Missionary Dating

Missionary Dating: When a single Christian dates a non Christian with the intention of converting them to Christianity, and possibly scoring a Christian spouse in the process.

Putting it frankly, missionary dating is a bad idea. But not everyone agrees with me. Tamara would like to see good looking girls date non Christian guys to save them from hell. I can see several problems with this.

Firstly, if you’re dating someone, there’s only two possible outcomes: you break up or you get married. If you break up, this can be a time of heartache and disappointment. If you know from the start it’s not going to work out, save yourself the pain and not go out. If you get married, it means that you’ve decided to join together and spend the rest of your life together. This means you want to be heading in the same direction. It’s all well and good to think you can convince your non Christian partner to come along to church and believe in Jesus, but they’re going to be trying equally hard to convert you to their life style. And then you have a choice: commit to spending time with your boyfriend/girlfriend or commit to spending time with Jesus. You may think your strong enough to stay true to Jesus, but do you really want to be putting yourself in such a situation?

The second, and larger problem with Tamara’s site (if indeed this site is serious and not a parody – I’m leaning towards parody) is the manipulative nature of missionary dating. She plans to use her attractiveness to convert people. They think they’re dating because they get on well together, but she has an ulterior motive. If you were the guy on the other end of that, wouldn’t you feel used? Wouldn’t you feel like she only wanted to go out with you to gain another notch on her conversion tally?

Missionary Dating is a terrible idea. It’s not loving to the non Christian as they are either being manipulated or going into the relationship under false pretenses. And ultimately, it puts the Christian in a dangerous situation where they have to choose between being faithful to God or “following their heart”. And if you’re following your heart and it’s not leading you towards Jesus, then it ain’t God who’s at work in your life.

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One response to “Missionary Dating”

  1. Calum Henderson says :

    Dating a non-Christian not only means that you are choosing between him and Jesus, it means that you are missing out on Jesus being part of your relationship. You will never be able to read the Bible together or pray. And those are really great things in a relationship!

    Thanks for the post Joel, definitely agree that missionary dating is a bad idea.

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