The Self-Made Man

So God created mankind in his own image,  in the image of God he created them;  male and female he created them.  Genesis 1:27  NIV

Male and female – Did you think that this phrase is just a sexual summation?  Do you believe that Genesis 1 is just a preview to the real story of the creation of Man that begins in the next chapter?  No, not at all.  Something fundamental is declared in this phrase that sets the stage for the rest of the Bible, and it isn’t the fact that human beings are sex-differentiated creatures.  What’s occurring here is the geography of ḥesed.

Hesed is the central linguistic marker of Hebrew religious thought about God.  As you know, the word is untranslatable into any single Greek or English term.  Its umbrella of meaning covers action, obligation, responsibility, reciprocity, and community.  But it is even more than that.  Hesed is a cosmological value concept. It’s about interconnectedness.  “ . . . everybody and everything is influenced and affected by something or somebody from the outside.  The idea of hesed rests upon this premise.”[1]

Why does the Bible specifically note that God created human beings male and female?  Is it because He wanted us to realize we are uniquely sexual beings?  Not likely.  Every previous animal species was also male and female.  Is it because He wanted us to know where babies came from?  Again, irrelevant.  It appears that God deliberately made us sexually distinct so that we would realize that we, male and female, began in relationship.  Our very essence is differentiated unity.  We are required to acknowledge our dependence on another; someone very much like us and very much not us.  Two of exactly the same kind don’t fit the bill.  There must be similar opposites.  We learn to be grateful for our opposite self.

The feeling of gratitude is “a knowledge that my existence is irrevocably tied up with the other self . . .”[2]  “The awareness of grateful indebtedness is the very core of religious and moral thinking and feeling.”[3]

“The self is not the exclusive property of the person himself.”[4]  In other words, there is no such thing as a “self-made man.”  You, that’s right—all of who you truly are—is the result of your dependence on others.  Without them, you wouldn’t be.  It might have started without your cooperation.  No one asks to be born.  But from that point forward, all of what you became, all of what you count as yourself, was inextricably tied up with others; your parents, your siblings, your friends and enemies, your community, your God, and not least, your opposite sexual partner.  Be grateful for that and stop fooling yourself that somehow you’re responsible for all your successes (oh, and failures).  ḥesed means connection—in fact and obligation.  The clearest manifestation of this ontological reality is the interconnectedness of male and female.  One without the other is not quite human.

Topical Index: male and female, self-made, ḥesed, Genesis 1:27

[1] Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed: Essays on Family Relationships (KTAV Publishing House, 2000), p. 136.

[2] Ibid., p. 140.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid, p. 141.