23 And Adam said:
“This
is now bone of my bones
And
flesh of my flesh;
She
shall be called Woman,
Because
she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his
wife, and they shall become one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
(Genesis 2:23-25)
During
Sunday school, my 14 year old son explained the origin of the term soulmate to the adult Sunday
school. Why did a Sunday school lesson on
Romans 12 require this explanation? Well, it involves a question about how much
Christian culture attributes ideas to the Bible that actually don’t come from
the Bible, a few points about neo-Platonism and first century Jewish theology,
and a Bible teacher (me) who’s philosophy is “Embrace the tangents.”
So
anyway, as the junior Anderson explained: According to Greek mythology, the
first human beings had 4 arms, 4 legs, 2 hearts, etc. Zeus, king of the Gods, fearing the power of
these creatures, split each human in
half and scattered the halves across the earth.
Thus every person searches for the missing half of his/her self, the
matching person who will make them whole again: their soul-mate. (Apparently my
son learned all of Greek mythology in the 8th grade .)
When
a Christian calls his wife “my better half,” or tells her boyfriend, “You
complete me,” or says that marriage is 50-50, the Christian is referencing the
polytheistic theology of ancient Greek paganism.
Let
the church say, “Amen.”
Adam
and Eve were not two halves of a whole.
They were complete ones who each separately and sinlessly reflected the
image of God. This brings up some
interesting mathematics, because Adam declared that the 2 were meant to become
1.
1
+ 1 doesn’t equal 1.
1
– 1 doesn’t equal 1.
½
+ ½ makes 1, but if you’ve ever seen a halfway man and a halfway woman together
you know that usually comes out as one total mess.
You
can get 1 with division, but that would violate the instructions. After God made them male and female, He
instructed man and woman to “be fruitful and MULTIPLY.”
1
x 1 = ONE
God
didn’t ordain marriage to fix what’s wrong.
He designed marriage to make what’s right better.
My
wife and I are not matching halves of a single soul. We are each complete individuals who make a
single powerful unit that is qualitatively greater than the sum of our
individuality. Her love and groundedness
exponentially increases the impact of my ADHD fueled multi-tasking. My unsophisticated country boy ethics gives
her the security to pursue career goals.
We have individual issues, but we’re a formidable team.
You
don’t need someone to complete you. You
don’t need an opposite to attract you. You
don’t need someone who’s just like you. You
don’t need someone who is lost without you or without whom you are lost. You need the ONE, the one whole and complete
other with whom you are both more and better than either of you is alone.
Eve
was the one for Adam. When God brought
them together, neither of them held anything back. They were naked and unashamed --- open,
honest, and completely vulnerable.
This
is the hard part in the math of modern marriage. Culture and trauma condition us to hold back
a piece of who we are, to give 50% to the union just in case we need the other
half to make an exit. We enter marriage
naked under an inch of emotional armor, and that is partly why so many
marriages fail.
.50(of
you) x 1.00(of them) = ½(of what ya’ll could be)
The
other one isn’t getting all of your one, so instead of being fruitful and
MULTIPLYING, you become a house DIVIDED, and that math won’t stand (Mark
3:25).
Get
the math right and get the marriage right, and that’s how dynasties are made.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer,
community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership
development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth
Networking Organization (SAYNO); and
director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human
Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and
clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.
Support by check or money order may be mailed to
Miles Chapel CME Church
P O Box 132
Fairfield, Al 35064
