Dating someone from a new church can be quite tricky, because you are used to certain customs and traditions. In the past, people were used to finding love within their own denominations, thus eliminating the stress of learning the new ways of a church that is not their own.
After all, when you are in love, you would do anything to please your partner, right? Well, times have changed. More and more people are choosing to date out of their denomination and settle with a partner who loves them – despite their differences.
As this happens, the women opt to ‘abandon’ their church and change to their husband’s church in order to feel more accepted.
If they love each other, this would certainly be the ideal thing to do, right? Not exactly. It has become quite the debate. When you fall in love with someone, it might be a difficult decision to change to another church for the sake of becoming comfortable. But is this really recommended?
Comfort Ajibola says it’s a yes and no situation. “Dating people from your own church I think is advisable because you’ve seen them grow in the Lord and in their faithfulness to Him and His works (when they take part in church activities on a regular basis and so forth). So you know how they are as a person and you can trust them easily and also because they know what their ultimate goal is – to get closer to God.
And you believe in the same kind of rules and principles of what a ‘church’ is “supposed to be.”
On the other hand, she had some points to reason out why this should not be a thing. “If you meet someone from elsewhere and you speak and they seem OK, you are really taking a leap of faith here because people can be religious without chasing God, but you can’t be sure of that because you don’t really know what their service to God and the church is.”
Ndahafa Jeremia agreed that she wouldn’t mind dating someone who was from another denomination, but specific ones. “I’m [from] Elcin (Evangelical Lutheran Church of Namibia) and willing to date a person who is from Catholic and Evangelical churches but that’s all. Other churches differ very much from ours and to avoid misunderstanding, I will stick only to those two that are not very different from ours.
“The dating world is indeed an interesting one and everyone has their own preference when it comes to the type of men and women they would date in different denominations. At the end of the day, it seems that love conquers all, and if falling in love with someone from a church dissimilar to yours is what happens, perhaps we should let our hearts guide us and see what happens from there!
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