On Love and Idolatry

THE STATE OF THE (ROMANTIC) UNION

I recently caught up with an old friend, and we had an interesting conversation about romantic relationships.

Allow me to summarize the essence of her view:

“Your partner must ideally complete you in a profound way, making you challenge your fears and inner darkness, and help you ultimately realize your deepest potential…”

I actually feel that on the surface, this is a noble and romantic ideal. How could one not see the beauty in it?

Furthermore, I believe that for all of its high-sounding idealism, that it is actually quite a common view. I would argue that most people today would agree with this as the definition of the ideal relationship.

So if our culture takes such a beautiful and inspirational view of relationships, why are they so notoriously unsuccessful? Why, for example, do divorce rates continue to soar?



SECULARIZATION AND DISPLACEMENT

Here’s a thought experiment that gets to the heart of my point: Take the above quote, and substitute the word “God” for “partner”. Here’s how it would read:

“Your partner [God] must ideally complete you in a profound way, making you challenge your fears and inner darkness, and help you ultimately realize your deepest potential…”

How did the words “partner” and “God” become interchangeable, so that they both seem to fit into the paragraph?

It’s stunning if you really think about it.

But I think it can be understood through the lens of history and sociology: As our culture becomes gradually secularized and religion loses its formal place in the fabric of our lives, those spiritual needs are displaced into other areas.

With the erosion of formal religion, we have compensated through an ‘over-spiritualization’ of romantic relationships.

So what is the problem with this? Simply that it puts extremely unrealistic expectations on romantic relationships—which can ultimately be corrosive. When our partner fails to meet our emotional, intellectual, sexual, and now spiritual needs, we feel that our relationship is somehow inadequate.

It is astonishing to think how within just a few generations, humans went from a purely utilitarian view of relationships (have kids, keep the farm going), to one so ethereal that it borders on transcendental.


AN ALTERNATE VIEW: CHRISTIAN INTEGRATION

So if relationships today suffer from confusing the vertical (transcendent) and horizontal (human) dimensions of human existence, what are we to do?

Surely I am not saying that we shouldn’t seek a spiritual dimension in our romantic relationships. I am definitely not saying ‘save the spiritual stuff for church and prayer…’

But what I am saying is that we cannot depend on our partner for being the source of these profound inner transformations; which is not to say that the romantic relationship cannot be their conduit.

By sharing our faith life with our partner—a life of prayer, worship, and charity—our romantic relationship can deepen our relationship with God: but it can never function as a substitute for that relationship.

To depend exclusively on our partner for facilitating these profound spiritual transformations is nothing short of a modern form of idolatry, the worship of false gods.

In his day, Moses had to compete with the Golden Calf; perhaps today he would have had to compete with this distorted notion of romantic love.