Food Fight!

Have you noticed that we do not all think the same way? We all have an invisible, internal list of what things in the human enterprise are important/unimportant, good/bad, right/wrong. In truth, none of our lists and matrices are permanently figured out; they are in a slow process of flux through life. They change as we come to trust a new framework of knowledge and belief. Do you hold all the same positions you held at the age of twenty-one? Just like I get new prescriptions for eyeglasses at the time, it seems as though I look at life through various lenses through time. I believe in absolutes, I just don’t have a reliable handle on any of them. It is a matter of epistemology. In the current age and every age, it is important to investigate what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

Our friend, Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles had this on his mind as he wrote to the Corinthians. He was helping them sort something out for the sake of unity in the fledgling Christian body. They were having a bit of a food fight. I mean they were in a stew about whether a Christian ought, in good conscience, to be able to eat meat that had been part of a pagan ritual of animal sacrifice. Problem was, Paul was writing to the church, and hoping to achieve peace in that believing body, so it was not a simple “yes or no” matter.

Paul would have said, “Yes, eating such meat is fine.” But he has the qualifications to apply. He encourages those who are fine with eating to refrain, because of the tender consciences of the others. Since the idols to which they were offered are not gods, for Paul the truth was, the meat is fine. Disturbing the sensibilities of others in the group, however, was not fine. Some of the Christians were scandalized by fellow Christians eating meat offered to idols.

I am not sure I fully appreciate what a complex and syncretic Greek city Corinth was. The Greco-Roman mythology lay alongside, the Jewish faith, Persian influences, and mystery cults. Christians, springing from Judaism was a new movement. There was a complex mixture of practices in the city, including animal sacrifices to the locally favorite gods. Even if a person had no regard for the rite, it was one place to get food.

Again for Paul, it was not a simple matter of people who thought consumption of the food was fine, and people who thought it was terrible. Paul was looking into what elements of conscience are informing the arguments. Let’s identify four kinds of people in the debate—people A through D:

A – I eat, and don’t care what others think or whom it hinders.
B – I don’t eat, but respect both eaters and abstainers making their own choices.
C – I don’t eat, even if eating means nothing. Let’s not offend the abstainers.
D – I don’t eat and am horrified that any believer would.

See, we don’t all think the same way today, and in the first-century church, it was no different. Paul was in the “C” camp. He was writing to the folks who were eating meat offered to idols. He rewards their higher thinking, acknowledging that the idols are not real, so eating the meat was neither here nor there. He goes on, though, appealed to them, that unity in the church counts for a lot, so they should be careful that the liberty they give themselves does not trip up people whose faith is not as hearty as theirs. You will hear the lesson this Sunday, but read it now from the J.B. Phillips translation:

Now to deal with the matter of meat which has been sacrificed to idols. It is not easy to think that we “know” over problems like this, but we should remember that while knowledge may make a man look big, it is only love that can make him grow to his full stature. For whatever a man may know, he still has a lot to learn, but if he loves God, he is opening his whole life to the Spirit of God. In this matter, then, of eating meat which has been offered to idols, knowledge tells us that no idol has any real existence, and that there is no God but one. For though there are so-called gods both in heaven and earth, gods and lords galore in fact, to us there is only one God, the Father, from whom everything comes, and for who we live. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom everything exists, and by whom we ourselves are alive. But this knowledge of ours is not shared by all men. For some, who until now have been used to idols, eat the meat as meat really sacrificed to a god, and their delicate conscience is thereby injured. Now our acceptance of God is not a matter of meat. If we eat it, that does not make us better men, nor are we the worse if we do not eat it. You must be careful that your freedom to eat meat does not in any way hinder anyone whose faith is not as robust as yours. For suppose you with your knowledge of God should be observed eating meat in an idol’s temple, are you not encouraging the man with a delicate conscience to do the same? Surely you would not want your superior knowledge to bring spiritual disaster to a weaker brother for whom Christ died? And when you sin like this and damage the weak consciences of your brethren you really sin against Christ. This makes me determined that, if there is any possibility of meat injuring my brother, I will have none of it as long as I live, for fear I might do him harm.

It was a specific squabble in the Corinthian church, and Paul very sincerely hopes things can calm down. To be sure, unity and health in a church are critical for the effectiveness of spreading the Good News. To me, it is a lesson that being right is not the only consideration in a matter where there are bigger fish to fry. (Fish offered to idols or not.)

I was in a contentious argument among vestry folk decades ago. I wanted things to go a certain way. As the Rector, I was the presider over the debate. The discussion went on and on. I finally had the Holy Spirit come over me strongly. I heard no words at all, but my disposition changed. It was as though I got the message, “Would you like to be a stubborn Know-It-All, or do you want something good to come out of this?” Within five minutes, the question was called, and they vestry approved a plan to commence with the building project.  It is easy to be interested only in throwing and ducking when the food starts to fly, but really, I should just get out of my way and have more charity for others. Bon appetite!