Fellowship, like God, is, was, and will be.
Before our universe, there was fellowship. Before time as we measure it began,
there was fellowship. God’s proclaimed goal is that when time ends, what will
remain is a perfect community.
It begins with the incomprehensible nature of
our Creator. No human mind can imagine what a three-person personality really
is, but that’s what God presents to us as both fact and faith. Something like
we would imagine a parent, something like we would imagine a child, and
something like we would imagine. . . wind? Light? Water? Oil? Frankly, Spirit
is something we can’t really imagine! And the whole truth is, God is nothing like we could
ever imagine.
So He (They?) set out to create beings “like us”
(Gen.
1:26) and then to spend the rest of eternity showing us, if one may coin an
odd word, Themself.
God began by creating a community we like to
call the biosphere. It’s a growing, self-contained, self-renewing,
interdependent ecosystem of living beings. Then He made people, and according
to verse
27, apparently one way to illustrate the unity within the Godhead was by
creating two genders who were “fit for each other.” Hebrew ‘ezer, which comes from the root
‘azar, meaning to “surround, protect, or aid.” (Strong’s Concordance) It is of great interest
that this word is the Hebrew equivalent of paraclete, the word used in the New
Testament for the Holy Spirit.
So human fellowship began. Almost immediately,
the best and the worst features of community were made manifest. These two
people, God declared, were “one flesh,” (2:24)
to cling together above all others, to “surround, protect, and aid” one
another. It is no longer possible for us to conceive what that perfect unity
was like. We can speculate that the nakedness and lack of shame described in verse
25 included complete transparency and understanding as they grew to know
each other. We do know it included perfect unity with their Maker, Who came to
walk and talk with them in the evenings. (3:8)
We also don’t know how long it lasted, but it
doesn’t seem to have been long. One day, a thief in the form of a serpent
entered their paradise. Satan had chosen to give up the community where he had
been known and loved and try a different kind. He wasn’t finding it as
enjoyable as he had hoped, it seems, and in his rage and jealousy, he wanted to
break up the happiness he saw. Divide and conquer was his first thought. And it
worked. Away from the other helper’s strengthening presence, one person was
easy to beat.
When God came calling, the broken style of human
fellowship was already in force. “She did it!” “It was his fault!” “Well, You’re the one who made her, God!”
From that day, humanity was no longer able to have direct contact with God. And
it wasn’t long at all until animals and humans began killing each other. Yet
there was and is a deep, unquenchable, overriding ache for union, for fellowship,
for the longed-for Other in every person born. We seem to have both the famous “God-shaped
void” of Augustine and a hole in our hearts for another person who will love us
as we are.
A desperate need to belong to a group of people
who accept us and help to form us and learn from us. A wish that a group could
be somehow better for our presence, lessened by our loss.
We try so hard to figure out how to fill those
holes. We run from one sexual relationship to another. We create gangs. We live
in communes. We go to churches, synagogues, mosques and the corner tavern. Or
we hide from each other and try to plug the holes by ourselves through drugs or
overwork or simply filling our mind with empty daydreams. Is this what God made
us for? Didn’t He have a better plan than this?
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