Together

by Andrew Cromwell

Don’t do life alone. Not if you can avoid it! 

There is a deep need inside of every human being for friendship. Of course there are people that are genuinely leave-me-alone hermit types. These types (you know who you are), don’t really care for people much and tend to select isolation over human connection. In the most extreme cases — can you say, Ted Kaczynski? — they even turn against their fellow humans.

Hermits and loners notwithstanding, nearly everyone has a deep, ingrained need for contact with others. In the Creation story in Genesis, the Creator God systematically creates the universe and all that is in it. After each instance of creation, He makes a declaration that “It is good.” He creates the sun, moon and stars and declares it good. He makes the earth and oceans, and declares it good. He makes all the animals and fish of the sea and declares them good too. 

Such is the pattern of creation up to and including the creation of man. This is the first time in the story that the Creator says something is not good. You can almost sense the Creator looking down at man and shaking His head and saying, “this guy just isn’t going to make it by himself.” That first man, Adam, needed someone to walk with him, and until he had someone, something was missing.

We all need someone else. Love demands it. Love that is not directed towards someone else is only a half-love at best and at worst it is a selfish love. We say things like, “I love my car”, “I love that tie”, or “I love skittles”, but this kind of love is simply an extension of loving yourself. We like these things because they make us feel a certain way. 

It is even possible to love people in this selfish way. When we objectify people and see them simply as means to the end of self-pleasing, then we have fallen into this trap. Much of the way our culture views relationships is based on this kind of self-love. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we seem to have such a difficult time with enduring relationships. When we discover this person, who we once thought was our perfect mate, begin to act in ways that don’t make us feel good, we start to look for the escape hatch.

Real love, on the other hand, is directed at another person and finds fulfillment in their fulfillment rather than in one’s own fulfillment. This kind of love cannot be experienced with objects. It is the kind of love that requires us to give of ourselves without expecting a return. It puts the other person first and seeks their best.

Doing life together requires us to put others first. When we do so we discover what true companionship means.