A Theology of Relationships

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

In The Happiness Advantage, author Shawn Anchor describes the value of an NFL offensive line. The league’s most talented quarterbacks fail without a good one. He writes, “They don’t score touchdowns, they don’t kick field goals. They only have one job—protect the quarterback—but it is the most important job on the football field.

Reflecting on the last three years, having stepped aside from 38 years of the same leadership roles within the same church family, Sheryl and I have lamented that loss. We are blessed with a wonderful trio of children and their amazing spouses. We are blessed with 11 beautiful grandchildren. And, most of all, we are blessed with each other. But that sudden interruption of life’s relational rhythms has been a challenge and, at times, quite discouraging. The explanation as to why, however, is quite simple. We lost much of our offensive line. Leading a small organization from home is much different than regular whiteboard sessions with a supportive team. 

A national survey of 24,000 people found that people (of both genders) with few or unhealthy relational ties were two to three times more likely to suffer major depression than those with healthy relationships. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who has read the first verse of the Bible.

Literally, Genesis 1:1 reads, “In the beginning They (the Hebrew Elohim is plural) He created (the Hebrew barais a singular verb) the heavens and the earth.” We tend to focus on what God did in the beginning, but the most significant information revealed in verse one is about who He is! God is They and God is He. That’s a tough one to get your head around, but let’s try to look at it in the context of relationship.

For those of us who grew up in church, most of us were taught to define holiness as the absence of sin. But it’s our recognition of our own sinfulness that frames that kind of explanation. God’s holiness predates everything, including sin, so a discussion of His holiness shouldn’t require any comparables. Defining His holiness wouldn’t necessarily include the idea of sin or the cosmic collapse that resulted from Lucifer’s rebellion. To understand God’s holiness, we only have to see Him in respect to how He existed within Himself and Himself alone, before the Fall, even before “the beginning.”

God’s holiness is grounded in His wholeness. God is a relationship. And we were created in His image.

They is They and He is He. It sounds weird to say it, but God can evidently enjoy relationship without anyone else around. As the Scriptures were revealed over time, they described God as Father, as Son, and as a Holy Spirit. Three persons who have always existed in a harmonious and balanced relationship—perfectly loving, supporting, and respecting one another. And those relationships, the ones God enjoys within Himself, provided the blueprint for the relational universe that He eventually created. We (Adam and Eve) were given the gift He had already eternally enjoyed, a gift of relationship, through which we could express our worship and practice with each other those same godly attributes of love, respect, and selflessness.

I mean, zoom out for a minute and notice how relationships are the foundation for everything. Even before the beginning begins, God shares harmonious relationships within Himself. Then He created people within the context of a seamless and harmonious relationship with their Creator. And for a while, like the relationship within the Godhead, ours were holy. Not only did we have perfect fellowship with God, our human relationships (albeit only one in the paradise that was Eden) reflected the wholeness of our relationship with Him.

But as sin became part of the human experience, it drove a wedge into the heart of those relationships, creating what the Bible calls “enmity with God.” (Genesis 3:15) What was once a holy relationship, characterized by peace and joy, became one of fear and frustration. While God, still holy, knew us perfectly, our sin compromised our ability to know Him back.

But that wasn’t the only result of the Fall. When our relationship with God was compromised, our relationships with one another became fractured as well. Brothers killed brothers. Parents abandoned children. Fathers divorced mothers. What played out on a global stage reflected the condition of our personal relationship with God, which now was fractured. Describing thousands of years of relational dysfunction and our futile attempts at religious fence mending, the pages of the Old Testament declare the utter despair of sin’s effect.

Then Jesus came, giving us the chance to have relationship restored, to again enjoy holiness, first with God and, as a result, with each other. The New Testament writers challenge us to maintain healthy and grace-filled relationships with the rest of the Body of Christ, describing the unity of the Church as mission critical, and then providing a relational framework that gives the Gospel both the scalability and credibility required to change the world.  

Looks like the techies were right. You can pick your software. But you’re stuck with your hard-drive.