Is Love In The Air?
By michaela dumlao
Have you seen the most recent season of The Summer I Turned Pretty?
The popular TV-show released its third season this summer on July 16 and managed to amass 25 million unique global viewers within seven days. [1] Belly Conklin’s complicated love-triangle between brothers Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher has enveloped the internet for over a month, and as the series draws to a close, fans around the world are left at the edge of their seats.
As someone who used to have an affinity for romantic movies, TV shows, and novels, I had binge-read the entire collection of The Summer I Turned Pretty books back in 2022, following the release of the show’s first season. Like many young teen viewers, I found myself utterly engrossed in the thrill of each episode. Looking back on my days as a romance enthusiast, the plot of this series isn’t anything spectacularly different from other storylines in the genre. In fact, the plot is fairly cliché: a seemingly ordinary girl suddenly gets caught in a love-triangle between two of her childhood family friends—big whoop. However, I’d argue that the reason why the series grew so popular, as is the case with many other romance series, was the fact it was cliché. Belly Conklin is a relatable character, and the universality of her ordinariness has drawn a cult-following of fans who are enamored with her love life. Woven in the very fabric of the series’ plot is the innate human desire to be fully known and fully loved. People are enticed to watch as Belly grapples with the growing pains of her young adult life, all while she chooses between two prospective love interests that have seemingly put aside their own brotherhood for the pursuit of the same girl.
Whether or not you are a romance-enthusiast, we all have this need for love. We long to be assured that we are seen inside and out, are appreciated, revered, and are served sacrificially. To crave love is part of our human design. We long for mutual affection with an implicit understanding that “love” must be reciprocated. We don’t want a one-sided romance, because we don’t just crave love—we each want to be loved. Hence, why so many romance plots appeal to this invisible tug-of-war, displaying the challenge of this implicit contract. Hollywood’s love interests go back and forth throughout the life of a story, wrestling to establish a mutual, assured love, that is strained by human selfishness, pettiness, and self-interest. Many find themselves enveloped in the fictional world of romance because of this very real battle of self-interest and self-sacrifice. Like many young girls, I indulged in these stories from a young age. I was completely awe-struck with this invisible tug-of-war, with the hope of a happily-ever-after.
Yet I, like so many others, was completely disillusioned by a false sense of love.
The Bible assures us of another type of love; a love that does not wrestle with the self-interest of human beings. Instead, the Bible describes a love that rests upon the interest and character of One. God, the Creator of all things, is described in 1 John 4 as love Himself: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” [2] Here, we find a completely different view of what it means to love and to be loved; love is not a feeling, an action, or an implicit contract of any kind. Instead, we are assured that “God is love.”
He who created heaven and earth, He is love. [3] He who knit us in our mother’s womb, [4] He who knows the number of hairs on our heads, [5]He, who loved the world so much, that He bore the weight of all of our sins as He died the death that we deserved so that we could find real, eternal life with Him. True love is found in Him.
God knew that we could do nothing to earn salvation on our own accord, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” [6] The Lord of Lords humbled Himself and gave Himself wholly for our sake, so that we may inherit the righteousness that we could never earn. He loved us, so that we could love—that is, so that we could know Him and lay down our lives for Him, as He did for us. While the love of the romance genre depicts love as a fragile, implicit contract, we Christians rest assured that we are fully loved, because Love Himself gave up His life for our sake. While the false love of the world promises a flimsy, self-interested, feelings-based system of doing right by others, Romans 8:38-39 assures us that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [7]
Soon after I accepted this true love into my life, I found my previous affinity for romance to be at odds with the blessed assurance I have in the blood of Jesus Christ. To indulge in any show, book, or movie that actively distorts the love I find in God alone is to feed my heart a false definition of love. We ought not to trust our hearts to automatically do what is right; our flesh actively distorts the love we find in Christ, and we are often tempted to seek love from people—God’s creation—instead of from God, the Creator Himself. Our hearts have become so conditioned to the selfish ways of the world that we are often hesitant to fully accept the fullness of the love given to us in Christ. After all, where else can we find a love like the love of Jesus? God’s love sits in stark contrast to any false love we can find in the world. In fact, God’s love is so remarkably different, that it often feels radical and uncomfortable for us to let go of our prior definitions of love.
Yet, Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” [8] Our hearts are distorted by the stains of sin, but in Jesus, we no longer are enslaved to the sin that once held us bondage. For this reason, the Lord calls us to guard our hearts against any distorted view of love. We simply cannot love others apart from the love of Christ, yet our hearts are so quick to flee from the love that paid for our eternity. While we must be mindful of the fragility of our distorted hearts, we can also rest assured that the messy tug-of-war of Hollywood romance is not true love. Love is not in the air—it is found in God alone, and “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” [9]
SOURCES
[1] Maas, Jennifer. 2025. “The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 Premiere Ratings up from Season 2.” Variety. July 28, 2025. https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/the-summer-i-turned-pretty-season-3-premiere-ratings-1236472124/.
[2] 1 John 4:8 NIV
[3] Genesis 1:1 NIV
[4] Psalm 139:13 NIV
[5] Luke 12:7 NIV
[6] Romans 3:23 NIV
[7] Romans 8:38-39 NIV
[8] Proverbs 4:23 NIV
[9] John 3:16 NIV