Divine excess

Griffiths argues ( Song of Songs (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible) , pp. 30-31) that the analogy between human love and God’s gift of love to us is found in “the sheer excess of human sexual love, its radical disproportion to its biological and social functions, its deranged openness to configuration in almost any direction (there are necrophiles, fetishists, practitioners of bestiality, those sexually obsessed with bodies of children, and so on) – meaning that it forces upon anyone who wants to give it serious though the question of why our bodily passions, are sexual desires, are like that.”

The obsessiveness and elasticity of sexual love “show the Lord’s presence by their very excess.” The Song thus “calls for attention to the meaning of its excess – a meaning only finally accountable by seeing its participation in the excess of the Lord’s desire for us – just because it is such a depiction. Whatever human beings attend to repeatedly and with concentrated and excessive passion has written upon it with special clarity the Lord’s presence.”

Here is wisdom: When you see two young people crazy in love, don’t tut-tut in an aged, knowing way. See instead a tiny glimpse of the Lord’s crazy love for you.