The world dresses its idols in silk and lace, painting a veneer of innocent affection over an altar that has, for millennia, demanded a far more crimson tribute. We find ourselves once again in a season where the masses are beckoned to bow at the shrine of a curated romance, oblivious to the fact that they are walking the well-worn paths of Lupercalia. While the modern reveller sees only cards and confections, the discerning eye, stayed upon the Word, sees the persistent echoes of a pagan past. We are warned in the Holy Writ to “abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22), yet every February, the culture plunges headlong into a celebration rooted in the wild lusts of Rome, where the “feasts of the wolf” celebrated a fertility bought with the strike of a thong and the shedding of goats’ blood.
History is not merely a collection of dates; it is a record of spiritual warfare. Those ancient rites were never truly discarded; they were simply rebranded for a more “civilized” palate. We observe a society that trains its youth to cast caution to the wind, baptizing impulsive passion as “love,” while ignoring the grim harvest that follows. The world mocks the idea that these ancient spirits still linger, yet the ledger of the natural world tells a different story. Statistical data consistently reveals a “mini baby boom” in the months following this mid-winter festival of license. But in our darkened age, where the fear of God has been cast off, that spike in conception is met with a horrific uptick in clinical slaughter.
The statistics of March and April reveal the true “sacrifices” of the modern era. As the initial excitement of the February festival fades, the abortion clinics see a documented surge in traffic. What was once a child offered to a stone idol in a literal fire is now a child offered to the idol of convenience and “self-rule” in a sterile room. We have not outgrown paganism; we have merely streamlined it. We teach our children that love is a fleeting feeling to be pursued without restraint, and then we stand idly by as they face the devastating spiritual and physical consequences. The scripture is clear: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).
When we celebrate the “holiday of love” without acknowledging its dark lineage and its deadly fruit, we participate in the Great Falling Away. We trade the “Blessed Hope” for a temporary high, forgetting that our bodies are to be the temple of the Holy Ghost. This is not a matter of harmless tradition; it is a matter of life and death, of truth versus a lethal lie. We must stand as sentinels, exposing the works of darkness and pointing a lost generation back to the only love that is pure, eternal, and life-giving—the love of Christ that leads to repentance, not to the clinic. “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11).