In my last post, I said we can live without sex, but not without intimacy. Having a great sex partner is not the key to sexual gratification. Finding a beautiful spouse won’t keep one from lusting after others. The desire for erotic pleasure comes as the result of a lack of meaning and purpose and nothing in life is truly meaningful without its relational value.
What I didn’t say in that post is what intimacy looks like. I didn’t really explain how to have meaningful relationships.
As I said before, I don’t necessarily feel like an expert at relationships yet, but I am slowly learning. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden with God provides excellent training material.
Naked with God
There they were, naked and unashamed in the very presence of God. That’s really weird! How awkward would it be to walk around naked? It’s not normal. But there is another significant fact here we often overlook: they were naked with God.
Here’s why I think this is significant: man receives his value, his sense of self-worth, his purpose, his feelings of delight, and his importance all from God.
In the Garden, Adam and Eve’s relationship with God was so strong they felt no shame or insecurity. They had no need to cover up or hide anything. They found everything they needed for personal security and meaning in their perfect relationship with God. And in their nakedness, they reflected all of who God is to each other.
I believe what Adam and Eve being naked with God implies is that we must constantly be close to God. This is the only way we can have healthy relationships, interactions with people where we are unashamed and reflecting the glory of God to each other. Our identity and sense of worth must derive from Him, otherwise we look for other people to give us significance and value.
The problem is, people are not meant to give identity—they are meant to reflect it and turn our gaze and focus back on God. Furthermore, others are broken. If we look to people for identity, they will leave us hanging and hurt. Meaningful relationships begin with being deeply connected to God.
Why Connection Doesn’t Come Easy
Where did relationships first breakdown? What happened that many of us now struggle with them and fear getting close to others?
The fall. Adam and Eve with the serpent. They were in the Garden naked and unashamed before each other and God when Lucifer slithered up to them. Here is another passage worth stepping back from and considering the story going on behind the facts and lists of events.
Lucifer came to Eve, not Adam. God had not given the commandment to not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil directly to Eve. Obviously, Adam had talked to her about it because she readily answered Lucifer when he asked if God really said they couldn’t eat the fruit. But she only knew what Adam had communicated to her.
God commanded Adam about the trees right before creating Eve; the Bible gives no indication God ever talked with Eve about it (see Genesis 2:15-18). Lucifer, in all his craftiness, came in between the first human relationship ever created and slowly broke it apart by addressing the one not responsible for carrying-out God’s command. Not only did he talk to Eve instead of Adam, he put words in God’s mouth: “Did God really say you can’t eat of any tree in the Garden?”(See Genesis 3:1)
Think how Adam felt to have someone question the assignment given him—only they didn’t come directly to him but cornered someone who was helping him.
I have been given jobs my wife has helped me with and in the process of carrying it out someone challenged her about the legitimacy of the assignment. It’s not that the challenge wasn’t logical. In fact, that is the point: it made sense to her. So, for me to step in and remind her what we were told to do would pit us against each other. I didn’t feel like doing that, to end up looking like the monster in the party.
That is exactly what Lucifer did with Adam and Eve.
First, he broke down their relationship with God by casting doubt on His intentions, His goodness. Secondly, he broke down their relationship with each other by coming between them and not talking directly to the person responsible, consequently pitting them against each other.
One thing you can be sure of is people who slide around the outside, criticizing what is going on, but never engaging those in charge, are playing Lucifer in your life, your church, your work—you name it. Lucifers are cowards, they won’t look the one responsible in the eye.
In one sly motion, Lucifer destroyed Adam and Eve’s trust in God and their confidence in each other. This left both, but especially Adam, feeling excruciatingly vulnerable, to the point that he ate the fruit Eve handed to him without commenting. Perhaps he was simply afraid of losing acceptance and being told he couldn’t play.
Speak Up When You’re Scared You Won’t Be Accepted
This leads me to believe there are elements to meaningful relationships beyond close connection with God.
One is sharing vulnerably with each other. If Adam would have dared to share with Eve and remind her of exactly what God said, he could have saved his relationship with his wife and his relationship with God. Instead, he kept silent. It was a moment I am guessing he regretted the rest of his life, constantly replaying the “what if’s” in his mind.
Here is the challenge, though. If our identity is linked to a person, we won’t risk being vulnerable and possibly rejected.
But when we receive our identity from God and what He says of us, we find a courage to speak things to each other that may leave us unaccepted. If we truly love someone, and deeply want their eternal benefit, then being vulnerable is a no-brainer when their life is at stake.
We will cower in fear, though, if we aren’t close enough to God to know and remember His goodness in the moment.
Speak Life Into Each Other’s Brokenness
Another element to meaningful relationships is calling forth life when we bump into each other’s brokenness.
It is crucial to draw our identity from God and not from others because people are broken. They will disappoint. They will reject. And if we are not grounded in what God says of us, people’s brokenness will throw us for a roller-coaster ride of desperation for approval. Their negative opinions, inability to meet us in our deepest needs, self-centered ways of relating will send us for a loop.
Eve listened to Lucifer. She countered his exaggeration with one of her own: “We can’t even touch the fruit.” Not only was Lucifer tearing apart Adam’s relationship, but Eve was responding in brokenness by not correctly remembering the command.
Yet, where was Adam?
His mouth was shut.
He didn’t have pants with pockets to put his hands in, otherwise they probably would have been there. But he was right there with her. He could have spoken life and saved his relationship with Eve, and consequently with God. Instead he did nothing. The most dramatic move recorded of Adam in this account is that he ate the fruit Eve gave to him (see Genesis 3:7).
For generations since men have been opting out of relational risk for the pleasure of sweet food.
How This Looks at Home
For the last year and a half, I have been working on one of the most important pieces of writing I’ve done in my life. Not only am I passionate about the topic, I have discovered I really enjoy the process of writing a book. My appreciation for the craft of writing has grown and I have developed a deeper love for communicating the story of Christ. I find a lot of meaning and purpose in writing this book.
The only flaw is it has been far too easy to get sucked into this work and neglect my relationships, especially those close to me.
The other day I came home from school and I could tell something was bothering Teresa. She was being allusive and painfully pleasant—I knew she was holding back negative emotions.
I had been spending a lot of time before and after school writing. The days were long, our evenings were filled up with other activities, and we hardly ever had a chance to talk.
Unfortunately, the reality is this happens a lot. I am still learning about cultivating meaningful relationships. It is too easy for me to gravitate to what I can control, to what gives immediate return and reward, and meaningful relationships don’t always give that. Not right away. The return and reward of relationship is immeasurable, but it takes time, energy, and work. Emotional work. And sometimes I don’t feel stable enough emotionally to engage my wife in a way that speaks love to her.
I’d rather have her stroke my ego or pity me for my suffering.
When I came home from school that day I knew that what was bothering her probably had to do with something I was working on. I felt vulnerable because my work was giving me a sense of meaning and purpose. Moving toward her to understand her felt risky, and I was afraid she would tell me my work didn’t mean much to her.
I was afraid she wouldn’t accept me or let me play.
Thankfully, I have been learning that she does not give me my identity. God does. What she thinks of me doesn’t have to shape how I feel about myself, whether I feel significant or not.
And when I have freed her from needing to make me feel worthwhile, I am free to pursue her in vulnerable times.
We made it through the evening, through our family time and various household chores. Then, after we put the boys to bed, I began asking questions about her day, about the boys and the different activities I knew she had done. Eventually, we landed on what I was dreading, what I had assumed was bothering her the moment I stepped in the door.
Yes, she was feeling burned-out, as if she was running the family all by herself. But she didn’t necessarily reject me as I initially feared she would. She didn’t say she wished I would quit writing. She simply said what she was feeling, and since I wasn’t looking to her for my identity, how she felt didn’t threaten me.
We’re young. We are still figuring out work, life, family, ministry balance and how to keep from ignoring what is truly important. I wish I could say all our conversations like this turn out well—they don’t. Sometimes I drift back to wanting her to validate me as a man, and that always ends sour. Sometimes she is wanting me to be God for her, and that is equally devastating. But we are learning relationships aren’t so much about running smoothly as they are about risking in moments of vulnerability and speaking life into each other’s brokenness.
That is what makes relationships meaningful, and when we are connected with God, receiving perfect love and acceptance from Him, we are able to share it with each other.
Question: What do you find most challenging, confusing, or scary about getting close to other people? Tell me about it in the comments. And remember, if you didn’t read the first post on intimacy, you can read it here.
