One of the major questions often debated regarding God is how specific His will is for each of us. Likely we all would agree that He has a general plan for each of us, specific callings for which we have been equipped. At the same time, I’m sure we all would agree that God doesn’t have a preference regarding what we eat for breakfast on a particular day. But the majority of choices we make fall somewhere between these two extremes, and there is disagreement over whether in each of these cases there is a “correct” choice, or if it’s simply up to us. For example, where should we live? What career should we choose? Should we have kids? And, perhaps especially, who should we marry? My focus for this blog will be on this last question.
It seems to be a fairly common belief that God has made each of us with someone else in mind, and someone else with us in mind, with the intent to bring each pair together. That there is a perfect match, a “soul mate”, for each one of us, and that we must rely on God to lead us to them (or them to us) at the right time.
I used to think this way as a teenager, immersed as I was in the so-called Christian dating culture. I was determined that I was going to rely on God to lead me to the right girl for me, that she would be the only girl I would ever date, and we would get married and live happily ever after in a marriage pre-arranged by God. And it all happened exactly as I imagined...until she broke up with me.
It was, of course, a very difficult time for me, and I decided to seek the advice and encouragement of several friends and mentors during that time. One particular friend with whom I had lunch one day, an elder in my church with a lot of spiritual as well as practical wisdom, made a simple statement that completely changed my view on this topic. I shared with him how difficult it was for me that my girlfriend and I had broken up, particularly because I was convinced she was “the one” who God wanted me to marry. In response, he said, “God may sometimes lead us toward certain people in certain cases, but ultimately, it’s your choice who you marry.”
I was stunned. I had been so immersed in the idea that there is a “right” spouse for everyone that I had never heard this idea from a Christian before, and it carried particular weight coming from someone I respected and knew to have a mature relationship with God as well as a strong marriage.
This brief conversation shifted my viewpoint and led me eventually to allow myself to let go of that relationship and be free to pursue another. And now, looking back and thinking about it, I realize there are several logical problems with the idea that God has literally created the “right” spouse for each of us, and that we must find them.
The first harmful and faulty idea is that there’s someone with whom we’re perfectly matched. In reality, we’re not perfectly matched with anyone (and for that matter, I wonder what exactly it would mean to be “perfectly matched” anyway)! Sometimes it can seem we come close, but inevitably there will be areas of friction and discord that remind us that it isn’t about finding someone with whom we match perfectly, but rather about learning to make it work with someone with whom we are not matched perfectly.
Second, what about those people who lose their first spouse (either due to divorce or because they passed away) who remarry. Must we assume that one of them was the right choice and the other must then have been a wrong choice?
The third problem is that if you’ve married someone and later somehow conclude that they aren’t the person God intended for you to marry, some may feel it would be justified to divorce in order to find and marry the “right” person.
Fourth, the danger of being fixated on a particular person as “the one” is that it can cause us to ignore red flags. If, for whatever reason, we’ve become convinced that God has shown us who we ought to marry, any legitimate concerning signs may be dismissed by telling ourselves that God knows better than we do. And yet it was never God telling us this was “the one”, but our own minds! In my first relationship, I thought there were many “signs” that we should get married, but looking back I can see how easy it is to invent such things in order to confirm what we want to confirm.
Finally, what if Man #1 was meant to marry Woman #1, but he messes up and marries Woman #2. This mistake affects a minimum of four people: if Man #2 and Woman #1 marry each other, fortunately the problem is contained (although these two are wrongly matched by no fault of their own). But how likely is it that they would happen to marry each other? More likely Woman #1 marries Man # 7, and Man #2 marries Woman #28; and then we have real problems! My point here is simply that if each of us really did have a “soul mate”, it would be a bleak situation because the odds are in favor of an extraordinarily small number of people actually finding and being able to marry the “right” person.
The bottom line is that my friend was right: ultimately, it’s our choice who we marry. Perhaps it would be nice if God had made a perfect spouse for each of us and dropped him or her out of the sky at just the right moment, but this is not the world in which we live. Of course, there could be clear wrong choices. And it’s wise to consult the wisdom of God as well as trusted friends when making such a decision, and I do believe God will lead us in a prudent direction if we allow Him. But I believe the idea that there is a specific person out there each of us has to find, and this is the only person we should marry, is nothing more than a romantic dream. Perhaps if we focused less on finding the right person and more on becoming the right person (growing in character and maturity), we would remove some of the stress from the process, be more committed to our spouse than we would be otherwise, and ultimately perhaps make a better decision in the end.
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