💭 The Longing for True Love
Everyone longs for it. Some chase it in novels, others scroll through apps, many wonder if it exists beyond fleeting passion. The ache remains: Is there such a thing as true love—lasting, trustworthy, real?
Culture offers sparkles: the soulmate myth, the perfect wedding, the endless thrill. Yet behind the glitter, people ask: Why does love fade? Why do relationships fracture? If love is real, what makes it endure?
This longing is not trivial—it is the deepest human question.
⚠️ The Problem: How Culture Misdefines Love
Culture shrinks love into feeling or product.
- Romantic Destiny: “Find the one” makes love luck, not commitment.
- Eternal Passion: Chemistry and thrill are mistaken for permanence.
- Perfect Compatibility: Conflict is seen as failure, not growth.
- Public Performance: Love is curated for display, not lived in sacrifice.
- Consumer Mentality: People are treated as commodities, not covenants.
Love becomes a sparkler—bright, exciting, but short-lived. True love is a hearth fire—steady, enduring, warming through all seasons.
Because culture misdefines love, the consequences are not only personal—they unravel families and corrode society itself.
💔 The Consequences of Misdefined Love
Misdefined love leaves scars on hearts, families, and society.
- Romantic Destiny → Disposable Relationships: Partners are abandoned when sparks fade; families fracture, children inherit instability.
- Eternal Passion → Burnout: Hearts chase highs but cannot endure the ordinary; marriages weaken, communities grow lonely.
- Perfect Compatibility → Fragility: Differences dissolve relationships; families lose resilience, society loses reconciliation.
- Public Performance → Hollow Bonds: Behind curated images, intimacy grows cold; appearances replace substance.
- Consumer Mentality → Dehumanization: Partners become replaceable; dignity erodes, trust collapses.
The larger consequence is disillusionment and decay. Culture promises love but delivers fragments—passion without permanence, connection without depth, intimacy without sacrifice. Humanity itself is diminished: identity collapses into isolation, morality into utility, society into fragmentation.
🌌 Intrinsic Worth as Love’s Foundation
Love requires recognizing intrinsic worth. Without it, love collapses into utility or sentiment. Secular accounts—reason, uniqueness, rights—prove fragile. If worth depends on capacity, the vulnerable are excluded. If worth depends on convention, it shifts with culture.
Worth must rest on transcendence—something absolute, beyond opinion. Without it, love is built on sand.
🤝 Relationship as Human Identity
If love requires transcendence, it also requires more than principle—it requires a deeper account of who we are. Humans are not solitary beings who occasionally connect; we are relational at our core. From birth, our lives are defined by bonds—with parents, community, creation. Even consciousness is dialogical, formed in encounter.
To be human is to be relational. Identity, morality, and meaning arise in relation. Love is not accessory—it is the expression of our nature.
✝️ Christianity: The Image of a Relational God
Christianity grounds this truth. Scripture declares humans are made in the Imago Dei—the image of God. But God is not solitary. God is love: eternal communion of Father, Son, and Spirit.
To bear God’s image is to be relational. Our origin is communion because our source is communion. Our destiny is communion because our fulfillment is participation in divine love. Relationality is not accident—it is God’s imprint.
Thus, love exists because it is the deepest truth of reality. To love is to reflect the God who is love.
🔑 Christianity as Love’s Ground
Christianity uniquely asserts: God is love (1 John 4:8). Not only does God love—God is love, eternal communion.
- Intrinsic worth is secured in the image of God.
- Relational identity is explained because God himself is relation.
- Origin is grounded in communion.
- Destiny is fulfilled in divine love.
Love exists because it is reality’s deepest truth. To love is to share in God’s life.
❤️ Closing Vision: True Love in Christ
Culture’s sparkler burns bright but fades. Christianity offers the hearth fire—steady, enduring, warming through all seasons. Love is not fragile passion or social convention; it is reality’s structure.
And Christianity goes further: true love is not principle but person. True love is Christ. In his life, love is embodied in service. In his death, love is poured out in sacrifice. In his resurrection, love triumphs over death.
This is not distant history—it is offered now. To believe in Christ is to step into that love, to be embraced and transformed. His love secures worth, heals brokenness, and calls us into communion with God and one another.
The love you seek is not illusion—it is real, and it is offered to you now. To receive Christ is to step into the love that never fails. The longing for true love finds its answer here: in Christ, we discover the love that endures, redeems, and makes us whole.
Apologetics in the Lion City 