16 “For God so loved the world . . .”[1]
21 As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,f . . .”[2] “See, the homea of God is among mortals.
He will dwellb with them as their God;c
they will be his peoples,d
and God himself will be with them;e
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.”[3]
I continue to find the concept of “intimacy” as the most compelling description of what God is up to in the world. It is a desire to be intimately related to this world that motivated God’s creative activity in the first place. “It is not good that the man should be alone. . .” Perhaps this is a statement that God makes based on God’s own experience. Being alone, God and nothing else, was probably not too fulfilling for God. And so God began this venture in Being, and more specifically, in Being in Relationship. “Yes”, God proclaimed, “this is good stuff, very good indeed!”
Yet we must also deal honestly with the reality of sin that pervades this otherwise good creation. If the purpose of creation is intimacy with God and others, the nature of sin is to be estranged. Estranged from God. Estranged from others. Estranged from self. And Estranged from the world in which we live.
I’ve written before about the two polarities of Being, namely that of differentiation and association. Every entity that exists simultaneously is differentiated from the Other, and is placed in relationship to the other. To use Buber’s terminology, intimacy is achieved in the I-Thou relationship, when two individual “Thou’s” are in a balanced and harmonious relationship with each other. This encounter of the Other as a person, a Thou and not an It, is the basis of intimacy. In this manner, true intimacy will always be a matter of faith, not knowledge, of relatedness, not experience, for the mystery of the Other must remain. To reduce the other to an It, the mere object of our experience, is the way of estrangement not intimacy.
Estrangement begins with the Self. Estrangement can take two paths. First, estrangement is the consequence of an inflated sense of the Self. The human quest to be as god, to be the center of existence, to be the Lord of all, subservient to none, is the basic sin of this inflated sense of self. Estrangement follows.
However the converse is also true. Namely, that a deflated sense of Self, “I am a worm, and not human”, losing a healthy sense of self and being subsumed into the Other, also brings with it estrangement. Neither a pride filled arrogance, nor a shame based self-deprecation allow for intimacy with the Other.
Likewise, when relating to the Other, estrangement occurs when the scale tips in either direction. Whether the Other in question is God, or neighbor, or the natural world in which we live, either an inflated or deflated sense of the Other destroys intimacy. The God who is so Wholly Other as to cause terror, is not the God that Jesus intimately revealed to us as “Abba”. But a God whose very existence is a matter of indifference to us, hardly can be a partner in an intimate relationship. We likewise experience estrangement when the Other is another human being, but one who we see as either so above us, or below us, as to disallow the mutuality of intimacy. And this planet on which we live can be perceived as an overwhelming place in which we are powerless and vulnerable in the face of the natural forces—Or it can be seen as a mere object for our exploitation.
In other words, the intimacy that God envisioned for this world is one of a harmonious balance. It begins with the recognition that we are children of God. We are limited, children not God, but with great potential, Children of God, created in God’s image. We are creatures, not the Creator, but creatures of God, indeed.
[1] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989, S. Jn 3:16
[2] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989, S. Jn 17:20-21
[3] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989, S. Re 21:3-4
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