Do you remember René Descartes? ("I think, therefore I am.") Well, one day Descartes walked into a bar. (Original opening, no?) The bartender looked at him and asked, "Would you like a beer?" Descartes replied, "I think not." Then he disappeared.

As we know, Descartes died (1650), but his ideas haven't disappeared. Today we can argue that Descartes' brilliant thinking undergirds much of modernity's individualism, an approach to life that, according to Pope Francis, can tear the world apart and fosters division. Individualism can grow like cancer and metastasize into nationalism, sexism, homo and xenophobia, etc. But Descartes' theory had a fatal fallacy: He didn't understand that he wouldn't have known what "I" meant if his grandmother had not held him on her lap and said, "I am mémé you are René." Genesis 2 explains this with a theological myth.

Genesis weaves a tale about how God formed an adamah, an earthy creature who reflected God's own Self. God watched the adamah, then, for the first time ever, God said, "It is not good." What was wrong? Adamah was all alone. So, God fashioned all sorts of living creatures to accompany our mythical mudman ancestor. None of them the fellow's need. Finally, God said, "If this poor little creature is to become like us, he needs another who is very similar, yet distinct from himself." Voila! Eve.

When adamah and the woman saw each other, they could not only call one another by name, but they could grow, drawing one another forth through mutual relationship. In this relationship, Eve and Adam initiated our limitless trajectory of growth in humanity, our capacity to be images of the triune, all-relational God. Their relationship served as their first catechism, leading them through the first steps toward a relationship with God whose love called them to life. This ushers us into today's Gospel.

A group of Jesus' antagonists asked him to legislate about the relationship between a wife and husband. Could a man just dump his wife like a pair of worn-out shoes? Jesus replied that legislating about relationships reveals hardness of heart; laws circumscribe what is meant to grow freely. Because all people are made for each other, ignoring or treating another as disposable denigrates both sides. The offended suffers an injury to her/his humanity — and the one dismissing constricts his/her world and humanity by rejecting, rejects the growth offered through relationship.