Welcome News In our In-Box

Family First WINS Appeal Against Deregistration  


A Win For Freedom Of Speech & Belief In NZ

Positive news from Family First

Family First NZ has won their appeal in the Wellington Court of Appeal against deregistration from the Charities Register.

This decision is a win for the freedom of speech and belief in New Zealand. The attempt by the Charities Board to deregister Family First would have been a watershed, not just for Family First, but for the whole country.

In the High Court in Wellington in 2018, the court judgment held that Family First’s “…core purpose of promoting the traditional family unit cannot be shown to be in the public benefit in the charitable sense under the Act.” Family First did not accept the High Court’s analysis or its conclusions and appealed to the Court of Appeal.

Family First appealed this decision because of the threat it placed on us and other charities and our collective freedom to speak on behalf of our supporters in a civil society.

An overly restrictive or narrow view of what is in the public benefit is likely to be of concern to all charities, many of which have a certain emphasis or point of view. The importance of freedom of expression and open debate in a civil society are ideals every New Zealander should be defending.

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT 

A The appeal is allowed. 

B The decision of the Charities Registration Board dated 21 August 2017 to remove Family First New Zealand from the Charities Register is set aside.

C There is a declaration that Family First New Zealand qualifies for registration under the Charities Act 2005.

THANK YOU!!

We take this opportunity to say thank you to the thousands of you who have contributed to our Legal Fighting Fund. It has been a very expensive fight - and it may not be over, depending on whether the charities Board decide to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

But we are so grateful for the financial support and the messages of encouragement in this fight which began way back in 2013 during the same-sex marriage debate! Thank you.

Thank you for standing with us as we stand for families in New Zealand.

Kind regards.

Bob McCoskrie
National Director

Bitter Fruit

Desiccation of the Family Into an Empty Husk

Family First has published an extensive review of the Anti-Smacking law, entitled A Dog's Breakfast: New Zealand's Anti-Smacking Law 13 Years On.  The law has failed.  It has ended up doing far more harm than good.  

Below is the Executive Summary of the Review. 

At this stage it would appear that not only has the ban failed to reduce the harm perpetrated against
children, but it has increased the harm inflicted by children.

It is crucial to assess whether the law may in fact be doing more harm than good. Notifications of abuse to government agencies continue to increase at alarming rates.  Key findings of this report include the following:

• Parents are confused by the law, both by the way it is worded and by conflicting messages from politicians who promoted it

• Notifications of abuse to government agencies  continue to increase at alarming rates

• Successive governments have failed to reduce physical abuse as promised, and any government targets appear to have been abandoned altogether

• Child homicides continue to fluctuate with no sign of any long-term, sustained improvement. New Zealand has one of the worst abuse rates in the OECD, and Maori are disproportionately represented

• We have more children in care (especially Maori children)

• Rates of physical abuse (including serious physical abuse) found by both the police and Oranga Tamariki (OT) have increased significantly since the law was passed

• There are significant, warranted concerns around increasing levels of violence in schools, including bullying and physical violence targeting principals and teaching staff

• There are disturbing trends in the wellbeing of children, including the high rates of self-harm, suicide, and emotional and behavioural problems

• While politicians claim the new law does not criminalise “good parents” for lightly smacking their children, a legal analysis finds this is inconsistent with the actual legal impact of the new Section 59

• Law firm Chen Palmer has not been able to find any decision where the courts have, at sentencing, explicitly balanced the long-term effect of the prosecution or conviction on the parent-child relationship against the level of the physical discipline with which the parent is being charged

• Recent polling finds a significant proportion of the public continues to reject and disregard the law

After an extensive review of the failures of the "Anti-Smacking Law", the Report provides conclusions.

Returning To The Wisdom of the Ages

Hungary’s Pro-Family Policy Is Working

Births Up 9.4 Per Cent

Jack Montgomery
Breitbart News

The pro-family policies pursued by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government as an alternative to mass immigration are reaping dividends, with births up 9.4 per cent year on year.

Eduard von Habsburg, the Central European country’s ambassador to the Holy See — and great-great-grandson of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary — reported that the “much-ridiculed” policies were also accompanied by a near-100 per cent increase in marriages and the number of children per woman rising to an average of 1.6.

“In Hungary, the population has been decreasing since 1981,” said Katalin Novák, Hungary’s State Secretary for Family, Youth, and International Affairs, in exclusive comments to Breitbart London explaining the enormity of the turnaround her government has achieved.

“In 2010, when [Orbán’s Fidesz party] won the elections with a two-thirds majority after eight years of socialist, anti-work, anti-economy, and anti-family governance, our country was at the brink of collapse,” she recalled, citing “austerity packages and the dismantling of the family benefit system”.

“In 2010, we started to build a family-friendly country… Our main goal is to eliminate the burdens that couples face when they would like to have children,” she said, highlighting policies including “lifelong exemption from personal income tax for women with four children”, partial mortgage write-offs for families after the birth of their second child, and grandparental leave.

“The recent demographic figures speak for themselves, the number of marriages is at its 40-year high, the fertility rate at its 20-year high, while the divorces haven’t been as low as last year in the last six decades,” she added proudly.

Why the UN Has to Go

Global Statist Overreach

UN Expert: World Religions Should Defer to the Authority of UN Experts

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.
C-Fam

WASHINGTON, D.C. March 6 (C-Fam) According to the UN’s special expert on freedom of religion, the fringe views of UN human rights bodies must take precedence over the mainstream beliefs of many leading world religions, when it comes to law and policy.

In his newly-launched annual report, Ahmad Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, wrote about the intersection of religion and gender equality.  He concluded that laws based in traditional morality, often religious in nature, should be repealed if they conflict with the opinions of human rights scholars and UN experts.

“States have an obligation to guarantee to everyone, including women, girls and LGBT+ people, an equal right to freedom of religion or belief,” he said, “including by creating an enabling environment where pluralist and progressive self-understandings can manifest.”

In order to enable these “self-understandings,” laws criminalizing abortion or various sexual behaviors would need to be overruled.

Shaheed noted that laws regarding abortion and homosexual behavior often arise from the application of religious teachings regarding the sanctity of life, the family, and sexual morality.

Not the Same, Actually

Marriage Eroding Into A Quagmire

How America’s Woman-Dominant Sexual Dynamic Is Destroying Marriages And Families

That’s the missing element in the push for the so-called equal marriage. By suggesting men and women are essentially the same, we set them up to fail.

Suzanne Venker
The Federalist


Susan Forray is a 44-year-old divorced actuary who wrote in The New York Times about her relationship with a man unlike all the others she dated in the past, in that he believed in traditional gender roles. This gentleman told Forray flat-out one day, “I’m the man. I should be in charge of the money.”

Forray felt a “jolt of anxiety.” Here she was, an actuary—someone who analyzes statistics and uses them to calculate insurance risks and premiums—and the man she’s dating tells her managing money is his job, not hers.

“I found his bluntness surprising but also alluring. He was confident in his desires…I craved a man who sought to take financial responsibility for his family, even if I didn’t need it,” she writes. “The men I’d previously dated thought of themselves as staunch feminists—in hindsight, frustratingly so, at least in the sense that they were too inclined to defer to me (under the guise of respecting me) to ever take charge, either financially or sexually.”

This sexual dynamic Forray describes is not an anomaly—it is the norm. I’ve heard countless stories of strong and successful women who are dating or married to a man who, in an effort to appear liberated, has either curbed his ambitions or simply follows rather than leads. Just the other day I had yet another conversation with a mother whose 20-something daughter is moving in with a man who lacks the direction and ambition she has, and the daughter told her mother she’s worried he will come to resent her.

She’s right to be worried. That will happen.

Homosexual "Marriage" Is an Oxymoron

There Is No Such Thing as "Gay Marriage"


Lindsay Elizabeth
Author

In a recent podcast, a well-known theologian and reform-baptist John Piper answered a question regarding the biblical stance on homosexuality.  “Should a gay couple, once converted, stay married?” Cameron asked.  “No, I would not recommend that two men or two women living together, practicing homosexuality, remain in that relationship,” Piper began. “The reasons are several.”

Piper explained that while heterosexual couples can enter into a marriage in a way that goes against the Bible, they can make decisions to change that. When it comes to homosexual couples, they can’t change anything about their relationship to move it in a Biblical direction because at the basis, it is wrong.

“I conclude that while it was an adulterous act to marry under the conditions that Jesus disapproves of in Luke 16, nevertheless, it’s called a marriage,” he explained.

It Could Have Been Us . . .

Standing With Muslims

Much has been made of Brenton Tarrant's hatred of Muslims--a hatred that was so extreme, he just had to murder fifty men, woman and children just to make sure everybody got his depraved point.

But why this hatred of Islamic folk?  Is it because they worship on a Friday--thereby, unsettling Jews and Christians who worship on a different weekly holy day?  Or is it because Muslims prostrate themselves on the floor when worshipping, and Christians do not?  Or is it because they separate men and women in public worship, whereas Christians do not (although orthodox Jews do)? Or is it because Islamic women wear scarves, despite the fact millions of Christian women replicate the practice? 

None of the above.  In his manifesto, we are told, Tarrant hates Muslims because of their fecundity and large families.  It violates, he explains, the fundamental necessity of reducing the human population which threatens the ecosystem.  In order to save the planet Tarrant thinks Muslim families should be attacked and killed because there are just far too many of them with large families.

The Gift Horse Now Inside Troy's City Walls

Conservative values? That now means forcing your children into sex lessons

By PETER HITCHENS

Mail on Sunday

PUBLISHED: 12:40 AEDT, 3 March 2019 | UPDATED: 13:34 AEDT, 3 March 2019

Revolutionaries love to indoctrinate children. You can look up yourself who said these words: 'When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side', I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on.  Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.' '

But it does not really matter who it was. It is horribly true, and it is what all these meddlers think and why they are all so keen on getting control of schools and youth movements.

+6

Revolutionaries love to indoctrinate children. You can look up yourself who said these words: 'When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side'

This week, they took a great step towards their goal, which is the eradication of all that is left of conservative Christian opinion in this country.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Few Brief Words on Behalf of Karen Pence

Douglas Wilson
Blog & Mablog

INTRODUCTION:

Some might wonder why I am not writing about Martin Luther King today. It is actually one of my initial forays into intersectionality.

I do need to grant at the outset that Karen Pence has done a great deal to bring on the enmity that is currently being aimed at her. After all, she has a husband who loves her and is faithful to her, and who will not put himself into situations that are potentially compromising. Not only does she have a husband like this, but they have had the effrontery to hold to these “devoted-to-one-woman” standards throughout the entire course of the #MeToo era, which threw hurtful shade on our leading lechers who wanted to lecture us all about the necessity of moral probity. And this is not to mention the women who can’t remember whose bed they were in a month and a half ago, as they were trying to act offended and appalled by the behavior of their men.

It turns out that the sexual revolution, like all revolutions, devours its own. But the Pences, because of their consistent personal standards, have been for the most part indigestible. That’s bound to irritate all kinds of notable and important people. 

THE SCANDAL OF ELEMENTARY ART:

So the most recent ruckus started the other day when it was revealed that Karen Pence is teaching an art class at a Christian school that does not permit all the de rigueur LGBTQ+ shenanigans. All teachers must agree to abide by the school’s code of conduct, which Karen Pence has agreed to do, and among other things it follows that the school will have no LGBTQ+ faculty or students. Sounds like yet one more moral atrocity, right?

So Twitter went nuts, as might be expected.

#Pencewife must resign from teaching at her school or #Pence must resign as VP. There is no justice for her actions!!!!!

#Pence What kind of @VP makes it clear thru the #SecondLady’s employment that a large bloc of #Americans & allies who don’t believe in treating their #kids as a disease if they feel they may be #LGBTQ aren’t entitled to #education or #art? #ExposeChristianSchools—#Evangelicals

Does @VP know how deeply offensive it is to us that 2nd lady is so prejudiced, insensitive and disrespectful of American values that she took a job at a school that discriminates against #LGBTQ students, employees & families? #Pence is offensive!

THE INDIGNATION MOUNTED:

And then there was another thing that went and happened. A gent named Clay Cane, a leader among the indignati, wrote a piece for CNN called “Karen and Mike Pence’s astonishing moral hypocrisy.” I will say something about the hypocrisy charge a bit later on, but we should begin by noting the high wickedness that the Second Lady has inexplicably fallen into.

The State Vs the Family

Public Policy Discriminates Against the Family 

Encourages Breakdown’

Jack Montgomery
Breitbart London


Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory Party’s star backbench Brexiteer, believes public policy is undermining the family, in part because it is an obstacle to state power.

The Roman Catholic conservative, who has six children himself notes that “Official statistics show that only two-thirds of British children live with both parents until the age of 14, compared with the OECD average of 84 per cent” in an article for the Daily Mail.

“Such a figure is one of the worst in the Western world. Inevitably, there’s an effect on mental health, with more than half of the cases that arise being linked to family problems.  According to the Centre for Social Justice, seven out of ten criminals come from broken homes. Also, single-parent families are twice as likely to live in poverty,” he adds, risking some controversy — as politicians who point out the negative statistics associated with non-traditional families are typically mischaracterised as “attacking” and denigrating the efforts of single mothers, in particular.

“Not all statistical relationships show cause and effect, but it is hard to argue against these stark figures which, I am convinced, are, to an extent, the fault of the State,” insists Rees-Mogg.

“The fact is that there is an inherent tension between the Family and the State,” the Somerset MP argues.  Those who favour the collective know that its most powerful opponent is the family, which will guard its interests against the authoritarian centre.

The Fruits of Liberal Social Ideology

We Reap What We Sow

Yesterday we blogged on a piece by Garth McVicar on crime and punishment.  McVicar went on to discuss what he believes is the most significant driver of criminality in New Zealand.  

We strongly endorse his argument.

I was born in 1951, a time when New Zealand's crime and prison numbers were incredibly low — in fact, the country was averaging one or two homicides a year until the early 1960s.  So what went wrong? How did one of the safest countries in the western world end up spiralling to a totally unacceptable level of crime? Why is it that even locking people up doesn't stop new criminals emerging? What is different about our country now that is creating this new breed of criminal?

The one common denominator that [Minister of Justice] Little and his colleagues won't dare talk about is the traditional family. I'm talking about a stable family unit — two parents and the children they bring into a loving, cherished relationship ... where the child grows up being taught right from wrong to become a law-abiding, contributing citizen.

The figures speak for themselves. In 1961, 95 per cent of children were born into a traditional family with married parents. By 2015 only 53 per cent of children were brought into the world by parents who were married.  A child that grows up without a father is five times more likely to commit crime.  The evidence shows more children are abused in de-facto-type households and a child who has been abused is 20 times more likely to end up in prison when an adult.

For Māori the figures are worse. In 1968, 72 per cent of Māori children were born to married parents. They had both a mother and a father as role models, just as the vast majority of Pacific Island children do today.  By 2015 only 21 per cent of Māori children were born into a traditional mother and father married-to-each-other family. The stark, staring fact is that the mantra "all forms of family or whānau are equal" is clearly absolute nonsense, and the statistics clearly prove that to be so.

The evidence is clear that a child needs a father who wants and loves them. This is the best way to raise a child to become a law-abiding, contributing member of society.  Little's justice summit won't dare say anything like that. They fear they might offend the left-wing liberals who have been at the forefront of breaking down the family unit.

These liberals would rather focus on the problem of prison numbers than face the reality of what their social ideology has created.  [NZ Herald]

• Garth McVicar is founder of the Sensible Sentencing Trust.

The causes of crime are a multi-headed hydra.  But we believe McVicar had identified the Big One.

It's a Mad World

Ideationism and the White Witch

Every so often the vacuity of Unbelief and rebellion against God is revealed in startling fashion.  In a recent example, an "expert" in child rearing was arguing that babies ought to be consulted before their nappies (diapers) were changed.

‘Sexuality expert’ and author Deanne Carson has attracted mass ridicule after suggesting babies should “give consent” to having their nappies/diapers changed by their parents.

Speaking to ABC News (Australia), Carson was asked what age clients she works with.  She replied: “We work with children from three years old, we work with parents from birth”.  “From birth?” the host responds, to which Carson smugly retorts:

“Yeah, just about how to set up a culture of consent in their homes. So, ‘I’m going to change your nappy now, is that ok?’  Of course the baby isn’t going to respond, ‘Yes mum that’s awesome, I’d love to have my nappy changed’. But if you leave a space and wait for body language and wait to make eye contact then you’re letting that child know that their response matters”. [Raheem Kassam, Breitbart London]

Carson (allegedly) has an extensive consulting practice in how to raise children--and, of course, teaching them gender neutrality, trans-genderism, and human sexuality.

Guest Post: Bruce Logan

The Charities Board Versus Natural Law


Bruce Logan
Board Member
Family First NZ

The attempt by the Charities Board to deregister Family First, if successful, would be a watershed, not just for Family First, but for the whole country. It is unlikely that Family First will ever find itself defending any issue of greater importance.

Deregistration would be a legal victory for those ideologues who would take power away from the family and give it to the state.  The irony is that this might not be their intention, they might not know this is what they’re doing, but that will be the consequence nevertheless.

The Charities Board believes that the primary purpose of Family First is to “promote and protect its view of the traditional family through advocating its view on various social issues.”  This is a reductionist understanding of what Family First is doing.

The term “traditional family” is inadequate because it is only part of the story. “Natural family” is a precise, useful and rational term.  The natural family is biologically determined, intergenerational and rationally and historically observable. The natural family is the consequence of the sexual nature of men and women. It is not a subjective or ideological or religious construction.

Islamic, Secular, and Christian Marriage

A Cultural Lightning Rod

Islam has problems.  Lots of them.  If any want an easy-to-read account of Islam, we recommend Patrick Sookhdeo's A Pocket Guide to Islam.  [Ross Shire: Christian Focus Publications, 2010]  A chapter is dedicated in that brief book to "Women in Islam". 

Since Muhammad had fifteen wives and a number of concubines, it is reasonable to expect that Islamic doctrines on marriage and the family would turn out to be not just unreliable, but wretched.  Not that the secular West has any grounds upon which to criticize Islamic doctrines on marriage and the family.  After all, the secular notion of marriage and family is now so meaningless it has come to include two females and a budgie.

Marriage in Islam is not primarily a man and a woman leaving the homes of their childhoods, and cleaving to each other for life.  Islam permits a man to have up to four wives--and if any displease him, they can be divorced at whim and will, simply by formally uttering to the wife, "I divorce you" three times. So there!  Go tell that to the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages.

When an Islamic marriage is contracted, it is almost always due to arrangements being made between two families, not two individuals.  Sookhdeo writes:

A Notorious Piece of Legislation

Legal Firm Chen Palmer Skewers the NZ Anti-Smacking Law

Media Release 12 February 2018
Family First

Smacking law fails to balance long term effect on parent-child relationship: Chen Palmer

A legal analysis of the 2007 anti-smacking law says that the law is confusing to parents, police and the legal profession; that statements and guarantees made by politicians were misleading; and that a comprehensive analysis of the effects of the law on families is impossible because of the difficulty in obtaining copies of judgements, and the absence of key data from the police.

The analysis provided to Family First NZ in January by public law specialists Chen Palmer is an update of an earlier Opinion in 2014, but reviews other cases which have become relevant since that time.

“It is just over 10 years since the hugely unpopular anti-smacking law was rammed through Parliament against the better judgement and will of the New Zealand people. This legal Opinion by Mai Chen will sound further warning bells to families and is a rebuke to all the politicians who thought they knew better than the public,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

In one of the most concerning comments made in the Opinion, it says:

NZ's War on Poverty Worse Failure Than LBJ's

What Have You Done?

Last week we marked the utter failure of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.  Nearly fifty years on  poverty is worse in the United States than when the "war" began.  

Lest some get the impression that this blogsite is anti-American, and since the War on Poverty is on our minds, it's worthwhile reflecting on how New Zealand's own little War on Poverty has been going.  It's been as ineffectual, wasteful, and useless--if not worse--than LBJ's now infamous War.

Bob McCroskrie has kindly filled in the New Zealand scorecard:

The current focus by the Prime Minister and other politicians and lobby groups on tackling child “poverty” is warranted, but “focus” and “targets” will simply be hot air and rhetoric until the elephant in the room is acknowledged – that is, the role of family structure.

Family malformation and breakdown is contributing significantly to increasing income inequality and child poverty, and must be confronted before we will see any significant improvements.

Raising Children In The Covenant of Grace

Divine Words for Desperate Parents

Nancy Guthrie 

I’m not exactly sure how it happens, but almost as soon as we visit the doctor to confirm we’re pregnant we start getting coupons for formula and diapers and magazines that include all kinds of articles about how to raise healthy, well-adjusted children. All of these “five steps to . . .” and “ten ways to get your child to . . . ” articles can fool us into thinking if we try hard enough and do everything right, our child will become and do what we want.

But anyone who’s been a parent for long knows parenting requires a lot more than simply following the right steps to success. To raise a child toward godliness, we need much more than the good advice parenting experts have to offer. We need what only the Scriptures have to offer.

We need the commands and expectations of Scripture to keep us from complacency, and the grace and mercy of Scripture to save us from guilt. We need Scripture to puncture the pride that rises up in us when our child is doing well and we’re tempted to take the credit. And we need Scripture to save us from the despair that threatens to sink us when our child is floundering and we’re tempted to take all the blame.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (On the Image of God)

The Image of God and Life Between the Sexes

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

INTRODUCTION:

People of course disagree about things, and one of the biggest things they differ on is the meaning and magnitude of their disagreements. One man’s adiaphora is another man’s summum bonum, one man’s mox nix is another man’s—oh I don’t know— buttterfly’s boots. I hope I am making myself clear.

Let me start over.

Unbelievers have grown so accustomed to their patterns of sexual license that they have come to regard the pattern of faithful monogamy among believers as just one more weird choice in a world full of weird choices. And—recognizing the differences between us—they (charitably, or so they think) want to relegate the importance of this particular difference to the museum of quaint religious opinions. Certainly we differ, they say soothingly, but surely, shouldn’t we be able to agree that it is no big deal? They allow that we can live this way if we want, but any hint from us that they ought to be doing so as well brings out all heir ire, not to mention the lawsuits.

A CENTRAL THING:

Now because we Christians understand that the two sexes coming together in a particular way bears the image of God, the response from us always has to be—no, this is necessarily a big deal. It is central, a true fundamental article of the faith. You can have true Christian churches that don’t baptize the right way. You can have real Christian churches that sing the wrong kind of songs. You can have genuine Christian churches that have adopted unedifying forms of church government. But you can’t have Christian churches that have the wrong God. And biblical marriage is one of the creationally-established and central confessions of faith concerning the nature of God.

May We Be Spared . . .

The Aching Void

How My Parents’ Divorce Ruined Our Holidays And Family Life Forever

In the decades since my parents’ divorce and through the years of my marriage, I have learned no-fault divorce is one of the biggest lies of our culture.

December always reminds me how much I hate divorce. As the lights on the Christmas tree twinkle while we wrap presents, I am anxious about family gatherings and travel plans. Three decades ago, when my parents divorced, family Christmas gatherings became very complicated.

My parents’ divorce is the one that their generation was told to have. Like many others married in the 1970s, their marriage ended with a no-fault divorce. One of them wasn’t happy and felt the only way to solve that was not to be married anymore. In the name of fulfillment and contentment, our family broke apart.

Fast-forward 30 years, and you’ll find the children all thriving in adulthood and two parents who rebounded and eventually remarried. On the surface, it seems like we all lived happily ever after.  The media loves to feed these sort of lies to their audiences. For example, The New York Times runs terrible pro-divorce articles regularly; here’s a particularly disturbing one.

Pro-Divorce Arguments Are Built On Lies

The writers at The Times of London currently have a campaign trying to reform England’s divorce laws. They believe divorce should be easier to get than current legislation that requires “a married couple wishing to split up [to] show evidence of irretrievable breakdown in the form of adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion, two years’ separation with consent or five years’ separation without consent.”

They propose instead: “Divorce, wherever possible, should simply be an acknowledgment that people have moved on. A marriage that lasts only ten years can still be deemed a success. It should be assumed that divorces are no one’s fault and that people need a simple, dignified, relatively fast way to split up, while also acknowledging that a partner who has sacrificed their career to look after children will need help to set up again.”

Pardon me while I roll my eyes. As our culture tries to negate the beautiful union of covenantal marriage, we look the other way from the hurts and hardships divorce creates.

In the decades since my parents’ divorce and through the years of my marriage, I have learned that no-fault divorce is one of the biggest lies our culture tries to get people to believe.

Fundamentals of Christian Living

Don’t Take It from Me

Reasons You Should Not Marry an Unbeliever

Kathy Keller
The Gospel Coalition


Over the course of our ministry, the most common pastoral issue that Tim and I have confronted is probably marriages—either actual or proposed—between Christians and non-Christians. I have often thought how much simpler it would be if I could remove myself from the conversation and invite those already married to unbelievers do the talking to singles who are desperately trying to find a loophole that would allow them to marry someone who does not share their faith. That way, I could skip all the Bible passages that urge singles only to “marry in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39) and not “be unequally yoked” (2 Corinthians 6:14) and the Old Testament proscriptions against marrying the foreigner, a worshiper of a god other than the God of Israel (see Numbers 12 where Moses marries a woman of another race but the same faith).

You can find those passages in abundance, but when someone has already allowed his or her heart to become engaged with a person outside the faith, I find that the Bible has already been devalued as the non-negotiable rule of faith and practice. Instead, variants of the serpent's question to Eve—“Did God really say?” are floated, as if somehow this case might be eligible for an exemption, considering how much they love each other, how the unbeliever supports and understands the Christian's faith, how they are soul-mates despite the absence of a shared soul-faith. Having grown weary and impatient, I want to snap and say, “It won't work, not in the long run. Marriage is hard enough when you have two believers who are completely in harmony spiritually. Just spare yourself the heartache and get over it.” Yet such harshness is neither in line with the gentleness of Christ, nor convincing.

SADDER AND WISER

If only I could pair those sadder and wiser women—and men—who have found themselves in unequal marriages (either by their own foolishness or due to one person finding Christ after the marriage had already occurred) with the blithely optimistic singles who are convinced that their passion and commitment will overcome all obstacles. Even the obstacle of bald disobedience need not apply to them. Only ten minutes of conversation—one minute if the person is really succinct—would be necessary. In the words of one woman who was married to a perfectly nice man who did not share her faith: “If you think you are lonely before you get married, it's nothing compared to how lonely you can be AFTER you are married!”