ODJ: in the open

October 20, 2013 

READ: Genesis 2:18-25 

The man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame (v.25).

Last autumn a professional athlete fatally shot his girlfriend during a domestic dispute at home and then took his own life outside his team’s stadium. Following the tragedy, some tried to pin the murder-suicide on a lack of gun control. Others wondered if the concussion the man had suffered weeks earlier or the medication prescribed for it contributed to his actions. One of his teammates offered perhaps the most insightful thoughts:

“One thing people can hopefully try to take away . . . is the relationships they have with people. I know when it happened, I was sitting, and . . . thinking what I could have done differently. When you ask someone how they’re doing, do you really mean it? When you answer someone back how you are doing, are you really telling the truth?”

This teammate may not have known it, but he was actually expressing the kind of open and honest relationships God intended from the very beginning. Speaking of Adam and Eve, Genesis 2:25 says, “The man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.”

The Hebrew word translated “naked” implies much more than physical nakedness. The idea is that everything about them was out in the open. There was no hiding any part of who they were. They were fully seen.

Today, sin and brokenness make it difficult to be emotionally open and honest. It doesn’t feel safe or comfortable as it did originally for the first couple. But we all still need to be open before God and others.

Believing friends can help us if we tell them what’s truly going on inside. And we can, in turn, be of help to others (maybe even prevent tragedy) when we genuinely ask, “How are you doing?” —Jeff Olson