Do I Have a Soul Mate?

You have great taste in scotch and you have great taste in women.”

That line, directed at my groom, probably was the best of my dad’s father of the bride speech.

That speech this past spring also included a dig at how long Joel and I were friends before dating (more than a year). And a dig at how long we dated before getting engaged (about two years). And it ended:

It would be a real cliché to stand here and tell you guys that you’re perfect for each other, but you really, really are. I just can’t be, you know, more truthful when I say that. You are perfect for each other. It would be a cliché to say you’re soul mates. But you are. You really are soul mates, and I could tell that watching you guys grow together in the past couple years. I just truly cannot imagine a better life for Emily than the life she has found with Joel.”

That’s notable because my family doesn’t often throw around sentimental words like “soul mate.”

And because—while I hate to shatter anyone’s really flattering illusions about my marriage or to find fault with a really great speech—I don’t think that’s true. The part about us being soul mates, that is.

There’s a lot of confusion around this issue of soul mates,”

according to Pastor Kerrick Thomas of The Journey Church of the City in New York City, the church I attended in college.

In fact, in a 2006 sermon about the movie The Notebook, part of The Journey’s summertime “God on Film” series, Pastor Kerrick said one of the questions he most often is asked as a pastor is, “Do I have a soul mate?”

It sounds biblical, this idea you have a soul mate who comes from God, who completes you, with whom you have a different kind of love. After all, it has “soul” right there in the name. But the idea comes less from the Bible than from ancient Greek philosophy.

The ancient Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes describes a third gender in Plato’s “Symposium,” a series of erotic speeches; that is, in praise of Eros, the Greek god of love and desire. This third gender was the offspring of the moon, with four arms, four legs and two faces, set in opposite directions. And it once “made an attempt on the gods.” The gods, in return, sliced the moon people in half, separating them sort of Tower of Babel-style, and now “each is always in search of his own token.”

Our race would be happy if we were to bring our love to a consummate end, and each of us were to get his own favorite on his return to his ancient nature,” Aristophanes said.

In other words, we’d be happy if we just could find that one person who completes us. Our soul mate.

However, in a way, this is what happens when we get married:

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

Marriage is “spiritual” and “mysterious,” Pastor Kerrick said. But that doesn’t mean it will make you happy. That doesn’t mean it will make you feel complete.

And that doesn’t mean you married the wrong person. That doesn’t mean if you’re unhappy, your real soul mate still must be out there somewhere. It means you married a real, fallen human being, not half a made-up, two-headed moon person. And no human being or moon person can complete you. That’s something only God can do.

FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR:

Emily McFarlan Miller is an awards-winning education reporter and adventurer, a social media-er, a Christian, a Chicagoan and, as of May 2011, the unlikeliest of newlyweds. Mostly, she writes. Connect with her at emmillerwrites.com.