Disagreeing well > Being right

Romans 14:1-6, 13-23

1 Welcome those who are weak in faith but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. 2 Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. 3 Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat, for God has welcomed them. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on slaves of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

5 Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. 6 Those who observe the day, observe it for the Lord. Also those who eat, eat for the Lord, since they give thanks to God, while those who abstain, abstain for the Lord and give thanks to God.

     13 Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother or sister. 14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who considers it unclean. 15 If your brother or sister is distressed by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. 16 So do not let your good be slandered. 17 For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 The one who serves Christ in this way is acceptable to God and has human approval. 19 Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. 20 Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong to make someone stumble by what you eat; 21 it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble. 22 Hold the conviction that you have as your own before God. Blessed are those who do not condemn themselves because of what they approve. 23 But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat because they do not act from faith, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

On the surface this passage from Romans looks like one of those parts of the Bible which is no longer relevant, speaking as it does of peculiar concerns of people long ago that we’ve long since forgotten.  Or so it would seem.  But in reality, this passage - and the similar one in 1 Corinthians 8 - address a constant issue that arises in Christian community.   In church, you’ve always got some people who are worried about stuff that other people aren’t worried about.  And what are you - what are we - going to do about it?  

Paul is writing to Christians who used to be pagans and who still live in pagan society.  To become a Christian was not just to change your opinions about certain truth propositions about God, it was to leave one mode of life, one set of practices, in favor of another.  This could never be a private affair; it was necessarily public, obvious to everyone. And the Gospel Paul preached was that all things had been revealed in Christ, the old age with it’s false gods was passing away, and a time was coming imminently when everything would be under the lordship of Christ.  

But these Christians were still surrounded by the same old folks living the same old life.  One of the routine rituals of that society was to offer sacrifices to the gods, and then to eat the meat in a kind of festival.  And much as we still move to the rhythms of the Christian calendar, their life was dictated by the pagan calendar.  

Some Christian converts wanted nothing to do with this, not only refusing to eat meat that had been scarified to idols but, so as to get far away as possible and to make clear that that weren’t mixed up in the old religion, decided to eat no meat at all, only vegetables.  This is hardly an unreasonable impulse: if something threatens to entangle you, the smartest thing to do is remove yourself as far from the situation as possible.   

There were other Christians who thought that Christ had shown these gods to be no gods at all, that there was no power in them, that they were idols of wood and stone, and that eating the meat that had been sacrificed to them was ultimately no different that eating anything else.  It didn’t contaminate you, in didn’t subject to the influence of dark spiritual forces.  

It’s not hard to imagine how this would create tensions in the community.  One group thinks that the other is too cavalier, still mixed up in the very thing they ought to leave behind, potentially endangering their souls and their witness to others.  They are scandalized that others in the Body of Christ would eat this food sacrificed to idols.  Holiness demands absolute purity.  

The other group thinks these folks are just weak-minded simpletons unnecessarily living in fear. Christ has set us free; why imprison yourselves in legalism?   Indeed, it seems the dynamic at play was that this was the dominant opinion - or at least the one held by these in authority - and that they were dismissed of the concerns of the so-called “weak” in the community. 

This conflict came to Paul's attention, and it’s likely that the “strong” in the community wanted Paul to settle this dispute on their behalf; as the founder of the church he had the authority to declare who was right and who was wrong.  

But this exactly what Paul deliberately avoids doing.  He does not settle the dispute. Although he concedes that “the strong” are more or less correct, he doesn’t invalidate the concerns of the “weak” and tell them to get over it.  He doesn’t try to ague that, if they really understood the truth, there’s nothing to worry about it.  Paul’s not primarily concerned with who has the correct position on the issue.  He’s not so much interested in seeking to resolve the disagreement as he is the way that the church disagrees. 

If you’re accustomed to thinking of faith as being all about taking the right position and persuading people out of erroneous positions, then this is a bit surprising.  Shouldn’t Paul provide an authoritative teaching and demand that those on the wrong side get on board?  Isn’t he worried about Christians proceeding with mistaken ideas?  Won’t this have consequences?  

The consequences Paul is most worried about is when people in the church look down upon one another because others take a different stance than they do, when people are more concerned with being right than with loving God or loving their neighbor.  

Instead, he says that people in the church can worship God from either position - that their taking that position proceeds directly from that worship, in fact - and that the most important thing - again, surprisingly - is that people act out of conviction, for everything else is sin.  The significant role that the conscience of the individual plays in Paul’s thought is not often recognized.  The whole of his argument is directed at the strong, that they not scandalize the weak of push them to violate their conscience.  Better to never eat meat again than to cause someone in the church to stumble.    

This kind of argument accords well with a modern sensibility - almost too well, in fact.  We might want to take the lesson that the most important thing is just being nice to one another, that strongly held convictions are a problem, or at least that we shouldn’t talk about anything where there isn’t universal agreement.  Just live and let live.  But then what’s the point of church?  

Church is the community gathered around the worship of God who is revealed to us in Christ Jesus, that we might live in his light, that we might be formed into his likeness.  This is the goal of our faith; it is why we are here.  The reality from the beginning, however, is that we might “in good faith” have different convictions about who we do this.  Church is not a place where seek the lowest common denominator, but a place where we have the same goal and where we encourage one another toward it, where we hope to be inspired and challenged by others, where our faith depends on the faith of others.  An essential aspects of living that faith is to imitate Christ in bearing the weakness of others - Christ who even when we were far from the truth laid down his life for us and thereby revealed to us the most important truth of all.  

We are a community of people who have different convictions about matters of faith - convictions which might stand in tension or even contradiction.  And many of us are people who, to some degree or another, are wary of firm convictions altogether, who have seen or experienced “the strong” use their position to force “the weak” into submission, who feel like your conscience was violated.  

It would be wonderful if we all were on the same page on every issue, but when you make that a priority there’s pressure to pretend we all agree and to deny that your convictions matter.  As much as I want you to agree with me about everything, I doubt that’s healthy for anyone.  But Christian unity is not primarily about that kind of agreement; rather, the unity which Paul emphasizes and the unity toward which we should aspire is the shared desire for Christ, to be like Christ and to be Christlike toward one another, where “the strong” among us take particular care of “the weak.”

I hope we will be a community full of people of conviction, and where those convictions can be expressed and embodied, where they don’t need to be silenced or hidden - that is provided those convictions flow from and are directed toward God in Christ.  All of us surely hold wrong opinions and false convictions, and where we do, we should want our hearts and minds to be transformed.  If we cannot connect our opinions and convictions to Christ, then we ought to question them.  And there are some things, possibly many things, worth disagreeing about.  Dietary questions might seem trivial - not to those scandalized by it - but there are weightier matters we should wrestle with together.  

The lesson of this passage, to my mind, is that how and why we disagree is potentially more important than what we disagree about.  Much more than being a place where we all agree, I would love for us to be community where one can say “I’m convinced that faithfulness to Christ demands this” while another can say, “I’m convinced that that faithfulness to Christ requires the opposite” - but where we recognize in one another the same desire for faithfulness to Christ.  These are exactly the kind of disagreements worth having, and there is perhaps no better place to practice our faith - and for our true faith to be revealed - that in the midst of such disagreements.  What a wonderful thing to be passionately pursue the same goal and to help one another on the way.