The oneness factor

I am sad about my mother’s death, but my father is torn apart.

I say “torn apart” more than metaphorically. For while I was my mother’s child, my father was her other half. The phrase “other half,” or “better half,” has become trite and hackneyed, but it is in fact a profound mystery, and the severing of the two halves has consequences in the person left behind that can be poorly guessed at by the uninitiated. Even a Band-Aid or scab hurts when ripped from the flesh. How much more the rending from top to bottom of united souls? On the mysterious oneness of two flesh in this temporal dimension, Jesus said:

“… Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh …” (Matthew 19:5–6, ESV).

So unequivocal is this that the principle even applies to sexual unions during one-night trysts, at least in some abstruse way that we cannot fathom but can only believe through Scripture’s authority:

“Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh’” (1 Corinthians 6:16, ESV).

The adulterer, the teenaged experimenter, the patron of the house of ill repute, all believe they are having a good time, with no harm done. They walk away from the dalliance thinking themselves scot-free, unaware that they have left a piece of their soul behind. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters:

“The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured.”

So if even a casual college hook up puts tentacles in you forever, how much more binding the oneness of a couple legitimately married who have shared 64 years together? Nor does it need to have been a particularly happy marriage. Mr. Lewis continued to dispense wisdom through the demon’s mouth:

“The Enemy described the married couple as ‘one flesh.’ He did not say ‘a happily married couple’ or ‘a couple who married because they were in love.’”

We have heard, since my mother’s death, of perfectly healthy widows or widowers who have died shortly after the passing of their spouses. The cause is not far to find. It is not medical or physiological, but etiologically spiritual. The takeaway lesson for the living and the still married is to love their spouses well, for in so doing they care for their own well-being. As the apostle Paul again said:

“For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it …” (Ephesians 5:29, ESV).

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