Alone

We are living in an individualized society that tells us that our Christian faith is a personal choice and that we don't need anyone else to help us practice it; it's something we can do on our own, without anyone else. Jesus is our personal Lord and Savior, and God is all-sufficient. If we have Him, we have everything we need. 

But as we left off yesterday, we said that God Himself said that's simply not true. 

So, what is true?

In the beginning, everything was formless and void. Then, God spoke creation into being with a holy breath over the course of six days, culminating in the creation of human beings - namely, Adam. And Adam had absolutely everything in the world. 

He had a garden to walk in, animals to hang out with, plants to grow, food to eat, trees to rest under, water to drink, rivers to walk by, stones to skip. He was a man alone in the world with literally everything at his fingertips, and he even had the fullness of God right there with him. 

From the very beginning, Adam was in full relationship with God, the way God intended it in creation. They walked together in the garden in the cool of the day. They talked face-to-face. Adam knew what God's hand felt like; he'd had it on him. Everything that you could possibly want from a relationship with God, Adam had it...in spades. Beyond our wildest imagination. Without sin having entered the world, there was nothing imperfect anywhere. Nothing that would separate Adam from the very fullness of God. 

Yet...God looked around at all of creation, at the fullness of the world He had made, at the man who lived in perfect relationship with Him, with whom He was walking and talking...and God said, this is not good. It is not good for this man to be alone. 

Wait a minute. 

Alone? 

Adam wasn't alone. He had God. Isn't that what we say? "I have God; I'm never alone." Isn't that how we justify having an individual faith, separated from the community of God's people? "I have God; He is all I need." Isn't Adam's Genesis 1 life the very life we aspire to and tell ourselves that it is the epitome of connection and relationship and goodness?

It is. And yet, God says Himself it is not good. The man, even in the full presence of God, is alone. 

Then, God - the all-sufficient, all-good, all-wonderful God who lived in full relationship with Adam, who walked with him in the cool of the day, who spoke with him face-to-face, who had breathed the very breath of life into him and given him all of creation in which to dwell - that very same God made Eve so that Adam, hand-in-hand with God in the garden, would not be alone. 

Shouldn't that at least give us some pause about the way we approach our individualized faith? If God says that in a "very good" creation, without the presence of sin, in full and unhindered relationship with man, He is not enough for man to not be alone, shouldn't we stop claiming that we don't need anyone else? Especially when we're trying to make that claim in the name of God?