I don’t generally write for a Christian audience, but this is one of those times where no one else can help. Back when I was still a Christian, the internet was so new that people were hooking up at ISCABBS and sending each other relatively low-res jpegs via e-mail. The idea of internet dating had not really taken off yet, and certainly we didn’t have hyperspecialized dating websites such as Christian Mingle or JDate or Muslima. We had to get by meeting single people at church, and for the most part we did get by. My church youth group was particularly prolific, producing multiple marriages per year in the late 1990’s, including my own.
These days, though, we have websites where Christians (and Jews, Muslims, etc.) can find love and become equally yoked with someone of their own faith. I understand the impulse here, religious differences are bound to be a additional stressor on any romantic relationship, especially if childrearing becomes an issue. That said, is it not sort of faithless to resort to the intertubes if you really believe that you already have God on your side? An all-powerful and all-knowing being wants you to find love (or else you’d be sinning to even have a go at it) and you pray for Him to guide your search, but when the rubber hits the road you resort to modern technology based on scientific breakthroughs to make it happen, just like anyone else would. Why?
If you really and truly believe that God answers prayer, why not simply ask Him to tell you whom to marry and how to find them? (Probably ask Him to drop them a line as well.) Surely this is not a big lift for the creator of the entire cosmos, who sees every sparrow when it hits the ground and (eugenic bonus!) who knows which people carry recessive genes for various genetic disorders and can easily arrange for healthier offspring. If this idea takes off, it will have the additional bonus of making it demographically and genetically obvious, after a time, which religion is indeed the One True Faith. As if finding love isn’t incentive enough, you’ll be helping to save the entire world!
Log off, let go, let God.
