Let’s talk about framing. Not framing as in home construction, but framing as in the way we perceive reality. Framing refers to how we see things. In particular, it refers to the fact that, as human beings, we don’t merely see things; we see things as. If you see a bear, you don’t just see a bear. You see the bear as dangerous. When you see a sunset, you don’t just see the sunset; you see the sunset as beautiful. That’s what I mean by framing. We see things as.

And not just sight, but our other senses as well. We hear the buzzing of a fly as annoying. We hear the laughter of a child as delightful. We smell the aroma of cookies as pleasant. We taste and see that honey is good. Framing, then, has to do with the immediate and snap judgments we make about reality and its relation to us.

Changing Lenses

Our framing is not static. The child’s laughter that is delightful at one moment is a nuisance when you’re trying to get work done. The laughter is the same; the framing — your snap judgment — is different.

“Framing has to do with the immediate and snap judgments that we make about reality and its relation to us.”

Let’s take another step. We’re always framing, and it’s good that we are. It’s what keeps us alive. Our snap judgments lead to snap reactions. The framing bear-as-dangerous is why you jump in the car and drive away when you see one. The speed of our snap judgments engages our snap reactions almost automatically. In fact, we might say that our snap judgments and snap reactions are not in our immediate control (though, as we’ll see, they are shaped over time by our choices and experiences).

As humans — with souls and bodies, hearts and minds, intellects and wills — our snap judgments are often incredibly complex. They don’t merely involve simple and straightforward judgments about dangerous bears and delightful laughter. Behind our framing lies a complex web of imagination, memory, narrative-framing, embodied experience, and our present expectations, desires, and fears. In short, because we are human, why we see things as we do is a complicated question.

More than simply being human, our fallibility and sinfulness complicate our framing. Because we are fallible, our framing can be mistaken. We might mistake a garden hose for a snake and unnecessarily panic. And because we are sinful, our snap reactions following our snap judgments are not always good. Your spouse makes an observation; you make a snap judgment — comment-as-insult — and you react with your own insulting comment, and the situation escalates. You see the two places you could go wrong: Was your snap judgment correct? And was your snap reaction appropriate?

Our Chosen Stories

We can think of many other examples. Was that question from your coworker simply a request for information? Or was it a subtle shot at your ignorance? Your friends go out one night and don’t invite you. Did they simply forget or intentionally leave you out? Snap judgment, snap reaction.

And now we can see how our framing — and the snap reactions that flow from it — sets us on a path.

They didn’t invite me. They intentionally left me out. They don’t want to be around me. They’ve rejected me as their friend. I’ll show them.

With every judgment, we add a corresponding reaction, which together make the frame sturdier. Our experience and our choices, our memories and our imaginations, the stories we tell ourselves and the things that happen to us — all of these work together to shape and reshape our framing.

Notice How You Frame

What then should we do?

First, we ought to be curious about our own framing. I reacted because I made a snap judgment. Why did I make that judgment? And was that an appropriate reaction? Growing in self-awareness is crucial if we are to frame the world rightly. Our reactions are tied to our framing, and both often reveal subtle assumptions that we may not even be fully aware of.
C.S. Lewis describes just this sort of dynamic in The Screwtape Letters.

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. (111)

Note the snap reactions: anger and ill-temper. Note that what produces them is a snap judgment: misfortune conceived as injury. That’s the framing: hardship as violation of a claim. What assumption is revealed by this snap judgment and snap reaction? Screwtape continues.

Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear.

Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own.” (111–12)

There is the assumption, the pattern, beneath the snap judgment — “My time is my own.” Curiosity about our reaction leads us to awareness of our judgment and the revealing of our (false) assumption. Thus, reframing our view of our time becomes essential in shaping us in a more humble and godly way.

Notice How Others Frame

Second, be curious about the framing of others. My spouse or child or friend reacted strongly because they made a snap judgment about me. Why did they do so? Does their snap judgment fit a real pattern I display? And rather than escalating the situation with my own snap reaction, how can I love them through it?

Again, Lewis describes how important such self-reflection is in our closest relationships. Listen to Screwtape’s strategy for provoking our snap judgments and snap reactions in our domestic lives.

When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it.

Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy — if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed. (13)

Again, note the way that our reactions and judgments reveal improbable assumptions. Our awareness of such facts allows us to be curious and compassionate toward our family and friends and, Lord willing, love them more wisely.

Be Transformed by Scripture

Third, mind the patterns that shape your framing. Paul says it clearly in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world.” In other words, don’t frame reality the way that the world frames reality. Its pattern is not to be our pattern. Instead, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This is why we read the Scriptures and seek God in prayer and worship with God’s people — so that our minds can be renewed and we frame reality the way God does.

“Don’t frame reality the way that the world frames reality.”

Finally, marvel at the amazing reframing that God has worked in us in our view of Christ. At one time, our frame was darkened and blind. We saw Christ as a stumbling block and foolishness. Christ-as-ugly, Christ-as-dull, Christ-as-trivial — that was our frame.

But then, the God who said “Let light shine out of darkness” shone in our hearts (2 Corinthians 4:6). He called us from darkness to light and reframed Jesus for us. Now we see Christ as the power of God and the wisdom of God. Through the miracle of the new birth, we see Jesus differently. Christ-as-glorious. Jesus-as-worthy. This is the frame of frames, the pattern that transforms us from one degree of glory to another.

Here I sit, gentle reader, on one side of a screen in Sydney, Australia, with you (very likely) looking at another screen in some other part of the world — and I am hoping that something remarkable will happen. I am praying that, though separated by geography and time, we will nevertheless meet together for the next few minutes through words on the screen.

It’s a miracle when you think about it.

If I write this piece well, you will “hear” my thoughts and my voice, even though, in fact, you may be hearing nothing but the soft whir of the fan in your laptop. Whether it happens asynchronously (in a book or in an article like this one) or synchronously (in a Zoom meeting or on a phone call), we find ourselves able to connect, communicate, and relate to one another without physically being in each other’s presence.

Remote, Partial Joy

Humans have been connecting like this since the invention of smoke signals. God has given us this remarkable capacity to project our minds and hearts and personalities to other places, and even other times, through dispatching representations of ourselves in words or images.

The New Testament authors, of course, made good use of this blessing. They saw their letters as an important vehicle for bringing their teaching, encouragement, and admonition to the people they loved and longed for from afar.

The little epistles of 2 and 3 John are a fascinating case study. In both letters, John rejoices to discover that his people are “walking in the truth” (2 John 4; 3 John 3), and encourages and exhorts them to keep doing so. In both cases, however, he concludes by saying that although he has more to say, he’d much prefer to do it in person:

Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete. (2 John 12; see also 3 John 13–14)

There’s real joy in hearing that someone is persevering in the faith, and a joy also in writing to encourage them. But it’s a partial joy — a joy that anticipates its fulfillment when we are face to face.

Technology: Relational Blessing or Curse?

The superiority of physical presence is so obvious that it seems strange even to argue for it. Who would be so perverse as to prefer a text message from our beloved to having dinner with her at our favorite restaurant? Or who would choose a phone call with our mother over the joy of a warm embrace and a leisurely conversation?

But we are strange and perverse creatures, with a long track record of choosing lesser joys over greater ones. As a result, we not only deny ourselves those greater possibilities, but in favoring lesser realities, we end up distorting and spoiling them.

As many others have pointed out, this dynamic seems to be happening in our cultural moment with respect to the virtual world of the Internet and social media. There is a disturbing trend to underplay the joy of physical presence, and to overplay the benefits of virtuality. We find ourselves so immersed in the captivating, constantly morphing, fast-paced stream of the virtual, that we have started to lose our taste for the solid ground of physical relationship. But like so many of God’s gifts, the blessings of virtuality, when misused or overused, become a burden and a curse.

It is not my task in this short piece to explore why or how this has happened, but I will briefly mention one important theological trajectory that relates to the importance of our physical church gatherings.

Isolation of Self

As Carl Trueman (among others) has recently documented, one of the strange aspects of our modern Western culture is the psychologizing of our selves and identities.

The steady, inexorable rejection of God as Creator and Lord in Western society has eventually thrown us back on ourselves and our inner lives as the source of morality, identity, and the self. It is hardly surprising, in a culture where we define ourselves by expressing our feelings and thoughts, that we should find virtual connections so attractive.

Our alienation from God and his created order has become a kind of rebellion against the bodily, physical nature of our created selves. And this rebellion leads to dysfunction, because our bodily nature is integral to who we are as God’s creatures. We are made to relate not only to God, creature-to-Creator, but also to one another, creature-to-creature. Our bodily existence is ordered for this purpose. As D.B. Knox puts it:

The body is marvellously contrived to accomplish its ends in relationship, with all the pleasure, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual that relationship brings. The eye, the face, the language structure of our brains, are designed to express our inner being to one another. (The Everlasting God, 52)

“We are made to relate not only to God, creature-to-Creator, but also to one another, creature-to-creature.”

This relates particularly to the redeemed relationships that God brings into being when he re-creates us in Christ. We are restored not just to right relationship with God, but also to right relationship with one another. Jews and Gentiles can now break bread together, greet each other with a holy kiss, even marry one another — all unthinkable impossibilities before Christ broke the wall of hostility that divided us (Ephesians 2:14).

Church Is a Gathered People

This gospel reconciliation is why the church — the gathered assembly of God’s people — is such a dominant feature of the new life we have together in Christ. In Christ, the Holy Spirit draws us together: to learn together from the word (Acts 2:42), to eat and drink together in Christ’s memory (1 Corinthians 11:23–26), to raise our voices together in prayer and song (Ephesians 5:18–19), and to encourage one another with loving prophetic words of exhortation, comfort, and admonition (1 Corinthians 14:1–3). All of these are creaturely activities, requiring creaturely presence with one another to fulfill their purposes.

I’ve often wondered if this thought lies behind the command of Hebrews 10:24, to not forsake meeting together. In much of his letter, the author of Hebrews emphasizes that the fulfillment of God’s plans in Christ involves a movement from the old covenant (with its physical, earthly temple and priesthood) to the new covenant of Christ’s eternal, spiritual redemption, through which we now have access to the very presence of God (Hebrews 9:14; 10:19–22; 12:18–24).

Was the author of Hebrews concerned that the obsolescence of the physical temple and priesthood might lead his readers to no longer see the need for a physical gathering with one another?

We should not speculate too far, but it’s certainly worth noting the form of his exhortation. After urging them to draw near to the heavenly holy of holies with full assurance of faith, he then says,

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging [or exhorting] one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24–25)

“Encouraging one another” is the counterpoint to “neglecting to meet together.” It’s an essential activity that not meeting together prevents us from doing. And encouraging each other is so because it is the means by which we stir one another up to love and good works as we wait for Christ’s return.

Given the weakness and sinfulness still present in our bodies, including the desires of the flesh that assail us, we need to gather regularly with other bodies — so that we can teach and encourage and spur each other on with our whole selves. The various activities we do with our bodies when we gather in fellowship are oriented to this purpose. They are done in the worship of Christ, and to the glory of God, but they are also very much done with and for each other — especially in building each other up in love and good deeds.

Physical or Virtual?

This vital aspect of gathering together is much diminished, or in some cases ruled out altogether, by neglecting a physical gathering in favor of virtual ones.

For example, the value and experience of sitting side by side, listening to a preacher, is qualitatively different from reading a printed sermon or watching one on YouTube — not only because we pick up different aspects (in the voice and gesture and physical presence of the speaker), but because we are in a different place and posture as listeners. We are sitting with each other under God’s word, listening together to the teaching and encouragement that his word brings us. Your presence next to me is part of my listening.

“Your presence next to me in worship is part of my listening.”

Likewise, when we sing, we sing not only to God for his glory and praise, but to one another for mutual encouragement and teaching (Ephesians 5:21–22; Colossians 3:15–16). We can sing joyfully to Christ anywhere, but only in the gathering can we sing to one another, making melody in our hearts to the Lord as we do so.

The same is true when we talk together and encourage one another around the word. When we are physically together, we not only enjoy a richer engagement with each other, but we have more opportunities to see and hear what’s going on with the people around us. We can sense when someone is troubled or joyful or heartbroken or disengaged or lonely or just new to our gathering and hoping to meet someone. We can proactively love each other, and speak the words that spur one another on to love and good deeds.

Joy of Gathering Again

Can these various goals be accomplished via email or a Facebook post or an article like this one? To some limited extent, yes — and what a blessing that is! But to allow the blessings and possibilities of the virtual to divert us from the joys and benefits of real, bodily fellowship would be a strange bargain indeed.

This has been the reality for us here in Sydney over the past eighteen months. We’ve had many months of lockdowns and other restrictions that have prevented us from gathering physically as churches. For about half of all the Sundays since March 2020, we’ve been stuck at home, trying to encourage one another as God’s people through virtual connections of various kinds. We have certainly been very thankful for these mercies (even if they have sometimes felt like small mercies).

But the joy we are now experiencing is the joy of real, face-to-face fellowship. I pray that we, and you, will continue to treasure that physical presence with each other, and never be distracted or diverted from it by the good but lesser benefits of the virtual.

Of all the Christians who start dating a nonbeliever, how many of them planned to do so?

I suspect few Christians set out to intentionally date (much less marry) a nonbeliever. The question really isn’t all that controversial in theory. Would anyone who genuinely loves Jesus sincerely prefer to marry someone who doesn’t? No, but when the question comes, it’s not theoretical anymore. By the time he or she is asking about dating “a nonbeliever,” the nonbeliever already has a name, a story, often an attractive face and a good sense of humor.

When we set out to marry, of course we want to marry another believer. We want to read the Bible together, pray together, go to church together, serve together. But for a variety of reasons, believers often struggle to find the right man or woman. For one, people are getting married later, which means many are having to look harder or wait longer. Combine that with apps and websites that multiply the competition hundreds of times over, and people are pickier and slower to settle down. Also, some Christians have already had bad experiences dating Christians.

Considering this, it really shouldn’t surprise us that some believers entertain the idea of dating outside the church. There’s more to choose from, and you can still have some things in common. In fact, it may seem at first like you have more in common with the non-Christians online or in your class than you do with the single people you see each Sunday.

“Would anyone who genuinely loves Jesus sincerely prefer to marry someone who doesn’t?”

But this isn’t what you wanted, is it? This wasn’t Plan A, or B, or even C. You’re here because you’ve run out of good plans. I’m writing to encourage you to press on and not settle for a bad one.

Only in the Lord

When it comes to dating nonbelievers, the verse that often immediately comes to mind is 2 Corinthians 6:14: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” It’s certainly relevant to our question (and we’ll come back to it in a moment), but the verse isn’t narrowly about marriage. No, probably the clearest one-verse answer is more often over-looked, 1 Corinthians 7:39:

A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.

The verse might seem obscure at first, but it wasn’t for the apostle Paul. After addressing various circumstances in which followers of Jesus might marry (or not), he lands with a smaller, but precious group in the church: women who have lost a husband. It would be careless to assume, however, that what he says in verse 39 only applies to widows (as if the not-yet-married were free to marry outside the Lord). No, if a Christian decides to marry, he or she is free to marry whom he or she wishes, but only in the Lord.

That phrase tucked into the end of Paul’s counsel to single believers is written in large capital letters across his letters. To begin this letter, he writes, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus. . . .” (1 Corinthians 1:2). And he ends the letter on the same all-important note: “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen” (1 Corinthians 16:24).
In his second letter to the same church, he writes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

More than twenty times in 1 Corinthians alone, he uses the phrase “in the Lord” or “in Christ.” This phrase, for the apostle, was not merely a spiritual tag onto his counsel about marrying wisely; it was his whole world. In his mind, we do everything we do — especially our major commitments and callings — in the Lord. For a Christian, there’s simply no other place to be, much less marry.

What Should a Marriage Say?

The phrase “in the Lord” was filled with meaning in another way, though. First, a Christian does everything he or she does in Christ — how much more so marriage? But then second, marriage is uniquely designed to unveil what it means to live in Christ. This love, of all human loves, was patterned after the love between him and the church.

“A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:31–32)

Most marriages in the world lie about Christ and the church. Husbands don’t sacrifice for their wives (Ephesians 5:25). They don’t read the words of God themselves, much less wash their marriages in them (verse 26). They don’t pursue holiness or encourage it in her (verse 27). They don’t delight in her like Jesus delights in us (verse 33). And many wives will not submit to the husbands God has given them (verse 22). They don’t respect their groom or support his callings (verse 33). And so their marriages slander the story they’re meant to tell. Their love warps and mangles God’s masterpiece.

When Paul says, “Marry in the Lord,” he’s saying, “Tell the truth about Christ and the church.” Say with your marriage what marriage was meant to say. Marry in a way that sheds light on God and his glory, sin and grace, the cross and tomb, heaven and hell — rather than clouding them like so many do.

Are We Unequally Yoked?

Now let’s look at the (somewhat strange) text that often immediately comes to mind first when we talk about dating or marrying nonbelievers:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. (2 Corinthians 6:14–16)

I say “strange,” because these verses don’t say anything explicit about romance or marriage. A yoke was a harness placed over two animals pulling the same cart. If the animals were mismatched (say an ox and a donkey, Deuteronomy 22:10), the one will be led astray by the other. So it is with a soul, Paul says. He’s warning the church about dangerous relationships and alliances. In this case, those dangerous alliances were forming within the church against his message and ministry. It’s still a good verse for discouraging someone from marrying a nonbeliever, but perhaps not in the way we expect.

So why do we come here to talk about marriage? Because no yoke is weightier or more influential — for better or worse — than marriage.

Marriage Could Cost Everything

Who you marry will likely shape who you become more than any other human relationship. If your husband runs from Jesus, you won’t be able to avoid the undertow of his lovelessness. If your wife runs from Jesus, you will live in the crossfire of her unrepentant sin. You may survive an unbelieving spouse, but only as through fire. Marriage under God would become a long and devastating war.

And, God warns us, you might lose your soul while fighting that war. That’s the clear warning in 2 Corinthians 6: Being yoked with the wrong kind of heart could cost you yours. We should be careful who we align ourselves with in the church, Paul says. How much more so in the bedroom, in the budget and schedule, in parenting and suffering, in the demanding trenches of everyday life? The wrong marriage really might ruin you. Therefore, Paul says a few verses later, “Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).

When you read a verse like this (in context), you realize we might be asking the wrong questions in dating. Instead of asking whether we can date a nonbeliever, we might start asking, how might I bring holiness to completion in the pursuit of marriage? What will help me run my race well? Who would the fear of God lead me to love? Could holiness thrive in a relationship like this?

Marriage Without God

To some degree, people date and marry nonbelievers because of a lack of imagination. It’s not really all that hard to imagine dating a nonbeliever (coffee shops, bike rides, nice meals out, movies together), being engaged to a nonbeliever (finding a menu, planning a big meal, looking at homes, lots of presents), putting on a wedding with a nonbeliever (dressing up, seeing friends and family, eating well, maybe dancing), even enjoying a honeymoon with a nonbeliever (coffee shops, bike rides, nice meals out, but you get to have sex too).

“To some degree, Christians date and marry nonbelievers because of a lack of imagination.”

Imagine, for a moment, though, life after all that. Real married life, the ups and downs, starts and stops, joys and agonies, is unusually hard for a single person to conceive, but I want you to try.

Imagine that seven years in, you suddenly get very sick and end up in the hospital. The worst-case scenarios are now real scenarios. Your spouse walks into your hospital room, grabs a chair, pulls it close, holds your hand — and you can’t pray together. You just sit and stare and worry. Eventually he says, “Everything’s going to be alright.”

Imagine meeting with God in his word one morning, being overwhelmed by his majesty and mercy — you’re brought to tears — and then going to share that with your spouse and their face is blank. They’re kind and happy to listen, but they can’t see or feel what you see and feel. They never share that kind of moment with you.

Imagine getting in a big fight with your wife. Not a “I didn’t like how you said that” fight, but a “I don’t want to stay with you anymore” fight — and you don’t have the gospel between you. She doesn’t believe God joined you together. She doesn’t believe she made promises before God. She doesn’t believe there are consequences beyond this life.

Imagine trying to teach your children about Jesus — reading the Bible with them, praying with them, singing with them — and he always sits in the other room. He only goes to church for Christmas and maybe Easter. Imagine your kids seeing, day in and day out, that dad doesn’t believe what mom keeps telling us. Imagine how disorienting that would be.

Imagine having to make another impossible decision about a home, or a loan, or your child’s education, or a crisis in the extended family — and you don’t have a single shared verse to lean on. You can’t hear from God together, because she doesn’t believe God speaks. The Bible’s just another good book on a shelf with lots of other good books.

Those are a few of a hundred scenarios where faith in God changes everything for a marriage — where “in the Lord” suddenly really matters. I suspect sincere Christians entertain the idea of marrying a nonbeliever because they cannot yet imagine what marriage will really be like. For the believer, a marriage without God would be a lifetime without sunshine, a sail without wind, a love without true love.