Who should I be dating? What kind of relationship do I want at this point in my life? Do religious views have any bearing upon whom I should marry-or at least at this point, whom I should date? Are these important questions?

For me, yes. These queries are the type that many students on DU’s campus frequently ask themselves, if only in the personal landscape of their own hearts and minds, well beyond the distracting buzz that permeates college life.

In the hopes of answering some of these questions, or at least to gain some perspective on them, I attended an event called “Why Date Within Your Faith?” facilitated by Rabbi Yossi Serebryanski and his wife, Chanie, on Wednesday, Jan. 24.

The main speaker at the event, Doron Kornbluth, offered some interesting advice on the subject of college relationships and marriage. In short, Kornbluth advised that people date within the confines of their respective religious practices, i.e. Jews should date and marry Jews, Catholics should date and marry Catholics, and so on.

In collaboration with his theory, Kornbluth offered many statistics to support his claim. Among the data presented, people who choose others within their faith have a much higher success rate in marriage. Statistically speaking, their marriages last longer and end in divorce less frequently.

Also, Kornbluth attested that people from all religious backgrounds go through a sort of lull in spirituality in their late teens and twenties while they pursue academic and vocational success. As he stated, when those people have children, usually in their thirties, they typically return to the faith of their own childhood so they can raise their kids as they were brought up.

But these arguments have two essential questions punching holes in them. First, how do we choose whom we marry? And second, in this so-called lull in spirituality, how are we to foresee where we will be on our devotional path in, say, ten years, when we are likely to be married and starting a family?

Kornbluth’s solution lies in “making good habits” and dating within our faiths now, arguing that if we choose relationships with the type of people with whom we are most likely to have relative marital success, we are inevitably going to end up in a good, long-lasting marriage in which our partners can share the deepest spiritual aspects of our lives with us and our offspring.

In this point, Kornbluth seems to say that rather than choosing whom we marry, we succumb to a process of elimination, and that, by systematically cutting off a large portion of society from our dating possibilities, we will find greater success in whittling down smaller numbers.

However, the antithesis to this agenda is simple: love. Call me a romantic, but I believe that we do not choose whom we love; love chooses us.

While I see Kornbluth’s point, that if we date others in our own faith we will fall in love with a few of them and eventually marry one, his solution seems formulaic and obtuse to the human heart. Furthermore, why would I want to limit myself to, say, 20 percent of the population? Or even 50 percent? If I were to do so, wouldn’t I limit myself beyond comprehension? What might I miss out on? And who?

This thesis is compounded by the fact that we can never know, with absolute certainty, who we will be or what we will be doing ten years down the road. While Kornbluth attests that this is the very reason why we should date our own faith now, I can only see it as extremely myopic and limiting to our chances of finding a real, lasting love.

Love has no regard for race, creed, nationality, or, in this case, religion. More closely, love cuts through these perceived differences to show us how inherently the same we are, to show us that there is no separation in true love.

Sure, there may be plenty of statistics to refute my claim, but in this era of unprecedented knowledge and spiritual freedom and learning, along with the libertine heart that seeks to grow, statistics crumble in the face of love. As a society, we are increasingly seeking to grow and learn in all aspects of life, so why should our love lives be any different? To borrow from the Buddhists, to change is to learn, and if there’s anything that can completely change a person, it’s love.

Those differences in a potential partner that would turn away those adhering to Kornbluth’s teachings are the very reason, as I see it, to get to know that person better. And if there’s a better way of getting to know someone than through a romantic relationship, I’d like to hear it. Ultimately, in each relationship we engage in, we get to know ourselves better, and that, my friends, is the point of this short time we call life.

I will give Kornbluth one thing: he sure knows how to get a guy to think.