Everyday Freedom

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Back when I was just beginning to explore my call to ministry, I was a member of a church in Pennsylvania. I had just made my decision to attend seminary and pursue a Master of Divinity degree. I was at a presbytery meeting one day standing around with a few pastors who were offering me their personal advice about seminary. One of these men said, “You’ll be fine as long as you keep your eyes and ears shut.” That struck me as counterproductive, but I got his meaning. His idea was the knowledge they want to give you in seminary will not help your faith, but hurt it. For him, such knowledge is a threat to the gospel.

It’s possible that there were some seminary professors who looked down on him, back when he was in school. Maybe he pushed back on some of their new ideas and maybe they mocked him for it. And if that happened, it would be understandable for him to resent them. It would have been better if he could have grown from the experience, but still understandable.

I have spent a lot of time in universities, and I admit there were times I felt resentful of academic folks who seem to disdain Christian faith because it didn’t fit into their knowledge framework. 

I have also, at times, felt frustrated by those who hate Christianity because of some subgroup of Christians who are loudly and harshly judgmental. I hate being lumped in the same group with them. And then I resent these Christians for behaving in ways that, in my opinion, degrade the church in the eyes of others.

So there’s plenty of resentment to go around. And I imagine it was true in Paul’s day too.

The Apostle Paul established the church in Corinth, and he seemed to have no end of trouble with it. When you read the two letters to the Corinthians in the new Testament you get a glimpse of just how troublesome they were, and how challenging it was for Paul to try to sort out their problems long-distance. This issue of meat that was sacrificed to idols is one of those problems.

The truth is, when the apostles took the gospel to the gentile world – that is, the non-Jewish world – there was a whole heap of things that needed to be sorted out. Basically, they needed to figure out just how much of Judaism was included in Christianity. Was it necessary to become a Jew first, before one could become a follower of Jesus? 

For example, there was an important discussion about whether it was necessary for gentile men and boys to be circumcised when they joined the church. And there were issues about dietary laws for Jews that remained important. These things all had to be sorted out; the leaders had to come to agreement on the rules.

And on the flip side, everywhere they brought the gospel they encountered other religious and cultural practices that might be at odds with Christianity. Again, it all had to be sorted out. What was essential? Where must a line be drawn? What could be tolerated?

And on the matter of eating meat that was sacrificed to idols, the decision seemed to be that it could be tolerated. 

Now, the gentiles ate this meat because they thought it would be helpful to them. In those days, people believed that demons could enter a person through the food they ate. So if the meat was first sacrificed to a god, they believed this god might protect them. Christians, however, knew that those gods – idols – did not really exist. They could do nothing to help or hurt them.

And because they knew this, some thought that whether or not the meat they were eating was offered to some pagan idols was totally irrelevant. They thought that none of this had anything to do with them. They had left that life behind; they were born anew.

Yet, for other new Christians it was a very uncomfortable practice. As something that was so closely tied to their former life, continuing to participate in it felt like a threat to their new life. It seemed to compromise their Christian faith, and might be the first step on a slippery slope back into paganism.

And you might expect Paul to see this as an opportunity to reinforce the idea that they can’t be hurt by these old idols. That this was no longer a part of their belief system and no longer had any power over them. As Christians, they are free of all that.

But Paul takes a different approach. He urges those whom he thinks of as the stronger believers to empathize with the ones he calls weak. He says that even though these idols have no literal power over any of us, a weak faith can lend them power they otherwise wouldn’t have. He says that if the more mature Christians are eating this idol meat in front of the newer Christians, they may throw these novices into a state of confusion and conflict. 

Paul says you are totally free to eat what you want to eat. But if you exercising your freedom results in someone with a faltering faith going astray, then it’s you who have harmed that weaker one.

Your freedom in Christ does not give you license to do that. 

And what we are seeing here is some of the complexity of mature Christian faith. These ones Paul calls weaker are tending to see matters in black and white, right and wrong; the meat that they used to eat in the belief that some idol was giving them protection against evil, they now think they cannot eat it at all – because to do so would be giving power to those old idols. Paul says this is not true.

But Paul also cautions those he calls stronger against applying the same kind of black and white, right and wrong, thinking. Yes, in Christ you have been given freedom, but that does not give you carte blanche to do whatever you feel like doing. There is another thing you need to bear in mind, a thing even more important than your freedom: that is how your actions affect other people.

He is teaching something that is called an ethic of care. Which means that the highest moral decision is the one that demonstrates care for others – particularly those who are vulnerable. So the right decision is not always the same one in any set of circumstances – because how your actions impact others carries some weight.

Paul had a real concern that the exercise of their newfound freedoms might create division in the church. And while it is true that there are times we cannot avoid divisiveness, Paul simply wants to remind the Christians of Corinth that they need to always hold the concern about relationships on a par with their concerns about their freedom. The most important thing to recognize about Christian freedom is that it exists in community. And, in a very real sense, it requires strong faith to bear that in mind. 

The fact is, idols come in all shapes. The idols in Corinth might have been carved wooden figures, but idols might be made out of other material as well – including rules, or even freedom. 

When you value your freedom more highly than you value the welfare of others, Paul is arguing, then you may have replaced those old wooden idols with a new one. Likewise, if you value the rules more highly than the welfare of others, you may have fallen into another trap. 

It’s simply a matter of knowing that God is God. “There is no God but one,” As Paul says, quoting the book of Deuteronomy. Nothing, and no one, else takes God’s place. There is no politician who speaks or acts for God. There is no political party that represents God. There is no policy or rule that stands in for God. A so-called weak faith might lose sight of this. A strong faith seeks to always keep an eye on it.

There’s a story often told that Abraham Lincoln was once asked whether he thought God was on the union’s side. He replied, “My concern is not whether God is on our side. My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

If our concern is to be on God’s side then we must be always seeking to know what that is, in any given situation. We do have a few rules to guide us. Most importantly, the rule of love. God is always on the side of love, for God is love. 

Let us honor the rules of our faith and our land, let us enjoy the freedom we find in Christ, but let us always be guided by God’s rule of love.