Posted on 09/30/2015 2:40:51 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
You want to know one reason why so many Christian marriages end up in divorce?
Ronald Reagan once quipped that the trouble with his political opponents, “is not that they are ignorant. It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
Well, I’ve had a bee in my bonnet for years over something that far too many of my fellow Christians believe in that just isn’t so. I speak, gentle listener, of the whole “soul mate” nonsense, especially when it comes to finding a husband or wife.
Let me be perfectly clear: No matter how many ads for Christian dating services you hear or trendy books you read, we simply don’t have “soul mates,” at least as our confused culture understands that term. Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. Look for that concept, by the way, in the Bible, and the only thing you can find remotely close to it is the fierce friendship of David and Jonathan. “Jonathan made a covenant with David,” Scripture says, “because he loved him as his own soul.”
Now those are soul mates, friends. But the Bible knows nothing of romantic “soul mates.” This concept is more New Age than Christian. The Huffington Post gives nine signs that you’ve found your soul mate, the first one being: “You communicate without speaking.” Okay. One New Age website, however, gives three signs you’ve “definitely” found your soul mate: “You just connect without trying,” “Your level of communication is unmatched,” and “You create your own world together.”
That’s cute, it’s nice, maybe it’s even romantic . . . but it’s certainly not biblical.
Now all of this confusion might be kind of funny if it weren’t so harmful to naïve Christians and others who’ve fallen for this idea. Because this idea implies that somewhere out there is that “perfect person” for you, and if your marriage is not exploding with intense communication, romance, and a great sex life, well then maybe it’s because your spouse is not your “soul mate.”
Men who are a little bored with their wives, or vice versa, might be tempted by a co-worker who “understands me so well and is my soul mate, or could be my soul mate.” But frankly, this is a recipe for adultery and divorce, and families end up getting dropped for “soul mates.”
Once I wrote a tribute to C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters” called “Screwtape Proposes a Divorce,” in which Wasphead, my invented senior devil, says the following to Gallstone, the junior devil: “That [soul mates] do not exist is to be kept TOP SECRET. … Let’s be blunt: these humans are scouring the globe for someone with whom a relationship will require absolutely no work or compromise. … Many adult humans who have long ago dismissed Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as myths somehow persist in believing this person to exist.”
The “soul mate” concept is unworkable and completely unfair to the real other person in your life. It puts enormous pressure on him or her to perform, to meet our impossible expectations. As Jerry Root and Stan Guthrie point out in “The Sacrament of Evangelism,” putting others in God’s place—expecting them to give us what only He can—is a naked form of idolatry and will only lead to deep disappointment.
Here’s another thing. The “soul mate” idea suggests that marriage is all about me, that I need to find someone who understands me perfectly, who makes me happy. Marriage should be about finding someone you can make happy. In the great teaching on marriage in Ephesians, for example, husbands are told to lay down their lives for their wives, as Christ did for the church.
As J. R. R. Tolkien once wrote to his son, “No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial.”
So folks, let’s drop the whole “soul mate” talk, shall we? Marriage can be wonderfully satisfying, but that’s the result of God’s grace, hard work, and self-sacrificial love. And that is the truth.
Likewise, men, by and large, have abdicated their role as the protector and provider for their families.
Try to find a man who acts like a man as opposed to an overgrown boy.
Lay down his life for his wife?
Maybe if he can fit it in his work schedule.
There’s some blame shifting right there.
It’s all the women’s fault????
If men are castigated, then who let them be?
Is there not a man around who can say “No” to that, or are they just going to go around blaming others for letting it happen to themselves?
I see the problem right there.
You are absolutely right.
The MAN is the head of the home.
It’s not the woman’s fault if it’s out of whack.
Those that do, don't understand the God given instruction we referenced earlier.
Thanks for the correction. Just contemplating Argentinian soul mates can make one’s mind foggy.
The structure of welfare programs like EITC, SNAP, childcare subsidies discourage welfare for those we’d consider “lower class”, which is why marriage is now considered a “middle class” or higher thing.
Make less than 30K a year, and marrying the father causes you to lose 5-15K a year in benefits.
Did I say it’s all the women’s fault? No, but I said they have the lion’s share of the fault. I also said that women (maybe like you) will go after people who start telling it like it is.
How many men scream with vitriol when told they should learn better how to love their wives? They’ll mostly agree. But if you told a crowd of women they need to learn to honor, obey and be subject to their husband in everything, you’re in danger of being run out of town on a rail or crucified.
You mean it discourages marriage, not welfare, correct? If so, you are so right (and this has been known for 50 years). At first the father would still live there (without the government’s knowledge) and still function as a father; now they’re way past that.
Yes, welfare discourages marriage.
And since a married couple invests and saves more than unmarried couples that make the same income, as well as invest more effort into the children, the breakdown of marriage is why a couple trillion dollars has done nothing to affect poverty numbers.
True; also, when children are simply birthed for freebies (rather than love or a true desire to be a parent), there is no nurturing/rearing. A friend that worked in a ghetto school district described apartments that didn’t have a single book, where the unwed mothers pushed the school to stay open regardless of blizzard conditions so they didn’t have to deal with their golden-ticket welfare bastards. They were (and are) meal-tickets, nothing else.
True. But that doesn't mean that Christian dating services are useless. My wife and I had both been widowed. We met on catholicsingles.com. We found we had values in common, and found we liked each other. We've now been married almost 15 years. It's been a happy marriage.
Does that make us soul mates? I have no idea. Regardless, I'm sure glad I responded to her first email.
There are two times in a man's life when he doesn't understand women: before he marries one, and after he marries one. That's not an argument for not getting married, though.
You said....”But the big issue today, which is almost totally ignored and/or avoided is the problem with women.”
You did not say it was most women’s fault. You said it was women’s.
You do a lot of implying which leaves you with an out on a technicality.
No wonder you don’t like being exposed.
I said women were the BIG issue not the ONLY issue.
Go join the Leftist MSM if you haven’t already. They need people like you who are good at at twisting the truth.
Spot on. The woman should only follow the man if the man is following Christ aka being Christlike. Otherwise is a mockery of Grace.
Don’t see that condition in the Bible. Another excuse for women, like Eve, to be deceived and take of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and for men, like Adam, to go along with the deception and resulting chaos.
Please, be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Reread 1 Peter 3:1-4 about God’s instruction to the wife of an unbeliever and may God give us understanding and discernment to know what his will is.
“Don’t see” which condition?
So an abusive husband or a philanderer are to be acceptable to the wife, in submission to her husband? Is that what Peter means when he uses the word “husband”?
That's fantastic and as it should be. The author must really have poor reading comprehension:
Let me be perfectly clear: No matter how many ads for Christian dating services you hear or trendy books you read, we simply don’t have “soul mates,” at least as our confused culture understands that term. Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. Look for that concept, by the way, in the Bible, and the only thing you can find remotely close to it is the fierce friendship of David and Jonathan. “Jonathan made a covenant with David,” Scripture says, “because he loved him as his own soul.”
Now those are soul mates, friends. But the Bible knows nothing of romantic “soul mates.”
He never got a clue from Jacob and Rachel? Sure there's work involved, but it goes like this:
Genesis 29:20 And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.
And Leah sure knew. It is clearly reflected in the manner she named her sons. Lots of effort involved, but..
Reuben: Surely the LORD hath looked upon my affliction; now therefore my husband will love me.
Simeon: Because the LORD hath heard that I was hated, he hath therefore given me this son also:
Levi: Now this time will my husband be joined unto me, because I have born him three sons:
[Instead of lamenting, she praised the Lord upon the birth of Judah, who was destined to rule.]
And it goes on, with Leah "purchasing" a night with Jacob with Reuben's mandrakes.
And then there's the irony with *that* story. Mandrakes - dudaim - what those are have been debated since forever. The etymology strongly reflects a double belovedness. Does a son bring his mother a hideous root yanked up from a field? No, he lovingly gives her flowers. And what happened? Leah traded them off to Rachel.
My own thought is that the flowers were forget-me-nots, called in Hebrew in the positive, that is zichrini, "remember me". Rachel was Jacob's soulmate. She perceived wisely.
Leah bore two more sons after that, but then it is written:
Genesis 30:22 And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb.
Joseph is known as Joseph the Tzaddik - the Righteous - the foundation of the world.
As we have already seen, early on Joseph is linked to the fulfillment of Jacob's legacy...
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