Why We Were Made For Relationship by Michael E. Wittmer, Becoming Worldly Saints

How can you tell if you’re winning the game of life? The
standard scoreboard looks something like this:
Success: What have you done?
Stuff: What do you have?
Status: What do other people think about you?
What if the way we keep score is not the way God keeps score?
What if most people are kicking their ball at the wrong goal?
Then it will happen, as Jesus said, that
many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be
first. — Matthew 19:30
Our primary purpose is to know and love God, and before we
leave the first page of Scripture, we learn a little more. Genesis
1:27 says:
So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God
He created them; male and female He created them.
Notice that the first two lines say the same thing, in reverse
order, while the last one replaces the term “image” with an
explanatory tag. What does it mean to be made in the image of
God? It means we are made “male and female.” Why is that
significant? Because of who God is.
Made for Community
The doctrine of the Trinity — that God is a loving Father, his
beloved Son, and the Spirit who unites them in his bond of love
— is a Christian distinctive. It is also a huge advantage.
If God were merely a single person, as Jews and Muslims
believe, He would be entirely self-centered.
How could such a God love? He would have existed from
eternity past all by Himself, with literally no one and nothing else
around.
Why would this singular person create something else to exist?
Perhaps He was lonely, a single God, nonsmoker, looking for
companions to enjoy long walks in a garden that He would
provide. This God would inevitably sound desperate, as He had
been waiting an eternity in what amounts to solitary
confinement. He would be too needy to ever love truly.
A singular divine person might also create to show off His glory.
Perhaps He grew tired of appreciating His awesomeness and
wanted someone else to adore Him. This God would be just as
needy as the lonely God, but with a need for respect rather than
a need for love. His quest for glory might seem less desperate
than the longing for love, but He would be equally dependent on
creation to supply what He could not give to Himself.
Only our triune God can be entirely satisfied within Himself.
Our God is one, meaning He has no competitors. The Shema
declares,
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. —
Deuteronomy 6:4
Our God is holy and high above us. He is on the back of beyond,
and everything exists for His glory alone. Our God is equally
three. If God were merely one, then we might think He was self-
absorbed. It might even be a sin for Him not to be selfish, seeing
how He is the most valuable being in the universe. But if God is
eternally three, a community of self-giving lovers, then it isn’t
possible for Him to be selfish. God has always loved the other
within the Godhead. His very essence is love (1 John 4:8).
Jesus described the bond of love that exists among the divine
persons when he said the Father is in Him and He is in the
Father (John 17:21-23). This mutual indwelling of the divine
persons, what theologians call perichoresis in Greek
and circumincession in Latin, means that the Father, Son, and
Spirit are more united than anything we can imagine. None of
them thinks, wills, or acts independently of the others. The
Father knows, chooses, feels, and acts in the Son and in the
Spirit; the Son does the same in the Father and in the Spirit; and
the Spirit likewise in the Father and in the Son.
The closest we ever come in this life to imitating this divine
interpenetration is in the act of sex. There is a reason, beyond
the physical, why ecstatic participants say they “tasted the
divine” or felt they “were knocking on heaven’s door.” When a
man and a woman join bodies, they inevitably unite their souls,
and their oneness is a reflection of the God who made them in
His image. This sexual activity requires both partners to be
unreservedly committed to each other. Any sex outside of the
ironclad covenant of marriage is bound to hurt, for the wounded
partners have ravaged what it means to be made in the image of
God. They have treated the climax of their human identity as if it
— and they — is nothing special. How can this not leave a mark?
The perichoretic unity of God is also why, after our basic needs
for food and shelter are met, all other needs are essentially
relational. The scoreboard of life may include success and stuff,
but both of these depend heavily on our status. What others
think about our success often determines how we evaluate what
we accomplished. Have you ever completed a project and found
few people cared? Maybe you put together a 4,000-piece jigsaw
puzzle, wrote a book, or won the Most Eligible Bachelor Award at
your local Comic-Con. You may have excitedly shared your
success with family and friends, but if they merely shrugged, you
gathered that what you did was not terribly important.
Relationships are also essential for enjoying our stuff. I once
spent a lonely couple of days on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. Its hairpin
turns and ancient villages clinging to the mountainside are
achingly beautiful, but I didn’t enjoy them because I was
missing my family and yearning to go home. A fine restaurant on
an Italian beach isn’t much fun when you’re dining alone. A
Hawaiian luau is even worse. I once made the mistake of going
to one by myself, and I spent the entire night trying to disappear
into clumps of people. I was in paradise, and I couldn’t enjoy it
because I had no one toshare it with.
The Grant Study attempted to define the good life by tracking the
lives of nearly three hundred Harvard men. The study began in
1937, when the men were sophomores, and it followed them for
more than seventy years through war, career, marriage, divorce,
parenting, grand-parenting, retirement, and old age. George
Valliant directed the study for four decades, and when asked,
“What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” he replied,
“That the only thing that really matters in life are your
relationships to other people.”
A poor man surrounded by friends has wealth beyond measure,
while a rich man with no one to call is pitifully poor. Why?
Because God is triune, and He made us in His image as
relational beings.