When Faith Lives Under the Same Roof as Unbelief
What a 41-year mixed-faith marriage taught me about grace, the gospel, and the God who saves.
I went to Bimini with my husband to celebrate our 41st wedding anniversary—clear water, conch shells, postcard views—but what I can’t stop thinking about are the sharks.
Paradise with Teeth
Bull sharks, tiger sharks, and great hammerheads live just beneath the surface, largely undisturbed by the island’s 2,400 residents, who’ve learned to coexist with a danger most people fear.
Fishermen clean their catch, tossing scraps into the water, a daily ritual that attracts the sharks. The locals, however, continue to swim (usually not around dinner time 😉). They know the sharks are there, yet they navigate their lives with an awareness of the risk, choosing to live without pretending it isn’t real.
That image stayed with me—because I’ve spent more than four decades in a marriage where faith and unbelief live under the same roof. Loving someone often means learning to swim with things that unsettle you. You sense the difference beneath the surface and you stop flinching every time it stirs the water.
Whether it’s in marriage, family, friendship, or ministry, we all face this: What do you do when you’re yoked to someone pulling in a different direction?
When my husband and I married, neither of us knew Christ. A few years in, God drew me to Himself. My husband didn’t share that experience and still doesn’t. What surprises me most is not our spiritual difference, but how deeply it unsettles other believers.
My situation is perceived by many as unsafe, but more often, it’s actually the illusion of safety that deceives. The places we label “godly” or “Christian” can sometimes be more spiritually hazardous than the ones we don’t.
I’ve seen marriages (and other familial relationships) look picture-perfect on the outside but they were drowning in secrecy, performance, and control. That’s why I no longer equate belief with safety or appearance with truth. The shark you can see is far less dangerous than the one cloaked in spiritual language, charm, and a polished Sunday smile.
When Grace Meets the Raised Eyebrow
The first time someone questioned how I could remain married to a man who didn’t share my faith, I was in my twenties. After speaking at a women’s retreat, I was approached and asked, “How do you sleep in the same bed with him?” I was shocked, not because I hadn’t asked hard questions myself, but because of the confusion and discomfort behind her tone. Since then, I’ve heard countless versions of similar questions often laced with pity, concern, and sometimes quiet judgment.
“How do you stay married to someone who isn’t a Christian?”
“Why hasn’t he come to faith after all this time?”
“Is there something you’re doing—or not doing—that might be keeping him from Christ?”
The underlying message seemed to be that our relationship—by virtue of its spiritual difference—was somehow incomplete, or even wrong.
These questions often say more about the person asking than the person being asked. The unsettledness is more about the raw truth that no one can control the outcome of someone else’s salvation. This fear sometimes cloaks itself in concern—but it reveals a subtle shift from grace to judgment and from humility to self-righteousness, equating spiritual fruit with performance and viewing proximity to Christian behavior as proof of faith. It forgets that the very Jesus we follow “died for us while we were still sinners” too (Romans 5:8, ESV).
The assumption belies the thought that faith can be systematized. If someone doesn’t believe, someone else must have done something wrong. With the right combination of effort, belief should be the guaranteed result—as if God were a vending machine and we held the coin of salvation in our hands.
I, too, have wrestled with these questions. When I was pregnant with our fourth child—our first son—I remember whispering desperate prayers: “Surely now, God. Surely you wouldn’t have me raise a son without a Christian father.”
I wanted to believe that I could somehow force God’s hand concerning my husband’s conversion. When it didn’t happen, I assumed someone must be at fault—maybe me, maybe him, maybe God’s timing. This wasn’t trust. It was control, dressed up as faith.
God began to show me that my role was never to play the Holy Spirit in my husband’s life. I was called to remain faithful to God, not to a particular outcome. Trust meant placing both our lives in God’s hands.
As Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:8, ESV, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” We don’t direct or command. We witness and we wait in hope.
The Ministry That Isn’t Mine
I’ve come to realize just how much of the Christian life is shaped by fear. When someone we love does not believe, we often fall into the trap of seeking formulas and explanations to fix the situation. We start believing that if we pray hard enough, love well enough, or model faith convincingly enough, the outcome will be sure.
But that’s not faith. That’s pressure. And it’s not the kind Jesus places on us.
God never asked us to play Savior.
Jesus invites us to follow Him, to live out His love and truth, and to make disciples. As John 15:5 says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” We are not the vine. We are the branches. While we are called to plant and water, it is God who gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6–7).
Scripture calls this a “ministry of reconciliation”—but not once does it say that we are the ones who accomplish the reconciliation. We are not the source of salvation, nor the architects of transformation. We are recipients of grace and carriers of a message we did not write. As Paul makes clear in 2 Corinthians 5:18–20 (ESV):
“ All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
Our role is not to generate faith but to walk faithfully ourselves. We can offer living water, but we cannot create thirst. We can testify to the truth, but we cannot force it to take root. The ministry of reconciliation is not a sales pitch. It’s a surrendered posture—trusting the One who awakens souls and brings the dead to life.
It has taken years to accept what I cannot change.
I couldn’t keep a child from wanting to end their own life.
I couldn’t fix the shattered places in people I love.
I couldn’t save myself.
Why would I believe I could save someone else?
I’ve come to love the quiet honesty in my home. My husband doesn’t pretend to be someone he’s not, and he doesn’t ask that of me either. We don’t share much of the same theology or worldview, but we do share a life marked by mutual respect and fierce loyalty.
Too many “Christian” marriages collapse under pretense—some using spiritual language to cover abuse. I would rather walk beside an honest unbeliever than share close communion with someone selling counterfeit faith in Jesus’ name.
There’s a quiet grief in walking this path. The church doesn’t always know what to do with people like me. I don’t fit in the single, married or widowed group. I’m not divorced, but I’m not spiritually partnered either.
But I am not alone.
According to a 2025 study by the Pew Research Center, 26% of married adults in the United States have a spouse with a different religious identity. Of those, 13% are marriages between a Christian and someone who is religiously unaffiliated—such as an atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.”1
That’s not a fringe statistic. It’s a quiet reality for millions—often judged, sometimes overlooked, or misunderstood, but no less present in the body of Christ.
Clarifying the Yoke
Some believers misinterpret 2 Corinthians 6:14 and insist that all unequally yoked marriages are inherently sinful. Paul’s warning in that passage isn’t about severing marriages—it’s about avoiding partnerships that compromise a believer’s integrity and mission.
To understand Paul’s warning, we need to go back to the image he used:
“Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.”
It’s a vivid picture drawn from agrarian life. Oxen were clean animals—steady, strong, and suited for long labor. Donkeys were considered ceremonially unclean—stubborn, unpredictable, and unmatched in stride. Yoking them together didn’t just slow the work—it made it miserable. They pulled against each other, often ruining the field.
That’s the imagery Paul draws on in 2 Corinthians 6:14:
“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?”
He’s not advocating total separation from unbelievers—Paul himself acknowledges that would be impossible without leaving the world entirely (1 Corinthians 5:10). Instead, he’s urging caution in forming relationships that require shared spiritual direction and unity of purpose.
It’s not mere difference that creates strain—it’s misalignment of direction, allegiance, and lordship. A believer and an unbeliever live with different foundations, different guiding loves, different ultimate aims. It can be exhausting to pull in opposite directions. That exhaustion is real.
Paul also speaks to those already in such relationships. In 1 Corinthians 7:12–14, ESV, he writes:
To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
This doesn’t mean the unbeliever is saved. It means God has placed His set-apart presence in the home through the believing spouse—and He is able to work through that tension for His purposes.
God never asked me to resolve the tension. He asked me to trust Him inside it.
My marriage may not fit neatly into theological boxes, but it isn’t outside the reach of God. He knows how to work in uneven ground and He knows how to walk with those who are pulling in different directions.
I’ve seen the beauty of spiritually aligned marriages too—relationships where both partners follow Jesus with shared purpose and mutual surrender. That kind of unity reflects God’s heart and carries a strength I deeply admire. Alignment in faith doesn’t erase all tension—but it does give both people the same compass.
Bridging the Divide
Living as a believer in a mixed-faith marriage is not a passive endurance test. It’s an invitation to deeper dependence on Christ. I’m not called to fix, persuade, or perform. I’m called to walk with Jesus—honestly, humbly—and love the person beside me with the same grace that rescued me. Salvation doesn’t rest on my shoulders. It rests in the hands of the One who crossed the greatest divide to rescue us all.
In my mid-thirties, I stood at the Great Continental Divide in Winter Park, Colorado, and felt the deep spiritual chasm between my husband and me. I stared across that vast expanse, the weight of it settling in my bones. I asked God how I could keep walking this path. In that moment, I remembered what it was like to be the one lying spiritually dead on the pavement of this world—no hope of revival—until God breathed life into me. Salvation was never mine to accomplish. It has always been God’s resurrection work.
I walk in hope—not because I believe I can bridge the divide, but because I know the One who already crossed it for me.
So before anyone asks me again how I can possibly sleep beside someone who doesn’t believe, I’d rather ask:
Why does my story make you so uncomfortable?
What do you really believe about salvation?
Are you clinging to a gospel that depends on external appearances instead of trusting the Spirit to move in unpredictable waters?
If the gospel we’re clinging to doesn’t hold space for mystery, mess, or spiritual tension, then it might not be the gospel Jesus actually preached.
There are sharks in the water, yes—but they aren’t always where you think.
Often, the most dangerous thing is not the authentic unbeliever swimming beside you but spiritual pretense selling a gospel of performance.
That’s why I trust the shoreline. Not because it’s free from risk—but because I no longer have to pretend. The shoreline is where I stand awake and surrendered, aware of what swims near, but anchored in the One who saves.
It’s where I let go of the illusion that I can control what only the Spirit can do.
It’s where I stop pretending that danger only lives outside the church walls.
It’s where I choose honesty over image, trust over striving, faith over fear.
And it’s where I wait—eyes open, heart steady—knowing that Jesus is the only one who sees it all and still saves.
Not because I did everything right.
Not because I said all the right words.
But because He is faithful.
For the curious:
Pew Research Center. (2025, February 26). Religious intermarriage in the United States. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-intermarriage/
Yes. Yes. Yes. (Honestly, some Christians say the cruelest things.)
Thank you for an excellent perspective and sharing of scripture. I’m so thankful for your story and encouragement to others in the same situation. May your light continue to shine.