Are you the right one?
Published:Saturday | February 16, 2019 | 12:00 AM
“Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following Me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.” Deuteronomy 7:3-4.
Second Corinthians 6:14: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?”
There are those who have fallen in love and cannot get married, or who have married, but later filed for divorce because of real issues of incompatibility and being unequally yoked.
What really are these issues, and how badly can they affect a union?
“What it means to be unequally yoked is joining together in marriage with someone who does not share your spiritual heritage,” Pastor Dr Roy Dennis, family ministries director at the Central Jamaica Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, began.
He said the statement should not be interpreted to be prejudicial or discriminatory as it is purely on the matter of religion.
SHARING BELIEFS
“Someone who does not share your spiritual belief is a non-believer of the thing you believe in, and if you marry this person, you will be considered unequally yoked,” he said.
He continued, “In aspects of Christendom, you may also be unequally yoked because you may still not believe in the same thing. If a Seventh-day Adventist person marries someone of the New Testament faith, they would be unequally yoked for a number of reasons, but one of the main reasons would be worship days: Sunday and the Sabbath.”
Dennis said that oftentimes, people confuse being unequally yoked with compatibility, but they are not one and the same.
“Compatibility is wider than unequally yoked. Incompatibility would mean that the persons are so different, they cannot survive together, and this could be a difference in age, education, financial status, and so on… .”
He added, “[Incompatibility] and [being] unequally yoked cannot be the same because you can have two persons from the same religion being incompatible, although they are equally yoked.”
But what of those persons who are compatible but are unequally yoked? Should they not marry?
“The Bible says you should not marry if you are unequally yoked, and one reason for that is to maintain your religion. We have some people in the Bible who were unequally yoked, and it created challenges for them: Samson went after women from the women of other nations, and it compromised his leadership. You can love someone, but that won’t necessarily change their religious persuasion,” Dennis said
However, he quickly pointed out that some persons who are unequally yoked are converted to one faith or religion after entering into marriage.
“During premarital counselling, I ask the couples how they are going to work out the difference with worship days. If they worship on the same day, it is oftentimes not difficult as some couples say they will worship at each other’s churches. If there are different worship days, it can become a real problem if neither is willing to compromise, and especially when children come in.”
Dennis revealed that a dated rule in the Adventist church states that if a member marries outside of the faith, they are allowed to carry out their posts – if they have one – for a year, and then they would be counselled. But, he says that rule is not one that is enforced.
“When you are getting married to someone, there are ways in which you must be similar and ways in which you must be different. The Bible says one similarity should be religion. Other similarities should be goals and objectives, and differences include the sexes – one male and one female – and temperament; a talker should marry a listener, a worker should marry a thinker, etc.”
Dennis said that it all boils down to what works and what is right for each individual because two persons cannot walk together unless they agree.