It’s one of the oldest and most contentious discussions, interracial marriages. Marrying outside of one’s own race angers some people to the point they would kill to protect the ‘purity’ of their own. Just as with other controversial issues, people either twist, misunderstand or cherry pick bible verses to suit their purpose, agenda or desires.
So when both or all sides of an issue are using the bible as their foundation, how do you know which is in harmony with God’s truth?
I’ve officiated several interracial weddings, and this information is a part of my premarital counseling sessions. I want to give ammunition to people to defend their relationships.
Let’s look at some verses used by those who WANT God to say interracial marriage is forbidden…
Deuteronomy 7:1-5 (NKJV)
When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3 Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly.
1 Kings 11:2 (KJV)
2 Of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love.
2 Corinthians 6:14 (NKJV)
14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
The wisest man who ever lived, King Solomon, allowed marriage to unbelievers to turn his heart from God and compromise his faith.
The New Testament verse in 2 Corinthians makes it perfectly clear that God’s concern wasn’t about RACE, but it was about FAITH.
God doesn’t want us to intermarry with someone who might allow our love for them to cause us to serve another God, or abandon God.
It has nothing to do with race.
Remember when God called Abraham in Genesis 12, he was from the land of Ur. He already had a ‘race’.
God wasn’t raising up a RACE of people, but a FAITH of people.
Now, I will give you some biblical examples to prove it…
First of all let’s look at what happened when Moses married an Ethiopian woman after his wife Zipphora died…
Numbers 12:1-9 (NKJV)
Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman. 2 So they said, “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?” And the Lord heard it. 3 (Now the man Moses wasvery humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.) 4 Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tabernacle of meeting!” So the three came out. 5 Then the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam. And they both went forward. 6 Then He said,“Hear now My words:
If there is a prophet among you,
I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision;
I speak to him in a dream.
7 Not so with My servant Moses;
He is faithful in all My house.
8 I speak with him face to face,
Even plainly, and not in dark sayings;
And he sees the form of the Lord.
Why then were you not afraid
To speak against My servant Moses?” 9 So the anger of the Lord was aroused against them, and He departed. 10 And when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle, suddenly Miriam became leprous, as white as snow.
God was so angry at Moses brother and sister’s dissatisfaction and gossiping about Moses’ marriage (sound familiar?) that He struck Miriam with leprosy…
Notice that Ruth was a Moabite and Boaz was a Jew (King David’s great-great grandparents Ruth 1:1-5).
Notice that the apostle Timothy’s father was a Greek and his mother was a Jew.
Acts 16:1 (NKJV)
Then he came to Derbe and Lystra. And behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a certain Jewish woman who believed, but his father was Greek.
Above are just few both Old and New Testament examples making it very clear that God isn’t concerned with the race of who you marry, but He is VERY concerned about their faith.
So, back to my question how can you tell when both or all sided of an issue are using the bible to support their stance…it is the person most willing to abandon what they WANT to believe and be open to accepting God’s truth. The person who can harmonize the scriptures they are using for support with the entire bible.
Don’t find yourself making God angry as He was at Aaron and Miriam for disapproving of Moses’ marriage.
So to be clear, God does NOT forbid interracial marriage.
God accepts any marriage that accepts Him…
BE BLESSTIFIED!
BE BLESSTIFIED! 
Well and accurately said, brother. Sadly, this makes people very emotional and even angry. My grand daughter is a mixed child, and there are still some, even her own kin, who cannot reconcile to the idea. Some who profess to be Christians in fact.
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That is so unfortunate. I am convinced that many Christians either don’t read their bible, do selective reading or ignore what conflicts with what they want to believe. One of my best examples is the fact that people continue to ‘swear in’ and take an ‘oath of office’ in a bible that forbids it.
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I can’t speak for Memphis, but I suspect it is not much different; the churches in almost completeness remain segregated in my part of the world. In fact, it was quite a big moment when a while back we actually Baptized a young African American girl. I know some opposed it but at least they had the good sense to not say anything. I can actually respect that much, that despite how they may have personally felt, they also understood they had to Biblical case. Seems a small victory, but change is slow sometimes.
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Yes, most churches are segregated, but there are also several more diverse churches with the stage concert feel…cool youthful dressing pastor…cool praise team model, but most if not all of those have a White Senior Pastor.
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Ah…the hip megachurch LOL. Little Rock, of course has that, but not so much in rural SE Ark. A cool praise team here is if anything electric besides the organ gets played!
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Lol!!!!That s funny!
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I have never gone to a church that was “integrated” to any major degree, but I will say that we tried to “become integrated.” Eighty years in about eight different churches, I’ve never known a person who was not welcomed to my church. I think the church as a whole gets a lot of criticism that is not deserved. One cannot force anyone no matter their ethnic background not social strata to like a particular kind of worship service nor drive outside their neighborhoods to attend any church. I might add that I have never gone to a church who had more than a sampling of rich folks either. Wasn’t because they weren’t welcome.
Just recently I found a former student of mine who is now pastoring a church (I presume mostly African American). I had school stuff from way back when… We had a delightful reunion via FB. I suggested that I come to his church to see him and bring those papers to give him. He became strangely silent. I didn’t get an invitation. I know for sure if the shoe had been on the other foot I would have been delighted to welcome him to my church.
You have cited excellent scriptures to prove your point, but I probably would not include Timothy’s parents. I believe they were not in agreement in faith, but I might be wrong. Didn’t Paul have Timothy circumcised because his father had not done so?
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Hey there my friend. And, you very well may be right abou that. I was just pointing out the interracial marriage that I know of in the bible. Even if they weren’t evenly yoked, their marriage was still acknowledged. I would love to see our churches become more diverse. Maybe gradually in time. Thanks again for adding to adding your great insight to the conversation:-)
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Thank you for your welcoming response to my comment. Only a few months ago we lost an inter-racial couple and their children from our church. They were loved and I know they loved us, but changed churches to go to one that offered more “hoop-la” for their children. I did not blame them, but I cried. Miss them still. 😀
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You’re welcome! I’m glad that your church made them feel welcome:-)
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Either people read the word with their own special type of glasses or they are pretty racist. Or Both!!
Amen to your post Aldtric. I’m a white Australian guy and my wife is African American and while no one yet has verbally said anything (we have been married only a 1.5 years), some of the looks we get let us know what they are thinking. I wonder how many couples actually take the time to work through faith stuff and make sure they are on the same page? So important. My wife and I had a long distance relationship for 18 months so we had no other choice but to make sure we were walking in the same direction. Very thankful
Thanks for posting
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You’re welcome my friend. Thanks so much for sharing. I pray that God richly blesses your marriage:-)
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Thanks dude, he already has, we just need to walk in that truth and freedom that’s already there.
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Amen!!
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I do not understand racism. I have never understood racism. Not even when I lived in an all-white town and believed that I, too, was 100% white.
If the racists were a tiny minority group, then I might understand it. I would believe they were mentally ill. Their thinking is screwed up because their brain isn’t working right. But So Many people are racists — how can that be? It makes no sense!
I grew up in a small town in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri that was all white. One day, when I was 5 years old, my mother took me to see the doctor. In the waiting room was a beautiful dark skinned family: a mother, a father, and two small children. They were sitting near the receptionist’s desk, in the area where everyone usually sat. (I went to the doctor a lot in those days, due to tonsillitis and bronchitis. So I knew that people in the waiting room typically sat up close to the receptionist’s desk.)
But on this day, all of the white people were sitting as far away as possible from the dark skinned family, way down by the exit door. My mother grabbed my hand and, after checking me in, she took me to sit way down by the exit door, too, where we had never sat before. And all those seats that were so much closer to where the nurse comes out to take you to see the doctor, were empty.
The light skinned people around me looked stiff, uncomfortable, and angry, including my mother. The dark skinned family looked terrified. Oh… it has just brought tears to my eyes, as I remember the awful deer-caught-in-headlights look on their faces!
This happened in 1958. Sixty years ago. Only white people lived in that town, then. Later, I heard my dad tell my mother that some… he used the horrible “N” word…. had been “run out of town.”
My dad often talked in a racist way. And he was a church pastor. But I never understood his racist talk at all. My cat was black with white paws. She had three kittens. One was black and white, like his mother, and one was orange and another was calico. No two kittens in that litter were alike. But they were all equally soft and furry, they all had sandpaper tongues and needle sharp claws, they all had tiny whiskers, and they all purred and mewed. What difference did their color make??
As for me, I look Irish. I have a zillion freckles, green eyes, and pale white skin under my dark freckles. So I am polka dotted! But I thought that I was 100% Caucasian, until my dad called me one day when I was 24 years old, and he told me the “family secret.” One of my sisters, he said, had gotten into an old family photo album and had learned the truth, that our paternal grandfather was 1/2 black. My dad said that his paternal grandmother was a full blood African American. This meant that my racist father was 1/4 black — a quadroon, as they used to say — and I was 1/8 black, an octaroon.
My dad thought he was telling me a terrible secret, but I was absolutely thrilled! I thought this made me special! And more than ever, I could not understand the racism that I had grown up with.
A couple of years ago, I had my DNA analyzed by ancestry dot com, and recently I also had it done by 23andMe. I was eagerly anticipating getting my racial profile and seeing the proof that I am 1/8 black. Maybe, I thought, I have even more than 1/8th!
But my racial profile is nothing like I expected. I can’t begin to tell you the loss, the sorrow, the PAIN I felt to get my DNA results and learn that I am only about 1% West African. I am 98.9% Caucasian. How can that even be?
I am in my 60s. After living for almost 40 years, happily believing that I was at least 1/8 African American — to learn that I am actually only about 1/100th African, feels like a terrible loss. And yet, one white person, on learning the results of my DNA, told me that I should be so relieved.
What is WRONG with people, that anyone would think racism is RIGHT???? We are ALL HUMAN BEINGS, created by GOD ALMIGHTY, and we are ALL MADE IN HIS IMAGE!!
I am sorry this comment is so long, I just do not understand. Not because I am a saint, God knows I have fallen and sinned so much, in so many ways. But racism is just not logical. At all.
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Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this comment. It really touched my heart. Racism breaks my heart too. I live in a Memphis suburb and I’m so tired that almost every issue is turned into a racial issue. I pray that people will stop giving the enemy another weapon to divide us. BE BLESSTIFIED and thanks again for your comment.
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I just love this. My husband and I struggle with the reality of people’s anger over our marriage everyday. I’ve been so blessed to get a front rower seat to learning about his background and been humbled by so many things I never knew. Thank you for speaking out.
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You are more than welcome. May God continue to abundantly bless your marriage:-)
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Reblogged this on BE BLESSTIFIED!.
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Yes to every thing you have said . But in some cases it makes life really difficult especiall for the children.
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That’s true. Even they can endure with God’s help. God bless you.
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