Adam and Eve

There have been a number of things running through my mind these past weeks and I should probably split them into a few different posts. The problem is I haven’t seemed to be able to post even a little in that time so here goes.

The first thing that must be said is probably the most profound statement ever made. And when I say profound, I don’t mean by me, I mean profound in the whole history of the universe, the whole history of humanity. And it isn’t anything that probably any of you haven’t heard a hundred times before. So why I would even say it now doesn’t make sense to me, but just the other day it hit me again. Like a ton of bricks it hit me. And here is that profound, utterly fascinating and wholly unfathomable statement:

God Loves You!

I know what you are saying, or maybe thinking because if you are saying it then you are probably getting some weird looks (that is if you are at the library or a coffee shop). You are thinking, “Duh! Of course He does!” But here is where I feel a little like Robin Williams.

“God loves you”
“I know”
“No you don’t, God loves you.”
“I know”
“No listen to me son, God… loves… you!”
“I know that”
“God loves you”

“God loves you”
“Don’t f#% with me Jesus, not you”
“God loves you”

We don’t get it. I don’t get it. Every once in a while, on that small island called my mind, I see a glimpse of this reality. And when I do, it is so scary and amazingly wonderful at the same time, that every time, I do just like Will did. See here is a truth that is so far beyond my comprehension that I quickly pass over the depth of the thought. Even now I can’t explain it, not here. This is a thought for people so much smarter than I. People like the following authors whose books that have brought about the second and last of my ideas.

(Lets pause a moment and discuss tonight’s refreshment. I am at my buddy’s, Chris Landry, place. It is an Army weekend and Chris is so incredibly kind each and every one to offer up his home and his spirits. Tonight’s is a 10 year old single malt whisky from The Balvenie Distillery, Banffshire, Scotland. Good stuff. You might remember that I drink it straight, no ice. I love to hold it in my mouth and savor the flavor. A really good scotch goes down so smooth you don’t even feel it. This isn’t that, but it is still good enough to savor. Good enough to hold for a moment, breath deep and then let it trickle down the back of your throat and settle in your stomach. A warm sensation begins deep inside as it melts into me and reminds me of the good old days back in ‘05 when life was simpler. Oh…, what a trip!)

There have been a couple ideas that have been exploring my island recently and meet tonight. The first comes from the series of Eldridge books. When God spoke, He had a plan. That plan was screwed up by its participants and the result was a big mess for all involved. Now it is probably sacrilegious or something to say that The Big Guy was in a mess, but it is starting to appear that way to me. But I don’t want to go into that, our mess is obvious. Eldridge, and now his wife, say that everyone is messed up and guys and girls are both screwed, but in different ways.

A guy is screwed in his strength. His biggest question is, “Do I have what it takes?” He, and when I say he, I mean me, goes through life trying desperately to answer that question. And because we are all in a mess, that answer tries to come from many places, but in the end, only one place knows what the answer is and can hence give it as the ultimate satisfaction of said man, i.e. me. Unfortunately, like Will, we miss the point so often and look at all the false answers instead of The Answer.

Women are screwed in their, well something else, and they ask everyday, “Am I lovely?” And just as sadly as the men, they look for the answer in the myriad of places that would be so willing to sell their dime store excuses to the fallen. In the same way for both men and women, “there can be only One.” So two halves to humanity, two questions. But are there really two questions?

No, there really is only one. “Who am I?” Since the man is intricately designed to be defined by his strength and likewise the women was woven in time to be the climatical being of glory, that one question is foundationally divided at its root. And my question simply is, “Why?”

An answer follows:

I am in the middle of reading “Searching for God knows what” by Donald Miller. (I feel a little guilty because I was at a talk he gave back in late November early December and it was very thought provoking. Normally I would have penned my thoughts for the masses, but there were other things going on and writing had taken a back seat. I wish I could say my car accident was one of those things, but it was at the earliest a week later so I can’t use that great and sympathy producing one.) Only a few chapters in, to be exact, and the theme of the book I have picked up on is one of relationships. This is what Don was talking about a few weeks ago and seems to be his mantra. “We are relational.” We were created to be in relationship. This isn’t a new idea, but here are some thoughts.

If God created us to be in relationships, especially with Him, then it goes without saying that we would be incomplete without them. C.S Lewis says that all throughout the history of humanity we have needed to be defined by something other than ourselves. There is an innate desire to know what others think about us. I, and all these other much smarter people, believe that to be true because that is how we where made. God made me and you to be in a relationship with Him, to be told by Him who we are, and when He isn’t there, we look for the next best thing. So when we ask, “Who am I?”, we are only doing what we were made to do.

Now here is where God did His amazing, His thoughts are higher than my thoughts, thing. In designing us to be in a relationship with Him, he also made man and woman just different enough so that we would compliment and push each other to want that relationship. (Last draw, oh what simple pleasures.) A man needs to know he is strong and a woman, lovely. That can only be perfectly answered by The One that is both perfect strength and perfect beauty, but in our fallen state, we only have glimpses and traces of The Truth.

Moses penned the beginning. He writes about the trees, and the fruit, and the naked humans enjoying their personal existence. But is it all joy? Yes it is, for a time. So then what about the aloneness? The pre-taking-a-bite-for-crime aloneness. It is there, and as Sailhamer through Miller points out, it was a good bit of time. God states that it is not good for man to be alone, and then he proceeds to parade the entire earth before him so that they all can get into the phone book. Guesses are that it was maybe a hundred years. So God says, in his best impression of James Earl Jones, “You need someone, lets slow cook for the next five score and really build the anticipation.” Granted Adam probably didn’t know what was coming, but if he did, he was one patient man. What was Adam doing for that 100 or so years? Working, yes. Keeping busy, no doubt. But was he complete, no.

This is where I start to wonder, “What was God accomplishing in those hundred years?” If I can relate it to my own life, He was making Adam into the man He wanted to be in a relationship with. Adam, like the rest of us, needed to grow.

So God used the waiting for Eve to mold Adam, just like he probably uses the waiting in our, my, life to mold us, me. And this helps answer those two questions. A scenario:

A man needs to know he is strong; he needs that confirmation more than life itself. What better way than to find it in the perseverance of earning the most glorious creation? A woman needs to know she is lovely, more than anything. What better way than to find it in the perseverance of earning the most glorious creation? See how we fit together. If a man doesn’t strive, work, endure, endeavor, pursue, then what is the value of the accomplishment? He has to do all those things. He has to. A woman has to be won with striving, work, endurance, endeavor, pursuit. She has to. I am not saying that a man and a woman complete each other, not at all. I am saying that a man and a woman are tools used to complete each other. We are all tools.

My good friend Anjie honestly asked what a woman should do when it comes to relationships. Things seem to be broken in the whole relationship system, and I have spent a good amount of time talking about what a dude should do, but what about the other 50% of the world. Well, they have to be pursued. Is that easy? It would seem so at first glance. “Hey, boys, here I am sitting on my porch waiting, come, pursue.” In my mind, that seems like the easier road. But ask any girl, and I have, if it is easy to wait, and they will let you know the real truth, sometimes more than once. Heck no it isn’t easy. With each passing day, their question isn’t answered in the affirmative and hence is answered in the negative. Just as with each passing day for a man, their question is answered, “maybe you really don’t have it?”

So they have to be pursued, and in my black and white world, the longer and harder the pursuit, the louder the YES is the answer of the questions on both ends. I am starting to think that the system is harder for the ladies because they have to deal with a class of men that are wimps, that give up well before the questions can be truly answered. I don’t blame them for giving in to early in the downward spiral that is this world. I wish they wouldn’t, but I don’t blame them.

So the next, and last, question is, “is it all worth it?”

Heck Yes!!!

It is tomorrow.

Jason