What Everyone Needs

It is not good that the man should be alone
Genesis 2.18

With no disrespect to the Lone Ranger, every one needs an “other.” Individualism may be esteemed in our culture, but, aside from the decathlon and spelling bees, one-man teams don’t win championships. And God, looking at the one man he had formed, knew something more was needed.

Everything had gone so well. For six successive days God had set out and filled up his kingdoms. And each day God had surveyed his work and judged it “good,” the whole of it receiving the Lord’s “very good” assessment. But then something happened, or more accurately, didn’t happen. Something was “not good.” The man God had formed from the dust of the earth was alone. And God, who had existed through all eternity in the intimate relationship of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—knew something was wrong. Something was missing; the man needed some thing, actually some one, for him to be complete.

Parading all the other creatures he had made before the man, God encouraged him to choose one for his partner. But none suited. It wasn’t that the man was particularly hard to please, but they just didn’t, well, fit him. Some were too big, others too small. Many walked on all fours, while the man stood and walked upright. There were the ones who lived underground, and those that lived in the trees, neither of which worked for man. And, perhaps the biggest problem of all, there was no creature man could share his thoughts with; that could experience the same feelings as the man. Who could man invite to be part of his dreams, his hopes?

Recognizing what needed to be done, God made the man fall deeply asleep, and deftly removing one of the man’s ribs, God fashioned the perfect flesh and bone complement to the man. Because she had been made “of man” she would be called woman. Right then and there God ordained that is should always be that the two, man and woman, should come together and be one flesh. Not rivals, and certainly not adversaries, but partners who together could become more than they ever could on their own.

Now, men are men, and women are women, quite independent of one another, and of course fully human in their own right. God the Father is fully God, as is the Son, and so also the Holy Spirit; yet to be God is to be the Trinity. And so, though man is fully man, and woman is fully woman, to be humanity is to be man and woman. God himself intended that his image in man would be manifest in maleness and femaleness together. (Genesis 1.27) In the economy of God’s kingdom one plus one does not equal two, but one, yet greater than one.