4thought.tv

This makes me feel angry and angry.

I don't understand the speaker's point of view at all.

Its completely weong, I know lots of people from "mixed faithed" families. If anything; the differencce in opinions will open the childs mind, no?

This makes me feel sad and sad.

what a load of cods wollop

This video was alarmingly ignorant. What exactly is wrong with a child being exposed to two different faiths? A child will inevitably be exposed to different faiths due to our multicultural society. Why attempt to shield them from it? The more they understand different faiths the more tolerant they will be of everyone. Something starkly lacking from our society is understanding and tolerance. All that you are proposing is to fence children off from information and encourage the further segregation of the human race. Scary stuff, I suggest you think it through.

This makes me feel angry and angry.

This is jusr a joke ! It shouldn't matter if your white, purple, yellow or blue ! Or if your a cristian, jewish or musilm ! Marriage is about who you love no matter what ! These kinds of statments get me so annoyed ! If one person loves another person may that be a jewish man loving a muslim woman then let it be ! So what if the bible says its wrong, the bible says a lot of things are wrong but who actually listens to the bible !

What a load of rubbish, sorry but these views are out dated and were written when the world was very different. There is nothing wrong with me and according to this chap I'm wrong!

I dont think Pastor Tapiwa Muzvidziwa belong in the 21st century. Infact I dont think he really understands what hes saying, if hes trying to find a moral guideline I suggest he stops reading lines from a book with rules dated from 2000 years ago. If he likes fantasy I'd recommend the Hobbit, still a good read and probably more relevant

I don't understand the speaker's point of view at all.

I can't see how mixed marriages should hinder the disciplines, morals and beliefs of children. If parents were any good at being parents, then children should will know the difference between right and wrong. Besides, these children have a better insight to religions and faith than many of us. Is that really wrong? Has this speaker thought that there are probably more pressures on these children to do right and follow more than one religion/faith? At the end of the day, you can't help who you fall in love with.

His whole point about mixed morality and values conflicting from different faiths is a ridiculous, morality simply is or isn't and we certainly don't need faith to tell us what is right or wrong.

This makes me feel angry, sad, angry and sad.

This man hides a fascist and racist agenda behind his "born again Christianity". Moral compass comes from being brought up in a loving family with good ethics, being religious isn't a guarantee to make a child good, in fact I can cite plenty of cases where it creates the opposite. Also if people don't mix it creates mistrust, intolerance and leads to things like war and inbreeding!

as a black woman i feel very sad for this man... i dont feel he is commenting on mixed religion at all but is trying to make his point felt about mixed relationships...... very sad.... this is why we are not getting beyound black and white... not just white people are racist... shame on you tapiwa... and u call yrself a paster.... SHAME....

It is a disgrace to humanity . Humanism is the only religion we all need to embrace first

Multiple opinions encourage children to THINK about what is right and wrong. If a child isn't allowed to think their moral compass will be that of their parents, which will be that of whichever background their parents are from. Things stay the same, the old prejudices never change and the world never has a chance to become a better place. All the social improvements of the last 100 years, the increase in the status of women and ethnic minorities for example, would never have happened if a new generation weren't able to challenge the values of the previous generation. Giving children the chance to think creates risks (which is what the Pastor is afraid of) but it is the only hope we have of making the world a better place.

This makes me feel angry and angry. I don't understand the speaker's point of view at all.

Where is the proof that mixed marriages are less likely to be stable? What is wrong with a child learning about two religions, two cultures and sometimes more than one language? I find the Pastor's views narrow minded and unfounded. It takes us back to pre 1967 America where it was illegal to mix marry but then African-Americans were not allowed to vote either.

I learned something from it.

I learned that religious people, still seem to think that their particular beliefs triumph over others beliefs.We live in a society where their are oppertunities for children to be educated on a varied array of religions. Learning about religion teaches us history, it teaches us what people find comforting and how people dedicate themselves to a belief so much that their whole life style revolves around this...and theres nothing wrong with that. BUT-to say that children should not be raised in mixed religious families is rediculous and unrealistic. I work with children and i make it possible for my kids to learn everything they wish to, to help them grow and form into their own peorson. Children should be raised with morals, manners, self respect and respect for others.It cannot be truely achieved with shielding children from other beliefs and life styles. I would be discusted in myself if i allowed my child to wonder blindly through life believing that they are always right because mummy and daddy say so....We should educate our children in a way that means they are a wholesom person, with respect for others and their beliefs and life choices.

This makes me feel angry and angry.

this person is going to provoke race religious war fare by saying stupide of of date things like that, my son is mixed race and has been put in A* GCSE level by his teachers, i came from a very religious back ground, what i found in the church was a load of hypocrites, saying do this dont do that, but doing whatever they wanted. Dont get me wrong i do have faith and i was married in a church, but this so called pastor needs to take a look around and see where he is living and revaluate he words before he does damage, cause he is called my son wrong how dare he lets hope he never needs help from a mixed race... lawyer,dr,nurse,dentist,or dustman cause he will be knee deep in a whole lot of touble

This makes me feel angry and angry.

The idea that people from different faiths may find it harder to transmit a consistent belief system to their children may be a valid one. However, I find it particularly insidious that this man tries to say that mixed-faith marriages will produce children that lack a moral compass! Essentially he is just saying that marriages of mixed faith, or indeed those with no faith, are completely lacking in morality. By saying this he is simply asserting that his is the only valid faith and that any other mixture with another religion would simply be contamination! I find this particularly abhorrent, especially when it is so easy to draw up comparisons with archaic beliefs towards mixed-raced marriages. And what annoys me the most is that once again he has found a useful passage to back up his theory. Now I can see plenty of reasons why people of faith look to their various Holy Books for guidance. But this whole picking and choosing of small sound bites just drives me mad! Whatever happened to 'Love Thy Neighbour?, I guess that was replaced a long time ago with condemning homosexuals.

Still, I can almost understand why Orthodox Jews try to preserve their faith by adhering to mixed marriages. Rather than picking and choosing, they try to observe all the strict rules of the Torah. Therefore, it makes sense that the best way to observe all these rules do this is to marry a Jew too. Perhaps when this pastor begins sleeping separately from his wife when she's on her period or stops eating shellfish, he can truly comment on mixed faith marriages.

It is not so much this opinion that insults me, for of course everyone is completely entitled to their opinion, but it is the way in which this view insinuates that people of other faiths (or indeed no faith) have a lack of morality. When is society going to realise that bad people do bad things? Not because they belong to one faith or another, but because they are just bad. One only has to look to the prolonged cover-up of child abuse in the Catholic Church, terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists, Sikh honour killings or even Evangelical Christians who beat children black and blue to rid them of evil spirits as proof of this. Some people of faith are very very good, but I'm afraid some are also very very bad and do many terrible things in the name of their religion.

Idea that a mixed faith marriage would be detrimental to the child's sense of right and wrong makes me feel particularly sad. In so many ways religion has been controlling our lives for centuries. So why are we still allowing it to control who we fall in love with?! I have heard of many friends who have fallen in love with, and even been engaged to, men of different faiths. However, the relationship has often been ruined by families from both sides refusing to accept the mixed faith marriage even though neither of the couple is actually that religious themselves. And let's not beat around the bush. Religion often corresponds to race. Whilst some parents accept that their children are not religious, they can't quite let go the dream of their son marrying a 'nice Hindu girl'. But this of course is not to say that mixed raced marriages aren't accepted in this and many other cultures as long as one of the couple converts. Still, when so many children are being born into severe poverty, into broken homes or just born without any love at all, surely having any loving parents would be a good thing? Why can't we just celebrate the fact that amongst all the bad there is in the world, there are good people out there who still want to commit to the institution that is marriage and raise a family? Surely this is better than no family at all?

I don't understand the speaker's point of view at all.

So this guy is born again- I think he should have stuck with being born the first time. What a confused, backward looking, narrow and prejudical point of view he has. The problem with believing in the super-natural and a book written 2000 yrs ago is that you lose touch with reality as this man certainly has. Not sure I would want to be part of any family he is involved with. You would laugh if it was so serious.

I too feel very sad for this man. He's ilogical and ill informed view of life is what holds back the human race from achieving its full potential. Shame on him and others that are stuck in this backward, sad and distructive attitude.

This makes me feel glad, happy, glad and happy. It reinforced what I already believed.

Well done Pastor Tapiwa for speaking clearly and articulately from a biblical perspective. The problem with this generation seems to be that 'they stand for nothing and fall for everything'. I do not agree with Christians entering into marriages with non Christians and I believe this is taught in scripture. Paul writes in 2 Cor 6:14 "Don't be tied up as equal partners with people who don't believe. What does righteousness share with that which is outside the Law? What relationship does light have with darkness?". Throughout Old & New Testament, there is a clear admonition for believers wether Jews or Christians to be 'distinct' and 'separated' from the world. As a Christian I believe the bible is the truth, the word of God and whilst having love for people of faiths and persuasions, I do not agree with them.

This makes me feel hypocritical, anti christian, un christ like, hypocritical, anti christian and un christ like.

I now know why the Lord Jesus Christ said that there will come amongst you wolves in sheep's clothing. This wasn't Jesus' message at all. Jesus said to his disciples that he would make them fishers of men, which surely means to spread the message even amongst the gentiles (non Jews), which was almost completely unheard of in the Jewish faith. After all Christianity is in the eyes of the Christian the completion of the Jewish faith in the messianic fulfilment through Jesus of Nazareth. If you look at the law contained within the book of Deuteronomy it is very much geared towards the people at the time of writing. The Jewish nation was extremely small and under attack from large armies from all sides. So to weaken their army by interfaith marriage or non procreation through homosexual relationships would not make any sense at all. Today however we are one people, we are all God's people, and therefore such prohibitions although are an important lesson for the past aren't meant to be enforceable in these modern times. This Pastor's comments are somewhat fundamental however it is clear that he is passionate about his beliefs and rather than condemn we should respect that everyone has their own beliefs and hopefully with our love and nurturing we can encourage them to see the true message of Jesus. God bless all his creations!

This makes me feel glad, happy, glad and happy.

I agree with this Pastors' view as mixed marriages are a breeding ground for confusion within the home for the children and to some degree even the parents. How can parents possibly see eye-to-eye if they have a different value and belief system? The children no doubt will pick up on the fact that their parents believe different things and hence be brought up amongst much confusion within the home. Well said Pastor Tapiwa!!

Indoctrination into any rigid belief system only causes harm, particularly if there is no exposure to other ways of living. None of the major religions deliberately preach immorality, as far as I am aware, so morality would be taught, regardless of the religions involved. People are good parents, people are bad parents, their religion is irrelevant. However, the bible is full of rape, murder, genocide,slavery,unnatural punishments for lifestyle choices and stuff that is just inaccurate. None of which strikes me as a good foundation for the moral high-ground.

Very Well said Pastor T!

Which world are we living in now? A modern society, with technology advancing every day. This is not the !5th century. Welcome to modern society. A blend of cultures only makes the World a stronger place. As long as the children have a Good Upbringing, it should not be such a fundamental issue, raising children in a mixed marriage!

I'm sorry but this is just nonsense, however you look at it. For example, perhaps we should also ban people with different political beliefs from marrying one another for fear that their children will be completely unable to make their own political choices when they become old enough to vote - leading ultimately to the decline (indeed collapse) of democratic politics itself. More insidious, however, is the fact that the pastor's whole argument appears to rest on an unspoken yet highly offensive (not to mention arrogant) assertion that morality depends upon religion per se to begin with. Perhaps it is time to learn a little humility and to understand that 'faith' and 'truth' are not necessarily the same thing.

His thesis is based on a fallacious assumption. Just because a there is a mixed marriage does not mean there is a dysfunctional moral compass. Just as a marriage between partners of the same cultural/ethnic roots does not mean that there IS a moral compass.

If, as Pastor Muzvidziwa suggests, a child raised by a couple who subscribe to different faiths may result in that child rejecting religious faith, then hooray for mixed marriages. Children should be encouraged to base their sense of morality on the wisdom available from a variety of sources. Taking your system of ethics from one deeply flawed and self-contradicting book, with highly dubious claims to any moral authority is poor substitute for a proper education. My parents' views on faith differ and I feel fortunate and grateful that they always urged me to think critically. A strong family is one that enjoys healthy debate, not one that insists on obedience to doctrine.

I completely disagree with the speakers point of view. The argument put forward suggests to have cohesion within a family that all things must be the of the same background, in order to provide stability. This is total nonsense, so misguided as to be damaging to the family health and well-being. If you follow the perspective through to its conclusion, it can only lead to hatred, intolerance & division, surely this outcome would be completely opposite to that which the speaker seeks.

Bible is a good read but it isn't the sole basis of Law in this country.

Fully agree, inter-faith marriage can lead to each partner forcibly trying to make the children go in their direction, and this can put the children in a situation similar to those with divorced parents. Marriage makes people one, and people should not marry unless both individuals involved can come to an agreement on which they should follow, as a couple, otherwise it defeats the whole idea of marriage. The pastor is very neutral in his statement and despite being a Christian does not try to make a particular religion appear more important than others. Well done to him. totally agree.

This makes me feel angry and angry. I don't understand the speaker's point of view at all.

Interfaith marriages are probably going to be difficult if the partners of the marriage, and their parents, take their respective religions as seriously as Tapiwa. There will be obvious clashes when it comes to customs, moral codes and the tribal loyalty which goes with such things. I know a few people who are from different backgrounds and religions and are happily together. One thing they have in common is that they don't take there religions that seriously. They still acknowledge their cultural and spiritual heritage, but it doesn't seem to get in the way. I respect Pastor Tapiwa's right to worship as he pleases, but he is wrong if he thinks religious people have the moral high ground. Most of us, religious or not, act morally and want the same things: to be able to love and be loved, have friendships, and bring up a family in a peaceful and secure world. This is enough to unite most people regardless of race or faith, and thank god for that.

Nicely encalsulates religious bigotry and the dangers of taking what the bible says as fact.

Oh come off it people! I agree that interfaith marriage can awill confuse a child and may cause resentment between spoused if the child decides to lean toward one parent's faith. He's NOT advocating racial segregation at all!

Arrogant and ignorant.