As a Compassion blogger, September is a month for Compassion. Click HERE to see a face with a name and offer a prayer.
According to October’s Vanity Fair magazine, reported by Good Morning America, there were “auditions” held for who would be the wife of Tom Cruise. If you’re a Top Gun or Mission Impossible fan, you might think there would be a line of willing women, but it was far from being just about love.
As an influential member of the Church of Scientology, it appears that leaders of his religion were rather “hands on” when it came Tom’s search for a wife. Here is where the story gets rather disturbing. If reports are true, secret interviews, covert video footage, makeovers, questioning, and (let’s just call it what it was) lies were part of the “getting to know you process.” The group denies the whole thing, but if it’s true, this was an arranged marriage process on steroids and under a cloak of religion. Doesn’t sound very motivating for a second date.
In all of these ways, Tom Cruise was not right. But don’t throw the hunk out with the pool water.
Maureen Orth, the author who broke the article, said Cruise wanted a “soul mate in the religion,” because he has such deep convictions about his faith. Score one for Tom Cruise!
It’s not enough to be beautiful and famous or even in love, you have to share the same heart. I’ll give Tom points for getting this right in a time of relativism, but this isn’t “Tom’s truth.” All truth is God’s truth, and this one came from God.
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? ~ (2 Cor. 6:14) ESV
Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way: “I’ll live in them, move into them; I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people. So leave the corruption and compromise; leave it for good,” says God. “Don’t link up with those who will pollute you. I want you all for myself. I’ll be a Father to you; you’ll be sons and daughters to me.” The Word of the Master, God. ~ (2 Cor. 6:14) The Message
I am NOT saying that the Church of Scientology is “light,” because I don’t think it is. But God makes it clear that when we join in marriage, we need to be “soul mates.” Women who love God don’t “go strolling” with someone who hates or neglects Him, and we don’t set up house with someone who wants to set up idols. We leave compromise and resist the urge to “link up with those who will pollute you.” With the same convictions, we are able to lay a strong foundation together, raise up children in the same direction, and use our lives for God’s purposes. If we have deep convictions about our faith in the one, true God, we search for a soul mate who shares that faith.
Some women marry, only to discover they’re unequally yoked. Don’t give up, sweet friend. Though you have times when you feel alone in your marriage, you are never alone. God’s Spirit will comfort and guide you, and His people will help and encourage you. Stay near to God’s word to have light for your days and nights. 1 Corinthians 7:12-17 offers encouragement for you.
You know something isn’t right when a story breaks in the “October issue” of a magazine …. on September 1st. Just that should cause us to wonder! Despite all of the pieces of the Tom Cruise Scientology story that send up warning flags, in this one thing I think he’s right: marriage has the potential to be sweet and successful when our hearts are on the same page.
What does it mean to you to be “equally yoked?”
What advice would you give a young woman looking for a spouse about how to know if she’s found her soul mate?
