Board index ‹ Marriage

[Wifebeater]

I'll try and keep this short. I'm an atheist and my wife is a Christian. This wasn't always the case though. When we married I was still a Christian. A few months after being married, I completely lost faith and couldn't continue pretending to believe.
She is having a hard time because of this. She is stuck between divorcing me and staying married to a non-believer, both of which are sins:

1 Corinthians 7:12-16

To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

As a Christian, what does one do in this case? What is the thought process behind making this decision?

[jimwalton]

As a Christian, it's not a contradiction. The passage in 2 Cor. 6.14 is about people before they marry: Christians shouldn't marry people who aren't Christians because they are going in fundamentally different directions, grounded in fundamentally different value systems and with fundamentally different priorities and allegiances. The passage in 1 Cor. 7.12-16 is about people after they have married. If one of the partners becomes a Christian after the wedding, they shouldn't end the marriage. In Paul's day, everyone was a first-generation Christian. No one had been raised in a Christian home. Everyone who was converted, generally speaking, was converted after marriage. We can talk about this much deeper if you wish, but I think at this point you want the simple answer. The simple answer is (1) these texts don't contradict, and (2) the Bible says the Christian should stay in the marriage unless the unbeliever wants the divorce. The Christian is not pleasing God by divorcing.