Have you ever been through a difficult break-up? They leave painful scars – and not just the end of romantic relationships. Family members won’t speak. Churches are left in anger. Jobs terminate in unprofessional ways. While we end relationships for intensely personal reasons, even our most awful break-ups are part of a pattern that began with the first humans.
At first, you might not relate to the Genesis 3 story of Eve and Adam being enticed by a talking serpent to eat forbidden fruit. Yet, consider the pattern: the first break-up involved lies, selfishness, and disloyalty. The serpent deceived the woman about the consequences of eating the fruit and mischaracterized God’s motivations for forbidding it. Desire led the woman to be disloyal to God – which spread to her husband who first watched and then participated. That’s how it goes: divorces, church splits, and even job separations often don’t stay between the aggrieved parties. Instead of clean breaks, we experience jagged, splintering fractures – and other people fall into the cracks we open.
Then hearing “the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” – a beautiful example of the “very good”-ness of life with Him – the now sinful man and woman hid from God among the trees He had made so pleasant and good for them (Gen. 3:8; 2:9). Imagine that: people trying –and failing – to cover up their mistakes. Now God set such a beautiful relationship example in how He addressed it: “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen. 3:11). He didn’t pretend everything was okay, but He still asked them, inviting a discussion. Yet in response, the man blamed his wife – and God for making her. The woman blamed the serpent. Look at that: people pointing out the (real or imagined) faults of others instead of owning their choices.
Humanity’s sin that day cursed all of creation with pain, conflict, and ultimately death. That’s what happens when you break up with the Author of Life (cf. Acts 3:15). While our circumstances might not look much like theirs, the sin that entered the world then – and which we all now participate in – is the real cause of our own struggles (cf. Rom. 5:12-14). Yet, we can change. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). Through Jesus, we can once again be close to God and experience the life and peace He meant for us. As we do, He will bring us close to each other, too.
It is not good to be alone. Through Jesus Christ, God gives us a way to experience real relationship. Learn how to experience it along with us at https://www.georgetownchurchofchrist.com/real-relationship.