Dear Pastor Lawyer,
Before my husband and I were married, I told him that we should stop seeing one another since he held to one religious conviction and I held to another. He told me that there is only one God and that He was the God of both of our different faiths. Now, after 25 years of marriage, he not only did not come to my religious convictions, but he no longer participates in his own. Do you have any suggestions as to what can be done to “fix” our situation?
Looking in Silverdale
Dear Looking,
I say this first part not for you, but for those readers who are contemplating marrying someone with whom they are in love, but who do not share the same faith in God. Marriage between two differing religious faiths, though common, is rarely as smooth and easy as one might think it could be. The Bible explicitly requires that Christians not marry people who are not Christian. The reason is that the Christian and the non-Christian differ in every area of their lives (except the chemistry that we call love). This difference is noticeable in areas ranging from what they think of life and death to what they think about child raising and education. Because the Christian and the non-Christian have different priorities and worldviews, their marriage will be one of constant battles or of constant compromise. Both are sin for the Christian.
It is important to realize that being a Christian is not simply about partaking in a certain kind of philosophy of life. It is primarily about having a relationship with the living God through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ. I say this because many are under the mistaken notion that being a Christian is like being a Buddhist or a Moslem — simply a matter of which philosophy or way of thinking you happen to like. A Communist might get along perfectly well in marriage with a Capitalist because down inside they hold to the same basic philosophy (me first, me biggest, me best). They learn how to get along and what subjects to avoid or to at least take with a touch of humor. The Christian can’t really do this because he is living in a relationship with God and God won’t share his love with another. He demands that his servants serve him and not themselves. This causes all sorts of problems, as you can imagine, when a Christian (a Christ-centered person) marries a self-centered person.
Now, finally, to what you can do in your situation: The first thing to do is to realize that being a Christian means having a relationship with God (it isn’t about “doing”, or “not doing” things). Then, once you get your mind in gear, you need to do all that you can do to strengthen that relationship. You need to confess your sin, turn away from your sin, spend a great amount of time with God by studying the Bible and praying that God would reveal himself to you and transform you in to the image of Christ as you read. You need to get so saturated with God, and his person that his presence causes you to think of serving and loving only him above all else. As part of doing this, if it is possible, you need to faithfully attend a godly church, one that faithfully preaches the word of God, one that regularly celebrates at the Table of the Lord, and one that emphasizes covenantal fellowship (this should all be in one church, not several). Once your relationship with God is where it should be, you need to follow the Bible’s directions about how to live with a non-Christian spouse. Among some other passages, this is primarily found in 1 Peter 3. It says that if a woman is married to a man who is not in fellowship with God (either a non-Christian or a Christian who is out of fellowship), she is to trust in God to care for her, not say a word, and serve her husband as if he is God himself (excluding sin). Notice that I mentioned that “not say a word” thing. This includes making snide comments and giving dirty looks. This includes doing things to “get back at him," such as not talking to him at all. The Bible means you are to love him, serve him, respect him, pray for him — in short, "kill him with kindness." The Bible indicates that, by faith, this will put your husband in a place where he will be able to come to God on his own and will also put him in the position of being able to lead your home when he does come to repentance. I hope this helps,
Pastor Lawyer
Monday, June 19, 2006
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