Monday, July 18, 2011

Red

Until I graduated from law school, personal relationships took a backseat to my educational pursuits.  My sister was known as my social secretary.  My brothers remember me in high school as a closed door.  It wasn't that I hated social interactions.  I didn't consider myself painfully introverted.  I simply did not place a priority on personal relationships.  Instead, I valued the life of the mind.  In my pride, I decided that being the smartest man in the room was more desirable than long-term relationships.

Having grown past that adolescent mindset, I perceive how detrimental that decision was.  How condemning that your brothers to remember you only as a closed door.  It has taken many of the succeeding years to begin to rectify my past mistakes.  Yet, as it is for money, the time value of relationships cannot be underestimated.  Building solid relationships takes time that no late investment can truly replace.

God created us in His image, as relational creatures.  The truth that God is love reflects a inter-trinitarian relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Being made in His image as a singular person requires us to live in community.  This is why God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone."  (Gen. 2:18)  Marriage was God's first provision for our relational constitution.  After the fall, the natural community became marred by the effects of sin.  Thus, God created a new community of His people.  In the era after Christ, this community is known as the church.

The necessity of those love relationships that derive from God's inter-trinitarian relationship explain God's requirement of fidelity in marriage and fidelity to the church.  These relationships ought not fall into the lowest rungs of our priorities.  They are of critical importance to our lives before God.  If God matters to us, so do others.  As John wrote, "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar."  "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God."(I John 4:20,7)

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