This is one of the most questioned and confusing topics I encounter when talking with young women. They want to believe that one day they will find "the one" and everything will make sense. There will be rainbows and sunshine and their life will be flipped upside down. This person will complete them. It will be like they were only half a person drifting through life, and he will make everything better. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard a church girl reference their "soulmate" I would be one rich little preacher. They are fixated on it. It goes from "I met the most amazing guy. He is my soulmate", to "I mean I think it's okay what we did because he's my SOULMATE after all", to "what am I supposed to do now? He was my soul mate and now he's gone."
What's so wrong with believing in this soul mate who completes you? First of all, the concept of a soul mate is not a biblical principle at all. Research it out. You will find it in Greek mythology, you will find it as a teaching connected to reincarnation, but you won't find it in the bible. Now some of you are racking your brains to disprove me. You are saying "but what about Song of Solomon 3:4, 'but I found him whom my soul loveth'?" Pinterest has done an awesome job of brainwashing my generation on this verse. It has become one of the most popular wedding verses in recent years. The problem is that as beautiful as it is, this verse, as with the rest of this book of the bible, is an allegorical reference to Christ and the church. Even if you were to read it as the literal relationship between Solomon and his bride, there is a difference in finding love and connection with someone and calling them your "soul mate".
Then you say, "well God made Eve for Adam." Yes, God made someone for Adam, but even if I gave in on this one, where does this leave the whole "when I find my soulmate everything will be great" theory? As I recall things weren't perfect after they joined together. If memory serves me right, we are all paying the price for what happened in their union. While I'm on the subject, Genesis 2:7 says, "Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being(KJV)." Some versions say he became a "living soul." It doesn't say "Adam became half a soul and he had to wait until God created Eve to become complete."
Yes, Eve was Adam's helpmate, but notice in the above verse Adam became complete with the breath of God, not with the creation of Eve. So it is with us. No man, woman, or family can ever make you complete. One of my favorite passages in scripture is Acts 17:24-28, which states “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything. Rather, He himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being'..." We are complete only in Him.
What difference does it make if we think we are completed by our partner? The problem is that when we give a human the power to complete us when they are near, we simultaneously give them the power to leave us incomplete when they are gone. No man (or woman) deserves that right. We are completed by the breath of God alone and unlike completion in a relationship, no one can remove you from God's presence except you! If you allow yourself to find your being in a person, you are setting yourself up for disappointment because people are disappointing and life has a way of throwing us curve balls. To say we are only whole once we meet our spouse, is to call a large portion of our population incomplete. What of the widows or the abandoned or the women and men who never marry? What about the apostle Paul who said that singleness was a gift and that he wished everyone could remain single like him (1 Corinthians 7:7)? Are you telling me that the man who wrote more than half of the New Testament was only half a man?
I believe God brings people together for a purpose. I believe God was faithful in answering my mother's prayers that He would "prepare a young man's heart" for me. I believe that God placed me with my husband to do His work and that we each have assets that when used in conjunction will bring more glory to God. But all of those things do not mean my husband brings my completion. I am made whole by the breath of God alone!
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