We know this deity all too well. Perhaps we are more familiar with his Latin (Roman) name, Cupid, that brings to our minds the pudgy little childish imp scurrying around shooting people in their backsides with his arrows of bliss. But within the subplot of this caricature is one of the most powerful forces in the world. True Biblical love has the most wonderful outworkings but it can be distorted by self-directed motivations, recasting it into something different. Lust, pornography, and marital infidelity, like Eros, are dark shadows of a very real thing. These impostors subtly cast sexual intimacy and the beauty of another into our own mold, squeezing the face of love until it is no longer recognizable. They take the goodness of love, which scripture says, “binds everything together in perfect harmony,” and bend it sharply until it is pointing toward one’s self rather than where it should be pointing, toward the other. Further hints of these distortions of love come from the myth of Eros. Fittingly, his daughter was named Voluptas in Latin and Hedone in Greek, which is where we get our English words voluptuous and hedonism, both of which translate to “pleasure.” There is no doubt that sexual intimacy should and does bring pleasure, but we must ask ourselves whose pleasure are we ultimately seeking.