VALENTINE OR VANITY? A PILGRIM-WATCHMAN’S TREATISE ON LOVE UNMASKED
“Let the marriage-bed be undefiled.” — Hebrews 13:4
Prologue — The Watchman at the City Gate
Night gathers again around the fourteenth day of February. Crimson banners billow like sails on a sea of feelings; neon cupids wink from shop-windows; a billion-dollar incense of roses and cocoa perfumes the avenues. The world hums a single refrain: Love is in the air. Yet a hush passes through the ramparts where the watchman keeps his post. I lean over the parapet and ask, What kind of love marches beneath those banners? Is it covenant or camouflage, a kiss from heaven or the lipstick of Babylon?
1. The Painted Heart — A Parable
Imagine a village that owned a well dug by their grandfathers. The water was cold, pure, and free. One spring a traveling artist arrived and painted the well bright red. “It will draw more admirers,” he promised. The villagers applauded the makeover until the paint began to flake, curling into the bucket, tinting every draught a sugary hue. Children liked the color, but the elders tasted rust. In time the well was celebrated for its appearance while its water grew brackish. So too does Valentine’s Day repaint love until thirst is forgotten in favor of aesthetics.
2. Excavating the Foundations — From Lupercalia to “Luv”
Beneath the glittering varnish of modern courtship lies the cracked stone of Lupercalia, Rome’s frenzied festival of fertility. Goats bled upon pagan altars; young priests, draped in the skins, raced through streets whipping women who hoped the lash would make barren wombs fruitful [1]. The ceremony venerated Faunus, the woodland god, and the she-wolf that suckled imperial twins.
Centuries later Pope Gelasius wrapped the wolf in saintly robes, replacing Lupercalia with Saint Valentine’s Day yet leaving the date, many symbols, and much of the sensual fervor untouched. Cupid—once Eros, the archer of lust—still flies overhead. Red roses sacred to Venus still spill from florists’ buckets. Even the heart, that ubiquitous emblem, once beat for Bacchus, god of wine and ecstasy [1].
Syncretism did not sanctify; it only perfumed the wolf. As another watchman, Sixbert Sangwa, has warned, painting Babel’s tower does not transform confusion into Eden but disguises Babylon beneath a rainbow glaze.
3. When Commerce Marries Carnality
Our age no longer sacrifices goats; it sacrifices attention. Algorithms stalk desnce stalked deer. The industry of affection corrals every passer-by into predictable rituals: dinners priced like dowries, bouquets clipped before their prime, cards that outsource articulation to a cartoon cherub.
Philosophically, this exchange reduces persons to pleasures. Martin Buber’s I–Thou collapses into I-consume-you. The unique other, mysteriously hewn in the imago Dei (Gen 1:27), becomes an experience leased for a night and reviewed tomorrow. Such commodification is not neutral; it catechizes. When hearts are taught to purchase their ecstasy, why should bodies hesitate to lease their purity?
4. The Mirage of “Special Days” — Love by Appointment Only?
Scripture never prescribes a calendrical carnival of eros. Jesus loves without holiday; the cross was not pencilled between Passover sales. The apostle commands, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor 16:14). Love, in heaven’s ledger, is a daily liturgy, not an annual fire-sale.
Here the danger pierces deepest: by quarantining affection to a single square on the calendar, we unwittingly absolve ourselves from the cost of continual charity. We grow generous for twenty-four hours and stingy for the remaining 8,736. The poor man at the gate receives no chocolate coupon; the widow’s mailbox stays empty. Thus Valentine’s Day, though coated in sugar, can train the heart away from the Jesus who feeds crowds every sunrise.
5. Ethical Critique — Pagan Memory and Christian Conscience
The Lord thunders, “Learn not the way of the heathen” (Jer 10:2) and “Come out from among them and be separate” (2 Cor 6:17) [1]. These commands are not relics; they are boundary stones against spiritual seepage. To drape pagan customs in sentimental lace is to invite termites into the beams of covenant. Paul saw the same danger in Corinth: “The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons… I do not want you to be partners with demons” (1 Cor 10:20-21).
Here lies the ethical fulcrum. If the symbols, myths, and practices of Valentine’s Day still pulse with the ancient heartbeat of fertility cults, then participation becomes complicity. The issue is not whether a rose can glorify God, but whether a Christian can kneel beside altars originally erected for Aphrodite and pretend the smoke drifts heavenward.
6. Anthropology of Desire — From Lust to Covenant
Desire is no villain when yoked to vow. The Song of Solomon celebrates marital ecstasy; but its garden is enclosed (Song 4:12). Modern Valentine’s culture, by contrast, bulldozes the fence and hosts a picnic for every wandering appetite. Virginity is auctioned, commitments are deferred, and purity is mocked as if chastity were an ancient superstition. Yet Scripture says, “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication” (1 Th 4:3).
The pagan backdrop matters because rituals shape appetites. Lupercalia exalted impulsive union; modern Valentine’s echoes that liturgy by glamorizing flings, elevating feelings above fidelity. What begins as flirtation too often culminates in fragmentation: souls fractured, bodies commodified, memories haunted by rooms paid by the hour.
7. Counter-Parable — The Furnace of Covenant
Picture two blacksmiths. One forges swords for parade, edges dulled, hilts ornate. The other tempers steel in hidden fire until it can cleave iron. When war arrives, parading blades shatter like glass; tempered swords sing through armor. So too with love. Passion forged in the furnace of covenant—vows before God, sacrifice, lifelong fidelity—outlasts any paper heart. Passion hammered only in sentiment melts under noon temptation.
8. The Theology of True Love — Calvary’s Cruciform Grammar
Love’s definitive icon is not Cupid’s arrow but Christ’s spear-torn side. “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13). The grammar of agapē reads: I lose so you may gain. Commercial romance, by contrast, bargains: I give to get. Thus the florist’s queue can never disclose the grandeur of 1 John 3:16—“By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us.”
Calvary also unmasks the lie that pleasure defines affection. Jesus loved while nails mocked nerve endings. Therefore purity—in courtship, in marriage, in widowhood—is not the absence of delight but the presence of self-gift. When young disciples steward their bodies as “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19-20), they echo Good Friday more loudly than any rented violin at an overpriced bistro.
9. Practical Watchfulness — How Then Shall We Walk?
Singles, guard the wellspring of your body. Do not trade eternity for an evening. Put flight to fornication (1 Cor 6:18).
Married saints, elevate ordinary Tuesdays with small obediences—dishes washed, prayers whispered—rather than outsourcing affection to Hallmark.
Parents and pastors, catechize children in a holiness broader than hormones. Teach them the long pleasures: loyalty, gentleness, the mystery of two becoming one flesh under God’s hovering Spirit.
All pilgrims, interrogate every custom: Does this draw me toward the cross or lull me toward compromise?
(These admonitions are offered not as talons but as balm; a watchman warns because he loves the city.)
10. Eschatological Horizon — Love that Outlives Calendars
The dark-side analysis from Open Christian Education reminds us that as the age hastens toward judgement, pleasures will intensify even while meaning evaporates [1]. The trumpet of 1 Thessalonians 4:16 already glints on the horizon. If Christ may descend tonight, shall we tinker with festivals that cradle pagan ghosts? Let every ribboned box tremble beneath this question: Will the gift survive the fire of His eyes?
11. Final Allegory — The Bride Who Forgot Her Dress
There was once a bride invited to a midnight wedding. She spent the eve decorating her dressing table with chocolates and perfume but neglected the gown. When the cry rang, “Behold, the Bridegroom comes!” she searched frantically for white linen yet found only crimson wrappers on the floor. The procession passed; the door shut. The chocolates melted into a sticky shadow.
Beloved Church, we are that bride if we gorge on seasonal sentiment and ignore the garment of holiness. Better to appear at the feast clad in simple righteousness than to arrive late, glittering with confection.
Epilogue — Trumpet, Not Violin
I withdraw to the rampart once more. The street below still shimmers. Yet across the night a greater music swells—the shout of the archangel, the blast of divine reunion. When that bar of eternity is struck, every counterfeit chord will fall mute. Therefore, pilgrim of the narrow way, exchange vanity for vigilance. Love daily, love purely, love cruciformly. And if February 14 dawns, let it find you already practicing the eternal canticle:
“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” (Rev 5:12)
Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
References
Open Christian Education. (2025, February 9). Is Valentine’s Day a celebration of love or a mask for pagan traditions? https://community.openchristian.education/p/darkside-of-valentines-day
Sangwa, S. (2025). When Babel becomes beautiful: The parable of cultural blend and the death of distinction. Open Journal of Science, Philosophy & Theology, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17633879