“… in the image of God created He him; male and Female created He them” - Genesis 1:27. Being made in the image of God, we are able to sense and feel the need for companionship and love, as our maker created these capacities. God loves us, and we realize what it means to be loved, and to love another. God’s first lesson about intimacy was not to be His last. As such, the first marriage in Eden was not designed to be the last, but it and all that would follow were designed to last without end. God intended to use marriage to teach us what it means to love in a different way than we had already learned. Beyond how a spouse loves its partner, a child loves a parent in a completely different way. The romantic love was designed to come first, and through its expression came the familial love of parents and children, siblings, and extended families.
The first gift given to the newly married couple in Eden was the gift of procreation. We were counseled by God to “be fruitful and multiply” BEFORE any test of sin or disobedience. Therefore if our premise holds that what was perfect prior to sin, will one day be perfect after sin’s extinction; we can assume that procreation remains a gift given to loving couples who marry. Man’s repopulation could one day replace the loss of the angels who turned away from God and now delight in forming his demonic league, but there is no indication that once these numbers were met, we would suddenly stop our ability to procreate. God did not counsel us to be fruitful and multiply … to a point, or until we reach some magic number, but essentially “throughout the earth”. Our ability to create families from the union of two was established even prior to outlining our dominion over the earth, and before our first dietary menu was laid out. We could imply from this perceived pecking order, that family is MORE important than work, and MORE important even than what we eat; perhaps outlining a parent’s willingness to sacrifice for the sake of protecting and providing for their child.
Today’s parents struggle to provide for their children, often with both having to work to insure there is enough funds to eat under the roof of our own residence. But this was not the original intent of God’s plan. Survival was something He provided. Notice in these same verses, He spells out that HE GAVE us all the herb bearing seeds, vegetable, fruits, grains, and nuts for us to eat. He did not say, if you work enough, and to my satisfaction enough, then I will consider giving you what you have earned. Instead, He only focuses our attention to the “gifts” He has already provided. The devil has gotten good at using our need for survival to rationalize our priorities to earn money as being more important than meeting the emotional needs and companionship needs of our families. This is to our detriment.
Remember the feeling of “new” romantic love when all you really want to do is “be with” the object of your affection. Time together, i.e. companionship, is at the top of your priority list on the things you value in life. The same feelings occur again when holding your new-born child in your arms. Both the baby and you feel a bond from the close proximity of holding that new precious life in your arms. The baby is invariably happy as long as you’re around, the minute you’re out of view, the baby tends to get nervous, or cry. In short, a baby craves the tactile companionship of its parents. Over time, age will continually reduce the need for tactile assurance from mom and dad, but it never will fully go away. Watch a grand-parent of 80-90 years in age, hug a son or daughter who is in their late 60’s, and you still see a familial version of love that exists that is unlike all others.
This entirely new dimension of love opens the doors to even other possibilities. So we learn that love can exist in romantic form with a specific object of attention, or in familial manner with multiple objects of deep love – each with their own personalities and perspectives; and now also in a fraternal sense or perhaps better stated, between friends. Friendship of the deepest variety is a non-romantic love, but is also born of the choices to two friends. You are not born into your relationship as it is in families, but rather choose to share a similar kind of love with someone you develop a relationship with. The lessons of love than began in garden, ripple through time and relationships, and extend well beyond what we know today, and beyond our sin-sick-vision. For eternity we will study what love is, what it means to love and to be loved. It is a subject we will not tire of, grow bored with, or master fully; for as God is infinite, so Love also is infinite. We have only begun to scratch the surface.
All these lessons of love began in the Garden of Eden with our first parents Adam and Eve. It is believed that both Adam and Eve were naked in the garden, but covered as the angels are with a covering of light. This belief may well have been reverse-engineered from the descriptions of the Heavenly city to come, where each of the saints is covered in a covering of light. Apparently God’s “light” makes a good set of clothing. It was only after man sinned that he lost the cloak of lights, and realized his nudity. He then attempted to cover himself with leaves. God fashioned the first set of clothing from the skins of animals, a practice man would grow to emulate far too often. But these handmade clothes were only necessary after sin had been introduced to man. Prior to sin, a light, some say the light of righteousness, was what covered man, and will one day cover him again.
In my experience, sin is much like entropy. Entropy in the sense that everything sin touches disintegrates, falls apart, loses its value, and drifts towards nothingness. Evolution as a concept, stands in direct contradiction to the reality of entropy. Evolution would have us believe that everything around us is evolving into a better, more advanced state of being. Yet nothing in our reality supports this conclusion. Our cells divide, reproduce, and divide again – yet we all age and die. Prey evolve their camouflage and personal habits, but then predators adjust to continue to make the kill. It is said the level of naked self-interest grows with each subsequent generation. Everywhere I look, I see the effects of entropy at work. There are only certain areas where I see the evolutionary concept at work, such as computer CPU’s. They double in capacity as our manufacturing techniques improve, and has our ability to engineer more capacity in smaller spaces improves. One could rightly assert the computer CPU’s are evolving. Bu the people making them are certainly not.
It is believed that Adam and Eve created in perfection used 100% of their brains, we use around 6% now. If entropy were not at play, why not maintain our 100% usage. If we were evolving, why evolve more brain capacity than is required to survive as a species? That seems to be all the animals ever evolved into. Seems to me “cavemen” would have been the 6% capacity utilizers, with modern man being the 100% users. But science proves this notion untrue. Along with our 100% brain utilization in perfection, was a radical increase in proportionate sizing. It is believed man was somewhere around 15 feet tall and weighed nearly a ton. This radical increase in size would have made man much more formidable, and helped establish his dominance over the animal kingdom in the earth even after the fall of sin. But the Bible also states were given dominion over the fish as well. I guess we were much better swimmers then.
There was a certain strength formed in the union of man and wife. It was noticeable by Adam before it was present. It was appreciated by Adam after it was corrected. Men and women need to be together. They need to look to each other to complete themselves. It is not good for man to be alone. He needs a help mate. Men and women were created equal in every way, each different and with unique abilities and purposes, but equal to each other. But then too, the mantra of the day was not how much one could acquire, but rather how much one could do to serve another, and cause the happiness of another. A service focused society does not need to fear equality, but can rather embrace it, and demand nothing less. Our union was strong, and beneficial. Marriage became the building block of society. It is why Satan focuses so hard on destroying marriages as a means of destroying nations. With isolation comes inevitable failure. With concern for another, comes strength and unity.
The “image of God” was designed to teach us what love is. These were the lessons we were supposed to have absorbed from the study of our origins. But there was so much more to impart, a ton of things that must be completed, our first parents had as much on their plates and more as we today. But suddenly, after six days, God delays the work load, and takes a day of rest. Perhaps there is something more we are to learn …
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