Post by TaQuilla on Jun 9, 2007 9:44:42 GMT -5
This article applies to all women, married or not, but it especially should be taken into consideration long before marriage. Just ask any woman who has gone/is going through it.
Is it okay to be romantically involved with an unbeliever? Ask a passionate, believing adolescent who has fallen victim to Cupid's religiously indiscriminate arrow, and you will get a different answer than if you ask an ascetic pastor of thirty years.
Or ask the believing wife of an unbelieving husband, and you will receive a different response than if you ask someone whose wife converted to Christ before marriage. Even our own reply to this question may change over the years.
There was a time when I thought it would be a cruel and unusual punishment if we could not exercise our free will to date anyone we chose. But over the years, I began to see that our true misfortune would be to have an unbelieving partner and have to live with such fundamental differences with our loved one.
Despite the variety of our responses, the Bible is quite clear about this issue. Throughout the Old Testament, the Lord commanded His chosen people not to intermarry with foreigners "because they will surely turn your hearts to their gods" (1 Kg 11:2). After Jesus Christ opened the door of salvation to all people, the Scriptures continued to instruct believers to keep holy and be separate from unbelievers:
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? (2 Cor 6: 14-16)
God commands against intermarriage with unbelievers out of love for His chosen people. He wants His children to marry within the same faith so that a husband and wife will provide spiritual companionship, not hindrance, to each other on the lifelong journey toward the heavenly kingdom. Yet even though God's stance against the union of a believer and an unbeliever is definite, we often struggle with this command. What challenges do we face and how can we deal with them?
read the entire article here: ia.tjc.org/elibrary/ContentDetail.aspx?ItemID=613
Is it okay to be romantically involved with an unbeliever? Ask a passionate, believing adolescent who has fallen victim to Cupid's religiously indiscriminate arrow, and you will get a different answer than if you ask an ascetic pastor of thirty years.
Or ask the believing wife of an unbelieving husband, and you will receive a different response than if you ask someone whose wife converted to Christ before marriage. Even our own reply to this question may change over the years.
There was a time when I thought it would be a cruel and unusual punishment if we could not exercise our free will to date anyone we chose. But over the years, I began to see that our true misfortune would be to have an unbelieving partner and have to live with such fundamental differences with our loved one.
Despite the variety of our responses, the Bible is quite clear about this issue. Throughout the Old Testament, the Lord commanded His chosen people not to intermarry with foreigners "because they will surely turn your hearts to their gods" (1 Kg 11:2). After Jesus Christ opened the door of salvation to all people, the Scriptures continued to instruct believers to keep holy and be separate from unbelievers:
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? (2 Cor 6: 14-16)
God commands against intermarriage with unbelievers out of love for His chosen people. He wants His children to marry within the same faith so that a husband and wife will provide spiritual companionship, not hindrance, to each other on the lifelong journey toward the heavenly kingdom. Yet even though God's stance against the union of a believer and an unbeliever is definite, we often struggle with this command. What challenges do we face and how can we deal with them?
read the entire article here: ia.tjc.org/elibrary/ContentDetail.aspx?ItemID=613