A poor farm boy's "as you wish" means "I love you" — and she truly loved him back. Image is ™, ©, and ® of 20th Century Fox

You truly love each other
and so you might have been truly happy
not one couple in a century has that chance
no matter what the storybooks say
— Prince Humperdink, The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride has masterful storytelling and some of the most endearing characters to light the screen, but what is its message? True Love defeats all odds and makes us happy. It seems innocent — almost Biblical! But “True Love” is entirely different from 1 Corinthians 13. It is, most emphatically, romantic love — and romantic love alone — not God’s love. And not just any romantic love, but only “True Love”, which is extremely rare.

True Love: A character trait or a god? At first blush, you might think it’s loving someone “against all odds”, in spite of difficulties and challenges. There are hints of this when Wesley questions Buttercup’s faithfulness, but look more closely. Her fault wasn’t that she was unfaithful, but — at the core — that she gave up hope in True Love. She didn’t trust True Love to overcome his apparent death at sea. Apparently, True Love is a powerful force outside of ourselves which deserves our trust.

True Love: A choice or a chance? True Love is not something that happens by an individual’s choice, it happens by chance. As Wesley says, “This is True Love. Do you think this happens every day?” And, as Humperdink says, “not one couple in a century” has the chance of both having True Love for their partner.

True Love: A New Hope? What’s more disturbing than Hollywood producing movies with such a distorted view of love is that they do it because of market demand — teen demand. Teenagers want something to hope for. They want to believe that they will find True Love and that it will bring them happiness and fulfillment in this life. While my tendency is to hope in ministry projects to bring me fulfillment, teens hope in Love — but both are wrong and foolish. And so is the old-school Jane Austen dream of “marital happiness”, which is really just True Love within the bounds of a covenant-promise.

As we will see in Peter’s second letter, the only real Hope for fulfillment and happiness is Jesus’ Coming. Sure, we have foretastes (Jesus’ followers have already entered into “eternal life”), but these are miniscule next to the flood of ecstasy in His Presence and Kingdom. This is what the apostles and 1st century Christians hoped for, filled with anticipation and an I-can’t-wait attitude. Any other hope will not only disappoint, but worse, it will rob us of joy, expectation, and kingdom-mindedness.