R: Cupid's Arrows Have No Direction

In his Eclogues, Vergil coined the famous expression amor omnia vincit, or “love conquers all.” It was his time and culture that introduced the personification of love as Cupid, a youth with a bow whose arrows fill those they pierce with unquenchable romantic desire. Whims and vendettas spurred the mythical Cupid to loose his arrows, often causing heartbreak and misery to those unlucky enough to be lovestruck. Clearly, the Romans did not conjure Cupid from thin air–the unhappy effects of broken relationships are painfully apparent every day. The pangs of love can feel random and cruel. And the situation has become worse since Vergil’s day: our culture is characterized by extraordinarily high expectations for romantic relationships. We are an ocean of people looking for The One. Cultural messaging insists that everything will be made right once we find The One: in a famous scene in my favorite Disney movie, Tangled (2010), Rapunzel sings, “I’m where I’m meant to be … now that I see you.” There is a sense that we are not where we are meant to be, that the world is profoundly topsy-turvy, while we lack true love’s kiss. 

The affirmative will condemn the search for The One as dangerous and antithetical to conservatism. Modern westerners don’t expect to be reasonably happy in our romantic relationships, we expect to be utterly blissful. And when bliss proves fleeting, we are crushed and our relationships shipwrecked. The affirmative may point to Princess Anna in Frozen (2013)–her headlong desperation to find The One nearly resulted in the overthrow of Arendelle’s government and her own murder by her erstwhile lover Prince Hans. Finding a spouse is not a matter of searching the world over to find The One but simply a matter of building a committed relationship with someone of the opposite sex who shares one’s core values. God is not a matchmaker; one can serve him just as well in one possible marriage as in another. The crushing burden of finding Mr. or Ms. Right is removed when we lay aside our impossible standards and commit to one of the many people God has put in our path, even if the fireworks and storybook romance are lacking. 

The negative may argue that the cultural messaging around the search for The One points to a deep and genuine human longing for true romantic connection. We should not sterilize romance by reducing marriage to a child-producing compact or economic contract; rather, we should unabashedly prioritize passion and romantic spark in our dating and marriage. There is more danger in settling for the wrong person than in waiting for the right one. The affirmative may point toward the Biblical story of Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 24), one of the model marriages in Scripture (and one of the only monogamous

marriages in the Old Testament), when God very directly chose a particular woman to be Isaac’s bride, going so far as to compel Abraham’s servant Eleazar to go on a quest to a distant land to seek out Rebekah. When Eleazar arrived, God gave him several tests to determine whether Rebekah was the right woman for Isaac, all of which she passed with flying colors. While God may not manifestly tell us whom we ought to marry, by prayer and his grace we can seek the wisdom to discern who The One might be. “I’ll know her,” one might say, “when I see her.” 

Should we wait for The One or simply choose one? Will you wait for true love’s kiss, or will you reject this notion as Disney propaganda? Love may conquer all, but is it best characterized as a pillaging army destroying everything in its path, or as a skillful assassin seeking out a lone target?