 
10 Crucial and Surprising Steps to Build Trust in a Relationship He/she had the Affair - Why do I Need to Change? What Everyone Needs to Know About Extramarital Affairs. 10 Fair Fighting Rules for Couples The Good Marriage - How and Why Love Last The Hidden Costs of Keeping Love Alive More Lasting Unions: Christianity, the Family, and Society The Power of Two: Secrets to a Strong & Loving Marriage |  |
 Marriage 101 - Collective Guidance | |
Click Here. 
|
||
| Celebrating Our Differences Living Two Faiths in One Marriage By Mary Heléne Rosenbaum & Stanley Ned Rosenbaum A Threefold Cord Shall Not Be Broken The Bible is first of all about the relationship between God and human beings. The marital bond, however, is the primary one between humans. As God says in Genesis, “Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father and cleave unto his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Many people, especially people writing about interfaith marriage, put the third point of the Eternal Triangle, the one that touches the Divine, out of the picture. We think this is a mistake. While a certain surface stability may be achieved by one or both partners’ ignoring the part God plays in their lives, they’re missing a chance to weave a strong, beautifully patterned web. As it says in Ecclesiastes: “Two are better than one…and a threefold cord shall not be broken.” Recognizing the sacred character of marriage will give your relationship strength for the long haul. Though “God is love” is a Christian formulation, it describes an attitude vital to Jewish understanding of the Divine nature as well, as the apostle John himself points out elsewhere in the same epistle. We have found that the bond between the love of God and the soul of the believer clinches the bond between husband and wife. We’re writing Celebrating Our Differences because we believe this to be true even when the wife-God/husband-God connections are braided of strands drawn from different religious patterns. In fact, we think it may be more vital for a mixed-faith couple to keep ties to their individual faiths strong than for those who can take their religious unity for granted. This isn’t the conventional wisdom on mixed marriage, and for good reason. Keeping two faiths strong while not weakening the marriage bond is hard work – it needs concentration and effort. But we think the results are worth it. And we know there are lots of you looking for the kinds of pointers our experience can give. One recent study indicates a 75 percent failure rate for interfaith marriages – 50 percent higher than for American marriages overall. This may be due to the fact that many young couples marry without really understanding what their own unexamined assumptions can do to the fabric of a marriage. Adding the tensions of different faiths to all the other pulls increases the odds of ending up with tatters – unless you learn to pull together.
| ||||||
 | ||||||
