To Do or Not To Do, That Is the Question

Before I married my husband, I had one or two relationships (not at the same time, yikes!) with other young men as we navigated the terrifying minefield called "dating." I liked a lot of characteristics about a lot of the guys I met, but there was one prerequisite for the man whom I would end up marrying, and that was that he loved God and served Him. In other words, I wanted to live my life with a man who had an active faith -- not one that he had simply been taught to believe and that's all that ever came of it. A man who pursued the Lord with determination and conviction. 

To my own kids, when you hear this, take note: This is super-duper important. Your spouse needs to have Jesus as the center of his or her life and he or she should be consistently growing in a relationship with Him. Reciprocally, you do, too, so that you can both grow together. 

I have a husband of whom this is true; he's your daddy, so... as Jesus said: "Go and do likewise." ;) 

That was free. Anyway, moving on. It's safe to say that over my 41 years, I have never stopped learning and growing spiritually. When I was "dating," I was what I considered to be fairly mature spiritually. I made life choices that took a different path from many of my peers, sending me into the mission field, exposing me to new spiritual terrain. I had a front row seat to some really amazing things the Lord was doing in my life.

But at that time, I had still to learn -- as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 8:1 -- a rather major point: "We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God."

So... I was in a dating relationship with a young man, not my current husband, and it was a long-distance relationship (I had a couple of those, and let me just say: long-distance relationships are hard). As the letters went back and forth and as we got to know each other better through the words on the paper (back in the day, we used actual envelopes and paper and pens and stamps, none of this email/text stuff. Y'all don't know how nice you have it), I began to realize... this young man and I had some theological differences.

Let me just say: these theological differences shouldn't have been deal-breakers. They were not along the major points: Salvation through Jesus, redemption from sin, walking in new life with God, putting the sinful nature behind us, because Jesus took it from us through His death and resurrection. Those points are deal-breakers.

These were denominational differences, and in my black-and-white glory days, I was naturally right, and he was wrong. Similarly, in his point of view, he was right, and I was wrong. And our letters to each other became tense and hard to navigate because of the war we were both fighting -- with ourselves and with each other. We weren't hostile to each other, but both of us pleaded with the other to understand why the other needed an adjustment. 

I look back on it now and laugh; we were so very sure we were each right. I remember being in deep distress, unsure how to move forward in this relationship with a person who didn't see eye-to-eye with me on these (to be clear) non-essential issues. The relationship was reaching a breaking point, and something had to be done. I had a mentor and close friend I trusted to see clearly on spiritual matters, and one day, I asked her to fast and pray with me as I looked for the Lord's guidance.

She agreed, and we sat near each other for an hour, not talking much between us, but both of us had our Bibles next to us, a notebook to write out our thoughts, and now and then, we'd pray out loud as we sought the Lord. 

At one point, I remember being so frustrated, I burst out with words to this effect: "He knows and loves the Lord; why doesn't he see that he's wrong?" 

I can hear your "ooooooohh" from here. Stop it; you know you've felt the same way at times. ;)

My friend didn't answer then, but when our prayer time was over, she tugged out several pieces of notebook paper she had scrawled on over that hour and handed them to me. I read down through what she'd written -- most of it was various pieces of Scripture, verses that called for holiness and trust, especially when we can't see ahead. One short paragraph stood out:

She'd written down what I'd said in all my frustration: "Why can't he see that he's wrong?" And then she wrote down Scripture reference after Scripture reference that showed spiritual growth. Milk to meat. Stagnancy to new life. The Lord revealing Himself to those who earnestly seek Him.

And I suddenly realized: this young man and I both had a relationship with Jesus, and Jesus was using us both according to what God had shown us about Himself -- but that He didn't necessarily show us the exact same things. To the man I was dating, He had revealed Himself in some powerful ways according to the things He wanted him to do, and to me, God had revealed Himself in other ways according to His plan for my spiritual formation.

I think that was a key point in my growth: Tamara does not always know everything about everything. Huh. Imagine that.

In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul is specifically answering the questions the Corinthian church had put to him about eating meat sacrificed to idols. The situation was that some church members believed it was wrong to do so; it didn't make sense to them that meat that had been put into a bowl and roasted on an altar in front of a stone image of an idol while people prayed over it should be acceptable to consume -- if one followed Christ.

Paul says: "We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and there is no God but one" (1 Corinthians 8:4). They're stone. Or wood. Or... gold or something. But they are certainly not gods. He acknowledges that. He also acknowledges over in 1 Corinthians 10:20: "The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons." 

So while idolatry is truly demonic, while the stone is nothing but the demons behind the stone are real, Paul tells the church, essentially, that's beside the point. In Galatians 5:1, Paul says: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." There is no binding with the powers of darkness in the process of eating food sacrificed to idols. He offers this fact to the Corinthians as a morsel of knowledge.  

Reminder of 1 Corinthians 8:1: "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up."

So... even though the Corinthians now know that they are free, Paul reminds them: There will be some who can't accept this, whose faith is weak, who are still under the illusion that this is wrong. It's important, Paul says, not to destroy the newborn, fledgling faith of this brother or sister who sees you doing something he or she thinks is wrong, even if you know it's not wrong.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. We can love our brothers and sisters into knowledge.

So with this proclamation of freedom, Paul says: "Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge" (1 Corinthians 8:9-11).

Not because he eats meat sacrificed to idols (which is not wrong), but because he sees you doing something he believes is wrong, and so he rationalizes that it must be okay for him to do something wrong, too.

Ouch.

We hold so much influence by our actions (check out this blog post: Word for the Church: Watchers in the Wings). 

Obviously, my long-distance relationship with this young man did not work out, and we ended up going our separate ways. Both of us had "knowledge" that the other person struggled to accept, and neither of us were able to walk in the freedom of Galatians 5:1. 

As I was reading this passage this morning, I thought about the internal struggle of the church, the various hills we each pick to "die" on: This point or that point or the other point. (Again, the non-essential points; the Word is super-duper clear about what happens when we compromise on the essentials, Revelation 3:16, for instance, or John 17:14-15). 

Here's a timely example of "food sacrificed to idols" from pop culture: 

We should absolutely wear masks to protect our brothers and sisters. We should absolutely not wear masks, because it's a politicized agenda that leads us away from Biblical principles. The question is: which viewpoint is the "weak believer's"? Half of you are pointing one way, half of you are pointing the other.

Honestly... in my opinion (which you can take or leave), I think it's both. Because it's a heart condition. The point isn't the masks, because -- similar to idols which are made of stone -- masks are made of paper or cloth. It's not even the wearing of the masks. Similar to eating meat sacrificed to idols, where the food has been placed in front of the statues and where Christians can eat it without sinning, people who wear masks or who don't wear masks... can do so without sinning.

What it comes down to is the heart. When some of us walk maskless into a place where everyone else is wearing masks "to protect our brothers and sisters," we put on a mask, because the general belief is that if we are not wearing masks, we are not doing all we can to show people love by protecting them. We personally may not feel that we need to do this, but we do it anyway for the sake of those who do believe that. 

On the other side, when we mask up to go anywhere in sensitivity to others, and we enter a place where no one is masked and where there are those who believe there's a political agenda behind our mask... we feel free to remove our masks so as not to give the wrong impression. 

I know it's not a perfect illustration, but the point Paul is making is this: We can know all sorts of stuff, we can be absolutely certain we're right, we can even publish our rightness on social media, we can be loud and proud and not be cowed. 

But if we don't love the ones we're being loud and proud to by taking into account their struggles... we may end up being the instrument of their faith's destruction, and do we really want to answer for that on the final day when we stand in front of God's throne and give an account for every action and every word, as the Scriptures tell us in Matthew 12:36 we will be required to do?