Don't Get this...

In the course of my bible-reading today I read 2 Corinthians 6. It is a passage of scripture that always causes me to ruminate upon a pastoral situation that is repeatedly encountered in any church situation and often with increased regularity in a church with younger people seeking their "life-time partner" so to speak.
It is an emotionally charged time and one, in an increasingly individualised setting, which few people are genuinely and wholeheartedly willing to receive the input of the church family. The pastoral situation I am referring to is the dating/marrying of an unbeliever.

To not want to hear what your peers and spiritual overseers may want to say in relation to the issues of romance and marriage is one thing, but to not heed the overt command of the Scriptures is wholly another. Again and again as I was a single young man hoping and longing for someone with whom I could honour the Lord and pursue the calling I sensed from him I received counsel regarding whom I was pursuing at any one time. But one thing that was an, "Umm duh, you don't need to tell me that" issue was the dating of someone who did not share my love for the Lord.

Seriously, I have always found dating or marrying an unbeliever a most remarkable state of affairs as it is not something "perhaps debatable in scripture." It is overtly opposed by scripture: "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?"
We can't make this one subjective. We can't fluff the lines with this one? I've even heard people say to me that they felt the Lord tell them they were called to marry an unbeliever cause they were going to "bring them to the Lord." Yes that sounds very likely that the Lord would ask you to disobey his revealed will. In fact, I can remember suggesting to my designated pastoral mentor at Bible College that maybe I could do "missionary dating" as my weekly pastoral placement - I said it to expose the absurdity of such an idea.

There are times when we, and we alone, must take the full brunt of a decision we have made - one which of course our remarkably gracious King can redeem if He chooses - but we cannot bring the will of the Lord into such decisions. We are making thousands of choices daily and the predominance of them are those in which we use the "set up" we have received from the Lord without going to Him in all reality.
This is right and actually is how it works. Thousands of choices should merely be made inside parameters inherent within our structure as human beings. For us, as believers, these parameters should be redeemed and be increasingly Christ-like the more we are transformed to His image and so in even everyday decision making we can become more God-honouring. But it is us who make the decisions, not Him.

If God did maybe get the absolute say on who we dated and/or married (not even sure Christians should date, but that's another can of worms) marriages, churches, and perhaps even our whole society would be vastly different. But, alas, we are seemingly most unwilling to listen or TO READ, when it comes to matters of the heart!

Simon