I am not sure where the expression “You complete me” originates. It was certainly popularized by the movie, “Jerry Maguire,” where Tom Cruise’s character declares it to Renée Zellweger. It is the foolish notion that we can be “whole” if we find our “other half,” our “soul mate”—that person who fills our longings. Only God can do that. In fact, He who began His good work within you, promises to complete it (Phil. 1:6).
That's not to say, however, that God doesn't use people in the process. Through personal interactions (that seem to bring out the worst in us), we are made painfully aware of the work God must do in us to fit us together in faith and knowledge until we measure up to the standard of perfection, Christ. (Eph. 4:13).
So as God completes us individually, He fits us into the ‘whole’ until it is perfectly fit for Christ (Eph. 4:16; 5:27; Col. 2:10). So then it is not so terribly wrong to say to one another, “you complete me.”
When I saw this article "Is Walmart Killing Small Businesses?" it occurred to me that BIG churches are not unlike BIG Box stores. Both are forcing the LITTLE guys out of business! Half the churches in America are under 75 members. But as the BIG Box church movement grows, LITTLE churches are disappearing (nearly 4000 close their doors each year), while the number of megachurches is doubling every 5 years.
Is Bigger Better? One can argue the pros and cons, but BIG or LITTLE, the question is: are they just filling seats or growing people into Christ's fulness? Watchman Nee said 'church' is what happens in between Sundays, when members love and serve one another, stimulate one another, confess sins to one another, forgive and bear with one another, and build up one another. Let's call them the "one-another" ministries!
The upsurge in violence since the U.S. military left Iraq reminds me that our coerced peace was like a mother who says to her fighting children: “Tell each other you’re sorry and make up.” Of course forcing the Shiite and Sunni Muslims to reconcile after centuries of hatred was not realistic. And as soon as the “adults” were gone, the Shiite Prime Minister accused his Sunni Vice President of treason and ordered him arrested. The sectarian violence that followed resulted in 60 deaths throughout Baghdad.
If forcing someone to love you is a contradiction, how can God command us to “love one another?” Isn’t that coercion? Well it would be, if it were beyond our ability to do so. But when Christ takes up residence in our hearts, we become lovers by way of our new nature, "the Holy Spirit filling our hearts with His love" (Ro. 5:5). This is what sets us apart from the world. For born again believers, the command to love one another is not the "have to" of external compulsion but the "want to" of internal desire.
It occurs to me that perhaps we are not so different from our fellow citizens across the globe. In light of worsening division between the secular culture and conservative Christians, we could be facing our own version of Sunni-Shiite hostility before long, in which case we need not only to love one another, we need to love our enemies.
