8th Week - Relationship

My relationship skills... suck. I've been a loner for a long time, prefering books,games and music to social interaction. Because I was shy, and quite smart, so this kind of leisure gave me all that I wanted -fun, fantasy, surprises and personal development- without having to handle bullies, meanies and sports. Seriously, what was the deal with sports? I was asthmatic, so I could never stand them. They weren't fun for me, so how could they be for the other kids?

First symptom of lacking social interaction is lacking empathy.

And lacking empathy is the main characteristic of psycopathy.
... stop looking at me like that, guys.

Is very conforting consider the fact that God is a relational being. He doesn't need us, but He wants us. That's fatherhood and closeness. I've found, during the week, a newfound love -and understanding of what this love means- for my friends, my partners here at DTS, my family and even for strangers, as I see my evangelistic work as an act of love for those who haven't found God's grace yet.

I must say that, during all this week, I found myself working on a different idea. What's God standar for relationship? This seems to be the real question after every week, and the answer has never stopped being surprising. But this time it didn't come like that, so I started thinking about it by myself. And the answer I come by was Unity.

Guys, if we all throw Paper, the game gets boring.

God's relationships are about unity. I think the idea started with some comment that Justin did during Worldview's week: he said that when he asked God saying that he couldn't understand trinity, God's answer was that in fact Justin didn't even understand unity. Let's take a look about that.

Adam was in closeness with the Lord. He was happy and intimate with Him, but still, there was something that God Himself couldn't do to Adam. Adam was alone, the only one of his species. That wasn't good enough. Adam needed Eve. Not only so they could mate and create marriage. God can't marry a man, nor a woman. God can't physically love. God can't love you as a son, even if He of course understands sonship. God can't give Adam the kinds of love that mankind eventually would, so He provided him with that. I know, I'm digressing, but it's good digression.

The main verse I can find about my idea is in John's Gospel, chapter 17, verses 20 to 23:

“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will[a] believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me."

So, the unity consists in sharing love. God loves Himself, and loves us. Someone told me once that, even if the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit loved each other so much, the natural next step to express their mutual, shared love was creating mankind to love them, not too differently from a loving couple who desire to father a child as the natural progression of their relationship. The child is not needed for love. He doesn't break the family unity, either; only adds to it, receives love, and promptly gives it too.

And then they can send their son to reach for the highest!
Yeah, the child in top of a Catalanish human castle uses to be younger than 10 years.

The man and the woman will be a single flesh. That's more than a metaphor of sex nor of breeding children. States a new state of being. God's glory is only His; still, we read that Jesus gave mankind the glory that He had received. He shared His best; love, glory and ministry. He gave it all to us. That was our adoption, our moment of becoming his. He cleaned us at the cross, because his glory is shekinah glory, and wherever it is, nothing else can stand, so everything else had to be taken off.

The trinity has unity as a whole. The Father is head of Christ, Christ is head of the church. The church will be Christ's wife in heaven, providing God of the kind of love that He couldn't share with Adam. It's, as everything in the Word, amazingly big and surprisingly simple, like hidden on plain sight.