Maybe It's Shouldn't Be All About You!

We live in a pretty self centered world, and sometimes it seems like we live in a pretty self centered church. I see lots of talk about "me" and "I" and the focus on what I need, have or can get. We have a lot of ideas about what we are free to do in Christ, this was made pretty evident to me today. I saw a Facebook post from a prominent Bible teacher today that had a profanity in it. It wasn't a major profanity, it wasn't one of the big ones, but it's something I wouldn't allow my kids to say, I wouldn't say in front of my kids. You wouldn't say it in church, so I'm not sure why it seemed ok to be used in this write up. No one seemed to mind, except for one person who commented, who said that the message of the post was taken away from by what they considered a poor choice of words.

What transpired to the replies to this person gave me chills. It is what I fear that Western Christianity is turning into, and I'm positive that isn't a good thing. The person was rebuked for her statement, called a legalist, told she was uptight and needed to stop being judgmental. A few people agreed with her, but most seemed to rally around the author of the post and support the use of some colorful langauge. What do we do with this?

First let me say that I understand that we live in the time and land of the snowflake that gets offended by everything. We can't speak the name of Jesus without offending, the Bible is offensive the message of the Cross is offensive, the name of God offends. I get that, and we can't stop preaching or proclaiming Jesus. I understand that, and that is not what I'm talking about. What I am talking about is when we begin to marginalize other Christians because our freedom sometimes is harsh and abrasive to their faith. This isn't a new issue. Paul dealt with this in 1 Corinthians 8. The problem in Corinth, among other things, we steak. Most of the steak you bought made the trip to the market from the pagan temple, where is was sacrificed to a pagan god. This made some believers think that maybe meat offered to demons wasn't a good idea. Other's thought it wasn't a big deal, it's not the steak's fault. Who was right? Paul says, "yes, you are both right". He simply said, if you can't eat it with a clear conscience, then don't. If you can, go ahead. Where it gets tricky is when you are eating it with a clear conscience while clouding someone else’s. Our freedom causing someone else to struggle with sin.

In verse 12 Paul says this behavior is sinning against Christ. To do something to violate another person's conscious, to make them stumble is to sin against Christ who died for them. That is a pretty big thing. I know I have been guilty, I have caused others to sin. I have used my freedom to make a mess of things. For those times I have caused others to sin and to stumble, I am sorry. When my pride and my love of self and my own freedom comes before someone else, I am sorry. Sometimes it's a simple as eating a salad, or not having that drink or not saying that word or talking about that movie. We need to not tell that joke or that story so we don't cause others to stumble. It's as simple as sometimes we need to put the other person first. We need to think about them and how we can support them. After all, isn't that what the cross of Christ is all about?  He put us first, we can be more like Jesus. It's not just about me being free, but about us, all of us being whole, clean and unified. We are the bride of Christ, together so let's work together to make sure we all get there together. A steak and a profanity just isn't worth it.