Forget About Finding Your Soul Mate
By Mark Gungor
I'm often asked to give advice to Christian singles. It's pretty tough for me since I don't really have experience as a Christian single. I've been a married Christian for the last 35 years of my life! Be that as it may, I will attempt to give guidance to those of you who are dating and single. There is one area that I see as being particularly problematic for single people. It is rampant in the secular world and has infiltrated our Christian culture. This is the idea of "soul mates".
I know this won't make me very popular with a lot of people, particularly many of the ladies, but the idea of the perfect "soul mate" - that God made one special person just for you - is the stuff of sweetsy, twenty-five-cent romance novels, and has no footing in Christian thought.
The Myth
"When you grow up," the wind whispered in the young girl's ear, "you'll meet your soul mate - the one with whom you can share your life and experience ecstatic, joyful love. You will find yourselves entwined as one in conjugal bliss."
"How will I know who it is?" the little girl questioned. "How will I find the right one?"
"Oh, don't worry," said the wind reassuringly. "Destiny dictates the meeting of our soul mates. You will meet the one who is right and you will live happily ever after."
The idea that there is just one special person for me - my soul mate - comes from an alleged altercation between the human race and the Greek god Zeus. According to Greek mythology, we humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. Because Zeus feared that the authority of the gods might be compromised by this race of beings, he decided to split each person in half, condemning us to spend the rest of our lives wandering unrequited until we find the half we were separated from - our lost soul mate. It was thought that our undying pursuit of perfect love is the result of Zeus's scheme to keep us busy - far away from meddling in the domain of the gods.
According to this account, a person's soul mate is the one-and-only other half of one's soul - we would always be less happy with any other person. Today millions base their hope of marital bliss entirely on the Zeus account.
If this is true, then when a relationship fails, it isn't that we have done wrong or failed to do what is right, it is that we have not found Mr. or Ms. Right. Hence, when relational failure comes, the best we mere mortals can do is cut our losses and return to our quest for the one who, once found, will cause us to live happily ever after.
Mixing Myth and Faith
The view that there is a predestined one-and-only out there for each of us has permeated even the Christian view of courtship and marriage. We have spiritualized it. We teach, "God has made one special person just for you." Oh Really?
If that is not the epitome of self-centered, narcissistic thinking, I do not know what is. God did not create another human being just to satisfy your needs or to make you feel complete.
Yet many believers pray for God to lead them to the "right one." Instead of negotiating through the decision making process of selecting a mate in a down-to-earth, biblical approach.
Those of us in Evangelical circles have even taken this to a whole new level by encouraging parents to start praying for that "one special person" that God has chosen for our child while he or she is still young.
Rather than praying for our children to embrace righteousness, justice, wisdom, sacrifice, goodness, et cetera - all things that would make them wonderful mates to whomever they chose to commit their lives to - we are praying for that "special one" God has already chosen for our child. Zeus be praised, I guess.
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God bless your family and your marriage.
Jim Stephens
