Last updated on November 2, 2020
Question:
Hello,
I will start off the situation. First off, I am a devoted Christian, but I don’t feel devoted enough as I can’t go to church since my family works on Sunday, and learning the Bible by myself is hard. I wasn’t baptized, and I always wished I could be more closer to God.
I dated a guy in my school who is a Protestant but wants to turn Catholic in his later years. I was fascinated by all the things he had taught me, and I started having feelings for him. Later on, he confessed he shared the same feelings as well, so we started dating.
The three months of summer was a disaster. We, unfortunately, became sexual and most of the times we saw each other in person was to relieve our desires. I was afraid that lust would overcome our love for each other, but he assured me that he will marry me one day and will stay with me until eternity. Also, I believed that is having sex was bringing us closer together. He gave me his grandmother’s rosary for my birthday, so I believed everything he said.
The next month, when school started, he told me he wanted to break up due to the temptations, which I understood. He told me we wouldn’t be broken up for long and that he needs to focus as we are back in school. Suddenly, he said that he doesn’t want to get back together with me because it was a sin to marry and have kids with a person like me. I am black and he is a white Puerto Rican. What he was telling me was that God didn’t intend the different races to mix and our children wouldn’t be smart and make it in this prejudiced world.
I felt incredibly sad and couldn’t eat for a week. I felt betrayed and utterly sad that the reason was because of my race. All the things he said to me were lies, and I was basically ignorant for giving away my virginity to somebody I trusted dearly. Now there have been no words spoken to each other in the past two months. He told me felt guilty for a while but now he’s happy and doesn’t feel guilty at all.
My question is: What should I do to overcome this? It’s been like a bullet in my head that I just easily can’t take out. Also, is race mixing an actual sin?
Answer:
Your former boyfriend used you. Like the seductress in Proverbs, he used flattering, smooth words to get you into bed with him. “For the lips of an adulteress drip honey and smoother than oil is her speech; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold of Sheol. She does not ponder the path of life; her ways are unstable, she does not know it” (Proverbs 5:2-6). Just reverse the gender and you have a description of your former boyfriend. All the way through, he told you exactly what you wanted to hear, so willingly accepted.
You were interested in religion, so he talked about religion with you. He made himself out to be a religious boy, so you weren’t as cautious as you should have been. After all, a religious boy won’t do anything bad, right? And thus, step by step he eventually got your clothes off and his penis into you. Once it started, it was easy to convince you to keep going. And he promised you all the things you wanted to hear.
But come the end of summer, he got tired of you. His first excuse was that he was too busy with school. But that wasn’t enough to totally break off, so he came up with the lie that people of different skin colors shouldn’t have kids. I know he was lying because he risked children the entire summer and it didn’t bother him then. But he doesn’t want to keep his promises. To me, that isn’t surprising. After all, despite his claims of being religious, he violated the teachings of God. He claims to want to be a Catholic, but he violated the teachings of the Catholic religion too. “Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).
We all descend from Adam and Eve. We who live after the flood also descend from Noah and his wife. There is only one race according to the Bible: the race of mankind. We are members of different nations, but we are not different species. There is no passage that says people from different nations cannot marry currently or that skin color makes any difference.
How do you overcome it? First, you need to accept that you were lied to and used. I’m sorry it happened. The past can’t be changed, but your future can be changed for the better. Second, you need to accept that this would not have happened if you had actually obeyed God’s commands regarding sex before marriage. There is a reason God says sex belongs only in a covenant relationship of marriage. But most important of all, it is past time that you became a true Christian. See: How to Become a Christian. It doesn’t matter if your parents are too busy to serve God as they should, you can make your own choices and serve him. If you need help finding a good church near you, just let me know what town you live near and I try to locate one for you.