Belief in God, Belief in Love

Q: What if your partner does not believe in God?

A: "Love thy neighbor as thyself" does not include the qualifier "unless your neighbor does not believe in God." We have known many people who hearing in daily news reports of atrocities committed in the name of God simply cannot bring themselves to use this word to describe what they feel in their hearts.

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Often, disbelief in God is a stand that the individual takes against the cruelty and destructiveness of organized religion. We do not have to feel personally attacked or disrespected by these people. Pressuring your partner to change his or her mind is not helpful to your partner or to you. Nor does it honor God, in whom we presume you believe.

In our opinion, having a partner who does not profess a belief in God does not have to be an insurmountable problem. We have counseled hundreds of couples who believed in God who nevertheless acted quite destructively toward each other, and we have counseled many couples who did not believe in God, or had differing beliefs, whose relationships were strong and happy.

We once counseled a woman whose primary complaint was that her husband refused to attend the spiritual-growth workshops and seminars that were so important to her. He also wouldn't read the books or listen to the tapes that she believed would help both of them develop spiritually. Needless to say, he also wouldn't attend church, and he did not like discussing anything having to do with God. All of this distressed her very much.

Central to our counseling approach is our belief that in a healthy relationship, neither partner attempts to change the other. When we asked this woman what her husband was like as a human being, she described him as "extremely kind and loving, a wonderful father, very tolerant," and "the kind of man people call when they need help."