What is the DNA of Relationships?

Just for fun, let us open with a question or two about DNA.

· What do the initials DNA stand for?
· What is DNA?
· What is the purpose of DNA?

Answers:

· Deoxyribonucleic acid.
· It is a “nucleic acid” molecule, which is a string of chemicals that are connected much like plastic, that is with both a chemical and physical bonding. It has the form of a “double helix” (two springs wound into one another).
· DNA stores the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all living organisms.

Our physical DNA then determines what we grow up to look like, physically speaking. Our study book is applying this concept to our non-physical nature, which we call the soul.

Let us begin by cracking open the Scriptures. We are going to look at Genesis, starting in chapter 2, verse 15 and we’ll stop at verse 25.

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

18 The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,

"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."

24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

We often consider this as part of the account of creation, but if we examine this part of the scripture is actually an instruction on relationships. In these few simple words, the Lord God provides the basic instruction for the man and woman to live in harmony. Let’s break it down a little.

· Go where God wants you. (v 15)
· Do what God has planned for you. (v 15)
· Enjoy your freedom. (v 16)
· Listen to and obey God, for a long and healthy life. (v 17)
· God doesn’t want you be alone. (v 18)
· Only one of God’s creatures is a suitable companion. (v 21-22)
· The companion is equal in value to self. (v 23)

Now let us look at what happened next. Genesis 3:1-13.

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?"

10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"

The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

Ok, what happened here? Let us look at the sequence.

· The serpent asks a “set-up” question. (v 1)
· The woman clarifies the matter, in innocence. (v 2-3)
· The serpent appeals to the woman’s admiration of God. (v 4-5)
· Both the man and woman eat the forbidden fruit. (v 6)
· Their eyes were opened, they lost their innocence, and hid from God (v 7-9)
· They felt their first negative feelings, the relationships were broken. (v10-11)
· God asked “What happened”. (v 11)
· He blamed God and the woman, she blamed the serpent. (v12-13)

We probably all know the consequence of this first act of disobedience, mankind fell.
Now we come to the point of all this. The book uses three basic principles drawn from this section of Scripture, this is “The DNA of Relationships”:

1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.

Let’s take a look at these in a little more detail.

Relationship

In our book there a couple of basic truths that deserve to be highlighted.

On p21, about halfway down it says, “Relationships are not an option”, I have underlined that phrased in my book. What does that mean to you? Yes, we don’t have a choice, we all have relationships. Still on p21, nearer the bottom the author rightly states some clarification, he says:

· We can choose HOW we participate in relationships.
· We cannot choose WHETHER we participate.
· Our only real choice is HOW MUCH we will work at them.

In light of these “truths” let us figure out what we ought to “work” on. In our book’s central Bible passage (Mt 22:36-40) we can identify three primary relationships:

· With God.
· With others.
· With self.

Our relationship with God

A whole yearlong Bible study could be done on this subject, and we have probably all spent time on this, so I am going to only summarize some aspects of it today.

· He is God the Father, loving us as only a parent can love a child. He provides His infinite forgiving and merciful love at all times to all that desire it. His only request of us is to love Him with all our being.
· He is God the Son, our friend who gave up His life because He loved us, just so we could spend eternity with Him. He is our listening ear.
· He is God the Holy Spirit, our ever-present help in time of need, our comforter in times of trouble and our moral guide.

Our relationship with others

This subject is the core reason why any of us are here. We all want our relationship life to improve. Most of the book is about doing that very thing; because of this I’m only going to cover one major point.

How many of us have thought, or probably even said, one of the following statements:

· If only HE/SHE would change our relationship would be better.
· HE/SHE has lots of problems, it is affecting our relationship.
· It is HER/HIS fault, our relationship would be much better if……...
· HE/SHE doesn’t listen to me, we don’t communicate in this relationship

While there may be an element of truth in these statements, there is also an element of denial (or a lie). The book says it very well:

· IT’S NEVER JUST ABOUT THE OTHER PERSON!

And, as the author says, if it was we could all call up an 800 number and have a “relationship repairman” go over and fix the other person. This whole issue will be more thoroughly discussed in lesson 4.

Our relationship with self

At first glance this whole concept of a self-relationship seems bizarre. Then as one begins to think seriously about it, we start to say “oh yeah, that’s right”, we have a little epiphany. Let’s consider a few simple questions:

· Do you believe you are important?
· Do you like yourself?
· Do you accept yourself?
· Do you forgive yourself?
· Do you love yourself?
· Do you take care of yourself?

It is that last question which is truly fundamental to having great relationships. When I say, “take care of yourself” what do I mean? Yes I am talking about all aspects of you! I am thinking about the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual parts of you, and me! Lesson 6 in this study will go into more depth on the issue of self-care.

FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

One of the truths we got out of our Genesis scriptures was that God gave us this precious freedom. We are not programmed robots, or animals living by instinct, we have a freedom to decide who we are and what we do. The book covers a couple of big truths about this that we need to get our head around.

· Making a choice is making a change.
· Not making a choice is making a choice!

Very simply put. If we decide to do something different, a change has occurred. If we decide to not change anything, we have chosen to stay the same. Either way, we have chosen. We can choose to stay the same, for example, we can remain a victim of our past, or we can make a new choice. It might be to forgive, to move house, to go to church, it could be so many things. Are you going to choose to do life differently?

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF!

In the beginning, Adam and Eve didn’t. When their eyes were opened, it was the beginning of the blame game, and us humans haven’t stopped since. We will be covering this issue in more detail in lesson 4. So let’s just take an overview look.

Allocating responsibility appropriately leads to better problem solving. This is such a true statement, so why don’t we ‘fess up? To me it is a matter of guilt and shame, combined with revenge and punishment. Let me explain.

When we do something wrong, we are guilty, but we often feel ashamed, just like Adam and Eve. Once they knew about good and evil, they were sunk. This is because when you are guilty, there is a consequence, a downside, a punishment. And we sometimes translate our guilt into a sense of “I feel bad about myself”, which we call shame. These feelings can be devastating and debilitating, they can cause us to freeze, emotionally speaking. So we won’t admit it when we do wrong.

God wants things to be so different. I sometimes wonder what life would be like if Adam and Eve and just told it like it was, and said I’m sorry. Why don’t we admit our mistakes?

I think the basic negative feeling we are avoiding is “non-acceptance”, sometimes called unworthiness. God’s word tells us the opposite though, when we admit our faults, healing is possible.

This is where I’m going to stop today. I hope you get a chance to think about your self-relationship, your ability to choose for your self and taking responsibility for your actions over the next few days.

The final word. Just as DNA is a combination of two strands, relationship DNA is also a combination of strands, but it has three! God says it best in Ecc 4:12 (b).

A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.