To follow the media, visual and auditory, we would never learn the meaning of intimacy as God would have it experienced. We begin at the beginning for understanding of the human condition. Adam was alone, except that God maintained a relationship with him that we may call intimate in that it was not given to any other animal-like creature with which Adam or God had to do. Of the animals of the Garden, Adam was given a literal characteristic (image from God, who has no physical type of image/ except in Christ) that set him apart from other animals, and made Adam above the animals although sharing physical characteristics of animals. Since the divine characteristic (image) was vouchsafed to mankind, it would have eternal/immortal meaning. That which is of God cannot be destroyed, and if violated he will redeem it or designate it. The factor is of God, found in his nature so is eternal. This factor implied intimacy with God in the ongoing nurture of that image freely given of God. Whatever God gives is freely given, in that God is free. No entity displaces God and nothing will set aside the outcomes of his will.
Adam sensing the value of relationship perhaps noting it in the animals, desired similar relationship. The individual and private nature of God’s creative gesture was kept in the formation of Eve so to be of the same characteristic (image) as Adam, and through coitus to make them one in the category of human beings. There was double fulfillment, intimacy with God and intimacy with like kind. In this the primacy of individuality (the course for human rights) was united with relationships – the one and the many. From that point humankind had to deal with relationships (self and others), and individuality (primary self and God). Both intimacies can be enhanced (matured) and both sullied (violated). Violation is summarized in the word sin. Other words may be used, such as carnal, fault, error, but the meaning to God and Scripture relates to rebellion against God that incurs evaluation and consequence. The pattern is found in the human context in the violation of the child against the parental standard in the family context. The analogy of the individual to the family is the idiom of Scripture, a perception hard to miss if Scripture is taken seriously for the reader. Even the redemption of mankind by God to redeem the divine image in humankind is represented in the family analogy. The Scripture declares the redeemed Church as the Bride of Christ.
The whole story seems exotic, but it does not seem so to the Christian. In practice the faith structure works and that becomes the human test for nearly everything that is engaged in the world of nature. Does it work? The individual finds intimacy with God in prayer and biblical education – and this achieved by the Holy Spirit at work in the world. Human intimacy (the individual with others) begins with the physical relationship between family members – husband and wife, adding children. (If a marriage is not consummated, society can annul it and the parties are presumed not to have married.) The spiritual factor is met in the ceremony of marriage attended by others as witnesses of spiritual vows, but the intimate act of marriage that points to continued life is to be fulfilled. When all is right in the context both man and God are respected for purpose. Intimacy then grows out of its understanding and expands with choices that relate to the nature of the intimacy. Love is for all: intimacy is for choice emanating out for the individual in an expanding circle, adding factors and subtracting factors fitting to the context of the circumference of the intimacy – from the individual (with God), to the mate, to the child, to the family, to the groups, to the community, to the state, to the world. Each extension adds something and takes away something so to give order to all, and righteousness to relationships. Public reporting of personal intimacy changes meaning.
Mankind, from first parents, violated the ideal by insisting on human interpretation. The human right to freedom permitted the violation of the original instructions, and human beings have lived in that freedom to choose righteousness (God’s order), or human context (creature preference). The two are sometimes in conflict. Only God can resolve the conflict in Jesus Christ and living faith that guides God’s standard to life and its consequences. The Christian holds to that: the humanist to some other. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020