1 Corinthians 8:7-13 (NIV)
But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.
Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.
Even though, as Paul admits, idols are fantasies, imaginary gods with no objective reality, there were people in the Church in Corinth who had come out of idol worship, who had broken free of it through faith in Jesus, but whose maturity had not yet reached the point of being able to go into a pagan temple to buy meat and be unaffected by it.
These people were much like reformed alcoholics or rehabilitated drug users. Even if they have reached the point where the substance that had formerly imprisoned them has no draw on them, to go into a bar, or to hang out at a party where drugs are being freely used, can cause their minds to run in the old channels, which can make them feel terribly uncomfortable, often for days afterwards.
Some of the Corinthian Christians were more mature, or were just stronger, and their knowledge of the falseness of idol worship enabled them to go unfazed into the temple. Some just brazened it out as a sign of their maturity. And others never had been part of the temple worship and couldn’t see what the big deal was.
But, as Paul points out, eating food offered to idols, or refusing to do so, is not a test or a sign of maturity, and should not be used in that way. It was not a sign of maturity to go into the temple and, if a person challenged his brother or sister to do so to show their maturity, they could call easily put a stumbling block in their way, hurt their conscience, and ultimately caused him to fall and be lost. Such an attitude is not mature, but unloving, and ultimately sin.
Paul’s final statement does not mean that he was a vegetarian. He is simply saying that he would never do something that would cause a brother or sister to sin, or to draw them back into their pre-Christian lifestyle. And even if that meant that he would have to give up meat in order to not draw people back into their old pagan lifestyles so that they would end up lost, he was willing to even do that. No freedom was dear enough to cost the soul of a fellow believer; no cost was too high to save them, and to help them to remain saved.
Father, it is easy to forget where our brothers and sisters were saved from, and just figure that after someone has been saved for a while, the old temptations will have lost all power over a person. But that is normally not the case. Some sinful behaviors actually change the structures of our brains and make it incredibly easy for a person to slide back into the old addictions, sin, and patterns of thought if they do not keep strong walls between themselves and the triggers. And I can see where it would be callous and unloving to urge someone to break through one of the walls they have constructed because surely, they are strong and mature enough to resist the temptation. How many lives have been ruined, how many souls lost by a moment of weakness in the presence of a temptation that was believed to have been conquered earlier! It is better to allow people to keep their carefully constructed boundaries in place than to challenge them to break through them in order to prove something to themselves or to us. Help me to always act in love, Lord, so that I help people to grow, and so that I do them no harm in the process. Amen.