Qohelet's Quest - Part Four - Romantic Love

One of the most powerful tools people use to overcome life’s absurdity is romantic love. In their efforts to make love bear the weight of meaningfulness in life, they distort its true purpose. In self-centeredness, people praise the initial feelings of being in love as the key point, thinking the more they feel that, the more life is worth living. One reason for this is that everyone has feelings of inferiority. Being in love really deadens those feelings.

This addiction to romantic love actually equates to idolatry as shown in 1 Kings 11. The idolatry of the heart, Solomon’s loving so many foreign women, led to the idolatry of his physical worship. Romantic love feels so close to the Truth that it’s so easy to make it the source of worship.

Isaiah 62:5 – “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God rejoices over you.” If having another human being being in love with you gives you a sense of meaning, how much more should the Lord’s love for us do so.

As seen in an earlier message, Romans 8 contains the New Testament understanding of futility. But under Grace, we have a hope. And Paul identifies this hope in the love that God has for us, just as is shown in Isaiah 62: “who shall separate us from the love of Christ? … no created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”