Valentines Day Special

Well many of you probably didn't realize this...but we just passed our 1 year anniversary of this blog on Feb. 6. What made me remember this today of all days is one of my favorite blogs that appeared on the site last year. So in the spirit of V-day here's the best post of '06 from the Foundation blog.

The "Valentines Day Bologna" post:

Well first off let me say that I kinda have a very biased opinion when it comes to Valentine's Day, well actually when it comes to anything, but if you are offended that I bash this corporate-commercial-bologna-holiday, I'm sorry, but this is a blog, haha, read at your own risk.

So my spill on Valentine's Day: The reason why this holiday is no different than any other day to me is probably because I celebrate the holiday as being, "Singles Awareness Day," (a holiday I celebrate everyday, haha) the term which is becoming very popular in Western Culture for Feb 14. This is basically because I never really have had to worry about buying a girl chocolate, roses, and dinner on Feb. 14 becuase I've always had the great joy of being single when it comes to the big V-day (That's right all 21 years of my life, I've never had a gf on Valentine's Day, what a lucky guy). So to my point and how this relates to this God-blog:

St. Valentine's day can be traced back to a Catholic Church feast day in honor of St. Valentine. The important thing to note here is that there are at least 3 different St. Valentine's in the Catholic Encyclopedia who are listed as early martyrs under the date Feb. 14. So we don't know who exactly Valentine is and the day's association with romantic love didn't arrive until after the High Middle Ages. The first recorded, "romantic" written valentine note dates to the 1300's in England and Feb. 14 was traditionally held as the day when birds paired off to mate. So anyways, my point is this, this holiday is a purely Corporate America, Commercial holiday with it's sole purpose of making money. There isn't any kind of Christian connotation which somehow merits this holiday, and in fact, I would bet that many Baptist's would denounce Christian connonations when they found out it was related to the Catholic Church! (Yes that was a diss on Baptists, but I am one, so I can do it). It wasn't till the mid-1900's that people started buying chocolate and sending rose's to their lovers on Feb. 14 and it wasn't until the 1980's that the diamond industry started promoting V-day as a holiday to give jewelry. And why do we send so many cards? In fact there are over 1 Billion Cards sent on V-day and that makes it the 2nd largest "card day" behind another now-commercialized holiday, Christmas.

My point is this: Valentine's day really doesn't mean anything. It's shallow. Its a commercial holiday which helps stimulate our economy. Valentine's day has become nothing more than an experience that we look forward to having once a year. Girl's look forward to the experience of getting cards, flowers, chocolate, and a date. While guy's look forward to sadly enough, 'scoring' with their woman.

Many people have done the same thing to Christianity and following Jesus. We have made it simply an experience. If we don't "feel" something or experience something then we have missed out and we don't know God. Many people turn away from the faith when they don't feel God, or see Him work in 'signs and wonders.' In a sense, we have turned going to Church into something thats not much different than a "shallow-holiday" when we go seeking an experience and not the Divine God of this Universe. Following Jesus isn't about doing it when your all tingly inside or its easy, anyone can do that. We only deepin our faith when we follow Christ through the trials and hard times. So let's not turn Jesus into just an experience and make Him into another once-a-week bologna-holiday!