I am thinking that we (most of us) lack a certain subtlety when it comes to our faith and the exercise of it. I find that more and more we wield our faith like a crudely fashioned club dragging it around with us and bashing ourselves and others around with it as we exercise it in various ways. God calls us to strike a profound balance in our life. We are meant to be tightrope walkers along the narrow way flexing every muscle we have as we move along interpreting and reinterpreting His Word as the world around us changes and our lives change. As our perspectives move and we see our faith from a different angle every moment of every day. We know His Word never changes. We know His truth remains the same but we forget that everything else in existance changes – everything; and so we must constantly re-evaluate our perspectives.
The challenge of the narrow way, the tightrope if you will, is that it is simply easier to fall off. Easier to fall to our left or to our right and into the net we know awaits us below. Most often our fall occurs in the exercise of our freedom in Christ. There is a spirit to every situation we find ourselves in that needs to be read. The apostle Paul speaks most clearly of this when he instructs the Corinthian church about the sensitive issue of eating meat sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8:
Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him. Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists’, and that ‘there is no God but one.’ Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. ‘Food will not bring us close to God.’ We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling-block to the weak. For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.
There is so much in these verses that to unpack it all here would take far too long. The short interpretation however is that we must be careful of how we exercise the freedom we have in Christ…always thinking of our neighbor, our brother and sister. We are also called to recognize that those of us who think ourselves wise may not be so wise as we think. In the verses we recognize that the church in Corinth was dominated by two kinds of believers: those who were going to eat meat sacrificed to idols "because there is no way I am going to let anyone dictate what I can and can’t do when I know there is nothing wrong with it in God’s eyes and to Hell with everyone else (literally). Then there was the other group who refused to touch the meat for fear that it would somehow defile them and they wanted to maintain their high level of purity (self righteousness). Both groups are what I would call club wielders. Too fearful or lazy to take the subtle tightrope of faith that requires every situation to be read and interpreted. No reality is as simple and black and white as we think it is (or want it to be) except that Christ came and died for us that we might have this freedom we so clumsily and cavalierly swing about damaging everyone in our path in the process.
So many of us strive to answer every question presented to us with a simple response assuming that everything is yes or no. Corinthians teaches us that the most likely answer to questions and situations posed to us is "it depends". It depends upon the group of people we’re with, it depends upon their maturity, it depends upon my state in that moment, it depends upon the local culture, it depends upon the demogrpahic. So many possible variables. So subtle and beautiful and so difficult sometimes to balance. But there it is all the same.
We have many examples of meat sacrificed to idols these days. The two most dominant ones I find in our culture are church adherance and alcohol consumption. Both are meat in the Corinthian sense. Both are issues we typically club each other about the head with in ignorance or selfishness or self righteousness but so often not with a keen eye to scripture and the spirit of the situation.
How many times have I heard of situations where believers throw caution to the wind and create an envrionment that inevitably leads to drunkeness for many involved? Too many. The most common excuses:
– "there is nothing in scripture against drinking"
– "anybody who criticizes me about this is a hypocrite"
– "I’m only human and God knows I screw up"
– "you are just judging me and God says not to judge"
All of the above and more are absolutely true and are also often weak, lame excuses to become self-indulgent and justify failure. Of course we are broken still, of course we are falling regularly and of course God fogives us. Still in our selfishness we fail to recognize that over time there is nothing compellingly different about us from the world. No reason for those in need of the gospel to be attracted to us because we show no strength. Christ said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light but there is still a yoke and there is still a burden and there is still a cross we are called to carry.
One can equally condemn the perspective that all drinking should simply cease and that those we do drink are partaking of evil and not fit to be called members of the body of Christ. This is simply the other side of the laziness coin…the easy path of self-righteousness, the easy path of setting up new laws despite the fact Christ has freed us from the law. Neither perspective looks to interpret the Word within the context of the situation they are in. Both perspectives are clubs that drive the world away from Christ and divide us against ourselves. Both are wrong.
Our call is clear. There are times when it is ok to eat the meat and times when we must abstain for the sake of our brothers and sisters and if not for them then for no other reason than that Christ has called us to be smart and sacrificial about our faith. I am guilty of all of the above. We all need to throw away our clubs and pick up the multi-faceted gem that is the Word of God. To hold it before our eyes and look at it from every angle and allow its beauty to be our guide and motivator as we seek to stay on the tightrope. It is hard work and we will fall often but we must strive to return to the rope for the sake of our brother and sisters and for the sake of a world dying to see something different. Something hopeful and strong.
Harnessing Chaos 