Made for Relationship
“You don’t need anyone in order to be happy.”
These are words we repeat so often that we become deaf to how absurd they are. We may use them to comfort someone who just ended a romantic relationship or fractured one of their deepest friendships with well-meaning but ridiculous platitudes. We might as well make fun of a fish that’s dying out of the water, or pretend that a plant should be content even if it never gets to dig its roots in the ground. Broken relationships hurt because, as much as it pains us to admit it, we need good relationships to flourish and be happy.
That we are deeply connected with other human beings is revealed from the first moments of our existence. We all begin our days on this planet being woven inside of a woman who offers her body to nurture and protect us. Months later, the umbilical cord is cut, but our lives remain firmly connected to those who brought us into this world. As infants, we’re still dependent on others. We need to be fed, covered, protected, and held. If we’re rejected or neglected in this critical stage of life, even though we’re unable to form permanent explicit memories, our bodies and minds will bear the marks of abandonment for a long time.
As the years go by, we become more and more able to meet our own physical needs without other people’s assistance. But we’re wrong to believe that this means we are on our way to becoming fully independent. As we grow and become more capable, we start to learn what it means to become interdependent individuals. We are part of something bigger than just us. Now we not only receive from others, but we can also serve others. This learning process takes a lot of time and energy. Although most animals have short “childhoods,” humans require many years to learn how to be functional members of their community. This is because our social fabric is complex.
For starters, we need to acquire our group’s language (or languages), and then we must learn to use it pro-socially, in a way that contributes to the community. From the day we’re born, our brain is flooded with words from those around us. Little by little, we learn how to use them: we try, and we fail, we are corrected, and we adjust. Then, through play, we learn to deal with other people, to negotiate. I have fun with you, you have fun with me. Oh, you aren’t having fun? Don’t leave, we can try something else. I can kick the ball, and you can block the goal; you can hold the base of the tower, and I can put the blocks on top. A good childhood helps us learn how to be part of a team, where we have skills that others don’t have, and we can contribute to making humanity prosper. Then we mature, expand our communities, join and leave groups, form families, and make them grow. We’re always connected with others, and that is a good thing. It makes sense, then, that it hurts so deeply when relationships are fractured.
The Bible speaks to the fact that we weren’t made to be on our own. In the book of Genesis, very close to the beginning of it all, God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Notice the plural. Who’s this “us” we’re being presented with? Who’s this “our” in whose image man would be made? Soon after we have the answer: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). This is puzzling: if we are made in the image of God, why didn’t He say, “Let me make man in my image, after my likeness”? Here we have perhaps the first glimpse of God being Someone beyond our wildest ideation.
The Old Testament emphasizes the oneness of God, very likely to protect the people of Israel against the idolatrous practices of the polytheistic groups around them:[1] “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Even so and as we’ve seen, beginning in the first chapter of Genesis, the Hebrew Scriptures give us clues about how this oneness is a partial picture (Psalms 45:6-7; 110:1; Zechariah 2:8-11; Proverbs 30:4). Further, in the New Testament, these glimpses of multiplicity in oneness become a blinding flare. Sometimes, quite literally (Matthew 17:1-8; Acts 9:1-9).
When Jesus began his ministry, at first, his followers might have thought He was just another prophet. Performing miracles doesn’t make someone a god, right? Turning water into wine was exciting, indeed, but similar things had happened before. After all, Elijah multiplied flour and oil, and Elisha purified a poisoned stew. Little by little, though, Jesus revealed more and more about who He was and what He had come to do. He was not just another prophet; He was the promised Messiah who had come from heaven. And the nature of this Messiah was much more wondrous than what the people of Israel expected. He was with God and, at the same time, He was God, who humbled Himself voluntarily to make sinners children of God (John 1:1, 12).
Not only that, but after His work on Earth was done, Jesus sent Another…someone who—like Him—was simultaneously someone else, but also God: the Spirit (John 15:26). If this makes your head spin, you’re starting to get it. It’s not in vain that the church father Augustine said that trying to understand the triune nature of God was a task filled with wearisome difficulties, as “the mind striv[es] to gaze upon light unapproachable.”[2]Indeed. God is One God in Three Persons. This is the beautiful mystery of the Trinity.
So, while God is One, He has always been in communion; He has always been giving and receiving love within the three persons of the Godhead. It is no surprise, then, that part of being made in His image is this ability to share and receive love from others. This gives us some insight on why relationships are so important for us humans, creatures made in the image of God. We might be tempted to argue that, just as God has been in joyful fellowship with Himself from eternity, we humans can also find contentment in giving and receiving love within ourselves. This might sound appealing to introverts, but alas, multiplicity in oneness is not in our nature. As content as we might be with solitude, we need others to love and be loved. This is emphasized later in Genesis, when God declares that “it is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).
People familiar with this verse tend to only think about it in the context of marriage. This is, of course, a primary way of understanding the passage. Just after making this declaration, God forms a woman out of the man to be his wife. In the larger context of Scripture, though, we realize that it is quite likely that we can understand this passage as not only talking about a guy who will miss out on romance unless God intervenes. There is more to it. After all, Jesus teaches that there will be no marriage in heaven, and the apostle Paul encourages single people to make the most of their freedom to serve the Lord (Matthew 22:30; 1 Corinthians 7:32-34). Marriage, as wonderful as it is, can’t be the end-all, be-all for humanity’s need for relationships with other humans. But the fact that it is not good for man to be alone continues to be true, doesn’t it? I think so. That is why I’m inclined to think that, when God brought forth Eve to Adam in the first chapters of Genesis, He was providing more than a wife (as wonderful as that is!): He was providing a way for humans to make more humans and be in relationship with each other. He was providing a way for us to have not only husbands and wives and mothers and fathers, but also uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, neighbors, coworkers, classmates, mentors, and more.
Why do we crave relationships? Because we were made for them.
[1] To look at this topic a bit closer, see a brief but enlightening primer on the Trinity here: https://learn.ligonier.org/guides/the-trinity.
[2] Augustine of Hippo, On The Trinity, Book II, Preface.
Taken from Life in Devotion: Cultivating A Deeper Relationship with God in the Everyday by Ana Ávila. Copyright (c) 2026 by Ana Ávila. Used by permission of B&H Publishing Group.