Religious Love versus Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Bendrix and Sarah are amazed to find that their love is perfect and immediate—there is no imbalance about which of them loves more. Their lovemaking is intense and fulfilling, which is in one sense the summit of human experience, to find the self mirrored in the other who answers the self’s desires and hopes.

Perfect as it is, this love is bound by human limitations. It is ordinary and corrupt, in Sarah’s religious terminology, complicated by Bendrix’ jealousy on one side, and Sarah’s marriage on the other. Without the clean slate of a pure beginning, Bendrix and Sarah’s love is impossible from the start—it cannot go forward toward marriage, and without that future, it cannot relieve Bendrix of his jealousy.

Against this love, the religious love of God—spirit, the ‘anything that is there’ Sarah prays...