Is it OK for a Christian to be romantically involved with someone who is not a Christian? If not, why not? I grew up, like I'm sure most of you did, with admonitions from several sources against dating unbelievers. Why? Are there good reasons for such a prohibition?
Sincerely,
Attracted in Amarillo
17 comments:
My friend, based on my "oodles" of dating experience, I have to recommend that you reign in those hormonal stallions raging in your veins and avoid dating a nonbeliever. I think it makes very good sense not to go down that path. First, ask yourself whether you would consider marrying someone who was not a Christian, who did not share the essence of your faith and the framework with which you see and understand the world. I have to think that a marriage like that (and I saw it with my parents) is in for a bumpy ride. If you are only interested in dating as friends, that may be another thing, but I wouldn't recommend it either. If you expect to be intimately close with someone, how can you do that fully if they don't share something as fundamental to WHO you are as your belief in Christ? If you are really attracted to a non-Christian, it may be in everyone's best interest for you to focus on the friendship. Going back to an earlier discussion on the site, www.christianmingle.com is a great place to meet one or two Christian girls ;-) Or so I've heard.
Dear Attracted,
What do you mean by dating?
I think what he meant by dating was getting "romantically involved" (as those are his own words.
Do you intend for this to be evangelistic romantic involvement? hehehe. If what you're looking for is self-actualization, maybe we could start a Coye-affirmation thread. just kidding.
I'm going to have to come down on the Adam side of this fiery debate.
Steve and Ryan posting--and on the same day! Do my eyes deceive me?
oops--yeah, I should have read Coye's post a little more clearly, seeing as he dosen't even use the word "dating." well, moving on.
Do I think it’s ok for a Christian to become romantically involved with a non-Christian? No.
Here’s the central reason for my thinking so:
Relationships that are given the romantic go-ahead by their participants quickly become totalizing and transformative relationships in said participant’s lives. This is the way we were made: the two were meant to become one flesh (“one flesh” is obviously not just talking about sexual union, but a true commingling of personhood such that Paul can say that “it refers to Christ and the Church”). In a basic sense, this “becoming one flesh” begins at the romantic agreement (either explicit or implicit), and it carries itself out by transforming the individuals in the relationship toward what is shared in the relationship. Even as the romance begins to decline and the covenant (on whatever level it was instated) begins to ascend, the process of becoming what is shared remains central to the relational pattern.
Now, by definition, a non-Christian does not—indeed, cannot—share Christ with a Christian: so what becomes of that relational pattern? For the Christian who is committed to the relationship, it means a steady movement away from Christ. It is a movement toward the world of the “old-self”—toward the pattern of relating and being that governs the flesh without the Spirit. Yes, the Christian must choose to move either toward Christ and away from his partner or toward his partner and away from Christ.
Obviously, Non-Christians do become Christians—but this is never a thing we can assume. In the context of beginning a romantic relationship with a person who is, as of yet, without Christ, any assumptions become quite the gamble. What a risk to take! You’re potentially gambling your soul away!
I will also say that it's a bad idea. Such a person cannot truly support your faith, and it's possible even better to evangelize outside of romance. I think Dave said it well. And I don't have a Bible in front of me, but there are Biblical passages that discourage unequal yolking to think of the most obvious one. The one time that I dated a non-Christian it didn't work well.
So far there's only been "con" positions posted here. And no responses from the originator - highly unusual. So what of it, Coye? What are you thinking?
I've got some craftiness up my sleeve (actually, I hope that it's more like charity), so I will post something up here for you, Adam, sometime this week (I was really busy last week and just didn't have the time). I also might post something more general about asking questions like this. But I must go to work now, so hopefully in a day or two...
First off, thank you, everyone for your thoughts and for caring enough to share them. I apologize for being irresponsibly slow in responding to your comments.
Well, as Adam pointed out, there does seem to be a general consensus here, which usually means one thing-- I feel compelled to problematize the issue. Dave and Adam had especially beautiful and compelling posts, and my comments are going to focus mainly on the language that Dave used (not because I think it is particularly weak but because I liked it best). I absolutely understand and have experienced first-hand the "transformative relationships" that Dave talks about-- in fact, what I find most attractive about a girl is usually that aspect of her person that I want to become more like, and I can point to pieces of my current lifestyle and psyche and tell you what girl is responsible for its presence in my life. I do have to ask two questions, though:
1)Is this true only of romantic involvement, or is it also the case with "platonic" relationships? I can definitely point out things in my self that are "Josh" or "Jordan" or even(heaven help us) "Aeijtzsche". So, should we avoid ANY close relationships with people who aren't Christians? Should we have only Christian friends? It seems unlikely. I do have to admitt that romantic attatchment is often more influential in shaping us (thus the imporatance of who you marry), but it seems to be a difference of degree and not of kind.
2)Are all Christians better to associate with than all non-Christians? Granted, if I'm going to become more like the people with whom I share relationships, then I should associate with those people whom I want to be more like. But there are a LOT of Christians that I don't think any of us should emulate (Falwell, for instance...or Litfin?), and many non-Christians whose example we could all benefit from following (Ghandi, Bhudda, and Levinas come to mind). If the aim is becoming a better person, then a simple Christian/non-Christian dichotomy doesn't seem to suffice. It is important to see here that I haven't made the requirements easier to follow-- in fact, they are much harder! If we can't rely on the rule, on the binary distinction, then we are responsible for making a much more difficult judgment.
This brings me to a much more difficult question-- one that I completely missed when I first formulated the question that started this discussion. Is it really "believers" in Christ that we should seek to be more like, or is it FOLLOWERS of Christ? Are we better off investing ourselves in people who express belief but do not live according to the royal law of love, or those whose lives are shaped by loving one's neighbor and seriously living out the requirements of that love but who don't express formal belief? Which of these (if either) is rightly called a believer (don't ignore the book of James). Who do we want to become more like? How do we judge (can we judge?) and by what criteria do we judge someone to be a Christian or a non-Christian, a follower or an "unbeliever"? [I have more to say about that-- and some other questions I've asked here-- but I'd better save it for a different post.]
So, I definitely agree that we should involve ourselves with people with whom we share a certain level of identity and whom we want to become more like, but is the "Christian/non-Christian" distinction (particularly as it is used in contemporary parlance) a reliable guide for this judgment?
OK, to be fair, I decided to do a short post responding directly to Steve and Strauss. No, no I am not trying to evangelize through romantic involvment. In fact, I think that being "unequally yolked" (especially with "missionary dating") is probably more dangerous to the unbeliever than to the believer: we talk about Christians taking their eyes off of Christ and drifting idolatrously from their faith towards the romatic relationship, but what about the non-Christian whose knowledge of and relationship to Christ would be unduly influenced by-- perhaps even conflated with-- their romantic attatchment to the Christian they are dating? Talk about idolatry! And all of that done in the name of evangelization-- yikes!
On What is a Christian
You seem ambivilant to form any meaning from Christian or Non-Chrisitan (as valuable terms); from what I know of you, I think I have some ideas as to the reasons for your ambivilance. But I'll let you speak about this yourself.
As for me: I do not place the vortex of "Christian" upon a string of words confessed, nor do I place them on a life structured after Justice or Chartity or any other concepts reified into a navigational ceiling over life's turbulant waters; rather, I seek to place the current of this word such that we see a life lived "all toward Christ"--Christ the living (articulated and articulating) high preist whom God has placed before us both knowable and accessable--in a fullness that springs fourth both confession and lifestyle (both truth and grace) such that the living face of Christ the King of personal life is clearly and constantly seen. This is the "Child of Light"--the life in the Spirit, the life in Christ. But take heed: this is still a life of precise confession (otherwise Christ would be marked out as unknowable) and lived emulation (otherwise Christ would be shown to be inaccessable): there is still valuable use in the term as it is usually used. Yet, as I have witnessed in my own short life, we can only see the true congruance between the substance of life (Christ Himself) and these fruits in a life lived--many can an apparent form of Christ without knowing Him in His tranformative filling.
This is a life lived out, worked out, never fully reconized until the end of the Day. This is the life of putting of one "self" or set of selves to put on a new self. It is the constant repitition, echoing in all self-speak and in all relationships: "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."
This is a life fought for, sought after, valued above all things, concepts, lovers. It is the life toward which we constantly encourage each other. This is the life for which we cut off all arms, eyes, relationships which hinder our persuit. This is the life of Christ.
We do not Judge, we simply live all toward Christ; we live as children of light, we walk in love as beloved Children, following Christ together until our last breath. We hold no conceptual banner as our constructed king, we march not only to the sound of our own words, we live as the growing and maturing body of Christ in the confessions and the footsteps of the One who is our head, our call--whose person is our Home--until we attain to the "measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."
This is the life lived all toward Christ. This is the Christian life. Let us not give up our painful persuit of such a high calling!
(I will speak on platonic relationships soon--you might already imagine what I will say.)
Thank you, Dave. I always find life and love in the folds of your rhetoric, and I thank you for that (in many ways you've already found the life-generating grammar you're looking for). I see and agree and have felt for some time that the high calling of Christ is a life of lived confession-- a life in which one's actions are confessions of Christ and one's words are acts of charity. There are question's, though, about when we fail to live up to this high calling (as I know I often do). It is an observable fact that our evangelical culture is more comfortable calling those people "Christians" who fail to live a life of charity than those who fail to make a confession. We tacitly acknowledge that no one will be able to live out a Christian life in perfection, but we expect someone's confession of Christ to reach a certain perfection before we call them believers or followers of Christ. My question-- and it is a question-- is whether or not this is a sound judgment. It seems to look at the lived life of confession and say "this is the ideal, but if you can't measure up to this, then you can just go with the confessional part." The whole thing makes me very uncomfortable, especially when the Scriptures say that there is ONE who judges (leaving the rest of us out of that occupation) and that we should refrain from judging lest we be judged and found wanting ("for you will be judged by the same measure with which you judge others"). If a "Christian" is one whose life is lived towards the articulated and articulating WORD of God-- Christ our great high priest-- then how do we ascertain whether Christ is at work in someone's life? [The terrifying thing is that I DO make these judgments even though I feel incapable of doing so and fear that all my judgments are illicit.]
Coye, I know you like to be the counterpoint here, but I feel like you're running circles around yourself. I fully agreed with you when you said "the high calling of Christ is a life of lived confession-- a life in which one's actions are confessions of Christ and one's words are acts of charity." It seems like here you provide a good paraphrase of what it means to be a Christian. That definition does not, and should not, include a life in which Christ is simply "at work", a phrase you used later in the post. Christ is at work in all persons without exclusion, drawing them to Himself. But this doesn't mean that each person acknowledges and accepts His call. I don't agree with you that we as the church require believers to exhibit anything like a perfect confession. "Confess with your tongue that Christ is Lord, and you will be saved." Confession is necessary to be a follower of Christ; a perfect life is not. Christ commands us to be perfect, but he also enables our perfection through his Spirit. It is not a prerequisite to be accepted into the community of faith, and I do not believe that the church is in this practice. We accept as true Christians those who state and show that their highest goal is to pursue and reflect Christ.
A further word on judging... Jesus calls us not judge, lest we ourselves be judged. Wasn't the true attitude Jesus was forbidding a matter of hypocritical judgmentalism? "Lest we be judged..." We WILL be judged, and so we must humbly submit to each other as we confront sin in each other's lives. We are also told that we will sit with Jesus and judge the nations, and that we will judge the angels. In 1 Cor. 5:12, Paul further instructs us that we ARE to judge those within the church, but not those outside. This implies a certain amount of judging (or discernment) in order to ascertain who is a member of the faith community - a Christian - and who is not. But this judging isn't a condemnation as much as it is a matter of holy discernment. Are we not called to sharpen each other in the Spirit, to hold each accountable to the faith we profess? The scriptures could be used to argue for and against some form of judgment. It seems clear, though, that we are still called to use the Spirit's discernment in many situations.
Thank you, Adam. You've given me a lot to ponder, and I believe that there is much truth and much love in your words.
I think there may be a difference--indeed, a critical difference-- between discerning someone's place in (or outside of) the community of faith and making a judgment about their standing before God or the state of their soul. I am much more comfortable accepting the need to distinguish "Christians" from "Non-Christians" if those terms are not synonymous with "the redeemed" and "the damned," respectively. It would be absurd and somewhat insulting to call the Bhudda a Christian, but I do hope to see him in heaven someday.
I agree.
Of course, we are in no position to make God's judgments for Him and I never claimed to be able to separate the goats and the sheep. But I thought the original query was more practical in nature. Should you date (a very practical exercise) someone who doesn't profess Christ as Lord and Savior, however good-hearted or open to spirituality they may be? This thread has instead turned into the very open-ended debate of the nature of salvation. We can debate it all day long as far as I'm concerned, but when it comes to the matter of making a practical decision, you have to settle on some definitions. You have to find some solid ground to stand on in the midst of the swirling philosophical/theological/
rhetorical mist we have wandered into. I love you and pray God's peace and discernment for you - the sooner you find a good woman the luckier she will be!
"It would be absurd and somewhat insulting to call the Bhudda a Christian, but I do hope to see him in heaven someday."
wait--what? Please explain.
Christ is the only way to the Father. That does not necessarily mean that Christianity is the only way in which Christ's sacrifice effects salvation. Therefore, I hope that Christ's salvific work has brought Siddharta to the Father.
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