Most of the time, I am very eager to read books. For example, right now I have at least four or five books en route and two more that I am trying to finish reading and review in a somewhat timely fashion. In fact, it is rather difficult for me to remember how many books I will be reading, as sometimes the books take long enough to arrive that I forget that I had asked for them in the first place (which is probably not a good thing, I know). That said, something happened this past week that is very unusual: I got a list of books to request, and did not like a single one of them.

Of course, there are some reasons for that. The biggest reason is that all of the books were “Christian” romances. While I will own to being a romantic sort of fellow, very interested in seeing what sort of romance God is writing in my life, I’m just not a big fan of the sort of romance novels that seem to be published by the thousand. Now, I know plenty of people who are fans of those books, and who relish the cliches and the slight changes of convention each author makes to a given story to add their own unique spin on it, and I can appreciate that, but for the most part, the results are just not appealing to me. This is not to say that I hate all romantic novels (I am, after all, an openly avowed fan of Jane Austen), but rather that for me to like a romance novel there generally has to be something more than merely a contrived meet cute.

Perhaps in many ways I think too often of my own life and wonder what sort of monstrosities would be enacted by someone seeking to make a romance out of the unpromising material of my own life. I cannot pretend, for example, that none of the usual cliches of a romance novel could apply in my own life, as the good people of Portland could certainly with justice consider me a mysterious stranger with a dark past. That said, though, most romance novels are about wish fulfillment (particularly the wish fulfillment of women) and few of them take a critical and reflective eye to reality (which is why I like Jane Austen’s works so much–she shows the attractive power of Darcy’s wealth as well as his nobility in character to Elizabeth Bennet, and when marrying off couples she does not correct the injustices of others via a deux ex machina, even though her novels show clear examples of providence).

It is hard when dealing with romances (or bromances, like Judd Apatow films) without falling into one of two extremes. Of the extremes is to make everything so cliched that the portrayal loses all touch with reality, as it turns people into two-dimensional figures, either good or bad, and it implies a too facile operation of divine justice, which in many cases is simply not administered in this lifetime. The other extreme is to take so much time focusing on the awkward and unpleasant and uncomfortable that the resulting cynicism and darkness protects the viewer from the threat of genuine emotional intimacy. When we seek to distance ourselves from either the reality of darkness and evil or the reality of genuine vulnerability and connection, what we have is a caricature rather than a genuine portrayal. As difficult as it is to capture the magic of love (for it is indeed the most powerful sort of magic that any of us will ever mess with) as well as the nature of reality and the constraints it places on us together, we are all the richer for having wrestled with that tension.

And that is the way that life is. So long as we try to pit two elements in tension against each other, what we will end up with is neither of lasting value nor is it ultimately fulfilling, because it is missing something vital and important in its design. However, when we face up to the tensions of our lives, and the many pulls that we are under, then we can create works of lasting value, as we will have our head lodged fully in the clouds while our feet are securely placed on the ground. So much in life depends on a harmonious balance between two elements that can be considered as opposites, whether we are talking about the head and the heart (both of which I would like to claim that I have in large quantities), maturity and innocence, strength and vulnerability, mystique and openness, justice and mercy, tender affection and ironic distance, and many other qualities besides these.