How Did You Treat This Person I Gave You?

Prior to having children, Valentina and I spent two summers preparing as much as we could, bolstering our marriage for the inevitable chaos and tension to come. Of the marriage studies we did together, going through Francis Chan's You and Me Forever was like watching a tesseract unfold; it pushed my flat understanding of relationships into a higher dimension where God lives and operates. Spoiler: it's bigger than marriage.

What is a tesseract?

I was first introduced to the word tesseract when I read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle in 5th grade. Researching it stretched my imagination and planted a deep sense of wonder—a kind of magic I didn't feel again until I discovered the internet for the first time. I actually spent a few days trying to think of a better word to use, one that was more commonplace and less esoteric, but I kept coming back to it.

A tesseract, also known as a hypercube, is a four-dimensional cube, or, alternately, it is the extension of the idea of a square to a four-dimensional space in the same way that a cube is the extension of the idea of a square to a three-dimensional space.

I want to key in on the idea of extending something we understand into higher orders. We all learn what a square is early in life. Afterwards, we can take that same understanding and add depth to arrive at a cube. I think this makes sense to all of us because we can directly observe cubes in the world around us, and something in our brain clicks, "OK, yeah, it's a square both directions!" Repeating the extension into a fourth dimension is much harder, and it creates a feeling of unease.

My two-dimensional understanding

Through what I had witnessed in life and my decision to come to Christ, it was easy for me to understand that I am loved by God and to love Him back. God and me...that was my square.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:16–17)

It had often been too easy for me to view salvation as a settled thing, and I lived accordingly, resting in the grace given the moment I accepted Christ.

Then, in the study, Francis posed a question. One day, when I am standing before God, what will I say when He asks, "How did you treat My daughter who I left in your care?"

Boom. What would otherwise be an innocuous fatherly question put me face to face with my own sins. It was the kind of question that lingered, building discomfort the longer I sat with it. I found myself wrestling with the idea that while the consequence of sin was erased, accountability for my actions toward others was not. Paul makes the same point to the Corinthians when he writes that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due for the things done in the body, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10).

Some things are easier to explain, but how could I answer for the words, actions, and sins that bruised my wife's heart and brought her to tears?

Extending to three dimensions

Francis's question added a dimension my square didn't have. If the square was God and me, the depth added was my marriage to Valentina.

At most of the weddings I have attended, Christian or secular, tradition still has the officiant turn to the bride's father and ask, "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?" Francis makes it very clear that the Father who responds "I do" is God Himself. Taking the ceremony out of it, she belonged to Him before she belonged to me.

Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. (Genesis 2:22)

Paul tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, giving Himself up for her so that He might present her to God holy and whole (Ephesians 5:25–27). Paul is quite literal in instructing me to take my understanding of how God loves me and extend it to how I love Valentina.

Moreover, his statement doesn't read as the language of permanent ownership. It reads as stewardship, a husband holding something that belongs to someone else, knowing it will one day be presented back.

Well done, Francis. I now have a cube with the same love God shows me, but given depth.

Called to four dimensions

What happens if we pull on the responsibility thread a bit more? Let's revisit Genesis.

The first person in Scripture to ask God whether he was responsible for someone else asked it to dodge the answer. When God asked Cain where Abel was, Cain shrugged: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9). God chooses not to answer the question directly in that moment, but answers it throughout the rest of the Bible.

If God placed Valentina in my life on purpose, I have no reason to think He was careless with everyone else. Paul told the Athenians that God determined the times and places where people would live so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out and find Him (Acts 17:26–27). Mordecai told Esther that she may have been placed where she was "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14).

What if the people around me are not background characters in my story? What if they were placed, and I was placed near them by God? That includes the obvious ones, like my children, my parents, and my community in Hoboken. But shouldn't it also include the coworker I find exhausting, the neighbor I nod to and never talk to, and the friend whose relationship turned sour after business got in between our friendship?

Who is my neighbor?

In the most recent church series, "Uncapped," Pastor Chris of Hoboken Grace claims that as a body, we function as a whole but don't hold equal roles.

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. (Romans 12:4–5)

Likewise, as part of the body, I don't believe everyone is entrusted to me in the same way. Scripture describes something like circles. God comes first, marriage second, my family, and so forth radiating out like ripples on the water's surface with God being the center.

As I make my way to the outer circle, I feel like this is the last unfolding of the tesseract which requires me to look beyond my current understanding of relationships. When the lawyer asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?", he was looking for the edge of his obligation (Luke 10:29). Jesus answered with the story of a Samaritan stopping for a stranger on the road, then turned the question around. The point is not who qualifies as my neighbor, but whether I will be one to someone else on the side of the road.

Being patient with Valentina is hard enough, but she is someone I love and chose. Jesus said that loving those who love you is no great accomplishment; even tax collectors do that (Matthew 5:46). Now I wonder what happens if God asks me how I treated the people I didn't choose but He did.

How did you treat My son?

When I first read about tesseracts in 5th grade, I couldn't picture one. I'm not sure anyone really can. You can see a square and a cube, and you can trust the pattern that carries them one step further, but the fourth dimension stays just out of my view. That's about where I am here too. I can see the square of God and me. Francis helped me see the cube with Valentina in it. Everyone else God has placed near me, I can't hold in my head yet.

How did you treat My daughter who I left in your care? My daughter who lived across the hall? The son who you've stopped talking to?

My first instinct is to identify 3 people in the outer circle to build an intentional relationship with.

I don't think that's what's being asked of me, but I can't yet say what is. Maybe it's simply faithfulness toward the people in front of me, or who I currently interact with. I honestly don't know what that looks like day to day.

What I do know is that I already have failures to account for, and I'm grateful the story doesn't end with my record.