Opposites

Mark 10:8 “the two shall become one flesh”

Back when I was in high school, one of the courses was General Science. Being that the school was in South Texas, the teacher was the football coach. One of the simple experiments Coach Shelby showed us had to do with magnets. He used a couple of bar magnets to show us a simple experiment in magnetism. If you aren’t familiar with a bar magnet, it is a metal bar and it is labeled N, for north, on one end and S, for south, on the other. He put one of the bars on a table and slid the other towards it. When he slid a north end towards a south end, the magnets came together. When he slid a north towards a north or a south towards a south, the bar on the table slid away from the one he was holding. The lesson was that opposites attract and likes repel. All magnets, whether they are bar or horseshoe or button, have a north and a south pole and the reaction is always the same.

What is true in the world of magnetism is also true when it comes to people. How many times have you heard someone say they want to have a spouse who is like them, and then when you see the person they married, they are opposites in their personalities? They may have similarities in what they like in terms of foods or activities or movies, but at the core they are often quite different. The extrovert marries the introvert and they leave all of their friends wondering what one saw in the other because they are so different.

There are several places in the Bible where the above scripture is written. You can find it in Genesis, Matthew, Ephesians, and the words of Mark above. They all say essentially the same thing, that a man and a woman will become one in marriage and leave their single life behind. God created them as separate, intact people, but different in such a way that their separate natures complement each other and don’t compete. If you had two identical puzzle pieces, you could not put them together regardless of how you twisted and turned them. On the other hand, if they were designed so that one of the notches was a perfect fit for a tab on the other piece, and the pictures on each meshed together, then the puzzle would be complete. When it comes to a life-partner, opposites attract and create a greater whole. There is a statement in Gestalt psychology that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So it is with a strong, Godly marriage. While each partner may be whole and complete in himself and herself, together they are much greater than the simple combination of the two.

What about friends and relatives, co-workers and acquaintances, who are alike in their personalities? They work, laugh, and play together and seem to get along easily and greatly. That is also part of God’s plan. In a social context, we are very comfortable with people like us. There is even a cliché that refers to people like that as “peas out of the same pod.” When it gets to our life partner, our spouse, the focus changes. God has designed us so that our spouse’s strengths are our weaknesses and our spouse’s weaknesses are our strengths. When we merge them together, we become the strongest whole and, provided we follow God’s plan and guidance, we can be unbeatable and unstoppable.

Stop and think for a minute and make a list of the successful, happy couples you know. They may have the same interests and likes or they may have their own. That isn’t what I am talking about. Think of their personalities. See the extrovert and the introvert, the hard-charger and the laid-back, the “just-the-facts” and the dreamer. See the magic of God’s plan to help people find their match, their opposite.

If we are fortunate enough to find our opposite and follow what God has said we must do, then we can be both the irresistible force that can conquer all and the immovable object that resists all attacks. Did you ever imagine that you could be so powerful? It is all in God’s plan. Will you follow His instruction?