On various occasions during my relatively young life, I have come across broken romantic relationships in which one of the parties will express the reason for the breakup as: “God has a better plan,” and/or, “It just wasn’t meant to be.”
Personally, I don’t find anything inherently wrong with a Christian man and woman devoted to one another even with no sense of a special divine word that the other is “the one.” In fact, I find that the Bible supports such a relationship! So why do we view the broken relationship as being a part of “God’s will”?
I don’t think it is. I understand God to be love. He is good. He does not want to see his image bearers suffer. He takes no pleasure in the death of anyone, even the wicked (Ezekiel 18:32). Now, God can use certain events, even evil events, for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28a), but that doesn’t mean these events were intricately planned by God to happen.
If the sovereignty of God is interpreted and/or understood by some to mean God causes every last thing that occurs in this realm, then we would have to blame God for the fall. If one were to assert that it is God’s desire for any and all events to happen, then they have misconstrued the nature of God entirely! God desires and pleads with us to repent and turn to him (2 Peter 3:9, 1 Timothy 2:4). Yet some Christians believe it is God who decrees such evil to happen, supposedly for his glory, and that he deliberately withholds from most of mankind the ability to believe in the Lord Jesus (the doctrine of reprobation).
This understanding of God is preposterous and makes the creator of the universe a narcissistic tyrant, playing around with his automatons. This position erroneously equates God’s sovereignty and omnipotence with direct causation. In other words, God is not powerful enough to choose to refrain from using a portion of that power in order to allow humans their own genuine power to choose as free moral agents.
In “The Problem with Evangelical Theology,” New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III writes that God’s will “has little to do with finding some more particular purpose or calling in one’s life when it comes to our tasks in life or our occupation.” The reality is, “God demands of us a less narcissistic focus on ourselves and our own needs.”
Witherington points out that in the Apostle Paul’s writings, the phrase “the will of God” is only used twice! And both times, in 1 Thessalonians 4:3 and 5:18, it is non-individualized instruction on holy living applicable to all of us.
That said, does God have a purpose for your life? Yes. Love God, love others. Does God have a special purpose for your life? Could be, but most likely not. God makes himself specially but only rarely known when he has a special purpose in mind for someone (see: Paul, Jonah, Jeremiah, Moses, etc.)
Moses was a shepherd. Paul was a tentmaker. There is absolutely no evidence that they sought after a clarion signal from God as to his special will before selecting and embarking upon their occupations (instead: 1 Corinthians 10:31). But here in narcissistic America, too many evangelicals have read the Bible in a manner that leads them to expect that God will treat them, indeed every Christian, just like the special characters in biblical history. I know this because I once held that belief. I wasted too much time attempting to figure out the future rather than making the future happen.
Instead of trying to play divine detective (a task unnecessary with the obvious burning bush or the Damascus Road encounter), be wise. Understand and apply the biblical teachings on whom to befriend (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:33) and/or to draw near (2 Cor. 6:14), whether befriending someone is within “God’s will.” I’m bewildered when a Christian is hesitant to agape another individual, romantic or not, for fear that it isn’t a part of “God’s will” simply because he or she hasn’t received a signal from the burning bush or from the skies above the roads of America.
