Unfinished Business

My facebook feed is an interesting indicator of what's on people's minds.  i don't contribute much.  i rarely update my "status", and it doesn't often reflect what i'm thinking --- more likely it boasts about where i'm eating.  But i have become a student of what my "friends" think...and what their friends think as i read the thread of "comments".  And it often causes me to think about what i think.

Over the past week, as the red equal sign popped up in the Human Rights Campaign effort to "paint the town red" in support of gay marriage, i have been thinking about what i think.  i have thoughts that are intensely personal, based on my own experience and history.  i have thoughts that some people would qualify as narrow, discriminatory...unAmerican.

Which is worrisome to me.

But as i've thought about this potentially volatile, certainly divisive issue, i keep going back to Scripture.  It's my sure foundation.  My anchor.  While there are many things that i am unsure of, this is something that i know:  the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God, 'the only infallible rule of faith and practice,' and the Bible alone is sufficient to inform my thinking.  About anything.

And so i read and re-read Genesis 1-3. 

The account of creation in Genesis 1 reverberates with this phrase:  it was good.  In fact, the chapter closes with the superlative:  it was very good.  In Genesis 2 Moses goes back and adds detail to the account of God's creation of humanity, the climax of creation.  These verses offer an interesting and important glimpse into the heart and mind of the Creator as He formed man from the dust of the ground and placed him into a perfect garden home.  The text is rich with so many significant features, but i want to pause in the middle of the chapter.

Verse 18 of chapter two indicates that God's plan is not yet finished.  "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone."  Hmmmm....

So God sends the animals.  One by one God "brought them to the man" and Adam had the privilege of naming each one.  This scene has become so familiar that i think we miss the wonder of the moment.  Can you imagine what Adam was thinking as each creature, from the spider to the giraffe paraded past him?  It makes me smile.

But something is missing.  You have to wonder if Adam is not looking at each of these creatures and noticing that there are more than one.  Every creature is part of a "pack", or a "school" or a "colony", or a "gaggle".  (Seriously.  That's many geese in one group.  It's a gaggle.)  Many lions.  Many mooose.  Many ants.

One Adam.

It's not like he didn't notice.  Verse 20: "But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him."  Sad.

Unfinished business.  Something is missing, and God intended for Adam to notice.

What happens next is profound as i ponder the red equal sign.

God put the man to sleep.
      Took out his rib.
          Closed up the wound.
                "And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man..."

And the rest is, literally, history.

It was not good for man to be alone....
       Equality not withstanding,
             God's answer to Adam's "aloneness" was not another man. 
                   What Adam needed was Eve.  A woman.

i'm so struck by that this week.  It's a nuance that is easily dismissed, but it's one that is of paramount importance to my thinking today.  When Adam was alone, God gave him Eve.  i know it's not popular, but this sure foundation is clear for me. As i submit my thinking to this text and to Scripture in its entirety, this is the framework for my understanding of the issue of marriage.

When Adam was alone and it was not good, God gave him Eve.
         He did not offer Adam a choice.
             And Adam, when he recovered from his deep sleep, was ecstatic.

i'm sure it's probably over-simplified.
      And i'm afraid it is narrow.
           And maybe un-American.   i hope not.

But with Scripture alone as my rule of faith and practice, it's what i know to be true.  One man. One woman. And it was very good.

i know. i'm repeating myself.  It just seems really important.

What's my status? 

Grateful for the Gospel.
      We don't live in the garden anymore.
     
Sigh.

p.s.  this "it was not good for man to be alone" theology has ramifications that weave their way through layers of my life.  It is enough to form the framework for a book that i'm toying with.  This content, therefore, is "proprietary" to that work... just FYI