Advice

Should I just go out with a Seventh-day Adventist to keep the peace with my parents but feel no connection?

Dear Tina,

It seems we have a lot in common. The church I grew up in didn’t have many young people in it. It wasn’t a youth-friendly church, so by age 17 most people would stop coming. I went to a public high school, so by default I knew more non-Adventists than Adventists. When it came time to make friends, the kids at church were just not around and didn’t want to hang out anyway. My public school friends were usually available.

When I went away to college, I went to an Adventist school, and I didn’t get along very well. I found Adventist kids a bit critical, even of each other. I didn’t understand the culture of young Adventism. I had lots of trouble adapting. It wasn’t until my junior year that I figured things out. I felt more comfortable around secular folk, but if you had asked me who I was more likely to date, I would have said an Adventist.

When it comes to friends, there is an old cliché that goes, “You are known by the company you keep.” It means that people will judge you based on the activities of your friends. If your friends are drug addicts and thieves, people will associate you with them. Even Jesus experienced this. Mark 2:16 says: “When the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, ‘How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?’” I would encourage you to be friends with the folk around you but also to live above their influence. Even though Jesus hung around with a tough crowd, He influenced them for the better; they never changed Him for the worse.

Dating involves a choice that is much different from friendship. Genesis 2:24 says: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Marriage joins two people together in a bond that is established by God. Dating leads toward marriage, so if you are not ready for marriage, you shouldn’t really be dating.

Clearly, friendship does not have the same status as marriage. Friends never experience the deep bonds formed in marriage. Friends may come and go in your life; marriage is designed to be permanent. Whom you marry has a lot to do with who you will become in the future.

It’s good that you want to date an Adventist. Paul says, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). The divine command is clear: while your friends may be cool to hang out with, marriage is off the table if they don’t believe like you do. While you can be a light to them, you can’t date them if the Light isn’t in them.

So what should you do? You can do what I did: wait. Don’t date until God has someone for you to date. I was 25 years old when I started to date. Before that, there was no one around. I complained all the time to God about how it wasn’t fair. But looking back, I see that it was the best thing I could have done.

In the years I didn’t date, I was able to earn two degrees, mature as an adult, procure a good job, and get a place to live. I didn’t get into dramatic relationships that scarred me for the future. It would have been pointless to have a lot of relationships that ended in failure as baggage for my future wife to deal with. Waiting may not be the easiest, but it’s the best. “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).