Different Religion, Equal Yoke?

~ by Courtney Perry (Courtney's Blog), a freelance photojournalist living in Dallas, Texas (Courtney's Photography), and a part of Journey Community Church

Recently while in South Africa I had the pleasure of visiting with Roger Saner, maintainer of the EmergentAfrica website, die-hard Protea cricket fan and all-around great guy.  Before we had ever even met face-to-face, we decided by phone to take a short overnight road trip together. Thankfully, in retrospect, this was a good and safe idea.  The quick trip gave us some great drive-time talks, spanning from “So, who are you, again?” to my incessant questions about Johannesburg life to a discussion about the verse in 2 Corinthians that advises against being “unequally yoked”. 

I honestly hadn’t thought of that verse in ages, and my presently conscious mind had completely forgotten it.  Roger wondered aloud what that phrase should even mean to us, seeing as he knows a Christian/Atheist couple and other religiously diverse couples who seem infinitely closer and in tune with one another than many Christian/Christian pairings.  I mulled this over and emailed good friend Luke Miller, who knows a bit about everything theological under the sun.   He directed me to a website, and for a contextual study of the history of this piece of Apostle Paul’s letter, I recommend reading this: http://www.crivoice.org/yoked.html

But what could these verses possibly mean to me in the context of the present when the terms ‘believer’ and ‘unbeliever’ do not compute in my vocabulary?  I love to paraphrase Richard Rohr’s commentary that salvation might best be defined as an individual discovering the God that is already inside.   According to that outlook , my daily life is spent searching to better know the God inside me while at the same time looking for the God which I know to be present in all others.   There is no split; no secret knowledge I can hold over another’s head in a condescending manner.  The problem I have with attempting to assign simplistic modern meaning to the stark words of 2 Cor. 6:14 is that it seems to only exacerbate an us-them; good-evil dichotomy of thinking.  You’re with us or against us—that is all.  Square peg does not fit in round hole and never will. 

So I took this question to the streets. 

I found through a rough survey of my friends that the ones who are in Christian/Christian romantic relationships do not perceive their faith as matching that of their significant others anyway.   Jessica, who has been with her partner Alex for 5 years (both are members of a Christian community), made the comment, "When we met, Alex still had one foot in his fundamentalist past ... and at the time if you, or anyone, had told me or my hippy parents I was going to fall in love with a post-fundamentalist evangelical in college, I would have laughed in your face and gone to a pro-choice rally."    Any couple I approached with the question of how 2 faiths interact and intersect within relationship told me about the unique faith of one member and the unique faith of the other, regardless of whether or not they shared the same religion.  They would then talk about common ground.  Lindsay, a person of faith from a Christian background, has a relationship with a man who is currently somewhat of an atheist, and she talks of their connection in this way: "I think we perceive the world in the same way, with hope, and we have a lot of faith in family that makes us okay with how we choose or not choose to believe."   Jessica summed it up as follows: "I think it's ridiculous to say that a 'couple' could not or should not have differing views on faith.  We have differing views on everything else ... politics, art ... why would the greatest mystery in the world, God, be exempt from that list?  We are 2 people, with 2 minds, with 2 life experiences and 2 different interpretations on everything ... My job in this world is not to be the same as him on any topic, but to truly and authentically be me ... and if he loves me after almost 4 years because of that ... then lucky me." 

In my own life, I attend a Christian church, finding it life-giving and growth-encouraging.  My partner whom I’ve been married to for almost 4 years does not go to any kind of organized faith-based group, and yet we connect spiritually in our seeking.  He comes home from graduate studies in evolution marveling at the wonder of creation, and I come home from journalistic work stunned by grounding stories of raw humanity, and that is our worship together.  In our collective awe, we bow to the God of all who is beyond our imagination, who mystifies us just as much in the realm of Quantum Physics as in the madness and beauty of  human behavior. Above all, there is complexity to our personal faith/belief, and that alone precludes us from judging or even understanding any union but our own.  And even that can be quite difficult at times. 

It’s tempting to look for some easy answer about what the perfect/ideal relationship is, especially when it comes to lifetime commitments, which are notoriously fraught with confusion and doubt along with the joy and ecstasy.  However, existence and experience teach us that, as in all things, there is no exact road map which every human is to follow.  Regardless of the look and flavor of it all, there is tension in every relationship.   A balance to be struck that will inevitably swing out of whack from time to time, settling to supposed “normalcy” in the in-betweens.  The only constant is change, and for that reason alone, we are ever-dependent on the God who lives inside us and surrounds our being to help us make it any way we can.

Comments

[Samir]

Courtney, over and over again I come across couples with "mixed marriages." The world is shrinking and sooner or later all of us will have someone close in our family whom we might have never expected to have (or even could not imagine!). And the shock will be ours (of parents) when we realize that our own child is connecting with "the other" better than with "our own kind." I trust that Faith House will be a refuge for such families and a showcase of wholesome "mixed marriages," a place that will help them live not by the lowest common denominator, but with all the richness both sides bring with them. I guess for "mixed marriage" to work, people need to agree on two things, 1)what matters in a relationship, and 2)curiosity about and respect for everything that another person regards as holy. Which is true of every marriage!

[Roger Saner]

Courtney - I've re-read this article with fresh eyes, now that I'm together with someone who does not, at least on the surface, share the same worldview as me. I find it suddenly providentially bizarre that just about a year ago we were having this conversation!

@Samir: great advice! There's a chance I may be moving to NYC for 2 years, starting September 09 - studying at NYU - and would love to be a part of what you're doing. Right now I'm in South Africa as part of a new monastic community. My friends Sean and Monica Callaghan were supposed to be in NYC earlier this year, but alas, their visas were not approved. I'm hoping to not have that trouble!