Well, it is mailbag time again!
Or “mail bowl” time, as the case may be…
“God made ‘Eve’ not ‘Steve’ as a companion for ‘Adam’.
End of story, it’s very simple Justin!”
I don’t know why “Eve” and “Steve” and “Adam” are all in quotation marks.
If I had a nickel for every time that I’ve heard the “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”
thing, I would have—
Well, I’d have a lot of nickels.
First of all, I don’t think this is a good argument.
There are some reasonable biblical arguments you could make against same-sex marriage.
This is not one of them.
To say that because the first couple was heterosexual therefore means all couples must be heterosexual
is such a weird stretch.
Honestly, it would be like saying, because God tells Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and
multiply,” every couple must therefore have kids.
Or because the first couple was named Adam and Eve, every couple must be named Adam and
Eve.
You can only marry people who are named “Adam” or “Eve.”
Which, of course, is ridiculous.
Nobody would say that.
This story isn’t even about the difference between Adam and Eve.
It’s about the similarity between them.
I mean, the point of this story is that Adam needed a companion who was like himself.
God starts off by looking at Creation, and saying that all of Creation is good, and then
saying, “Oh, actually, one thing’s not good.
It’s not good that the man should be alone.”
Which, part of that is God recognizing, “Hey, Adam needs somebody besides just Me.”
And God looks at all the animals and brings all the animals to Adam—in a weird moment—
and says that there are no suitable companions for Adam among the animals.
So Adam needs a companion like himself.
Not God, not an animal.
God then makes Eve, who Adam calls “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.”
And the point here is, “Look, Adam needed somebody like himself.”
Now of course, Adam and Eve are different.
Of course they are.
We need sex difference in the first couple for the purpose of procreation, right?
Which doesn’t mean every couple needs to procreate, but at least this one needed to!
But also, I think, even in a same-sex couple, you don’t want to be with somebody who’s
your identical—your clone.
That would be weird.
You want to be with somebody who complements you.
Gay or straight, I think that’s true.
But the point of this passage is not to condemn same-sex couples or childless couples or couples
whose names aren’t “Adam” and “Eve.”
This is a story, a beautiful story, about God recognizing the needs of this first person
and meeting those needs.
Now I think when people say, “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” the reason they’re
sayign that is that they believe deep down that sexual orientation is a choice.
They imagine that I’m sort of looking at my options for a life partner and saying,
“Well, hmm, I could choose a woman, but no, I’m gonna buck the system, I need to
be different, so I’m gonna choose a man.”
And that’s just not how it works.
That’s not how any of this works.
As a gay man, I don’t have any attraction to women.
This is a more complicated discussion if you’re bisexual.
But I’m not.
I’m gay, and this person was writing to me.
I can’t make myself be attracted to women.
So in this text, we see that God doesn’t just create a friend for Adam.
God creates a sexually attractive partner.
Adam and Eve have a desire for each other.
And God put that there.
If I were to build a relationship with a woman, it would be somebody I had no feelings for.
No desire for.
Which—would not be at all like what Adam and Eve had.
So my choice here is not between a male or female version of this relationship—between
heterosexuality and homosexuality.
My options here are: Be alone, or be with someone I feel nothing for and potentially
ruin their life, which I just couldn’t do in good conscience…
Or have the closest thing that I’m able to have to what Adam and Eve had—a loving,
mutual relationship with somebody—
Mutual desire, mutual attraction, serve God together—
Like Adam and Eve had.
But in my case that would have to be with a guy.
That’s the only option I have if I want to have that kind of relationship.
If your message to me is that I have to be alone, I would hope that you would only be
able to communicate that message to me through tears.
That it would really just break your heart to think about how hard that would be for me.
And this kind of flippant message is not that.
This is not the message of somebody who’s really considered what life looks like for
a gay Christian and whose heart is breaking when they say, “I’m so sorry but the Bible
just won’t allow this thing that you want so badly.”
This is the message of somebody who really hasn’t thought much about it.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this video.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you feel led to, I would love it if you liked and subscribed, because those things
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Also, if you want to help me make more videos like this, I would love it if you would support
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You can do that by going to geekyjustin.com/patreon, where you can learn about what Patreon is,
if you don’t know about it, and what kinds of rewards you can get.
But whether you do or not, thanks so much for watching, and I will look forward to making
more of these videos for you very soon.
Keep those comments coming.
Even if you disagree with me, keep ’em coming.
It’s—fun times.
Fun times.