I heard someplace that the idea of soul mates started with the Greek philosopher Aristophanes. The tale goes that originally, human beings existed with four legs, four arms, and two heads. Once upon a time, humans made the Greek god Zeus very angry and he split the one into two-- thus we have our present form. And thus we spend our lives searching for the other half who will complete us. It's like a romantic little dream and it's a total crock.
I love the way Matt Chandler debunks this idea (for audio, go here, and scroll to 10.25.09). He says that if one man way back when chose the wrong mate, mistaking her for his soul mate, then the next guy would have to end up with the wrong woman and so on, until we're all screwed because one guy picked wrong. So the idea that Aristophones put forth-- and that modern culture buys into and propagates-- is completely absurd. There cannot be one perfect person for each of us. No, it's not romantic to say that, but it is a relief, really. Rather than worrying about finding the one person who will complete us forever, we just have to make a choice.
Yes, choice. We choose one person to walk life with forever. We choose one person to help us seek sanctification. We choose one person to try to love unconditionally, even though we know we will fail. Essentially, we are choosing to fail.
Why?
Because we are made for relationship. We are meant to share life. I don't mean that marriages are guaranteed to fail. What I'm saying is, as human beings we are selfish to our core. When we choose to love an individual for better or for worse, we are saying that we desire to be sanctified, to be made holier, to try to put another's needs and desires above our own. What an amazing responsibility we are choosing then. What a beautiful picture of Christ's love for us.
At the foundation of the earth, God knew we would fail to live in right relationship with him, and yet he chose to create us, to breathe life into Adam's dry bones and to fashion Eve from his side. He chose us, knowing we would fail him.
How humbling it must be for a man to request to spend his life trying to love you unconditionally, with the full knowledge that you will fail him, he will fail you, and the most you can say is I'm committed to being sanctified by our God through a life spent with you.
How much more humbling then, must it be to know that the Creator of this universe, the God of perfect plans, the mind which fashioned all others-- that Being chooses me, chooses you, knowing full well that we will fail him, but also, knowing he will never fail us.
It seems like a lot of people have been writing lately about this whole idea of us as humans expecting other humans to complete us, to be our soul mates, as Aristophanes theorized. And I guess I am relieved that we're all kind of on the same page here-- we're all thinking that being complete can't happen here in this broken world and feeling whole can't come from another person.
I don't know if my thoughts are coherent to you, but I want you to think these things through, especially, especially if you are young and about to be married. Or if you're old and about to be married. Or if you're already married for that matter. Or if, like me, you want to be married someday (even when someday seems very far away). Think about what happens when we expect a person to complete us who was not designed to complete us. We are making demands of people that they will always be unable to fulfill, and I think that leads to bitterness.
I don't want bitterness and I don't want a relationship that is grounded in unfair expectations. It never works.
What do you think? Have you considered these things? Do you disagree? Tell me why. I want to know, I want to explore this, to grasp it and turn it over in my head.
2 comments:
"In a marriage course I used to teach at the University of Notre Dame, I always gave the students one absolute that they could write down and put in their pockets; when times got tough, they could pull it out and say, 'God, it's great to have an absolute to guide my life.' My absolute was that you always marry the wrong person. It's a reversible absolute, though: you always marry the right person. The point is you don't know who you're marrying. That absolute is meant to challenge the presumption that a person's life is fundamentally a matter of choice. It is a matter of choice, but often one doesn't know what one is choosing. That's where fidelity comes in. A couple marrying must be willing to make a promise although neither person knows exactly what kind of promise is being made."--Stanley Hauerwas
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