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A Conversation with Lee Strobel, Part One
By Jim Mueller and Duane Careb
Read Part Two — click!
Lee, how was the experience of writing a book with your wife?
Leslie and I had a great time writing this book together.
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There were times when we had long conversations, trying to remember things that happened when we were spiritually mismatched and tried to recall things back to our dating years that might be relevant.
So we really had a great time together, reliving this stuff. Even though it was hard, we had a good outcome.
Should believers date non-believers even if they don't intend to get married?
I really don't think so. I think it's dangerous for Christians to be dating those who are not followers of Jesus. The reason is, the bible says specifically; don't become unequally yoked to a non-believer (2Cor 6:14).
When we're dating someone, we're often heading in a direction of more intimacy, toward more time together, and eventually perhaps marriage.
What happens is the Christian is faced with a choice: Do I follow and marry this person I've come to love or do I live
out my faith and honor and follow God in His teaching not to marry a non-Christian. You don't want to put yourself in that position.
Often what we find is when men and women are dating, the man who is wanting to get the marriage thing done will feign spirituality a bit and try to win over the woman by praying and expressing an interest in church and ministry. Not necessarily overtly lying, just expressing interest in those areas in which his girlfriend is interested.
Consequently, the woman is fooled into thinking that the person she's been dating is really a Christian when he may not be. Your judgment gets clouded when romance becomes a factor. We encourage Christians at any level, not to get involved with dating non-believers.
You have used the term conjugal evangelism. What is that?
Conjugal evangelism is trying to convert someone through marriage. It's knowingly dating a non-Christian; the hope and belief that you will influence that person to become a Christian.
Through interviewing lots of people for this book, we've found it's more likely the woman is the Christian in these situations. She is more likely to lose her faith than the man is likely to gain faith. Often you have a reverse evangelism taking place. That's a dangerous position. A Christian shouldn't want to put themselves in to.
We think conjugal evangelism is very dangerous. You deceive yourself into thinking the other person might be more spiritually receptive than they might be because your judgment might be clouded by romantic feelings or chemistry with the other person. Our counsel is that Christians should not even consider that.
I've found even after we speak on this topic and we talk about all the turmoil, pain and conflict Leslie and I had when I was an atheist and she was a Christian, people will still come up afterwards and say, "I understand that. That's really important, but I'm dating this guy and we'll be married soon and he's really close to becoming a Christian and I think if we just get married I'll be able to influence him."
I want to shake them and say, "Read my lips: Do not become unequally yoked with a non-believer!" The bible says it for a reason; to protect us from the kind of pain and heartache Leslie and I endured for two years of our marriage.
But aren't we honoring God by following the Great Commission and reaching out and sheparding and nurturing people we love?
There's no question we should be concerned for the eternity of every person. The best way to handle that with someone is not to get involved in a dating relationship, not to violate the biblical injunction against becoming unequally yoked with a non-believer.
It's to say, I care about this guy. He's not a Christian; I'm concerned about his eternity. I need to arrange for someone of the same gender, another guy, to meet him, to get along side him and mentor him spiritually and share Christ with him.
Make those kinds of arrangements instead of yourself getting involved in something the bible says is very contrary to what God wants for your life.
You mention we can learn to thrive despite our spiritual differences. What do you mean by that?
You get married to a person for a lot of reasons. There are things you love about that person. There are things you do in common you enjoy together. When you have a spiritually-mismatched situation and conflict begins to come into that relationship, you need to identify those things you love about your spouse and things you love to do in common ? and build on those.
Identify those things and say, "I will spend effort and energy building into those ways in which we can build bridges between us instead of letting our spiritual mismatch cause us to drift apart.
The other thing you can do is decide you will live out your faith unilaterally as far as you are able to do it. You can decide to have a Christian marriage to the extent that I can unilaterally live out what my faith means to me. There will be those times where you have conflict with your spouse, but if you can identify and minimize those, you'll find you can thrive in the midst of your spiritual mismatch by identifying those ways you can grow spiritually and at the same time reaching out to your spouse and building on common ground.
So, assuming that we want to live out our faith unilaterally, is it okay to attend different churches?
I don't think it's healthy to attend different churches. Whether you're Christians or both seekers or one of you is a seeker ? I would identify a church where both of you can grow and connect with the spiritual methodology and ministry philosophy of a church and attend that church together.
Attending different churches causes problems. One person may encounter something in church ? through a song, a word in the message ? that has moved them deeply, and yet the other spouse wasn't there to experience that. So you're in a position of having to explain that later to the other person and things get lost in the translation. It's better to experience something together so you have something to discuss and become the fodder to spiritual conversation in your marriage.
Lee, what should a spouse do when the other insists that attending church is out of the question?
Sometimes there are spouses who put down their foot and say I don't want you going to church and I don't want our children going to church. When that happens, it's important to understand you still need to grow spiritually and you need spiritual input in your life.
If you can get that spiritual input without going to church on weekends and thus introducing all kinds of conflict into your marriage, that's one way to approach it.
God's desire for you to attend church and to worship Him is not based on you sitting in a certain place in a certain room with a certain group of people in a certain pew and doing church on a Sunday morning. He wants your heart to be devoted to Him. He knows you desire to worship Him. He knows you desire to spend time with other Christians.
He also knows if you pursue attending church against the desires of your mate you could blow the marriage apart. I don't think God wants that. My advice would be to say, "Can you reach a compromise?" Can you convince your spouse that you have your beliefs, therefore you should be able to attend church if for no other reason than to grow in what you find to be true in your own faith? Maybe he'll buy into that, maybe he won't.
If he doesn't, I don't think it's worth blowing up the marriage over. It's more important to find other ways to get spiritual input into your life and continue to pray for your spouse. Don't make this the decision that lands you in divorce court.
What might be some effective ways to evangelize to our unbelieving spouse?
When you're married to someone who's not a Christian, it's a very dicey situation.
1Peter 3:1 says if you're a woman married to a non-believing husband, he most likely will be won over by your behavior, "By the purity and reverence of your lives."
There will be things your non-Christian husband will see in your character and values that will intrigue him and he will find winsome and find attractive. It might cause him to ask spiritual questions. This is exactly what happened with Leslie and I.
She became a Christian and I began to see changes for the good in her values and character and the way she related to the children that I found attractive. It was her very behavior, influenced by her relationship with Christ that eventually prompted me to give church a try. That's when I heard the gospel, that's when I began to use my legal and journalism training to systematically investigate if there was any credibility to the Christian faith. I write about that in my book, The Case for Christ .
It was Leslie's change in her relationship with me and the children, which I found so winsome and attractive, that caused me to at least investigate this God she said was responsible for these changes in the first place.
1Peter 3:15 says we always need to be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks us to give the reason for the hope that we have. We need to be prepared to share our faith verbally when those opportunities arise.
If Leslie had tried to debate me on theological fine points as an atheist or new Christian, I would have erupted in
anger. We would have argued, it wouldn't have taken us anywhere. It was more important for me to see Jesus Christ lived out in my spouse than it was to hear words about Him.
Having said that, there may be those instances where you do have an opportunity as the Christian in a marriage to talk about the Gospel verbally with your spouse; Leslie certainly did that with me. But I think Peter's right: The most likely way your spouse will be influenced for Jesus to see Jesus in you.
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Copyright © 2002 Growthtrac
Read more about Lee Strobel...
Read Part One — click!
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