Love in Ancient Times

A friend texted me a lengthy text today. I have been contemplating it since then. I hope these perusing words will make you pause and take a step back. Especially in the grand scheme of it all.

Ernest Becker, an atheist author, in his book The Denial of Death, writes that in ancient times romantic love was seldom the basis for marriage. Becker says that modern people don't want to admit to what degree they are making up for the lack of inner spiritual fullness by looking out there for their one true love. He puts it this way,

"We still need to feel that our life matters in the scheme of things. We still want to merge our selves with some higher self-absorbing meaning in trust and in gratitude. But if we no longer have God, how are we to do this? One of the first ways that occurred to the modern person, as Otto Rank saw, was the romantic solution. The self-glorification that we need in our innermost being, we now look for in the love partner. What is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to this position? We want to be rid of our faults. We want to be rid of our feeling of nothingness. We want to be justified. We want to know that our existence hasn't been in vain. We want redemption, nothing less…Needless to say, human beings can't give you that."
In other words, the reason why so many marriages fail and relationships end in heartbreak is because we demand too much from them. We idealize and idolize our partner, looking to them to complete us, only to discover that they have faults just like we do, and lack the power to fill our inner emptiness or satisfy our hunger for love. Only God can give to us and be for us what our hearts truly long for. The gospel is that Jesus Christ came and lived for us, died for us and rose for us in order to give us the justification and redemption that our hearts so desperately long for. He alone makes our lives matter.