"Never date someone you wouldn’t marry." Mrs. McKee’s injunction to her sixth grade class remains one of the most significant memories I retain from my elementary school years at Spencerville Junior Academy. I will never forget looking up expectantly from my laminate pine desk to hear her authoritative assertion well before I knew what dating meant, let alone marriage.

For a Good Adventist Girl like me, I divined that she could only mean I should date a Good Adventist Boy.

I obeyed her rule for a long time, mostly by staying out of the dating scene until college. Sidestepping the presumptions of her advice (that marriage is an inevitable milestone or that one can accurately discern a One And Only Right Person), only in my mid-twenties have I begun to think actively about who I want to be with. I realize now that her categorical approach might not be the only (or best) way for Adventists to date.

Along with other cosmic decisions, the nuances of choosing The Right Person grow each day. My dilemma is compounded by the fact that few people I meet, male or female, fit fully into any single category, nor can the dynamic parts that make up their personalities and worldviews be quickly judged as wholly positive or negative.

Cookie-cutter assertions like Mrs. McKee’s submerge lessons to be learned from dating outside one’s inherited preferences. I have a theory that people ought to date as a way to learn what they can live with and what they cannot live without, from a desire to understand both themselves and others better. However, this formula does not work when the input remains static or narrowly defined.

I don’t think I am alone in my desire to explore new ways of thinking and living through dating. Over half of my twenty- and thirty-something friends not already married have either dated or are currently seeing people of non-Adventist and/or non-religious backgrounds. Such a noteworthy fact suggests a deeper tension within the contemporary Adventist social fabric, between the expectations and convictions of our Adventist upbringing and sense of belonging, and the independence and appreciation of life we have cultivated for ourselves outside traditional Adventism.

The flaw in my dating theory is that the who of dating is not always a simple matter of preference. Rather, for many it seems to be a biblical command that generates conflicting convictions and guilt. As one girlfriend of mine explained, "The biblical writers were adamant that Christians should not marry non-Christians, and that if they do they will suffer." Such views make choice secondary to conviction, regardless of circumstances.

Might this reaction be more cultural and intuitive than grounded in spiritual reasoning? Might it result more from the emphasis that denominations place on tradition, obedience, and behavior as means to establish ecclesiastical empires than on what God was really trying to convey about how we ought to integrate faith, and fidelity to to God, with the realities of human society? Might not the genius of Christ’s sacrifice enable a more profound freedom to live life to its fullest in and with the world, rather than to establish a restrictive or judgmental regimen that necessitates total isolation from that world?

My generation of Adventist Americans does not believe in only one way of being, behaving, or believing. Allowing ourselves that freedom (usually) makes us inclined to extend it to others, as well. Call it what you will, but the opening of society over the course of the twentieth century, be it Adventist or American, logically led to increased intercultural encounters and opportunities for self-exploration. It is not hard to imagine that the more one travels and/or studies outside an Adventist or an American consortium, the more one encounters non-Adventist Christians, non-Christian Americans, and non-American Christians, and the more likely it is that one might fall in love with such a person.

Several examples of this chaos come to mind. I recently met a man nominally raised as a Catholic and educated as a Marine who has chosen to establish himself without any conscious relationship with God. I chose to date him because I admired his emotional resilience and professional success, and I enjoyed the easy-going rapport between us. I had never dated a man who could speak so honestly and freely about who he is, how he sees the world, and how a girlfriend fits into that view.

An acquaintance of mine also chose to date (and later to marry) outside her religious background. Marrying an orthodox Jew has allowed her intimate knowledge of another religious tradition, as well as space to explore areas of herself that Adventist Christianity never cultivated. She feels that her creative talents and spiritual identity have grown with the self-reflection and exposure brought by dating and marrying outside her Christian tradition, and that to deny herself the option would be to silence an integral part of herself.

Clearly there are many positive elements to nontraditional and even nonreligious relationships. What, then, do we make of scriptural texts that permit marriage only between people with a common belief in God, or those that make parallels between the relationship of the Trinity to the ideal components of human relationships? Is marriage a symbolic closure of freedom to think outside the box? Is belief in Christ all it takes for the perfect marriage? If not, is it satisfactory to negotiate relationships at only the practical level, vis-à-vis the established norms of a society, while remaining silent about any deeper relevance of faith in God?

Ultimately, I found out the hard way that a price would be paid for my decision to stay with the man I was dating; he did not understood either my family’s religious heritage or my own spiritual questioning, both of which are integral to who I am. I felt that the price ultimately would be my conscience, independent identity, and self-worth. Separately, two girlfriends of mine fear they will never have the spiritual intimacy with the non-Adventist men they are dating, and that the trajectory of their own relationships with Christ will be stinted.

For me, asking whether it is "okay" with God to date or marry outside one’s religious tradition is prescriptive and unhelpful. Rather, how one negotiates faith and dating relationships reflects one’s position on a broader spectrum of Adventist discourse. Faith can play a positive role in relationships by providing a framework of goodness and hope, but it is not an ace in one's pocket. If we do not separate the deeper meanings of faith from the pretenses of religiosity, we miss opportunities that might mature our understanding of God.

It is better to begin the conversation of who to date or not to date with reflection on what environments and influences have raised the issue than to shut out the unexpected ways that God is made relevant in our lives. For those who do not learn or think well in isolated, authoritative, or homogenous environments, this means embracing the humanity of all people and the potential of all relationships, and seeing where God leads one day at a time.

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