Shortly after God created man he declared in Genesis 2:18 (NIV), "It is not good for man to be alone."
What is so shocking about this declaration is that Adam wasn't alone! He was still in the Garden of Eden. He had not yet sinned. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil hadn't been touched. Adam was walking with God and Adam was without shame and without guilt. And yet despite his closeness with God, Adam was subject to a degree of loneliness. It is true that man is incomplete without God, but it is also true that we are incomplete without human companionship as well. There is an inherent aloneness that resides deep within our souls that can only be quenched by a relationship with God, but also with our fellow man.
The Bible says in Genesis 2:21-25 (NIV), "So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the ribhe had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman, 'for she was taken out of man .'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame."
Contending with aloneness.
Since that epic moment man has been aware of his need for companionship with God and aware of his need for companionship with another. This is what the Elton John hit, "I Want Love" is all about. He sings, "I want love, just a different kind. I want love, won't break me down, won't brick me up, won't fence me in. I want a love that don't mean a thing. That's the love I want. I want love."
He wants to be liberated by love from his bondage to aloneness. He wants to feel alive, to achieve true intimacy, to know the reality of the genuine love first experienced in the Garden of Eden. But in his song he is surrendered to defeat. "A man like me, so irresponsible. A man like me is dead in places. I can't love, shot full of holes. Don't feel nothing, I just feel cold. Don't feel nothing, just old scars. Toughening up around my heart. I want love on my own terms. I carry too much baggage. I've seen so much traffic. So bring it on, I've been bruised. Don't give me love that's clean and smooth. I'm ready for the rougher stuff. No sweet romance. I've had enough. A man like me is dead in places. Other men feel liberated, but I want love."
Ever since the Garden of Eden man has been expressing his inner longing for true intimacy. Have you noticed that 99.9 percent of the music you love is about love? Love is the cure for aloneness, and no matter how old we get we'll always be obsessed with love.
When I worked at Lewis Memorial Christian Village I developed close relationships with many of the residents. I'll never forget one guy who despite his deteriorating health was awake to his need for love and companionship. He wasn't afraid to pull his wheelchair alongside a chick and ask her downstairs for a cup of Folger's coffee or to go out of his way to notice a lady. One day he riled up the village people when he asked one of the residents to join him on his sofa for a television program. He made his rounds, but those good old gals there didn't have much use for his kind. A year later I ran across him in a nursing home and his health was even worse. But he was as restless and pesky as ever!
God created us for relationship. He created us with a God-shaped void for himself, but also for one another. Until we draw our last breath of air we'll continually cope with our aloneness. We'll crave love. This is the way God has wired us up.
Aloneness away from God.
This past week I read that the success or failure of a marriage in large part hinges on how we cope with aloneness. Let's first talk about how our aloneness away from God impacts our marriages. Then we'll discuss how our aloneness from one another has an impact. And even if you are young or single or divorced or widowed, I encourage you to reflect on your need for intimacy with God and with other people.
Consider our aloneness away from God. Earlier I mentioned that even though Adam was walking with God, he was subject to a degree of aloneness without Eve. This fact doesn't negate nor diminish in any way the intense longing that we have for an intimate connection with God. We have a very real, expansive, God-shaped void within us that feeds an insatiably powerful hunger and thirst to know God.
You can think of this craving to know God as a basic fundamental need much like our need for air, food, water, and shelter. When this basic need isn't quenched it is hard to effectively focus on anything else. In fact, until this basic need is met it is hard to even feel alive. As Elton John sang, "A man like me is dead in places."
Most people, young and old, do not understand the incredibly powerful undercurrents of the soul. These undercurrents lurk beneath the surface of our consciousness and pull and tug and exasperate and exhaust us. As a child I remember turning on the Chicago news. Some construction workers on the Chicago river had breeched a century-old underground coal tunnel. As city engineers gathered to assess the situation, the multi-story deep basements of skyscrapers which were once linked to the underground tunnels in the downtown area of Chicago began filling up with water, causing millions of dollars in damage.
Back on the Chicago river, workers helplessly stood by, aghast at the sight of an enormous whirlpool that was literally consuming everything within reach. They poured dirt and rock and sand into the whirlpool hoping to plug the hole. Dump truck after dump truck of debris was brought in, but nothing worked. The whirlpool was feeding hundreds of miles of underground coal tunnels. Finally, and I'm not kidding, mattress trucks began arriving on the scene. If I remember correctly, the mattresses got the job done!
I think we see the whirlpool. What we don't see is the hundreds of miles of cavernous void that lie just beneath the surface of our consciousness. In order to plug the desperate emptiness, we pour our heart and soul into the whirlpool hoping something will plug the breech. We work. We sow. We spin. We toil. We labor. We expend. We struggle. We exhaust ourselves. When God created us, he created us with a specific void that only he could fill. This means that no matter what we throw at the whirlpool, short of God the cosmic chasm beneath will never be filled.
So what happens in a marriage relationship, or in any other relationship when we project our God-sized void on a finite human being? What happens when we hoist the burden of this God-sized discontentment, or aloneness, square on the back of our poor unsuspecting spouse or on some other person? My friends, this overwhelming, unrealistic, swirling expectation will suck the life and soul out of everything in its path. Do not ever believe, not for a moment, that a finite human being can satisfy and heal and fill the God-sized void in your life.
No human being can fill the God-sized void in your life.
There is a slippery slope of sexual immorality that develops whenever we try to fill our God-shaped void with finite human relationships. Our godless MTV culture elevates human relationships to divine-like status. In fact, pop culture idolizes the flesh. It would have us to believe that human affection, sexual intimacy, some perfect muscle-bound body, some attraction, or some infatuation will complete us and make us whole.
And once we take the bait and believe the lie, and begin grasping, and project our God-sized void on another person, disaster results. Lust. Jealousy. Envy. Pornography. Promiscuity. Pre-marital sex. Fornication. Adulterous relationships. Divorce and remarriage. Prostitution. Homosexuality. Bestiality. Pedophilia. Molestation. Rape. Murder. Are these not our errant attempts to resolve a God-shaped void with finite means?
For any relationship with anyone, especially with your spouse, to be a success we must first contend with our aloneness before God. God built loneliness within us. He wired us up so that we would seek him with all of our heart, mind, body and soul. Marriage failure is always rooted in our failure to first be filled by God. The precursor for sexual immorality is the deficit that results because we choose to retreat from God's presence into the darkness of sin and selfishness.
The quickest fix for a broken marriage is to deepen your life before God.
Hear me clearly. The best fix for a failed marriage isn't more of the same old gibberish that is propagated in every book and on every talk show. What you need to fix your marriage relationship is found lying deep in your past. It is not found within you or within your spouse. It's not found in some technique or skill or exercise of the will. The fix is found when you and your spouse come before God, asking him to fill your God-sized void instead of driving each other to madness by demanding and grasping for that which neither of you can even give in the first place!
The quickest fix for your marriage woes is to deepen your life before God. The quickest fix is the most unexpected. The fix involves scripture memory, Bible reading, worship, prayer, divine contemplation, and being still before the God that fills you. Have you ever tried to fix your marriage by first deepening your life in God? The only people who doubt that this works are the people who have never tried it.
The first questions God asked of man came after Adam and Eve became ruined with sin. In Genesis 3:8-13 (NIV) God asked Adam a series of questions. "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, 'Where are you?' He answered, 'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.' And he said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?' The man said, 'The woman you put here with me— she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. 'Then the LORD God said to the woman, 'What is this you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate.' "
Essentially God was asking, "Where are you in relationship to me? What finite remedy are you seeking for your divine-sized void?"
Our aloneness away from one another.
Of course, even in God's presence Adam was subject to a degree of aloneness. In addition to his God-shaped void he had a human relational void. He needed human companionship. He needed intimacy. He needed to give and receive love. He needed someone he could be vulnerable with and someone he could trust. Drawing near to God is a sure fix for most any marriage woe, but so is drawing near to the one God has united us with; the wife or husband of our marriage covenant. It's not either/or, but both/and.
During times of difficulty couples often make two mistakes. They withdraw from God, but they also withdraw from one another. They withdraw from God's presence. They stop being filled with God. They let their shame and guilt grow and cut them off from God's holiness and grace. But then they further exacerbate the problem by separating and then divorcing. They cut off their communication. They question each other's intentions and love. They accentuate and personalize their hurts. They rekindle the embers of their pain. They demand and grasp and insist. They project their divine-sized expectations on one another.
The man retreats to his cave. The wife escapes into some made-for-television fantasy world. The couple's aloneness gets compounded first by their God-deficit, but then multiplied as they withdraw from their marriage union. They withdraw into isolation, without God and without one another. The intense, growing loneliness that ensues, then feeds further dysfunction and chaos. A perpetual cycle sets in that grows and consumes and destroys until by the grace of God, one or both of the affected parties draws near to God and then near to one another.
The first question God asked of man in Genesis was, "Where are you?" The second question God asked of man in Genesis 4:9 (NIV)was, "Where is your brother?" Are you drawing near to one another through God's forgiveness and mercy? Are you moving deep into reconciliation and understanding? Or are you exacerbating the problem by holding on to your hurts? Are you being filled with God and with one another, or are you drifting into isolation? How you answer those two critical questions is of ultimate consequence to your marriage relationship and to your relationship with God.
I do. I did. Now what?
Where from here? What are the next steps? In Hebrews 13:4 (NIV) we read that, "Marriage should be honored by all ..." The key to honoring marriage is first drawing near to God. But a second key to honoring marriage is to draw near to one another as well. It is throwing yourself into the cavernous void which truly fills you. The key to honoring marriage is coping with your aloneness according to God's design instead of according to the design of sin. It is resisting the pull away from God and from each other.
It is giving God his rightful place as the focus of your worship, while embracing the companionship that he gives you through your spouse. It is developing realistic, godly expectations about what only God can realistically provide and about what the one you wed can provide.
The key to honoring marriage is in probing the deep aloneness of your soul and coming to terms with your need for God.