Marrying Someone With Different Religious Beliefs | Paul Friedman

How will you handle the situation if you're marrying someone with different religious beliefs? Watch Paul shares what you can do and how it is important for you to know the importance of every decision that you will make.

Let's talk about this but let's distinguish between religious beliefs and religion because in today's
world, and this is actually not a new thing. People end up marrying someone who's of a different religion, maybe even still the same overall religion but different beliefs within that religion --
there are different sects.

There are two parts. One part is that you belong to a different religion, maybe one of you grew
up as a Christian the other as a Jew, maybe one grew up as a Muslim the other as a Hindu and in those cases where we're just talking about religious affiliation, not beliefs, the biggest problem is going to be family. Your beliefs are not necessarily going to be the same as the dogma that is espoused within the particular religion that you belong to but families get funny. I know of situations where one parent decides, "I'm not going to the wedding. They're not going to get married with my blessings," that's very sad and frankly, there are a few things you can do in those cases but not a lot.

What you try to do is be non-confrontational with that particular parent and you try to ease into some sort of compromise, not always going to be possible but you at least do your best. In those cases, if you're not going to get cooperation from a parent that is the parent basically deciding that they want to continue to impose their authority upon you as an individual and they have lots of excuses for doing so. They use words like tradition, family values but they miss a very important point. That point is very important to you and that is that you are marrying the person that you're going to be with long after the parent has left this earth. This is your choice and it's a big deal so I'm going to give you foundational information that will help you do the right thing.

Number one is huge and that is that in all of your life from prior till now until you're passed away there's only one person who you will choose to love and not be compelled to love unconditionally and that is the spouse. You see even our children, we don't select them based on their qualities it's a surprise package when they're born and you were a surprise package to
your parents and their role in your life was not to control you past the point of where they can influence you in ways that helped you become a better person. Their job was to raise you on behalf of God not to take charge and pretend that you belong to them.

We can use words like inappropriate and it is inappropriate for a parent to interfere and maybe you're the parent -- it is inappropriate. Now that doesn't mean that you go up to that parent and say, "You're inappropriate." You still have to be respectful toward your parent. You still have to recognize that they have flaws as individuals also but you look past their flaws to love them with all of your heart but not more than the one you're choosing to spend the rest of your life with. So you love them but you stop allowing them to dictate your life. They just don't have a place in that. Your life is moving forward. They're not going to send you to your room. They will badger you, try to make you feel guilty. Try to offer you a sense of you should be "loyal" to them and/or to their religion but that does not mean that it's yours to carry. It's sad.

There's no question so you do your best to include them to have them come to the ceremony. Maybe make some concessions depending on what their beliefs are. You do the best you can
that's all you can do but you certainly do not allow their beliefs to interfere with yours. Let's get to the other side of this where you have different religious beliefs. Some of those beliefs and let's call them spiritual beliefs and religious beliefs. Religious beliefs, I think of as dogma so the religion that one belongs to has laid out how they perceive God, how they perceive morality,
how you should in order to win the favor of God that's the dogma and it could go anywhere even within certain religions. I could use Judaism as an example. In certain sects, Judaism believes in reincarnation.

In others, they don't even discuss it. Does it matter? No, what is important is then when your
children come that they are raised in a consistent manner when it comes to meeting God they should recognize God as a loving mother, father, friend regardless of the religion in which those ideals are encased and that's what's most important. It isn't important using reincarnation again whether someone believes in it or not. Your beliefs don't send you to heaven or hell using that as
an example. It's your behavior and that's all it is. It's your behavior.

Watch the video for more.

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