Unequally Yoked: A Difference in Belief

Question: Is it ok to date a non-Christian person?

Question: What are your views on Christian dating and possibly marrying an atheist?

The best way to answer these questions is with scripture. No matter what I may say or how you feel, if God's Word says it's wrong--it's wrong. In 2 Corinthians 6:14 (NIV), it says " Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?" (Often times, when you want to get a better understanding of a scripture passage, I recommend looking up other translations/versions.) I think the Message translation explains this best.

2 Corinthians 6:14-16 (The Message)

Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives.

"Yoke" may seem like an irrelevant or outdated term today, but back then a yoke was commonly used to pair animals together to plow a field. If you had a large animal with a smaller one, or a faster one with a slower one, then one of the animals will be doing the majority of the work, while the other would struggle to keep up. Being equally yoked meant that both animals were working together, pulling the same weight, without additional stress to either one of them. In life, there is no greater partnership, no greater yoking, than that of marriage. "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh."  Genesis 2:24 

As Christians, we are to pursue God and His ways, always striving forward toward heavenly things. (Philippians 3:13-14) However, non-Christians do not pursue godly things but rather worldly things. For example, they may pursue a career, money, pleasure, or personal desires. Going back to the yoke analogy, if one animal is pulling right and the other one is pulling left, what will happen? Constant fighting, going nowhere, and nothing getting accomplished. If you aren't both striving toward the same goal, your relationship cannot grow or be healthy. If the animal pulling to the left is stronger, then it might be able to force the other animal to go left as well, but it will not make either animal happy or productive. When forced, both animals will still be miserable. Often than not, when it comes to Christians and non-Christians, it is the Christian that oftentimes gets pulled off course. Unfortunately, it is easier for us to lose our way and succumb to temptation than for others to change their ways and turn to Jesus. (Matthew 7:13-14) Even without the extra pull, we need to be vigilant in our faith, which means it will be especially difficult when someone is working actively against you.

While the passage in 2 Corinthians may seem harsh when it speaks against partnering with non-believers, it's important to remember that God loves non-Christians and atheists and everyone alike. After all, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."  John 3:16.  However, He also loves you and wants what is best for you too. The Bible is an instruction manual on how we are to live happy, healthy, and spiritually-rewarding lives. Whenever we choose an opposite way than what God's Word says, we turn away from his blessings in our life.  While we may be happy for a time, a lifetime of commitment to a non-Christian is a lifetime of commitment to strife, hardship, and working against one another. It simply is not wise and will be counter-productive to what God wants to do in your life.

Perhaps you reason that as long as you don't marry a non-Christian, you have the freedom to date them.  Ask yourself, "Why are you dating? What is your purpose? And is that purpose pleasing to God?" A relationship is also a yoke, albeit, a shorter commitment than marriage. You cannot achieve happiness or success in your faith, when your partner does not encourage you to keep God's ways. Even if non-Christians seem more charismatic, or nicer, or cooler, the Bible warns us to be cautious. In Proverbs 2-5, it says that those who do not follow God, but follow the world instead, are enticing and their "words drip with honey," but their ways lead to death. When you date someone, you promise the other person your heart: your emotions, feelings, and your spirit—the entities that make you, you. However, God says that you should guard it carefully, for from your heart comes everything you do and everything you are. (Proverbs 4:23) To give it away recklessly, for the sake of a relationship, is asking for it to be trampled upon and hurt. If you have no intention of giving your heart to them for safekeeping for life, why would you trust them for the short term? So, guard your heart, as God says, and protect it from pain by not putting it into a destructive relationship.

Finally, it is important to remember that our body, soul, mind, and heart do not belong to us. Once we become a Christian, everything belongs to God. Jesus and His Holy Spirit reside in us. (1 Corinthians 6:15-20) We should treat it with same respect. If you give your body to another before marriage, you defile and violate Christ. If you give your heart and mind away, you give away a piece of you that God wanted to keep safe for those that are worthy. Wherever you go and whatever you do, God is with you and lives inside of you. Non-Christians simply cannot understand this thinking. They believe that their bodies, minds, hearts, and souls belong to themselves alone. They can only see the truth once they truly know Jesus. They are blinded to the fact that they do not belong to themselves, but actually everything that they are belongs to the world, sin, and death.

    As Christians, God has asked us to be in the world, shining as examples of light, but not of the world. We should not conform to the world (Romans 12:2), but rather they should hate us (John 15:18-23), in fact, God says if we are friends to the world, we are an enemy of God (James 4:4). All this to say, it doesn't mean we shouldn't be friends to non-Christians, and it doesn't mean we should isolate ourselves in a Christian bubble. However, if non-believers love you and do not recognize that you stand for something different, then, it is a good time to re-evaluate your relationship with Jesus to see if you're truly living the way you should be.