Consciences and Convictions

I recently took a lot of time to respond to an email from someone who had asked: What is the Bible really saying when it talks about "not offending people" and "not causing them to stumble?" I think that this would be a great place to store my response, if only so I don't ever have to create it again:

I think the passage that you're referring to comes from Romans 14. There's also another related passage in 1 Corinthians 8. These passages are probably two of the most misused passages n the New Testament (and this misuse is often referred to as "prooftexting"--incorrectly using a passage of Scripture to prove one's own point of view). In order for us to properly understand it and apply it, we have to understand the context and the flow of Paul's argument. Let's start in Romans.

The context is this: Paul is writing to the Roman church, which is made up of both Jewish and Greek people, with people from both groups on various ends of the faith spectrum--some new, and some mature. Kinda like any local church. So, beginning in verse 1, he states his message: STOP PASSING JUDGMENT ON DISPUTABLE MATTERS. Not "it's your job make a correct judgment in disputable matters" or "judge disputable matters by this set of personal convictions" or "here's how I personally stand on some of the ambiguities in dressing, eating, and drinking... use these as your guidelines." Everything ties back to Paul's command to us: stop considering it your Christian duty to transform disputable matters into "right and wrong" behaviors. Ironically, a lot of times, Christians use this passage in exactly the way that Paul was condemning (vv. 1-4).

What is Paul's reasoning for this command? 1) There is such a thing as personal convictions on disputable matters (vv. 5-6); 2) those convictions need to remain personal--a person should not attempt to make their personal convictions universal (v. 5b; v. 22a; indeed, these convictions inform our consciences--more on that later!); 3) each person is responsible to the Lord, and to Him only, concerning his or her own set of personal convictions on disputable matters (v. 6); and finally 4) we're all saved by Jesus anyways, so regardless of our personal convictions about disputable matters, when it comes down to it, we're all dead without Jesus and alive with him (vv. 9-12). In other words, you aren't "more saved" or in "better standing" because of your own particular set of personal convictions. The strictest of the Christian teetotalers is very much in the same objective standing with Jesus as the most liberal of the Christian social drinkers: each of them is saved only by the grace of Jesus.

Okay, great. But what exactly is Paul talking about when he refers to "stumbling" (v. 20) and even "falling" (v. 21)? Well, in the immediate context (vv. 19-21), Paul is referring to convictions about eating and drinking. Paul talks about a similar theme in 1 Cor. 8, centering completely around food being sacrificed to idols. In both places, he refers to the faith of those who have a set of personal convictions about abstaining from such foods as "weak" (Rom. 14:1-2; 1 Cor. 8:7-12). So, before we can get to the root of what Paul means by stumbling in falling, we must establish: how does Paul extrapolate from a person's set of "abstaining" personal convictions to a judgment about their faith being weak?

Well, if we go back to point #2 in the 'reasoning' paragraph above, we can see the connection between our personal convictions and our consciences. Our personal convictions do not remain static as we mature; they develop as our faith develops (as demonstrated in 1 Cor. 8:4-7). As I grow in my faith, I more clearly see what the actual boundaries of the Christian faith are--for example: the Trinity, the deity of Jesus, salvation by grace through faith, loving your neighbor as yourself, etc. In the same way, I more clearly see what are actually preferences within those boundaries. This distinction in turn helps me to better understand different perspectives, different interpretations, and different expressions which are all acceptable because they fall within the actual boundaries of Christianity... even when I come up against a particular expression of another mature Christian that does not match up with my own.

So, because my personal convictions develop along with my faith, so also does my conscience; I no longer experience conviction about a certain behavior like I once did, because my boundaries concerning what is "Christian" and what is not have been more broadly (yet more accurately) delineated. This is clearly demonstrated in I Cor. 8:4 and then later in 8:7--people who had matured in their faith had come to a knowledge about the real nature of food sacrificed to idols... but people who were not yet mature (who were still brand new!) had not yet come to that knowledge. And this is OK!! In fact, it has to be this way, because that is how people work--they go from infancy to maturity. As we mature in our knowledge, we mature in our convictions, which in turn matures our consciences. In this way, there is a subjectivity to what is sinful--what is sinful for one person to do may not be sinful for another, depending on their maturity level. In these matters, the objective standard is a subjective conscience. If the Spirit is convicting you personally of something, you must personally respond to that conviction, and not base your response on whether or not someone else is being convicted in the same way.

With those last two paragraphs in mind, we can now more accurately see what Paul meant when he was talking about "stumbling" and "falling." These are very serious words indeed; I think the NIV translates the force of the word (it's translate it as "fall" in Rom. 14:21) better than the NASB (which translates it as "stumble" or "to make a misstep"); Paul uses the same word in Romans 9:32 to describe Israel's critical failure to recognize the importance of Christ's saving work in God's plan to save them. As mature believers, by asserting our knowledge and the "free-er", less-strict set of convictions that come about as a result of it, we can actually cause new believers who still have a "weak" or infant faith to fall away! It could be devestating for a new believer who has just been saved out of alcoholism to see a group of his fellow church-goers get a little tipsy at a home gathering. Likewise, it could be fatal for a new believer who has just been redeemed from a depraved, depressed "Emo" style of life to head out to a "Killers" concert with a group of his newfound Christian friends. While it may not be wrong for mature believers to get a little tipsy at home or to go to a Killers concert (and actually, I kinda like "Emo" music), it certainly becomes wrong for them to do so when it concerns the faith of a brother or sister who has yet to mature. Thus, we must heed Paul's warnings in these scenarios (Rom. 14:13-15; 1 Cor. 8:9-13).

And yet, all of this must be done with Paul's first command in mind: mature Christians should not waste their time by deciding whose personal convictions on disputable matters are "right," and whose are "wrong." Those matters must remain disputable, and mature Christians must learn to interact with each other lovingly despite the dispute. Such arguments about disputable matters have no place in a maturing life in Christ. Morever, we should not transform Paul's warning about causing weak, infant believers to stumble into living by the most conservative set of convictions in an effort to avoid offending anyone. In fact, we should stand against those mature Christians who wish to stretch Paul's warning to include their own set of abstentions (see especially Paul's command in Rom. 14:16)!

Rather than focus on what can only be subjectively true for some of us, we should focus on what is objectively true for all of us: we are all dead without Jesus, and alive in him (Rom. 14:9-12; 1 Cor. 8:6).