Marital challenges in the Saints Adventist Church in Seychelles

Abstract

God instituted the marriage institution immediately at the end of the creation week (Gen 2:24). This institution was set as a model that human beings should follow in order to fulfill God’s requirements for generations to come. God’s purpose in marriage is that a woman and a man united together in covenant relationship will live together as long as they both shall live provided they follow the guidelines given to them by their maker. The marriage vows would bind them together in sacred bond that no man should separate. However, in the Saints Adventist Church in Seychelles, many couples are continuously contemplating divorce, young girls are having children before getting married and church members are getting married with non-SDAs. The Saints Church in Seychelles have experienced significant challenges in terms of marital relationships whereby many active members at some time were lead into practices which have not brought glory and honor to God. God’s Church worldwide including the Saints Adventist Church in the Seychelles Mission in the Indian Ocean has a high moral responsibility in defending the biblical principles in family life with the advantage of having principles from the Bible and inspired commentary from the writings of Ellen G. White. The context of this small state country with a population of not more than 100,000 favors strong external influences within the community. Many members now, especially the young ones who accepted the faith and come into the new community of believers were faced with the pressure of past unbiblical cultural relationship practices. Hence the urge of proper education to young adults and adolescents seemed crucial and timely. This project examined the situation of the Saints SDA Church so as to find lifelong solutions towards the existing unfavorable trend. The researcher asked the church clerk at the Saint’s SDA Church to distribute 100 questionnaires to 100 members. Among the members who received the questionnaires care was taken to make sure that all the members were baptized members from the Saint’s SDA church only. There were young people, middle age and elderly, married spouses, singles, divorcees, widows and widowers, spouses with or without children, and young people contemplating marriage. Gender sensitivity was also taken care of during the selection process. Only 55 copies of the questionnaire distributed came back from the members. This represented 55% of the total distributed. Furthermore, among the 55 collected only 37 (67.3%) were filled as they should. Besides filling of the questionnaires there were 25 spouses who were selected for interview. The following were considered in the selection: young men and women contemplating marriage, recently married spouses with and without children; spouses remarried after divorce, and divorced spouses with children. The interview was carried out following appointments with the selected spouses in the list after sending a letter of appointment. Results showed that failures in marital issues in families in Seychelles were due to weak foundations in the family relationships and thus required immediate remedial approaches to change the direction of the trend.