Do I Have a Soul Mate?


I’ve finished two more articles/chapters for the book. Here’s the titles:

Do I Have a Soul Mate?
Part 1: Soul Mate Myths
Part 2: How Can I Know I Have Found the Right Person?

I’ll give you a little excerpt from Part 1:

“Soul mate” is a commonly used expression when we talk about love and romance. There’s one “small” problem for pastors like me: the soul mate is not a biblical concept. The notion, in fact, seems to come from religions that believe in reincarnation. The idea is that two souls are timelessly bound together as they pass from life to life.

Don’t get me wrong, I won’t hit you over the head with the Bible for saying these two words (this special ritual is reserved for boys who go around breaking young girls’ hearts). In fact, I’ll use the expression repeatedly in this chapter. For most of us, “soul mate” simply means someone that we connect with on an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual level. There’s nothing wrong with desiring this, but I want to dispel a few myths and help you put things in their proper perspective. . .

You’ll have to buy the book to read the rest. Let me know what you think of the excerpt.

Book Update (part 2)

Title:

LoveLife (or something very similar) will be the in main title. My friends have come up with something very catchy that I’ll share with you in due time. I’ll let that be a little surprise.

I’m still deciding on the full title/subtitle, and I’ve even interviewed a few students to see what they like. The full title will look something like this:

LoveLife: Making Wise Relationship Decisions (my current favorite)
LoveLife: Love, Sex and Relationships
LoveLife: Love, Sex and Relationships Issues
LoveLife: Making Wise Decisions about Love, Sex, and Relationships.
LoveLife: Insights and Inspiration

Maybe I’ll put a survey on the website to see what you guys think.

New Articles:

I’ve written the following articles that will only be available in the book:
Masturbation: One Pastor’s Perspective
How Important is Physical Attraction?
Live-in Relationships: the Counterfeit to a Covenant
The Fuse–How Far is Too Far?

Other Possible Articles:

The Problem With Pornography: I’m still undecided on this because 1.) I’ve already addressed this in other articles. 2.) My book it is not intended to be an in-dept study of all sexual purity issues (more on relationship issues in general). Regardless, this is a major concern and I’m thinking about dedicating an article specifically to this topic. That’s the dilemma of writing on such a broad topic as love/relationships—hard to know where to stop.

Thought Life: The Mental Battle: Same issues as the above article.

Soulmate: Maybe I’ll write some general thoughts on knowing you’ve found “Mr or Ms Right.” I’m at a disadvantage since this hasn’t happened to me, but I’m getting some input from happily married couples.

God of Second Chances/Second Chance Virginity:This article would be about the advantages to re-committing your life to purity for those who have already lost their virginity. Of the three possible articles, this one is the most likely to be written. I realize that I haven’t said much about this in my writing and I want to address it. I think King David’s fall and restoration is a good model to explain the balanced reality of forgiveness and consequences. Rhea Paredes has a chapter on David’s fall in The Price & Prize of Purity (a book I highly recommend), but I would approach it from a different angle. We’ll see.

Publishing/Pricing:
I think the best I can do is to get the book down to about 120-150p a copy (retail). I’m really unsure as to how many copies I should print. I’ll need to print at least 1,000 to make it worth the publisher’s time. The more I print, the more inexpensively they can be sold. If I print too many, however, I loose money. I’m trying to balance faith with good business sense here.

So what do you guys think? Feel free to comment.