We get a slew of questions from listeners from Indiana to India, and this one comes from

a listener named Ruby in Jaipur.

Hello, Pastor John, thank you for your sermons and for this podcast.

I got married recently and here in India, culturally, a woman lives with the husband's

family.

What would you say about this in light of the multiple times where the Bible talks about

a man leaving his parents to become one with his wife?

What does this leaving look like in a marriage where he physically doesn't leave his parents

home at all?

It's risky for me to speak with too much specificity across the miles and across the

cultures into a situation that I know very little about culturally.

So let me see if I can say some foundational things without too many specifics that might

nevertheless give some clear guidance in this matter because it really does have relevance.

This question and the text he's referring to, it really does have relevance to every

culture, mine, hers, even though some cultures make this word of scripture more pressing than

others.

Here's the text, in Genesis 2, 23 and 24 Moses writes, just after God created the first woman

from Adam's side, he said this, Moses said this, then the man said, this at last is bone

of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman because she was taken out

of man.

Therefore, here's the key verse.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast.

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