Growing up, I heard so many preachers say that interracial dating and marriage is wrong. I questioned this so many times. "Where did you find that in the Bible?" I was always given the same scripture-- 2 Corinthians 6:14 "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"

Now, what does that have to do with race?

Then, I was told that all throughout the Old Testament the Israelites were forbidden to marry outside their own race. I do agree with this. God did tell the Israelites not to marry with the ungodly nations around them. However, the reason for this command was the ungodly nature of those nations religious beliefs and practices, not their race or skin color.

I am a Pentecostal Christian and I am very strict in my beliefs. I believe very strongly that a person should closely monitor what he/she watches, listens to, reads, eats, etc., but Ijust cannot follow the train of thought of christians who say that interracial relationships are wrong!

So, I studied God's word for myself. Here is what I found:

First of all, like I mentioned before, race was not the reason God commanded the Isrealites not to mix with the other nations. Before Christ, God destroyed the whole world with a flood because of its profound evil state save one man, Noah, who "found favor in the eyes of the LORD" (Gen. 6). Several generations later, God chose to reveal himself to Abram, a man from the lineage of Noah (Gen. 12). God told Abram that He would make him a great nation if Abram would go where God was leading him. So Abram went. From Abram (Abraham) the nation of Israel was made and God was their God. Now in this time, every nation had their own gods that they had created to try to explain creation and nature and why things happen. God Almighty, the God of Israel, commanded the Israelites not to mix with these other nations simply because they followed their own manmade gods and not the God Almighty that the Israelites knew. God knew that these other nations would sway the Israelites to follow these other gods which were not alive and could not help them in any way (Deut. 4-7). God says specifically, "When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you" (Deut. 7:1-4). It is very obvious that God's intentions were to keep the Israelites faithful to him, not to keep skin colors seperate. As a matter of fact, you can search and search the entire Bible and you will never read that skin color plays a role in any of God's commands. God's commands are all to guide His people into a life of holiness and faithfulness to him, nothing else.

Secondly, the New Testament distinctly removes those racially-bound spiritual stipulations by informing us that all born-again believers are part of one body in Christ and adopted into one family (Ephesians 2:11-22; 1 Corinthians 12:12-13).

I believe the Bible is very clear that God's only desire for separation in this world among His creation is the separation between the godly and the ungodly. I also believe that it is racist and unchristianly to believe that interracial marriage is a bad thing and I believe that it is very wrong for anyone to advise against it.