Stuff Happening This Week
- Song of the Week: check back on Monday for the next selection.
- Graduate Christian Fellowship: Wednesday at 9am. We’ll be continuing our conversation on prayer by looking at the prayer life of Moses.
- Faith and International Development Conference: I will be leaving with six other students to attend this conference in Grand Rapids Michigan. We’ll leave Thursday afternoon and return Saturday night.
- The Connection: Thursday at 5.30pm. Since I’ll be gone, Rachael has graciously offered to lead the evening with a light-hearted exploration of typical student lifestyle habits.
- Advance Notice: Bruxy Cavey at UWO: Wed, Feb. 11 @ 7pm in Conron Hall. He will be speaking on “The End of War: the Jesus rEVOLution.” You won’t want to miss it!
Word of the Week: 1Corinthians 8.1-13 (ESV)
“Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
“Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one.’ For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth – as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’ – yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
“However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.”
This weekend is my oldest daughter’s birthday – she’s turning 13: a teenager. We’re very excited for this special day in her life. We have lots of plans. Relatives are coming to town. And, as part of our celebration, we’ll probably go to a restaurant at some point over the weekend.
Ancient Corinth
Which, if we lived in ancient Corinth, would make some of my brothers and sisters in the Christian faith freak out. You see, in the ancient world there were restaurants but they were pagan temples. On special occasions, families would bring meat to the Temple of Diana or the Temple of Apollo where it would go through a grand sequence of religious acts. First, it would be offered to the god of the Temple. Then, it would be cooked and served to those gathered around tables in the temple (often afterward there being copious amounts of wine and lovely temple boys and girls for further ‘enjoyment’). The family probably won’t be able to eat the entire animal so the rest would be taken to the local market to be sold. Really, in the ancient city of Corinth, the only meat one would have would most surely have been offered to a pagan god at some point. So, as a result, many Christians in the ancient Roman empire didn’t eat meat at all – they wanted to remain separate from any pagan associations.
And this is what Paul is addressing in 1Corinthians 8. In fact, in chapters 8 through 10, Paul is addressing a much larger question: How does a Christian live in a pagan culture? Which is why he begins where he does – by countering the prevailing customs and pop-theology with the gritty and sacrificial call to love.
Temple of Apollo, Corinth
Sure, for some people whose consciences are strong and whose faith makes it possible to eat and drink with thanksgiving to God instead of the pagan religious system, it wasn’t a sin for them to go to the temple/restaurant. But, for those whose entire life prior to coming to faith in Christ was steeped in the religious world of pagan Corinth, even the thought of eating meat was abhorrent to them. And it was near impossible for them to understand how anyone who claims to be a Christ-follower would allow themselves to get caught up (even one step removed) in idolatry.
The issue of eating meat sacrificed to idols isn’t very often where we experience the difference between Christian faith and the unbelieving culture that surrounds us today. But, there are parallels. For some, their life prior to faith in Jesus was so steeped in the naturalistic world of Darwinian evolution that a strict Creationist interpretation of Genesis is the only faithful response. And yet for others that way of thinking seems backwards. For others, their pre-Christian life was an endless indulgence in pornography and promiscuous casual sex such that many Hollywood movies and unrestrained dating practices now feel way too cavalier and compromising. For others, this just isn’t so. For many Christians, alcohol brings one way too close to moral debauchery and deadly consequences that total abstinence is the only option. For others, alcohol is a gift of God to be enjoyed in moderation.
How do we live as Christians – in Christian community – amid the unbelieving culture of 21st century North America? Well, we won’t do it perfectly but we live lives commited to love – sacrifical love, even. We live willing to curb our desires so as to not make faith even more difficult for others. That sounds pretty radical. But, it’s the same radical love with which Jesus has taken hold of us. For, in the end, what counts isn’t what’s in our heads, but what’s in our hearts.
Posted by Mike Wagenman 
But that’s just what Jesus did when he came upon Simon, Andrew, James, and John. And these four men were in the family business. In the ancient world, the family trade was something that gave one security, honour, and livelihood in a very uncertain world. I don’t know how long their families had been in the fishing business, but it isn’t a stretch to think that it may have been decades and even centuries. Can you imagine the pressure they felt? Pressure to stay the course, to be responsible, to hold up the family reputation, to make good on one’s gifts and talents and blessings.
That’s why Jesus calls for people to repent. Not to feel sorry for their moral failings, but to abandon their mistakenly-placed political allegiances. Jesus knows that the people have placed their trust (and their hopes for a good life) in their hard work, in their Roman masters, in the Roman coins in their pockets, maybe even the Temple or their misguided ideas of an absent or uninterested God. Jesus calls for them to repent (literally, to turn around) from the real, tangible ways in which they’ve compromised their lives and lifestyles which are leading them as a society and nation into war and destruction.