Were we made to be relational?

Welcome blog readers.
I was thinking about what my first GDBS blog should be about, and I think if we are really gonna get deep and figure out the whole story, we need to know a little bit about ourselves. And what better why to do that then to take a look at the very first two people every created Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.

Now the Garden of Eden beyond our usual perspective of the little cottage by a pond on a small plot of land, it was actually very large, possible as large as a continent. Moses said a great river flowed out of the garden, dividing into four rivers; the Pishon, which flowed through Gavilah, a land full of gold, resin, and onyx stone; then the river split into the Gihon and flowed through a land called Cush. And there were still two more rivers, the Hiddekel and the Euphrates. The great river, the river that created the other four, flowed out of the garden. But for such a river to gather enough strength within the garden to be split into four, defining the landscape for four territories, means the land that created the river must have been very large. This ending any thoughts of a little cottage by a pond on a small plot of land.

So in this large, I imagine very beautiful place called Eden, was Adam.
To be honest I envy Adam quite a bit. I have to wonder what it would have been like to have had the kind of relationship with God that Adam enjoyed. Adam and Eve, after all, are the only people in all history who had a good relationship with God, everybody else after the fall, had a pretty screwed-up idea of who God is. But Adam and Eve had the whole Deity before their eyes.
God told Adam his task was to name the animals. So I imagine his days went about naming all the animals (which probably wasn’t the effortless task we sometimes presume, being that there was somewhere between one million and fifty million species around in the time of the garden. And Adam apparently had to name each and every one of them.) And then going on long walks with God through the garden passing by waterfalls and having the most beautiful conversations.
But with all this, having the Godhead with him, Adam was still lonely. This thought comforts me because I realize loneliness in my own life doesn’t mean I am a complete screw-up; rather that God made me this way. I picture the emotionally perfect human being someone who doesn’t need anybody. But here is Adam going around wanting to be with somebody else, needing another person to fulfill a certain emptiness in his life. And even though Adam was lonely. I don’t think he had any self-doubt or any low self-esteem because he had God there.

Just as a plant gets its life from the sun, people must have received their life from God. Jesus talked about how His glory came from God, as though God was shining on Him. The thing that made Jesus good, and the thing made Adam good, was God’s shining on them. Can you imagine something like that? What it must feel like in the soul to have God shining through you at that level? With that much glory, that much love. You would never have a self-defeating or other-person-bashing thought again. It would be amazing!

Now God recognizing this loneliness, this need for companionship, he created Eve. I don’t think he created her right away though. Adam a man who despite feeling a certain need for a companion preformed what must have been nearly one hundred years of work, naming and perhaps even categorizing the animals. It would have taken him nearly a year just to name the species of snakes alone. Moses said that Eve didn’t give birth to their third child till Adam was well into his hundreds, which means they would have had Cain and Abel some thirty or so years before, which also means either it took Adam more then a hundred years to name the animals, or he and Eve didn’t ‘get it on’ for a good, long centaury.

So when Adam finished his work, God put him to sleep, took a rib from his side, and created Eve.
Here is a guy who was intensely relational (Lets just go ahead and admit we are all are very relational creatures, the loneliness thing proves that) he’s in need of another person. And in order to cause him to appreciate the gift of companionship, God had him hang out with chimps for a hundred years. God directed Adam’s steps so when he created Eve, Adam would have the utmost appreciation, respect, and gratitude. And then I think how wonderful it was that God made Adam work for so long because there is no way, after a hundred years of being alone, looking for a helpmate, somebody whom you could connect with in your soul, there would be no doubt that when you found that person in the world, you’d probably wake up every morning and thank God for them.

I used to read the bible and think of it more as a text book, a book of rules, dos and don’ts. But when you set back and read it as the beautiful historical literature it is. You see that these where real people, with real emotions, and these things really did happen to them.

How wonderful it is to see that you and I were created to need each other. The romantic need is just the beginning, we need our friends and we need our families. In this way, we are made in God’s image. Certainly God does not need people in the way you and I do. But he feels a joy at being loved, and He feels a joy at delivering love. It’s striking to realize that, in paradise, a human is incomplete without other people.

So were we made to be relational? Yes, we definitely were.

God made me, He knows me, He understands me, and He wants community

Have a good week everyone! and remember I love feedback, good and bad.
Comment or send your thoughts to: seekingtheunseen@yahoo.com