Stories in the Bible

In class yesterday we talked a lot about romance and how it has its place in the Bible. What I learned, however, is there are very few (if any places) where it explicitly talks about romantic love. This got me thinking about the use of music for telling stories. Obviously, musicians when writing songs about love in the Bible are stretching a bit. That does not mean the story cannot be interesting to the ear. Honestly, some of my favorite songs in general “paint a picture” or tell a story. Music is supposed to depict real life. Music has a lot of purposes, but telling stories through an artform is undeniably a very powerful one. The problem, however, becomes the insertion of our own human desire for romance and pleasure into a sacred text. We, as humans, make inferences, what if there really was nothing romantic in the story of Ruth and Boaz? What if it was just a man doing his patriarchal duties? We can never be sure of the damage that the assumptions have on people, especially believers. Those with faith in God, however, can assume that their belief in Jesus as Lord can be enough to triumph whether or not they believe Delilah and Samson were really in love or not.