What Happened to Get Us Here
When God created humanity, we were made to experience perfect communion with and connection to him – and to one another. In that brief moment in history, one could emphatically say that relationships were lived in perfect harmony. There was no loneliness or suffering. But now, nearing the end of 2023, loneliness is said to be a global epidemic.
The first two humans were perfectly connected to God and to one another. The first love poem (or I like to think that it sounded more like a soulful spoken word) was performed when Adam first looked upon Eve with selfless eyes and uttered the words, “At last, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh…” But then sin entered and broke the perfect connection to God and that beautiful selfless connection to one another. Adam’s love poem quickly turned into blame-shifting, loss of trust, conflict, selfishness and pride. Cue this theme continuing throughout history. We can no longer love the way we were initially intended to love. Pain, disconnect, distance, and self- interest all took the place of pure love, perfect community, and connection. All of humanity from this point on was born into a need to be redeemed and reconnected to our Holy God.
Where This Leaves Us
This is where I meet most people in the counseling room (and what’s thrown me to the other side of the therapeutic relationship on several occasions). They come lonely, broken and disconnected – searching for healing…for wholeness. They have looked We have all looked for connection, love, belonging in god replacements. And these replacements, though sometimes offering a soothing and temporarily distracting fix, ultimately destroy. I think this is what John Mayer was lamenting in his 2003 song Something’s Missing when he described having it all but searching for more:
I can’t be sure that this state of mind
Is not of my own design
I wish there was an over-the-counter test
For loneliness
For loneliness like this
Something’s missing
And I don’t know how to fix it
Something’s missing
And I don’t know what it is
No I don’t know what it is
Friends (Check) Money (Check) All well slept (Check)
Opposite sex (Check) Guitar (Check)
Microphone (Check) Messages waiting on me when I come home (Check)
How come everything I think I need, always comes with batteries?
What do you think it means
We worship whatever we think will satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts – money, sex, power, success, beauty, health, sports, intellect, possessions…and we worship people. Our hearts, like John’s lyrics, are searching for something to quench our thirsty souls. Instead we get tossed around in a confusing whirlwind of euphoric abundance met with unmet needs – unable to find rest (Jeremiah 17:5-8).
Often this takes form in a crushing pressure that we place upon the people around us to meet our ultimate needs. People always get hurt when we put our hope in them because they can never live up to our expectations – only a perfect God can provide what we are most deeply longing for. We all know how human relationships can simultaneously dispense and destroy. They can dispense love, connectedness, support, joy, unity and more. They can also destroy; bringing suffering, pain, neglect, physical/emotional/spiritual abuse and trauma, misunderstandings, deceit, mistrust and more.
Even those of us who have found deep connections in our relationships are still instinctively aware that they can never take the place of the deepest need we have – connection to God. Human relationships, when lived out biblically (how our Creator has instructed us to live together) can be beautiful, but are still only mere shadows of the joy, intimacy, love, and belonging that is found in relationship with Christ.
Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) wrote in his Confessions , “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you” (Warner, 1963).
Not Left On Our Own
God hasn’t left us broken and disconnected. He gave a promise of Christ -the Christ who we celebrate this Christmas season. Through Christ we have connection to God (read that again and let yourself celebrate the most simple yet most awe-inspiring truth we can ever grasp). We have hope that one day, for those of us who are in Christ, not only will we be in perfect communion with God; worshiping him in heaven, but also living in perfect communion with one another. All things, including the most painful relationships, will be restored.
Here on earth, relationships will bring both beauty and brokenness, but one day Christ will transform our broken earthly bodies to be like his glorious and perfect body (Matthew 5:48). We will once again taste the perfection; perfect connection to God and one another. All pain and trauma and abuse suffered by human hands on this earth will be completely set free from its bondage and pain (Romans 8:21). God will come to restore everything just as he promised (Acts 3:21). This is the most glorious hope that all relationships have. And then even more gloriously is the following promise: Relationship with God is never broken, not because we keep our end of the deal perfectly, but because we are kept perfectly by him.
How This Transforms The Way We Love Others
Relationships, at their very best, are beautiful when they are subservient to relationship with, devotion to, and rest found in God. When we are at rest, and realize that our deepest longings are met by God, we will have the ability to love people without exploiting them and seeing them as commodities. This allows us to love without needing anything back.
When we have our ultimate needs met by a holy and loving God, we are freed to live in beautiful, generous relationship with others. We can extend ourselves to people who most people would find toxic and unlovable through remembering the miraculous grace that a holy God has extended to us. Love and relationships, in this case, are never wasted because they are not mere exchanges of expectations nor are people our possessions. We will become unchained to expectations and instead able to love with miraculous freedom; enjoying the good gifts of relationships and the deep soul connections we find in others.
Grace and peace,
Steph
I loved thiz