrating February 14th with my fiancé as we complete the homework for our marriage preparation class accompanied by Chinese take-out and Casablanca. Last week, the class assignment asked us to pick out some Bible verses that we felt supported our marriage. Ephesians 5:22-33 emerged as a favorite.

In recent decades, the institution of marriage has endured ridicule and attack from every angle. Amidst dismal divorce statistics and “alternative lifestyles” agendas, it is so easy to forget about the sacrament of marriage. I am not Catholic, but I believe a vital lesson exists in the idea of considering marriage as a sacrament.

Dictionary.com defines sacrament as “something regarded as possessing a sacred character or mysterious significance.” As the originator of marriage, God highly values marriage between a man and a woman. He celebrates the beauty of physical intimacy within the marital context in the Song of Songs (it’s enough to make you blush Valentine red!) and provides careful instructions on how husbands and wives should treat each other (1 Peter 3:1-7).

Most importantly, He reveals marriage’s purpose as a special allegory for the relationship between Christ and the church. This puts a whole new spin on the Song of Songs! In his book Without a Doubt, Kenneth Samples explains that “sex is a symbol of a greater spiritual intimacy between God and mankind.” But the allegory encompasses more than just physical lovemaking. As Paul describes in Ephesians, the structure of the relationship between husbands and wives correlates to the way Christ interacts with the church.

Being a literary-minded person, I love the symbolism that my marriage to Darren will embody. When I think of our union in that context, it transcends all the cultural stigmas and Hollywood flippancy. It becomes something of immeasurable worth, something that participates in God’s purpose for humanity. It just makes me stop and think, “Wow!”

Happy St. Valentine’s Day!