Bringing It All Together Part 2: Is God Alone All That I Need?

Before you envision my burning at the stake, please read through to the end!

You and God alone in the garden. Perfect temperature. Perfect weather. Perfected nature to enjoy. Perfect food. Perfect relationship untainted by sin. Nothing stressful. No email to check, no stock market to track. No threats of tornadoes, drive-by shootings, or flat tires. No annoying neighbors or pesky bugs. No locking your doors at night. Just the two of you in perfection.

And what does God say about this scene?

NOT GOOD.

God looks at Adam as a lone ranger human being and concludes "NOT GOOD."

When you consider it from this perspective, this statement is just a further flowering of the previous post. Our relationship with God is not the only thing that is broken. Our relationships with other people and with ourselves are also profoundly broken and in need of fixing. And God is deeply committed to redeeming all three.

Here's what I'm not saying:

-I'm NOT saying that humans are more important than God. They are not.

-I'm NOT saying that God isn't the ultimate end, the one who deserves our highest praise. He is!

-I'm NOT saying that God is not deeply involved in the process of redemption in all three areas. He is. If my broken relationships with others are to be healed; if I'm to see myself rightly, then He must heal me.

-But I AM saying that my relationship with God is interdependently connected to my relationship with YOU and my relationship with myself. They are deeply tied together.


Someone may object, "But God is the most important being in the universe. So surely this means that my relationship with Him is more important than my relationship with you."

In one sense I agree. My relationship with you will not save me. My relationship with Him will. And, my relationship with you is only possible because He created both of us to relate to each other. And absolutely, hands down, God is the most significant being in the universe. But yet-- The most important being in the universe DESIGNED IT so that Adam needed more than Himself.

In Matthew 5:23, Jesus tells us that if we bring a gift to the altar (I want to be rightly related to God) and there remember that there is a conflict with our brother, then FIRST GO and be reconciled to our brother, and THEN bring your gift to the altar. That's right. God wants me to get right with YOU FIRST before I come to Him. In other words, right relationship with God does not exist apart from right relationships with others.

Someone may object, "We know that our relationship with God is primary because marriage (which was God's answer to the problem of man's aloneness) is not eternal. And that shows that in the end, it's just me and God."

I would disagree. In the end, it's ALL OF US (His whole, collective, purified, all the redeemed TOGETHER bride) and God.

Some (big, radical) implications of saying God isn't enough

-You're struggling in your relationship with your husband/wife. You can't figure it out. You decide that maybe you've forgotten your secure identity in Christ. You meditate on verses. You soak them in. And yet, things with your husband still suck. What's wrong? You can't fix your relationship with your husband by focusing on your relationship with God (alone.) Is it bad to think about your identity in Christ? NO! Is it bad to go read your Bible when you are struggling in your marriage? Not necessarily, but it could be, if it becomes a way to deny what is true about you and your husband.

-You've asked God all your life for a spouse. You long to be deeply connected to someone and know that they will be there for you, no matter what. But you feel a little guilty saying so, because you think that God should be enough for you. You long to be content enough that your desire for a spouse will go away. There's a problem with this. God made you to LONG to connect with other people, and enjoying a deep and intimate relationship with God isn't meant to replace or stand as a substitute temporary while you wait for a spouse. I think that God certainly IS PRESENT, at times intimately so, with us in our unmet longings. But we have to resist the temptation to make one equal to the other. And we have to resist the temptation to provide trite explanations to friends who are single or have broken marriages when we say "God is enough." God doesn't hold our hand and with us in the park, or hold us when we cry-- (YET.) And yet we long for a person with skin to reach out and touch. And God made it this way, that you would feel something is missing when you don't have this in a physical, tangible way.

Thoughts? Objections? Challenges?