I think it's meant to be comforting. A multipurpose phrase intended to cover a range of sadnesses and prevent a multitude of sins. We tell it to our young people when they're just starting out in faith and relationships; we sympathetically utter it to friends who've just been through a painful break-up:
"Don't worry. God's got a special someone planned just for you."
It's loaded with good intentions of course; meant to inspire hope in the hearer, and to encourage that person that 'everything's going to be OK.' But it's also loaded with serious problems – enough that we should seriously consider wiping it from our collective vocabulary. Here are a few of them:
It's not in the Bible
This phrase doesn't appear anywhere in Scripture – in fact there's nothing remotely close to it. The Bible IS clear that God has a plan for the world (see Revelation 21 for example), and for his people (see the much-misapplied verse, Jeremiah 29:11). And Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about anything (Matthew 6: 25-34) because God is ultimately going to look after them. But neither Jesus, Paul or the prophets of Israel have anything to say about hiding that special someone away until some sort of magical appointed moment. This is Christian self-help, and nothing more.
God doesn't puppet our love lives
Perhaps the key reason that it's not in the Bible is that God doesn't work like that. The whole point is that he has given humanity Free Will – the ability to decide how to treat him and each other. In the same way that we get to decide whether we accept him or not, who our friends are, and what we choose to do for a living, he's also not into arranged marriages. That's not to say he doesn't intervene (hello Nick Cave fans) in our lives, and perhaps cause us to meet certain people at certain times, but it's a huge leap to suggest that he does so to give us our one, totally miss-able chance of meeting Mr or Miss Right.
It creates a wrong and unhelpful view of singleness
Another key problem with this phrase is that it elevates the idea of marriage and romantic relationships so that they become the ideal, and much preferable to singleness. Interestingly, that's not what Paul says: in 1 Corinthians 7 he repeatedly states that for those who can demonstrate self-control, it's actually much better to stay single, because it allows a person to focus completely on the tasks of disciple-making and Kingdom-building. It's interesting that we don't hear that message all that often in a sex-saturated world. Of course, as Paul asserts, marriage is great too: but there's nothing in Scripture that says it's the ultimate goal of the fulfilled life; that's what this phrase helps to imply.
It can make us paranoid we've got it wrong
If you're single, and you haven't met anyone who fits this description lately, it's perfectly understandable that this phrase could start to cause you some anxiety. Were you looking the wrong way at the appointed moment, and that 'special someone' walked straight past you? Were you somehow being disobedient to God at the time, so he decided not to show you the person after all? The idea that God has a special someone that he's holding back from you until the perfect time actually communicates a really unkind picture of a God who could give us what we hope for, but chooses not to just because he can. It's a load of nonsense; we don't need to be a prisoner to it.
It can cause huge pain when things don't work out
What does this phrase, which burrows its way into our collective consciousness, communicate to people who thought they'd met that special someone, before things went wrong? To someone who saw that person leave their life and marry somebody else; or to the divorcee who had believed their marriage would be forever? What does it say to someone who begins to become the victim of domestic violence, at the hands of the person they believe God lined up as that 'special someone'? The words are actually more dangerous than we give them credit for; they can create huge feelings of sadness, guilt and resentment, all of which could be avoided if we weren't so attracted to pat phrases and hollow encouragements.
Of course, God DOES have a special someone planned for all of us. That's the entire point of the Bible, in fact. It's only through Jesus that we can truly find a life-long sense of contentment and purpose. If that sounds cheesy and tokenistic, then perhaps we've really misunderstood what relationships are really about: at their best only a dim reflection of the love God has for us, and the intimacy he wants us to have with him. You may or may not meet a special someone in your life; either way, God's offer of relationship is eternal and unconditional. Now THAT's something we should be talking about.
Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. Follow him on Twitter @martinsaunders.
