The Challenge of Worldview in Multiethnic Marriages

Much like missionaries who labor cross-culturally experience some degree of culture shock, multiethnic couples will encounter significant cultural differences within the marriage covenant. Regardless of how long husbands and wives have been acquainted with each other prior to their wedding, subsequent interactions inevitably will reveal innumerable cultural practices of which they were unaware. Committed Christians possess a spiritual kinship and a theological system of belief that is common to them, but the ways in which representatives of unrelated cultures approach certain matters may be worlds apart.
            Missiologists, anthropologists, and theologians refer to this phenomenon as worldview. Apologist James Sire provided an excellent definition of this important concept:

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.[1]

Multiethnic couples cannot prepare themselves for every conceivable cultural difference that awaits them within the bonds of matrimony, but they can enter their marriage with the knowledge that worldview disparities will arise. Believers who marry people who originate from dissimilar contexts almost certainly will contend with issues such as identity, values, concept of time, and male and female roles. People who marry across ethnocultural lines must negotiate each of these categories in order to enjoy a successful marriage. 
[1]James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, 4th ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004), 17.

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