Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”

Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—everything that has life.” And that is what happened. (Genesis 1:26-30)

The greatest commandment is to love God. But the second is equal to it: love your neighbor as yourself. From the beginning, human beings were designed to live together with others: to be involved with one another. The very word for man in the first chapter of Genesis has a collective sense to it. It is also striking that when God created people he referred to himself with plural pronouns, suggesting a plurality within God himself, an Old Testament hint about the nature of the Trinity. Humanity was made male and female, and the two became one. That community of a husband and a wife somehow reflected the image of God. It took more than an individual to make humanity like God. Isolation, doing it all by yourself, is not the way of God. Living a life as a hermit, living without reaching out to your fellow man, being concerned only with yourself, is less than God’s design for people. After all, how can we love people if we’re always alone or only think about what’s best for ourselves, as if we are alone? Love requires an object beyond itself.

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