Finding Your Soul Mate Is No Where In The Bible
By Mark Gungor
Surprising to many, there is absolutely no biblical evidence to substantiate "finding your soul mate." The Bible never tells us to find the one God has chosen. It teaches us how to live well with the person we have chosen. And there is a distance of infinitude between those two thoughts. The first assumes that life, love, romance, and marriage are the result of a couple living by God's principles - that never fail. But this version, which places true love and marriage on the footing of human choice and responsibility, just isn't nearly as romantic or seductive.
Many people of faith bristle when I take this position and ask me, "But what about when Isaac prayed that God would bring the right woman to him at the well?"
First of all, Isaac never prayed such a prayer; it was Abraham's servant who did. Abraham had sent his servant back to his homeland to find a relative for his son, Isaac, to marry. True, the servant did pray at the well that God would help him find the right girl, but he wasn't looking for some divine soul mate, he was looking for a relative of Abraham. In fact, when you read the story in Genesis, the servant does not begin to praise God until he learns that the girl is in fact, one of Abraham's relatives.
Now, if you are comfortable with one of your dad's employees searching for a cousin for you to marry, I guess it would be appropriate for you to pray that God will lead him to the "right one." But beyond that, the Bible is clear that marriage is your decision - not the result of divine edict. In point of fact, I can find only two places in the Bible where God ever told someone to marry a particular person.
One is when God spoke to Joseph to take Mary as his wife. Joseph wanted to abandon her when he learned she was pregnant, knowing he wasn't the father. But God revealed to him that her pregnancy was by the Holy Spirit - obviously, an unusual situation. But even in this case, Joseph had previously chosen Mary.
The only other time God told someone to marry a particular person is when God told the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute. (And I will concede that if you are considering marriage to a prostitute, you probably should have a divine revelation before doing so.) But even then, God did not tell him which prostitute to marry. It was still up to Hosea!
Though it is not supported in Scripture, there is something about the soul mate blather that is a siren song to the human soul. We want to believe it - it is so...romantic. And with this longing deeply embedded in our psyche, we inadvertently impress these thoughts onto the Bible as we read it. Sad to say, but the sacred Scriptures, which have brought unspeakable comfort and a blessing to countless mortals, have also been used over and over to justify numerous untenable positions.
I'm suggesting that the problem is that we don't understand the dynamics of true love. We think we do. Our songs, movies, romantic novels, and TV shows all echo the belief that true love will always appear when we meet the right person, our destined soul mate. And this love will hit us hard out of the blue - an idea charged with mystery and romance. So the search for romantic love continues to occupy the minds of people, even those who are married! The result. High divorce rates and a plummeting marital happiness index.
The truth is a successful marriage is not the result of marrying the "right" person, feeling the "right" emotions, thinking the "right" thoughts, or even praying the "right" prayers. It's about doing the "right" things - period.
Why doesn't God have a special person just for you? Because He knows that His principles of love, acceptance, patience, and forgiveness work, and they work all the time, every tine - no matter to whom you are married. That is why the apostle Paul never told us to find that "special someone," but rather to make sure we find someone who truly believes and lives by the principles of love, acceptance, patience, and forgiveness. He referred to such a person as a "believer."
Even though I don't think there is such a thing as a soul mate, I'm not saying the dating process shouldn't involve a hunt to find a special someone - someone compatible with you, someone with whom you have made a connection. If you are single, I think you should expect that, even strive to find a person with whom you can share feelings of deep affinity, friendship, sexual attraction, and compatibility.
That being said, I think finding someone to journey with in marriage is the slenderest part of life-long relational journey. A great marriage is mostly about two people committing to each other and then employing principles such as love, acceptance, patience, forgiveness, sacrifice, and unselfishness, to enrich that committed relationship.
Marriage is more about work than about divine luck, more about finding someone to love than about finding someone to meet your own laundry list of personal needs.
___________________________________________________
God bless your family and your marriage.
Jim Stephens
