I met a guy yesterday. Not for me, not romantically. No, this was a lunch meeting with my best friend and her boyfriend. They live out-of-town, so though the two of them started dating in December (four months ago), this is the first time I was able to meet him.

They met on OKCupid, and unlike most of her other matches he has both a job and ambition. He doesn’t live with his parents and he can carry on an intelligent conversation. For some reason, finding all four of these things together in someone who is available is difficult in our little corner of the desert. They have similar interests and she finds him attractive (I agree, he’s cute), so those are all pluses. While they may still be in the so-called “honeymoon period” of the relationship, where everyone is still on their best behavior, she’s convinced he has to be the one. I think it’s because she’s so disillusioned by the rest of her search, but I see where they would be compatible.

Except for one very key thing.

My friend’s OKCupid dating profile very clearly states she is an atheist. This can be important in our neck of the woods, which is abundant in Catholicism. And Mormons, but, and pardon me for the generalization, they aren’t known for haunting dating websites.

The first time she visited her new boyfriend’s apartment, she noted a cross hanging on his wall and a few religious books on his shelves. But since, at that time, they had spent every weekend together, she wasn’t sure what to make of it. He hadn’t gone to church, and the old classic of, “He’s sleeping with me, how Christian can he be?” But within another week or two she came to find out he was actually more religious than she thought. He does regularly go to church, he just hadn’t those weeks. He’s Lutheran, a very classic style of Protestant.

She sees little dilemma in this. She figures in a religious-secular relationship it is the religious partner who has the larger problem, because they believe their partner is going to hell. But apparently her boyfriend has lived his whole life (they are both in their thirties) never pausing to consider or question his beliefs. And she doesn’t want to ask him about that, beyond asking if he believes the Earth is only 6000 years old. (Answer/non-answer: “I believe it is older than that.”)

I promised I would not grill him on religion, though I hoped something would come up for the sake of my very first attempt at street epistemology (restaurant epistemology?).

More, though, he wants any children to be brought up with the church, while she would not want that, though ultimately, of course, everyone chooses their own way. I think she’s settled for, “Okay, but if they ask me questions, I’m telling them the truth.”

She doesn’t ask him questions though. Is he a bible literalist? Does he believe the story of Noah? Is he aware the only known record of Hebrew slaves in Egypt is found in the bible? What are his thoughts on the LGBTQ+ community? What are his thoughts on abortion?

If this is a person you’re thinking about marrying…for one, I still think four months is too soon to come to that conclusion, especially since she was talking about that less than a month in. But you can’t simply compromise. You also have to find out what he actually believes beyond simply being a Lutheran and how that will affect his decisions in the world, the raising of children, and the treatment of those children if they aren’t every father’s dream.