Stumbling over meat

1 Corinthians 8: ¹³Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.

This is one of those passages which is easy to take out of context. Here we read Paul instructing the church at Corinth to not abuse their new-found liberty in the new covenant with God. The old covenant was black and white, not much gray area when it came to what was lawful and unlawful. However, the old covenant made it easy to have a bad heart but with your actions and keeping the law, seemingly being a righteous person. The new covenant was more about the heart and less about the “rules.” Paul is explaining to his people who while they have grace and liberty to eat meat that may be “unholy” according to the jewish traditions, that if they do so, do it in a manner that would not offend or cause one to sin.

So how is this passage taken out of context today? Here’s my example: alcohol is not a sin to drink. But if I am with a friend who struggles with alcoholism (the abuse of alcohol) and I offer him a drink, he partakes, gets drunk, beats his wife…what have I done? I have caused him to stumble.

Now the flip side: People can abuse this passage by dictating to others what they think is sinful and not sinful. I could see a friend from church at a bar drinking, and me not being an alcoholic, says to myself, “Self, if they can drink I guess so can I.” So I get drunk, get in a wreck and kill someone. I go to church and say, “It’s not my fault, I saw a deacon at a bar drinking so I figured I could also, but it was their fault because they should have never been drinking.” So what I’ve done is placed blame on someone else when it was my responsibility.

But here is the ultimate point: It’s all about the heart. If I have liberty but there is even a small chance of hurting someone else from it, I should want to NOT use my liberty because I love God and love others as my self.

Funny how it always comes down to the heart.