I’ve always been irritated by many of the ways that people in our culture (and sometimes people in our churches) talk about looking for a marriage partner: They are trying to find their soul mate. They’re looking out for ‘the one’. They are hoping to meet their other half.
These irritate me not because I’m a grumpy old man (my friends are under strict instructions to call me out if I start becoming one!), but because they represent such unhelpful misunderstandings. They tend to wrongly suggest that marriage is completeness while singleness is incompleteness. But they also suggest that there is one perfect person out there with whom you can have the perfect relationship.
Marriage is committing to love someone proactively through self-sacrifice as a picture of the self-sacrificial love of God.
Anyone who is married or who knows some married people knows that isn’t how it works. And in a Christian vision it’s not meant to be. Marriage isn’t finding the perfect match whom you find it easy to always love perfectly. Marriage is committing to love someone proactively through self-sacrifice as a picture of the self-sacrificial love of God. You don’t need to find the perfect potential spouse to get married; you need to find someone whom you are prepared to love through self-sacrifice till separated by death and who is prepared to do the same for you. One of the bits of advice I like to give people is to stop looking for the perfect potential spouse and to start looking for someone they want to choose to love through action.
The way people sometimes approach finding a spouse irritates me, so imagine my shock recently when I realised I was doing the same thing, not in marriage, but in friendship.
I feel like I’ve spent my entire life waiting to find my perfect friend. And I confess that sometimes I become aware of the way my existing friends aren’t that perfect friend. (Just as I’m sure I’m not their idea of the perfect friend.) Sometimes it’s about the fact we have different likes and dislikes. (Turns out the combination of loving classical music, musical theatre and biblical languages is pretty rare!) At other times it’s aspects of our personalities that clash. Or it’s when I’m feeling tired or stressed or low and they don’t respond exactly as I’d want them to. To be honest, if I focus on those things too much, sometimes it gets me down. When am I going to meet my perfect friend?
But recently it’s struck me that I’m doing exactly what irritates me when others do it. The context might be different, but the mistake is basically the same. I’m looking for the perfect friend, the one who will give me everything I want and make the friendship always feel completely easy and natural. But that’s not what friendship is about. Real friendship is about a choice to love.
Real friendship is about a choice to love.
There are differences between marriage and friendship – important differences – but at their heart should be the same thing: self-sacrificial love. Husbands and wives are called to foster self-sacrificial love in their marriage (Ephesians 5:22-33) and Christian friends are called to do the same (John 15:12-17). In some ways, love gets expressed differently in marriage and in friendship, but love is meant to be the heart of both. And to self-sacrificially love another, you don’t need to find the perfect person. In fact, if they were perfect, it might take away opportunities to love through self-sacrifice.
When I focus on the ways my friends don’t fit the mould of my ‘perfect friend’, I become focussed on myself rather than on loving them, and I risk missing the gift of God that those friends are to me. One of the big risks for all of us in life is that we get so focussed on what we don’t have such that we miss all the good God has given us. I want to focus on all the blessings that my friends bring into my life and on how I can love them well, not on whether they are the most perfect friend I can imagine.
No human relationship is meant to be perfect because no human relationship is ultimate, each is a signpost to the relationship that is.
You will never find the perfect spouse, just as you will never find the perfect friend. That might sound like bad news, but I think it’s actually good news. You won’t find them because you’re not meant to. No human relationship is meant to be perfect because no human relationship is ultimate, each is a signpost to the relationship that is. Marriage is a signpost to the ultimate marriage – the eternal union of Christ and the Church. Friendship is a signpost to the ultimate friendship – the friendship with Christ that every individual who puts their trust in him can enjoy.
So, maybe it’s not actually that we should stop looking for the perfect spouse or the perfect friend. Maybe it’s just that we’re usually looking in the wrong place. For those of us who have put our faith in Jesus, we’ve already found him.