My blogging buddy, Rina, of Into Still Waters, wrote a beautiful little post a while back called, I Didn’t [...]]]> “I met my soul mate at 44. I am…having a very hard time deciding whether I should…spend the rest of my life with him or stay in my marriage….Wouldn’t God want me to be happy?”

My blogging buddy, Rina, of Into Still Waters, wrote a beautiful little post a while back called, I Didn’t Marry My Soul Mate. (It’s a two-minute read and lovely. I hope you’ll check it out.) In it, she praises the richness of two people loving each other and walking through life together despite the fact that they weren’t pressed out of the same cozy cookie cutter. And, even though she wrote the post back in February, recently she got a comment on it that she passed on to me to see if I’d like to have a go at responding to it. Here it is (with a few typos corrected):

This is a truly beautiful thing that is written. After I read it, I realized I wanted to ask you a question. Did you ever meet your soul mate? A lot of people never meet their soul mate till they die. So if they never felt these feelings how with someone special then they are not in the position to say that their husband is a better choice. I met my soul mate at 44. I am married and am having a very hard time deciding whether I should go back to see my soul mate and spend the rest of my life with him or stay in my marriage and keep the family happy but endure the pain of loosing my soul mate. What should I do? Wouldn’t God want me to be happy?

And here is my response:

Dear Friend,

Many people might expect me to start out talking to you about promises, and wedding vows, and how divorce will hurt your children (if you have any), and how it devastates society and isn’t good for you, and how you’ll actually be happier in the long run if you stay with your husband, etc. But instead, I’d like to talk to you about: steak.

See, I think the real heart of your question is not the part about your soul mate. I think the real heart of your question comes at the end where you ask, “Wouldn’t God want me to be happy?” I think the fact that you apply that question to a situation in which you are contemplating leaving your husband for another man demonstrates that you’ve been fed lies in two critical areas: what God wants, and what will make you happy.

I’d like to do my very best to tell you the truth about these two things because if you have a handle on them, the answers to your other questions should fall into place.

Let’s take these backwards and start with what will make you happy. The deep gravitational pull of your soul to your soul mate is an ancient one, commonly called desire. I’m guessing it’s probably the case that you long for this man the way a runner longs for water on an August afternoon. It’s a deep, almost visceral need to be refreshed, and quenched, and satisfied. But what you may not realize is that what you are feeling is a hunger.

Which brings me to steak. What could steak possibly have to do with you and your soul mate? Well, all human hungers work, not on the basis of satisfaction, but on satiation. We can’t actually make the hunger go away permanently. We can only satiate it for a little while. I love steak, especially with a nice cream horseradish sauce, maybe with some fresh dill, like they have at Outback, with a potato, and some salad, and a Coke. Yum. That’s my idea of a fabulous meal. And there are times when I’m hungry, really, really hungry, and I get this perfect steak, and I savor and devour the whole thing, and it’s incredible and perfect, and I love it, and I go home from the restaurant really happy. But you know what? In the morning, I’m in the kitchen scrounging up some eggs. Because I got hungry again.

We always get hungry again.

Proverbs tells us, “the eyes of man are never satisfied” (Proverbs 27:20). Everything in this life from steak to romance satiates but never satisfies. You could run off with your soul mate and you might feel wonderful for a little while, months, even years, but one day you will feel that emptiness again. All you have built with your husband has left you empty. And all that you could build with your soul mate will leave you empty in the end as well.

There is only one thing that takes the ache away, only one thing that fills the emptiness, only one thing that truly satisfies, and that is God.

There was a woman in the Bible who went chasing around from man to man, seeking satisfaction without success. She was on her sixth try when she met Jesus by a well, and He offered to quench her thirst forever.

Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:  But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. –John 4:13-14

As temporarily happy as being with your soul mate might make you, it will not make you permanently happy. The only thing that will truly make you happy is God.

Now there might be some folks out there who are saying, “I’ve tried this religion stuff, and it does NOT make me happy. It’s ridiculous that you’re saying God is the ultimate source of happiness.” Ah, but if you don’t actually know Him, no amount of religious behavior will bring you close to Him.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, walked this earth preaching a message, telling people the way to know God and to be perfectly satisfied in Him. The trouble is, many people have no idea what that message actually was and misconceptions abound. Those people think they know Jesus and His message, and they still feel hungry all the time, so they look elsewhere. But in reality, what they thought was Jesus’ message was wrong. And they actually have no idea what it means to follow Christ.

Jesus message, His Gospel, His “Good News” that He had to share with the world, was the Gospel of the Kingdom. He said, “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). We need to “repent,” turn around, stop going our own way, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. A kingdom is a place where people are under the authority of a King. Think about this. Why do I go to the store and spend money with “The United States of America” stamped on it? Why do I pay taxes to the government of the United States? Why am I responsible to obey the laws this government makes? One answer is that I live here, on this land. But why doesn’t my money list the local Native American tribe? Why am I not paying taxes to the Potawatomi and obeying their laws? Because they were conquered. They are not in authority anymore. The thing that determines what kingdom you’re living in is whose authority you are under.

So, if you are not under God’s authority, are you part of His Kingdom? And if you’re not part of His Kingdom, do you have any hope of understanding “what God wants,” of being close to Him, and of finding the ultimate satisfaction your heart is seeking? No, you don’t. Anyone who is outside of God’s kingdom will spend his life going from steak to steak, man to man, human hope to human hope, getting satiated, but never satisfied, and always getting hungry again.

The question everyone has to answer is this: are you truly under God’s authority, or are you living your life apart from His rule? He said, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” (Exodus 20:16). Have you ever told a lie, no matter how small? He said, “Honour thy father and thy mother” (Exodus 20:12). Have you ever complained to your friends about what idiots your parents are? He said, “Thou shalt not steal” (Exodus 20:15), and maybe you’ve never stolen anything “big,” but did you ever take a pen from the office or put pirated music on your iPod?

The fact is, we’re all born outside of God’s kingdom. None of us is capable of obeying God all the time. The Bible calls this sin, and every one of us is guilty of it.

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God –Romans 3:23

And there’s even worse news.

For the wages of sin is death –Romans 6:23

Sin leads to death. It destroys us. We’re all dying men, trying to medicate ourselves with steak, and romance, and the love of soul mates while our bodies slip slowly into decay and finally fail us entirely.

And there’s even worse news yet! That God we’ve disobeyed, the God whose kingdom we could not be part of because of our sin, that God will judge us after our death. We will give account for every lie, every complaint, every stolen pen and broken marriage. We will be found guilty and condemned.

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works… And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. –Revelation 20:12, 13, 15

But there is some good news in all this. God, through Jesus, has made a way for us to have our sins forgiven and removed forever, a way for us to come under His authority and become a people capable of obeying Him, a way for us to be part of His kingdom. When Jesus died on the cross, He took the penalty for our sins.

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. –Colossians 2:13-14

When we put our faith in Jesus and accept His offer of pardon, we become new creatures. Jesus called it being “born again,” and without it we cannot know Him or truly experience Him because we cannot see His kingdom.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God. –John 3:3

And what about you, dear friend? Are you part of God’s kingdom? Are you living a life fully submitted to God’s authority? Let’s look at a passage from the Bible:

And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife. –1 Corinthians 7:10,11

One of the Lord’s commands is that wives don’t leave their husbands. There’s a loophole there, probably for wives’ protection in situations of abuse, that allows them to just remove themselves physically from the situation, but they don’t get to have a new man. If a departed wife wants a man, she has to go back to her husband.

Suppose I was hungry for a steak, but the only way for me to get a steak would be to steal it. God has said, “Thou shalt not steal” (Exodus 20:15). In light of what I’ve just shared with you, would it make sense for me to contemplate stealing the steak by asking the question, “Wouldn’t God want me to be happy?” The steak is a temporary happiness, a satiation, not a satisfaction of my longing, and in order to get it, I must put myself outside of God’s authority and separate myself from the only Source of lasting happiness: God. Therefore, stealing the steak is both not something that God wants me to do and not something that will ultimately make me happy.

And so it is with you.

Being with your soul mate will satiate, but not satisfy you, and in order to get it, you will have to disobey God’s command to wives not to leave their husbands, thereby putting yourself outside of God’s authority and separating yourself from the only Source of lasting happiness: God Himself. Leaving your husband for your soul mate is both not something that God wants you to do and not something that will ultimately make you happy.

I plead with you to consider that the only way to understand what God wants and to know Him, the only source of true happiness and satisfaction in the universe, is to be born again. Anything else we chase, from steaks to soul mates, will merely satiate us for a little while on our way to death.

Romance.

We might at first be tempted to call it “love,” but it isn’t real love, the kind that cherishes the familiar [...]]]> What is the primary narrative of our time, the theme running through our songs, our literature, our movies, our TV, the story we tell over and over and strive to reenact with our own lives?

Romance.

We might at first be tempted to call it “love,” but it isn’t real love, the kind that cherishes the familiar and hangs on through back labor, mortgage payments, and gastrointestinal illness. No, we in our culture, know that that kind of faithful love is important, necessary for life, like vegetables, but it’s not exciting, it’s not the stuff of fairy tales or the Top 40 countdown. It’s romance that drives us, romance that gives life its meaning for so many millions of real and fictional characters, romance that confirms our worth as human beings. So ubiquitous is our group obsession with romance that we secretly suspect that those who are not wrapped up in its breathless passion are not truly fulfilled, that their lives are lacking in the most fundamental and crucial ways. A single gal may have lots of love, love from friends, love from parents, siblings, church family, but if she doesn’t have strong arms holding her in the night, we feel sorry for her. We may even wonder if there’s something wrong with her. She must certainly be a half-baked, undeveloped, unrealized shell of a person without this necessary and awakening element. Poor dear. (Never mind that Jesus lived the perfect life on this earth and was never “in love” with anybody.)

If we can’t be swept up in the racing heartbeat and warm desire in our own lives, we live them vicariously through romance novels or just the latest yummy chick flick. We feel a sense of entitlement. If falling in love is the ultimate in human experience, shouldn’t we all get a taste?

Until recently, I would have explained all this with platitudes about how it’s in our genetic code to continue the species, and how we naturally have that urge to merge driving us. But then I read a fascinating article, provocatively titled Why Christians Have Lousy Sex Lives. (The title at first made me write the article off because I KNOW it’s not true that all Christians have lousy sex lives. Ahem. But once I read it, I realized that if people were still bound by the lie the article was exposing, they really would have a lousy sex life.)

According to this article, our obsession with romance is not a universal human obsession present with us through all of history. It dates back only to the Middle Ages. Up until then, despite our perfectly functional hormones and the fact that we were able to get married and even procreate, we had other obsessions, other stories we lived. There was a time when people in Europe were actually obsessed with the life of Christ. Fancy that. It is a recent development, this concept of “falling in love,” in which a selfish, at times even destructive, consuming, boiling, hormonal high is elevated to the noblest of all emotions and motivations. “They fell in love,” is used to justify all kinds of evil, impulsive, and foolish behaviors. And our culture has bought it, every bit, and we want to hear about it again, and again, and again.

Once I started thinking about this, I realized that there is almost no mention at all of falling in love in the Bible, except in a few very negative stories in which a man does some pretty stupid things based on lust (Samson and his first wife, David with Bathsheba, and the rapes of Tamar and Dinah come to mind). You could point out that the Song of Solomon is very romantic, but the Song of Solomon is not about falling in love, it’s about feeding a marriage that already exists. It’s about staying in love over the long haul.

The story of our culture, our number one drive, our definition of meaning and purpose, is nearly completely absent from God’s Word. That blew my mind. You could write it off and say, “Eh, it’s just a cultural difference.” But if falling in love is this unimportant to God, why is it SO important to us? Why do we allow singles to be treated like lepers? Why do we allow ourselves to be tempted to affairs, real or mental, when we don’t feel “in love” with our spouse? Why do we surround ourselves with romantic movies, romantic books, romantic music, and feed this ideal that is so completely foreign to God’s Word? Will our minds be steeped in our culture? Will we allow this false God of Twitterpation to have a place on the altar of our hearts, or will we strive to live the culture of the Kingdom?

We need to tell the world a different story, one in which it’s all about God, where He’s the primary passion, drive, motivation, and delight, a story in which we get married (or not) because we want to serve Him, a story in which everyone single, married, in love, or out of love, can all share equally in the adventure of living out the Gospel.

Intrigued? Click on over to Why Christians Have Lousy Sex Lives.