Look Up: The Love Triangle Is a Holy Pyramid

Here's a warning: This is a nerdy post. It contains books and the rantings of a bibliophile (that's me) and literary allusions and young adult novels and mentions of the ever-popular love triangles. 

So there, you have been warned. Let's move on.

I have some friends who are absolutely outraged by this, but I freely admit it: Any time I get a shiny new book in my hands and prepare to read it... I flip to the last page first and skim over it.

I know, I know, throw your stones; it's okay, I can handle it. ;)

Why do I do that? Because I want to understand from the get-go who I am supposed to like. If I end up liking the wrong person, it's a tiny death when I realize their flaws are too great and they won't be redeemed by the end of the book.

So here are some love triangle books I've read because of their love triangles: Hunger Games, Twilight, The Host, City of Bones, Outlander. I admit to reading even older, classic love triangle books like Jane Eyre (Edward Rochester, St. John Rivers), Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Darcy, Mr. Wickham), Tale of Two Cities (Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton), or Gone with the Wind (Ashley Wilkes, Rhett Butler). The common element among all of these books -- I open to the last page first and skim. This saves me the heartbreak of wrapping myself completely up in a character whose flaws are fatal, and it comes with the bonus of keeping me from reading a book with a tragic ending (unless it's required reading, a la Gone with the Wind or Tale of Two Cities, both of which ended up on my "to despise eternally" list because I couldn't stop crying for days).

To note, in one of the book trilogies I wrote (the Guardian of the Vale trilogy, for anyone interested), there is indeed a love triangle -- but (spoiler, kind of) -- the final page does not include either of the two points that have always revolved around the third point of that triangle. The last page brought an answer that completely satisfied all requirements of a young adult romance, but did not settle for the fatal flaws of either of the two contenders who had been probabilities all along.

The one who "got the girl" came from the outside... but had been there all along.

Interesting, that. Because the parallel in the next paragraph of 1 Corinthians (2:6-10) is pretty cool. But instead of a light romance among flawed humanity, we get reference to the great romance between Jesus and His bride, those who are wise with the wisdom from God, not the false wisdom of this world. Paul says: "We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing" (1 Corinthians 2:6).

Already in this verse, Paul draws the love triangle:

We are one point on that triangle. We are the main character in our own life stories, so go ahead, designate yourself on a point of that triangle, and then watch:

Next point: The wisdom of this age. And oh man, this one's super cute. It looks like -- I don't know -- slicked back, highlighted hair and a business suit, maybe some designer trendy glasses, because look at where our money goes -- higher education, institutions where we learn to be erudite and use all that gray matter to fling around syllogisms and other forms of critical thinking and reasoning.

That's two points of the triangle, so here's the third: The rulers of this age. But we're a democracy; we don't have rulers. True (in the U.S. -- other some places, there are actual rulers). But this point on the triangle looks like... senators, congressional leaders, presidents, state leaders... or, gasp, Twitter rantists (yes, I made up that word), Instagram protestors, Facebook philosophers (Tamara, you're starting to point to yourself. Please note: Tamara has no wisdom that comes from herself).

So now, Paul, we're stuck. We've got a triangle, and all three points are filled in with faulty wisdom. Where does true wisdom come from?

Paul says: "No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Corinthians 2:7-8).

Have you ever wondered why Satan carried through on his plan to crucify Jesus when he had a chance? Didn't he know that doing so would seal his fatal destiny, his eventual and eternal ending in the lake of fire prepared for him and all his followers?

Here's our answer: God's wisdom was hidden from him. God's plan -- "destined before time began" -- was unknown to Satan, and he couldn't understand it. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: 

"'It means,' said Aslan (the great Lion), 'that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a Magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.'" (Go read the book, y'all; it's excellent).

So, since all three triangle points are filled up with not so great pieces of worldly wisdom, where do we look now? How about this?

Look up.

That's right, up above us is an outside point, a point that makes this triangle we've been wrestling with... into a pyramid.

And at the point of the pyramid, we get Paul's words: "However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him' -- But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit" (1 Corinthians 2:9-10).

As long as we're focusing on the other points on the triangle, we're going to get no nearer to wisdom. Because looking up is where the answer is. In my Guardian of the Vale trilogy, the ultimate romance happened when my girl Alayne stopped looking outside her triangle or the points on it and focused instead on what had been there all along -- she just couldn't see it until she looked for it.

Going back to "No eye has seen..."

Y'all, lest we get too big for our britches or think that we know so much: No eye -- no human eye nor any aid to the eye, the most powerful microscope or telescope ever made -- has seen...

No ear -- not even the best devices that science has produced that has brought in sounds from outer space -- has heard...

No mind -- not even the greatest theologians, apologists, or philosophers that this world can produce, not even artificial intelligence, the most "brainy" computers or robots produced by mankind -- has conceived...

...what God has prepared for those who love Him.

But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. If His Spirit lives in us, we know Him. We see Him. We hear Him. We understand the things He wants us to understand.

My kids ask me sometimes: "Mommy, how do you hear God? Do you hear, like, a voice?"

And I say, "No, you hear Him with your heart." And it makes me laugh a little to see them concentrate really hard to try to listen to their heart. 

I know, the idea makes no sense to minds glued to the natural world --

But we have the mind of the Spirit, the mind of Christ. So rather than focusing on those other points of the triangle -- the knowledge and the 'rulers' of this world -- let's look up to the point of the pyramid, that is... to Christ.