FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES IN MARRIAGE: GENOTYPE INCOMPATIBILITY
I am delighted to welcome you to the October edition of the Singles’ World. In the last edition, I ended my discourse on bewitchment. We have been dealing with foundational issues in the family for some time now because of its devastating impact on many homes. To refresh your memory, foundational issues are often more difficult to tackle in marriage than others. This is because they form the bedrock of our lives and homes on which we were either born or issues that have been ingrained, entrenched and deep-rooted in our lives which have virtually become irredeemable or unalterable parts of our lives.
Most times, would-be couples do not pay attention to all this. We are either ignorant and allow love to blind our eyes and move into an unmanageable and unworkable relationship. Sometimes too, it is due to religious fanaticism, overzealousness, impatience, doctrinal error, wrong counsel and guidance. Unfortunately, none of these reasons is sufficient, according to Matthew 19:9 to dissolve such a marriage when confronted with any life-threatening foundational issue. I pray that this piece will be a blessing to you in the name of Jesus Christ.
Genotype compatibility has continued to generate issues in society including the church of God. There are two schools of thought that we will discuss here and then give my opinion.
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The Faith-Based School of Thought: This school of thought believes that you don’t need genotype incompatibility to determine your choice in marriage. It emphasises spiritual faith in God and God’s will in marriage. It relies on divine guidance completely. It believes that once God has ordained your union with your partner, genotype compatibility is not necessary.
To them, once God has spoken, human intervention or investigation is inconsequential. For instance, medical science says AS brother should not marry AS sister because their children will be potential SS carriers, but the Faith-Based School says once they are sure it is God that has ordained their relationship, they can go ahead and get married, and there will be no problem afterwards because God is beyond their genotype incompatibility.
After all, He is an omniscient and omnipotent God, and there is nothing that He cannot do. They believe that God can give the couple AS or AA children instead of the expected SS children. They believe that God can even change the genotypes of both of them because with God all things are possible.
To illustrate this school, a man of God said there was a brother with an AS blood genotype who was engaged to a sister with an AS blood genotype. They were determined to get married because God had led them together. The man of God said if they were sure it was God, they should go ahead and get married. The man of God believes that blood genotype incompatibility is immaterial when you are sure of God’s guidance. Fortunately, according to the testimony of the man of God, this couple never gave birth to children with the SS blood genotype. That is unbelievable.
Also, I know a man who is AS and his partner is SC. Despite the outcry of some people to dissuade this man from marrying the woman on the grounds of genotype incompatibility, the man went ahead and married the SC woman not because God told him to marry her, but because he loved her. After marriage, the wife had a lot of crises which made the marriage very turbulent for the man, as the wife moved from one hospital to the other for medical intervention. Fortunately for the couple, none of their four children has the SS blood genotype. That is incredible. It is against these occurrences that some believe genotype incompatibility in marriage should not be considered in choosing a life partner. We will now look at the second school of thought.
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The Scientific or Medical Pragmatism School of Thought: This school of thought emphasises the genotype compatibility test to avoid marital crisis and genetic disorders. The emphasis here is on medical science and genetic factors to make informed decisions. This School of Thought prioritises the well-being of individuals and marital fulfilment. That is why AS versus AS, AS versus SS, AS versus SC, SC versus SC etc. are incompatible partners. Scientifically, the children of such unions will face a lot of stress and crises in life, and their parents will never enjoy their marriages. I know of families that have separated because of genotype incompatibility when their children began to die one after the other. Such SS children are usually truants in schools, and their parents spend a lot of money on managing them because of genotype incompatibility.
