God says, "It is not good for the man to be alone." This is a little odd because technically the man is not alone. God is with him, the animals are with him, and he is surrounded by a lush, green garden of perfection. Yet, "It is not good for the man to be alone."
I suspect that you know just what God means. After all, you have probably had your moments of loneliness and isolation even when surrounded by people. A widow in my congregation who lost her husband years and years ago, stills speaks regularly about how lonely she is without him. Regardless of all her vigorous church activity, strong spirituality, and faithful prayer life, God somehow isn’t enough. Would it be appropriate or wise for me as her pastor to tell her that she should stop feeling lonely because God is with her? I don’t think so. Yes, we need God in our lives first and foremost, but we need more.
I don’t think this widow’s experience is unique. Many of us feel lonely——sometimes even when we are surrounded by God’s goodness we feel lonely. Perhaps that is how you feel today, or perhaps you know someone who does. Somehow, we need more than just God in our lives.
We need more than animals too. Now, you may want to argue with that because many of us have animals as our "best friends." We are willing to pay big bucks for the care, feeding and pleasure of our animals. In my experience, one of the most common questions that kids ask about heaven is, "Are there animals in heaven?" Yes, we love our pets. Yet, even while the man is surrounded by animals, the scriptures say, "It is not good for the man to be alone."
What are we to conclude from this? Well, to start with we must recognize and acknowledge that simply having God in our lives, or simply surrounding ourselves with our pets, is not good enough. We need more. It is not good for us to be alone with just God and the animals. We need more. As the old saying goes, "No man is an Island."
Some of you may be familiar with the movie entitled, Castaway. In this movie Tom Hanks plays the part of a FedEx employee named Chuck. Chuck’s Federal Express plane crashes and he is stranded on an uninhabited Island in the Pacific. He quickly discovers that he is completely alone on this island. He has no companionship. The plane’s pilot washes up on shore, but the pilot is dead. Chuck buries him. All Chuck has are the soaking wet Fed Ex packages from plane wreckage. He carefully stores them away, but when he recognizes that he may be on the island for a very long time, he begins to open the packages. He finds little of use. He throws a Wilson brand volleyball off to the side. He is all alone; who would he play volleyball with? He is a castaway—all alone. It is not good for the man to be alone.
Having established that it is not good for the man to be alone, our scripture passage now goes on to explore what the man needs. The man needs a helper suitable for him. We human beings need suitable helpers. In scripture this Hebrew word translated "helper" in English is most often used about God. God is our helper the Psalmist says. But God in one significant way isn’t "suitable" for us. After all, God is God and we are not. God is the creator and we are creatures. God is wholly other. Whatever relationship we have with God, even if it be an intimate relationship—a close personal relationship, a relationship like the first man had with God—it remains an unequal relationship between a sovereign Almighty God and mere creatures. We are not on equal footing with God. No peer relationship can be developed with him. So, although God is our helper, he is in this respect not suitable. A suitable helper, a suitable relationship, needs to be one with a fellow human being.
Animals also are not suitable for exactly the opposite reason that God is not suitable. God is not suitable because he is exulted above us, beyond us and over us; Animals, on the other hand, are under us, ruled by us. Animals are not created in the image and likeness of God. They have not been given dominion over the earth. We can develop wonderful partnerships with the animals. We can and do develop close relationships with animals. But they are not our peers. We should care for them, treasure them, protect them, but they are not suitable helpers. We need more.
Neither God nor the animals are the kind of suitable helpers that Scripture has in mind for us. The sort of helper that scripture has in mind is an equal partner to share with us in our lives and work. But such equal partners are not always easy to come by. In Scripture Adam and God looked at all the animals; they are all named by Adam; but, for Adam no suitable helper is found.
How do we find a suitable helper? When we feel all alone—when we lack intimacy in our lives and relationships—what do we do? Many of us do what Chuck, the castaway on the deserted island does. Remember the volleyball that Chuck set aside as useless? Well, that volleyball becomes Chuck’s best friend on the island. It happens by accident. Chuck rubs the palm and fingers of his hand raw trying to start a fire and then in anger he picks up and throws the volleyball. His bloody handprint forms what with a little imagination could be the rough outline of a face on the ball. Chuck looks at the ball and begins to envision a face. He sets to work painting eyes, a nose and mouth on the ball in his own blood. He then sets the volleyball on an old stump and appropriately names it, "Wilson." Throughout the rest of his time on the island the volleyball, Wilson, is his closest companion.
Intimacy—how can we create intimacy? Usually the first tendency is for us to look for it anywhere we think we can find it. We hunger for intimacy; we thirst for it. And when you are hungry and thirsty you will drink and eat just about anything. And so it is with intimacy in the human race. We will reach out for just about anything. We lust after pornographic images on our computers, we desire the husband of another woman. We talk to our houseplants and pets, but do not know our neighbor’s names. Intimacy—it is illusive. We try to create it, but so often miss it.
So where does intimacy come from? Look again at our scripture passage. The man is completely passive while intimacy is created for him. Did you notice that? It is God who takes all the action in the text. It is God who speaks saying, "It is not good for the man to be alone." This is God’s observation, not man’s. God says, "I will make a helper suitable for him." The man remains mute. God also does the operating in this passage. God causes the man to fall asleep; God takes a rib from the man and forms it into a woman. God is doing the creating in the text. Finally, it is God who brings the woman to the man presenting her before him.
The man, in the meantime, is completely mute. He says nothing during the creative process. You will also notice that as is so often the case when work needs to be done, the man is taking a nap. The man is asleep during the whole creative process. Lest we think that Adam has anything to do with the creation of his intimate partner, God causes him to sleep during the whole operation. Finally, the man does not take the initiative going to the woman, but instead he simply awakes and receives the gift of God.
It is here in God’s creative activity and our reception of God’s gift that we find the guiding principle for the gift of intimacy. God creates; we receive. It is God’s job to create; it is our job to respond. God is the creator and we are creatures. God gives; we receive. And so it is with the gift of intimacy. God creates fellow human beings who surround us and give us opportunity for intimate human relationships. It is God who gives us co—workers and friends, spouses and children, parents and siblings, grandparents, uncles and aunts. It is God who gives us one another and the potential for great and good intimate relationships with others. That’s his job. It is our job to receive this good gift of intimacy.
But how? That’s the million dollar question. How in the midst of our world of broken relationships, false intimacy, and lonely people do we receive God’s gift of intimacy? As we wrestle with that question, let me take you back to Chuck, the castaway, and his friend Wilson, the volleyball. After a long stay on the island Chuck finally manages to get off the island on a make—shift raft. He takes Wilson with him. But out on the open seas Wilson is lost. Chuck is devastated, crying out "Wilson!" Wilson!", but Wilson is gone. This scene is one of the climatic scenes in the movie because after Wilson, Chuck’s self—created friend, is lost, Chuck is found by a passing ship. The rest of the movie details Chuck attempt to reconnect and rebuild intimacy with other human beings.
Unlike Chuck most of us have not been stranded on a deserted island. But, like Chuck, many of us need to reconnect and rebuild intimate relationships with our fellow human beings. How do we do that? Let me suggest two concrete actions that we must take in order to be good recipients of God’s gift of intimacy.
First, we must look to what God has given us in order to find intimacy. Look to God—not yourself, or Hollywood, or your culture—to find intimacy. In our text, Adam does not try to manufacture completeness and intimacy with the animals or any other part of creation. He simply waits for a fellow human being to be brought into his life. He looks to God.
Now the reason this is so important, is that too often we won’t look to what God has given us. We need to look at what relationships God has already blessed us with. Who has he placed around us? So many of us, don’t look at what God has given us. Instead we look around at what we wish God had given us. Many of you who are married know what I am talking about. A real problem in marriage is a lack of contentment with the spouse with which we have been blessed. We do not focus on the blessings, instead, we focus on faults and failures and weaknesses. We begin to look around a say, "Man, oh man, why don’t I have a spouse like so and so." "How come my husband can’t be more like this or my husband more like that?"
Since we are talking about intimacy broadly today, let’s recognize this problem in our other relationships as well. In politics, we always seem to want someone who isn’t running for office. I heard someone a couple of months ago say that on every ballot there ought to be a check box for "none of the above." In business this unhappiness happens when management blames the workers and the workers blame the management for any problems they are having. In schools the students think the teachers are the problem; teachers think it is the students; and both of them think the problem is the administration. We see this sort of negativity and lack of satisfaction in our relationships in our churches as well. Pastors grow tired of their churches. Pastors think, "If only I had a better church. If only my people were more visionary, then we could do great things together." Heaven knows that it is not only pastors who think this way. Church members wonder, "How did we get stuck with this pastor—couldn’t we do better?"
You see the problem so often is that we are not looking to God. We are not looking to what God has given us. Instead, we are looking to what God hasn’t given us. This happens if we are single and not happy being single. It happens when we are parents and our third child dies and we feel cheated and robbed by God, somehow forgetting or discounting our other children. It happens to couples who can’t have children and in their disappointment find that they are growing apart from one another. In short, many of us know what it is to be disappointed in our relationships because we are looking everywhere else for fulfillment, not looking to what God has already given us.
Look to God for intimacy. Don’t try to manufacture it for yourself. A great many problems happen because we decide to find intimacy on our own. A married person thinks that they will find intimacy outside of their marriage and so they have an affair. A single person thinks, "I can’t be celibate," and so they search for intimacy in the bedrooms of various individuals, only to be lonelier and emptier than before. A person struggling with their sexual identity thinks, "I have to find intimacy somewhere," and so rather than looking to God and struggling with what true intimacy means for them, they simply dismiss God and his standards. All of us, single, married, homosexual, heterosexual, divorced—whatever our status—we must be looking to God for intimacy.
One of the best ways to make sure we are looking to God for intimacy is to also make sure that we are doing the second thing that we see Adam doing in our text. That is, he celebrates the intimacy with which God blesses him. We must celebrate the intimacy God gives us.
Adam wakes up to see the good gift of God, Eve, who becomes his spouse, standing in front of him and he utters the first human words. These words are not simple prose or some dull speech; instead they are beautiful words of poetry. He exclaims, "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken from a man." With these celebrative words Adam embraces God’s good gift of intimacy.
So, if you have a mom or a dad; if you have a spouse or children; friends or good neighbors; then celebrate what God has given you. Let me tell you, if you don’t celebrate your relationships, then at some point you will begin to mourn your relationships. If you’re not celebrating your intimate relationships, then you are setting yourself up to be unhappy, unfulfilled, and eventually without intimacy. Celebrate what God has given you as you look to God.
Some of you may be thinking, "Well pastor, it is fine for you to say look to God for intimacy and celebrate the intimate relationships that God has given you. That’s fine if you’re in a healthy marriage and your spouse doesn’t abuse you or cheat on you or if your children respect and honor you, or if you have good neighbors and co—workers, but what about those of us in lousy relationships? What about those of us with nothing to celebrate?" Well, I don’t want to be simplistic in my answer here, but I would suggest that what you need to do in a case where your relationships are strained or even broken, is to go back to step number one. That is, go back to God and look to him.
Just a few months ago I spoke with a young woman from my church that had lost three of her grandparents in a year. What a blow. But sadly, it’s not unheard of. What do we do when there is more to mourn than to celebrate? What else can we do, but look to God? Look to God to see how we can repair and heal intimate relationships in our lives. Or, if healing and repairing is out of the question, than we must look to God to see where he is revealing new, better, healthy relationships.
At the end of the movie that I have been talking about, Castaway, Chuck is shown at a crossroads out in the middle of the country. Almost all his old relationships are gone due to the years he has been away, stranded on that island. His loss of relationships is at least as hard as being on that island, but as he stands at the crossroads he has an opportunity to build new relationships.
Dear people of God, you too, whatever your circumstances, have an opportunity—a gift of God. It is the gift of intimacy with fellow human beings. Look to God. Who has he placed in your life? Celebrate those relationships and look to God. AMEN.
Prayer
Dear Heavenly father, We thank you for the gift of intimate relationships in our lives, but we admit that we struggle to see them. We struggle to celebrate them. Help us, Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, to look to you for intimacy and help us to celebrate it when we find it. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
Paul DeVries
Rev. Paul DeVries, most commonly referred to as “Pastor Paul”, is the Sr. Pastor of Brookside Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is married to Diane (nee Vanden Akker) and the father of four children. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1989 and served for 12 years as the pastor of Unity Christian Reformed Church in Prospect Park, New Jersey. As a pastor his first love and greatest joy comes in the honor of bringing God’‘s Word to his congregation on a weekly basis through his preaching. He enjoys reading, camping with his family, watching his children’‘s sporting events, and working on home improvement projects - inside and outside his home.
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