Incomplete by God's Design!

This morning, as I was reading John McLaren's book, "The Story We Find Ourselves In," I came across something that, at least for me, was fresh--so fresh, that I had never even had the thought. Here is the line: What a crazy thing! In the Genesis story, the rib is taken out of Adam--by God! God seems to want Adam to feel incomplete on purpose. God nicks a part of him on purpose! That means that Adam is--meaning we are too--incomplete by God's design! The story is telling us that we were designed to be incomplete and unfulfilled in ourselves as monads, as isolated individuals. We feel an ache in our side, like some part of us is missing, so that we'll always be looking outside ourselves for belonging and connection, for it is not good for a person to be alone--not in this story! And so in this story we live in a garden, with all the creatures around us, and we walk with God in the cool of the day. WOW! (That's from me!)

Yes, I am aware that we are incomplete without Jesus, very aware; however, I had never made the connection of this "imcompleteness" and "Adam's rib." From the very beginning, God set us up to be needy and to be needy, not just for something, but for what is missing--the part of us that that makes us incomplete! As a result, we feel an ache in our side, actually an ache that radiates across our entire body and soul (especially our soul), an ache that tells us that something is missing. Quite naturally (by God's design), we spend our lives looking, always looking, outside (beyond) ourselves, trying, desperately, to put an end to the relentless, God-given, ache, the ache that constantly reminds us that something (something very significant and critical) is missing. The symptoms are obvious (or so it appears to me): we do not feel loved; we do not feel valued; nor do we feel that we belong (connected) AND all by God's design!

Those of you who know me are aware that I have known for some time that marriage is imperfect by God's design. When this dawned on me, I was within seconds of assisting a couple on their 25th wedding anniversary, to renew their marriage vows, and I knew I was supposed to incorporate it into what I would say to them but goodness, gracious--how would I ever get out of what I was about to say, especially in such a short period of time? Well, I said it and I have never forgotten it.

Now, I have both of these truths, with which I must deal: (1) God removed Adam's rib to make him feel incomplete--all God's purposeful design; (2) God, purposefully, brought Eve to Adam to complete him (replace the missing rib that made him incomplete) and to, therefore, live with him in what I must now call an imperfect-by-God's-design-relationship, aka, marriage. Now, that is interesting, especially, in light of the fact that we are led to believe that, done correctly, marriage leads to eternal bliss.

Well, this is my point: God did remove Adam's rib to make him (and, therefore, the rest of us) keenly aware of his incompleteness, and He did bring Eve to him to be the rest of him, to complete him, BUT He never intended for her to eliminate his awareness of his neediness! Instead, God gave Eve to Adam to make him even more acutely aware of his neediness and, I might add, He gave Adam to Eve for the same reason, and guess what--it worked!! It really worked, and it is still working!! Something, however, is, yet, missing and this is quite the mystery to me: after all of this, we have still not caught on. Our longing is NOT for our felt needs to be met (love, belonging, acceptance, value) through another "Eve" or "Adam." No! No! Much to the contrary, our longing is for for Jesus, but be careful now because it is not for the "jesus" we have conjured up in our minds (the legalistic, fairy tale, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, plastic "jesus")! Our longing is for the Jesus, who colored outside the lines of religion--way outside the lines; the Jesus, who was THE renegade of all renegades; the Jesus, who never typed with caps, never used commas correctly, never spelled correctly, never figured out what a split infinitive is, never put semi-colons where they belonged--the Jesus, who irritated the hell out of the religious (those who attempt to fill their imcompleteness and repair their imperfectness by using caps, correctly placing commas and semi-colons! Our longing is for the Jesus, who effectively said, "To hell with religion!" Our longing is for the Jesus, who said, "Come follow Me and I will make you fishers of men," meaning, not what we think but this: Come follow Me and I will so drastically change what you think you know how to do and love doing (fish, for Peter, Andrew, Jame, and John) that the object of your affection will forever change!