True Love Waits to Regather

This Valentine’s Day, the church’s greatest act of affection for others is following health guidelines.

I lived my teenage years at the height of the True Love Waits movement. While purity culture missed the mark in some ways, I was—and still am—grateful for the lessons it provided on two particular virtues: first, the wisdom to slow down long enough to make good decisions, particularly in the face of strong emotion; second, the love to care for my neighbors by seeking their good and not just my own pleasure.

Many of the same institutions that taught me that “true love waits” are failing to speak wisely or lovingly to the current moment. They rush to big gatherings, ignore scientific consensus, and eschew public health guidelines as symbols of government overreach. The tune has changed from “stay home, save lives,” to “well, we’ve waited long enough.”

As someone who was shaped and formed by these church leaders, I feel deeply disheartened watching them prioritize personal freedom over love of neighbor. But while these libertarians have been loud and their lawsuits prevalent, I’ve seen a quieter and perhaps sadder cause of noncompliance at play as well: that of despair.

If COVID-19 might always be with us, the logic goes, what are we waiting for? With all the uncertainty around variants and vaccine effectiveness, why be patient when the thing we wait and hope for may never arrive?

I recognize that despair as something I saw and heard from my ex-evangelical friends who grew jaded with the True Love Waits movement. Many of them threw out the pearls of slow wisdom and love of neighbor in the midst of their eagerness to reject its admitted foibles, failings, and cultural excesses.

I see a similar sentiment lurking in many believers these days: “Why be patient? What are we waiting for? It might all be for nothing anyway.” Read More