Sunday, October 13, 2013

Can There Be a Wrong Match on Christian Mingle?

God is a pretty powerful guy.  He takes care of everything from tiny birds to the deepest friend drama, and he manages to do it for everyone all over the world, too.  Yet even though he has so much control and influence over the big picture, we often expect him to orchestrate the minutiae.   It happens more often than it really should–instead of relying on our own God-given wisdom and discernment, we expect him to come down out of the heavens and make our decisions for us.
One of the areas of life that is often the recipient of this strange approach is marriage.  It’s no wonder, since about half of all marriages end in divorce, that we want to be absolutely positive that we pick the correct person for a lifetime of companionship.  The thing is, this isn’t quite how things were designed to go.  We often are so worried about making the wrong choice that we can’t make the right one.

It shows a sad truth about the box we’ve put God in.  Men and women spend hours scouring Christian Mingle for the one person the Holy Spirit says is “it”.  “They’re wondering if God’s going to tell them one day, ‘You really messed up. I had your perfect spouse all ready and waiting for you, but you went ahead and married the wrong person. Too bad.’” (LaFitte 2013).  This makes God seem like a rather vengeful kind of deity, punishing us for not hearing correctly or for being baby Christians.  Is this really the God we serve? 

Dive into the Bible sometime and you’ll see several mentions of marriage.  Read them all and you won’t find many statements from God saying anything like, “Wait for my signal!” “And it certainly doesn’t talk about marriage and spouses in terms of finding only one uniquely-designed match, yet we’ve strangely adopted this notion when considering a potential spouse” (LaFitte 2013).  The idea of The One didn’t come from the Bible, so it could only have come from society.  God urges us to follow his lead, but when it comes to revealing whether a person is “right” or not on Christian Mingle or any other dating site we must use multiple channels. First, we can pray for God’s wisdom and discernment.

 Second, we can take things slowly to really determine if we feel compatible on critical areas such as values and temperament. And third, we can have our close friends and family give us their feedback on if they feel we’re making a good choice.  In addition, we need to be careful fantasizing about the ideal partner because no one is perfect and we may be setting our bar too high. We are all broken people living in a broken world and must view romantic relationships as one of the best conduits for personal growth and refinement. Through this perspective and the steps above, the future for romantic relationships definitely becomes brighter.

LaFitte, J. There is No Such Thing as ‘The One’. Retrieved on September 25, 2013 from 
relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/there-no-such-thing

By ChristianCrush team. ChristianCrush.com aims to be the most authentic, innovative, and trustworthy site on the web for believers to connect. To get in touch with ChristianCrush, please find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FBChristianCrush.

3 comments:

  1. Sounds great for singles who are looking for other christian singles :) I met my husband when I was in my teens and we are amazingly still together after all these years! More than half my life has been with him. <3

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  2. I believe it is really important to take things slowly and get to know each other first. There are people who are so lucky to have found 'the one' but not all people are so lucky. In all cases, it is all important to pray for guidance.

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  3. I am not familiar with the Christian Mingle; however, a lot of my friends met their one-true-love through Singles For Christs.

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