Marriage Foundation

Dear Fellow Seminary Students:

It was most comforting to hear Dr. Akin say in his 30th September chapel message, "The Bible has nothing negative to say about interracial marriage." That made me feel like he is on my team, in my corner, so to speak. Birds of a feather may flock together, but the Bible does not require it of a Christian. Rather, in this regard, we are free.

I have a South Korean wife. We have been married for fourteen years now. When we first met I pulled out a Bible and we talked for three hours. We agreed then that if we were to marry, we would use the Bible as our common basis for argument, to correct each other. Too, we agreed to use our marriage to the glory of God, in particular to take His first words to man seriously, "Be fruitful and multiply." So, to a certain extent, we have.

This degree of sincerity, wherein my future wife was able to tolerate me breaking out a Bible and reading and talking about scripture in depth on the first meeting, I had not seen in American girls, which may have helped to "keep them out of my hair," making me one who was lucky to have married his first and only girlfriend, and be spared the fruitless, debilitating experience of dating in uncertainty and then breaking up in despair over a lack of clear scripturally based definition at the outset of a relationship.

With the extended adolescence common in modern developed societies, it is unusual to marry one's first love. It may be unusual to be still going strong fourteen years later. But I expected nothing else, talking with my future wife that first evening we met. I had the same feeling about her, that she, too, had a strong sense of expectation and trust.

Furthermore, where else, but within the confines of holy scripture would a person embed his heart such that he may then live his life in the greatest freedom externally, in relation to others, and retain the fullest confidence that he will not be disappointed in the outcome of events in his life.

All things work towards the good when your heart is embedded in the Word of God. That does not mean all your friends live to a ripe old age, nor that your children remain free of every disease or pitfall. But it does mean that you will take all good things as gravy, and give God the glory. If a friend is taken early, you are grateful for having known him but a few years, in his youth.

Love, Nathaniel