Love is as Strong as Death: Meaning That Overcomes

Song of Songs 8:6,7, “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.”

In my further reading, Viktor Frankl in “Man’s Search For Meaning” noted that he discovered an unassailable truth – that love is the “ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire”. He echoes Paul’s claim that love has ultimate value, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal”. The value of love is best understood when one considers John’s affirmation that “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8b).

Frankl goes on to say, “I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right – an honourable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.””

Though I don't think Frankl had Jesus in mind here yet he correctly discovered that love gives us power. It transcends our suffering and creates an oasis of hope; rivers of life in the dessert as it were. Still, we must recognize times when these rivers can seem hard to find, and some deserts seem to go on forever. Furthermore, suffering often doesn’t make sense to us. We often view love and suffering as polar opposites. How can a loving God allow us to suffer we ask? But for the Christian, with Jesus as the object of our love and we the object of His, love compels us to rest in His promises, rest in His faithfulness, rest in His goodness, and not our understanding necessarily. Isaiah 43:19 assures us, “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Nevertheless there are questions we must ask ourselves; are we willing to see beyond the evil and injustice of our experience of suffering and trust God to subdue and redirect the effect as Joseph demonstrated in Genesis 50:20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Still this hardly seems to address the loss and injustice we witness in the holocaust. But somehow, perhaps miraculously, Frankl does not come off as embittered by his experiences. So the question remains, do we trust God to make our experience of suffering meaningful and purposeful, even redemptive, and are we then willing to embrace them? Will we trust Him to sublimate our experience? Isaiah 35:4, "Say to those with anxious heart, "Take courage, fear not Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you.""

Despite Frankl’s macabre situation he maintains that in circumstances of “utter desolation” when a man’s life no longer makes sense and no longer demonstrates meaningful purpose, where all one’s efforts focus on survival and the preservation of some semblance of humanity, even there one can find meaningful purpose. In the midst of immense suffering Frankl found fulfillment. How you ask. Through the love he carried in his heart for his beloved wife. Frankl was able to surmount the insurmountable. He survived the unsurvivable. Frankl's love gives credibility to Paul’s assertion that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails“ (1 Cor. 13:7, 8a).

Frankl elaborates further, “…perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet” — and the light shineth in the darkness … Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.” Even in the dunghill of his experience Frankl found the courage, strength, and hope to continue through the power of love. A love carried where no thief or corruption could touch it - in his heart.

I remember a scene in Ridley Scott’s movie “Gladiator”(2000) where the character Maximus Decimus Meridius is standing in a field prior to a pivotal battle in Rome’s quest to conquer Germania. He appears battle-worn. The constant demands of command and combat have had its toll. Standing alone in thought, he finds himself escaping to a memory, or perhaps an imagining depicting a more tranquil setting; a wheat field. A place denoting the virtues of productivity and fruitfulness. Perhaps it reminded him of home, of happier times. Times that for him had special meaning, contrasted against a struggle that seemed empty of meaning. Maximus sees a field of wheat waving in the breeze, a testimonial to the sowing of life verses the taking of it as he had become accustomed to. It represents a foreshadowing of the wealth of a harvest to come. A symbol of hope. It offers serenity albeit short-lived, and then the scene changes as Maximus returns in thought to present realities. The disparity between the two scenes mocks our sensibilities, and jolts us into a cold sobriety. His contemplations of a wheat field are contrasted against the devastation and often bleakness of war. Everything is pale and grey. The land is scorched and barren. Much like Frankl's experience, only death seems to exist in this place. But then something catches Maximus’ eye. A very tiny bird sitting on a slender twig looks up at him before fluttering away skyward. Maximus’ gaze follows the bird’s flight path until it is out of sight. It has meaning. He smiles. For a brief moment Maximus has found joy outside of his fantasy, outside of any memory he might hold to. Although ever so briefly, he has experienced joy in the midst of harsh realities. Maximus has found life within a battlefield of death.

So what can I walk away with here? Well for one, Joseph's story shows me that due to God’s commitment of love, suffering can have redemptive purpose and meaning. The gospels teach me that Jesus as my atoning sacrifice expunged my sins and rendered me favourable before God, and subsequently has opened a way for me to know God’s love and draw strength from it. His suffering had meaning and purpose so is it possible that I can experience a meaningful life with promise of a eternal inheritance? Is it possible to conceive that my hardships are not without value even if that value lays behind some distorted and perverse act beyond my control. Frankl teaches me that love, which is not bound by physical circumstances, transcends even the harshest realities. Simply put, life, love, joy, and meaning is not dependent upon circumstances, its dependent upon the source and object of our love, and our willingness to embrace that independent of what we are facing. We experience life, love, joy, and meaning through a function of His love: grace. It was God's grace that Frankl experienced the "victorious yes" as he contemplated life's ultimate purpose, to love and be loved. We are created by love, for love, to love. A perfect trouble free life is not proof of God's love or goodness, rather the meaning God's love affords gives our life value and purpose. Its God's love which gives our life meaning, not circumstances. It's like ‘the forth man in the fire’, a “Et lux in tenebris lucet”, by which Christ’s love outshines our troubles and provides loftier meaning, preserving our dignity in the process. It's His love, demonstrated by His own personal sacrifice that Jesus becomes our beacon and teacher, our hope of glory.

In closing, and in reference to Frankl’s discovery of love’s preeminence, I’d like to offer something to meditate on. I derived this from a couple of scriptures: Romans 5:3-5 and Psalm 139:16.

But we find redemptive purpose and meaning in our sufferings, knowing that love produces hope, and hope does not shame us, because we are the focus of God's love and His love dwells in our hearts through the Holy Spirit’. In all your troubles saints remember God loves you.

Prayer: Lord You saw me before the day I was born and every day and moment that I would experience was laid out before a single day had past. Your provision too was established before the foundations of the world. Nothing escapes Your view and nothing will quell Your love for me. Because I am Your workmanship my value is immeasurable. After all Your hand ... the Master's hand has touched my life. I am never alone, and You will never abandon me. Because You live, I live and my life has meaning.

Quotes taken from - Frankl, Viktor Emil. Man's Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006, p.40, 41.