Marianne Gutierrez: Health Practitioner: Do not be unequally yoked 2 Corinthians 6:14

Do not be unequally yoked 2 Corinthians 6:14 · 20 May 2008

This statement of Paul’s from the New Testament in the Bible has caused many Christians to believe that God expects they should only marry Christians.

Then to confuse matters some will debate what a Christian is. Is a Christian someone who goes to a Church or someone who lives and breathes their faith and knows God and accepts that Jesus died for them?

Tricky isn’t it?

No.

Not at all.

Many Christians when they read the Bible also learn about the time it was written and so have a better understanding of what God or the Prophet in question or Jesus or Paul or Peter was talking about.

But funnily enough they don’t with the ‘Do Not Be Unequally Yoked’ bit.

At the time when Paul was speaking, the people all around him were Jews or other Pagan beliefs. In Corinth the Greek religion was the mythical gods, mithranism an eastern religion and the mysterious cults that were around Greece at the time.

Christianity formed yet another very diverse belief, structured as it is to ‘allow’ individuality – the extreme opposite to having a religion which sought the opposite – to control people and groups of people. Whereas Jesus Christ came to free people.

Paul illustrated with his unequally yoked picture that you couldn’t and wouldn’t harness a donkey with an ox to plough as Deuteronomy 22:10 says one shouldn’t. It just wouldn’t work. A Jew marrying a Christian in those days, certainly wouldn’t work, the whole marriage would be at odds with each other the whole time, one party would have to give up on their belief for the sake of harmony. A Christian believing in one God and the saving grace of His Son couldn’t live with someone who needed to give burnt offerings to a lump of Gold or stone statue every day. It would make life very difficult.

So you can see that the unequally yoked was advice from Paul to suggest that such a diversity of beliefs would destroy a union.

So it is not a question of whether someone is Christian enough but whether their belief is strongely opposed to the Christian belief. If it is then that union may be unequally yoked. If it isn’t then it won’t be, will it? Don’t you think?

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