Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Wisdom on Unequal Yokes

I would like to call the attention of all my single readers to an excellent article entitled Don’t Take It from Me: Reasons You Should Not Marry an Unbeliever by Kathy Keller, wife of Pastor Tim Keller and co-author of The Meaning of Marriage.
Over the course of our ministry, the most common pastoral issue that Tim and I have confronted is probably marriages---either actual or proposed---between Christians and non-Christians. I have often thought how much simpler it would be if I could remove myself from the conversation and invite those already married to unbelievers do the talking to singles who are desperately trying to find a loophole that would allow them to marry someone who does not share their faith.
That way, I could skip all the Bible passages that urge singles only to "marry in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 7:39) and not "be unequally yoked" (2 Corinthians 6:14) and the Old Testament proscriptions against marrying the foreigner, a worshiper of a god other than the God of Israel (see Numbers 12 where Moses marries a woman of another race but the same faith). You can find those passages in abundance, but when someone has already allowed his or her heart to become engaged with a person outside the faith, I find that the Bible has already been devalued as the non-negotiable rule of faith and practice...
She says it better than I could, and perhaps better than any man could. Read it at the link.

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