Marry from another faith?

This question often troubles young people, parents and church leaders, but many times finally parents and leaders give in to marriages where the couples are mismatched in faith. Even in churches where they preach, "Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?" (2Co.6:14), the pressure from young people is finally allowed to win. But it is a recipe for disaster, and that is why God took the trouble of warning us in writing. In the large majority of cases, it becomes an example of marrying in haste and repenting in leisure! How can two people walk together, except when they agree with each other?

Why young people do not think this difference in faith is a serious-enough reason to give up such ideas is likely to be that their faith is not very important to them, and most likely it consists only of a set of ideas they accept. A Christian who thinks that to be married for life with someone from a different faith is something that they can handle together is ignorant of the true Christian faith and has no real claim to the name 'Christian'. Only those who have been born again are true Christians (Jn.3:3). Such people have seen themselves as sinners in the sight of the Holy God, confessed their sins and turned away from their old sinful life and received salvation as a gift of grace from Jesus. God does a supernatural work in them, changes their heart and mind from sinning towards following Jesus in every part of their life. From then onwards their goal in life is to be pleasing to God in everything.

Imagine such people getting married to those who are still living self-centred, sinful lives! Values, goals and ways are all different. They may put on an impressive show to each other before the wedding, but after the romance has settled down, the true nature begins to show from both sides! It will be a lifelong experience of conflict, misery and compromise. What can you expect after you have disobeyed a plain command of God, thought yourself to be wiser than God and made your own standards of relationship?

Some young people claim that they are going to win their spouses to the Christian faith after the wedding. It happens in the rarest of rare cases, but if only we look around, the evidence is full of the opposite. Some people claim that their friend is actually a better person than many people in the church! Even assuming that there is some truth in what they say, what we must remember is that Christians are not perfect people, and we can find many things we lack. But hopefully we are headed in the right direction, whereas these others are not, and the distance will show up more as time goes on.

Aren't we being arrogant if we think we can do better than God? Knowing our human weaknesses, He is trying to warn us before calamity hits us, but if we neglect that warning and make our own decision, how can we hope for it to go well?