> Dani Treweek Bible & Church History Case #73 - Disconnected

The not goodness of Adam’s aloneness†

August 06, 2025

Dani Treweek

†This article is adapted from Danielle Treweek’s forthcoming book, Single Ever After: A biblical vision for the significance of singleness. Available to pre-order from Amazon or The Good Book Company.

Given that I am by no means an outdoorsy person, my obsession with History Channel’s Alone came as an unexpected development. And yet I’ve spent the last few years binge watching every season I could find.

For those unfamiliar with the show, ten contestants are separately deposited in extremely rugged and remote terrain. They take with them ten survival items and double their weight in camera equipment, all the better to film themselves going a little bit insane or starving to death—or both. While their goal is to be the last man or woman standing, they can pick up their satellite phone and ‘tap out’ at any point when things become too much. The psychological drama is ramped up by the fact that none of them know how many other contestants remain in the game.

For me, the most fascinating thing about Alone is that it’s not usually the threat of being eaten by a bear, freezing to death in the Arctic or licking tree bark for all their nutritional needs that causes many contestants to pick up that satellite phone. So many of them ‘tap out’ for one profoundly simple reason: they can’t bear the soul-crushing reality of being truly alone for another moment.

If there is any human person alive today who most resembles Adam’s reality in the Garden of Eden, I reckon it would be one of those Alone contestants. In Genesis 2:18 we get this stark assessment of Adam’s existence in a single-occupancy paradise:

The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’

What was not good?

In the beginning, there was absolutely nothing. And then God spoke and nothing became everything. In Genesis 1, we read that God looked at each thing he spoke into existence and he saw it was good. And yet, it was not until God made humanity in his own image that what was good turned into something ‘very good’ (v31).

If Genesis 1 gives us the bird’s eye view of God’s act of creation, then Genesis 2 is like a camera lens that zooms in on a particular part of the action. We discover how God created the man and placed him in the glorious Garden. Adam was living his best life! But then suddenly, in the midst of all this abundant goodness, there is something not good: ‘The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him”’ (v18). Out of nowhere, something is not right. What are we meant to make of this sudden dissonance?

Well, one thing to note is that, just as it was God who looked and saw that what he had created was good, it is likewise God who looks and recognises something is not good. Often we can assume the problem was Adam was lonely. Yet if we pay close attention, we see that the passage doesn’t invite us to consider how Adam felt about his aloneness. Unlike the editors of the Alone series—who make it very clear how desperately isolated their contestants are feeling—the author of Genesis 2 doesn’t say anything at all about how Adam was feeling. The diagnosis comes entirely from Adam’s creator. And that diagnosis is simply that it is not good for him to be alone.

But God’s diagnosis doesn’t mean that he got to the end of day six and realised he had overlooked something important. Rather, this was God’s way of intentionally revealing that he didn’t ever intend for the man to be literally the only human being on the planet—that he had designed the man to need a suitable helper.

At this point something interesting happens. Rather than getting straight to it and making Eve, God first parades all the existing living creatures before Adam (v19). Why? One reason is that it was another teaching moment. Adam didn’t instinctively know he was alone. He needed to be taught that by recognising that no suitable helper could be found for him (v20). The parade was also God’s way of making it clear to Adam (and all the other creatures) that the special problem of Adam’s aloneness required a special solution—Eve.

But God didn’t go ahead and create Eve in the same way he created Adam (that is, from the dust). Rather, he makes Eve from the man’s very side. God’s solution is not to create something entirely new and different to the man—Eve is quite literally bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh (v23). She is not only a suitable helper fit for him, but she is a suitable helper who is one with him.

If we read Genesis 2:18 carefully, we discover that, in the words of one of my favourite children’s books, Adam was not having a ‘terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’ simply because he was unmarried. No, Adam was quite simply the only human person in creation. God taught him, and all the rest of creation with him, that this was not the end plan. The man was not ever meant to be, let alone to stay, alone.

But Adam didn’t just need anything. He specifically needed Eve. Why? Well, we find the answer to that question back in the previous chapter.

So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
(Genesis 1:27)

It was always God’s intention to make humanity in his image as a differentiated them—as male and female. They were made to be the same as each other, but also different to each other. Here, at the very beginning of all things, we see that God made the man and the woman to be as one, but also to be more than just one. Human beings were not made to be human alone. We were made to be human together.

Marriage is only part of the answer

All this is why marriage between the man and the woman is right there on view in Genesis:

The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman”, for she was taken out of man.’ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:23-24)

God created marriage as one human relationship in which men and women were to live and love together—to not be alone. We should not doubt that at all. And yet, God’s generous solution to Adam’s aloneness was not the meagre provision of just one relationship. He didn’t say, Because you’ve now got each other, you’ve got all you and this world will ever need. Instead he said, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it!’ (Genesis 1:28). God’s creation of the marriage relationship between Adam and Eve was intended to result in the abundant provision of a multiplicity of relationships. God took someone who was really and truly alone, and then he generated the entire network of human relationship from his very body!

And this is what we observe as we read on in Genesis (and indeed, the rest of Scripture). Adam and his male descendants weren’t simply made to be husbands and lovers to women, but also their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, kin, neighbours, work-colleagues and friends. Eve and her female descendants weren’t simply made to be wives and lovers to men, but also their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, kin, neighbours, work-colleagues and friends. God created men to relate to women. He created women to relate to men. He created men to relate to other men, and women to relate to other women.

In other words, God’s solution to Adam’s aloneness was to create an immense wealth of relationships that demonstrate companionship, friendship, community, collegiality, intimacy, togetherness and love in both our sameness (we are all human) and our difference (we are not all male or all female). He created a vast multitude of people to bear and be his image in the world and to rule over it under him. He created humanity to be together, rather than to be alone.

Dani Treweek is the founding director of the Single Minded Ministry, works part-time as the Sydney Anglican Diocesan Research Officer and spends the rest of her time writing, reading, speaking and training on singleness, sexuality, church community and more.