The young man, a Christian and a member of a local congregation’s music ministry, was attracted to a young woman in the congregation. Wanting to do the right thing, he prayed about it. And having prayed, he went to the young woman and told her, “God told me that you’re supposed to be my wife. It’s God’s will.” She didn’t want to go against God, so she agreed, despite not knowing him all that well.

A few years later, they were divorced.

You have to wonder, was that God’s will too?

As with all churchspeak, the problem is not with the words themselves, but the way in which the words are used to achieve certain purposes in a social context. There is indeed such a thing as “God’s will” as revealed in Scripture. God wills, for example, that people be saved, that his people be holy, that death be defeated, and so on.

But we quickly find ourselves on a slippery slope when we claim that we know precisely what God intends in a particular situation or for a particular person because we’ve prayed about it. And please — don’t hear me as saying that what God desires in a particular situation cannot be found through prayer! My concern here is social. What I worry about is the way people weaponize the language of God’s will to get others to do their will, whether they recognize they’re doing it or not.

Think about it. What if the young man had said to the woman, “I really like you. I’ve prayed about it, and I really want you to marry me.” That would at least be an honest statement, one that takes full responsibility for his own thoughts, behavior, and desires. But it’s hard to imagine any young woman saying “Okay, let’s do it” in response to that. It might even be honest to say, “I’ve prayed about it, and got a really warm feeling thinking about the two of us being married. I think that might mean God wants it too.” But that’s still a far cry from the definitive and flatly unambiguous statement, “It’s God’s will.” For the young man to say that denies his own responsibility. Rhetorically, he may be throwing God under the bus of his personal desire.

And surely, one could make a much stronger biblical case that God’s will for the young man was humility first.

Here’s another example. I know people who struggle for years in ministry positions under abusive leaders. Such leaders often claim absolute authority and the right to determine what God’s will is for their congregations (and even the possessive adjective “their” is revealing). Anyone who disagrees is treated as rebellious and insubordinate, subject to public censure or ridicule — even from the pulpit.

Does that mean that it’s impossible for God to have revealed something to such leaders? Not at all. But again, where’s the humility? Where’s the sense of the church as one body with many parts, all important to the functioning of the whole? In a my-way-or-the-highway leadership structure, the language of God’s will is effectively weaponized to force people to comply. One dare not even ask the question, “Um, how do you know this is God’s will?”

One safeguard is for us to be more circumspect with regard to how we understand the nature of God’s will in the first place, and how we use the language. We often speak of God’s will as the specific, preordained, right choice we’re supposed to make when faced with a difficult decision: Am I supposed to choose X or Y? Which one is God’s will?

That way of thinking about God’s will can be narrow and highly individualistic, susceptible to all manner of influence and superstition: Look, there’s a parking space right in front of the door! That never happens. It must mean God wants me to buy that new TV!

We would do much better to stick with what we know from Scripture: what kind of people does God want us to be, especially in relationship with each other?

Let’s get that right first. That way, when anyone claims to know God’s will for someone else, we’ll have a better climate and environment for discerning the truth together.