~ Intimacy Etc

This is a title I have been fighting with for some days so now I am handing it over to see what Dad makes of it.  The point for me is that there are so many nuances when we start using the word “intimacy”, it can devolve into confusion.

The Online “Free Dictionary” uses the following word associations to the noun intimacy as:
“familiarity, closeness, understanding, confidence, confidentiality, fraternization, a means of achieving intimacy with another person”.

Wikipedia goes further saying.  “Intimacy is a psychological concept used to describe the feelings garnered from the level of quality, frequency or exposure to a physical or emotional relationship with one’s self and with everything else; places, things and people. The ideal of this concept is the highest quality, most constant and most fully exposed physical and emotional relationships with one’s self, everyone else and everything. ... It also describes relationships within families and with pets and within groups of people such as theatre troupes and sports teams and within their audiences. Intimacy can be had with knowledge in general or within long term activities”.

It becomes apparent from these definitions that the most common application of intimacy, that of “being intimate with another” comes a long last. 

My position is that we are designed for intimacy.  A state of being related and reliant on another who is above us, yes intimacy is part of the image of God that was planted in mankind at creation.  It was there to foster an attitude of oneness between Father and family, us His created family.  Unfortunately we have denigrated it to the basest levels since then.

We are told in Genesis that as a result of sin God removed His Spirit from mankind.  It seems that not all the upper level elements were removed at that time.  Many parts of our personality have been hard wired to our DNA that seem to be qualities that are more associated to God than the rest of creation; those created without Fathers Spirit.

The “Teacher/Preacher”, the son of King David made the following comment.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:1.

The nature of our intimacy with others, and not just our Spouse/Partner, is a factor of how we relate to Father.  There are verbs, more accurately adverbs that show intimacy in our life.  The main ones used are sharing, loving, and caring but other words include justice and compassion.  They are also God words.  They describe the nature of God in His dealings with the creation mankind corrupted and His expectations that we would learn to become.

The more closely we align ourselves with Father the more we will be inclined to demonstrate the qualities of intimacy.  There is a “God sized hole” in mankind our hearts yearn often unknowingly for God and He stands ready to fill that hole through the person of Christ Jesus.  Jesus is the solution to the problem we, as mankind, gave God in the first sin, and we only need to relate to Jesus as God’s Son for us to redeem the world.  The rest is up to us whether we relate to the Redeemer or not.