I work in a hospital and see people dying of COVID-19 on a regular basis. As I write, roughly half of the patients in our hospital are there because of serious symptoms caused by the virus. There would be more, but we have to send home the cases we believe can survive without hospitalization. Because they are taking up so much space, we’ve doubled them up in single-patient ICU rooms. Long ago, I lost count of the COVID-19 patients I’ve been with as they died. This week an unvaccinated member of my extended family died from COVID-19, even though seeming to get better. Things are bad.
As bad as things are, I have plenty of people who are dear to me who have refused to be vaccinated for one reason or another. Some are part of my extended family and some are colleagues or close friends. I love these people. I am concerned for them, believing they are a danger to themselves and potentially a danger to others who they may infect if they come down with a new COVID-19 variant, even if they’ve already been infected once themselves by a previous variant.
I’ve avoided social media for the most part over the past several months because of the increased polarization and rhetoric thrown around in people’s posts and particularly in the comments made on those posts. If civility existed on social media before, it’s become harder and harder to find.
There’s something worse than COVID-19 infecting us. More than being just a physical pandemic, COVID-19 has helped spread something more harmful: contempt.
Vaxxers and anti-vaxxers both have disdain for those on the opposite end of the argument. I have listened to hundreds of rants this year as people rail against those who persist in not getting vaccinated and quote false sources or against those who try to shove vaccines down their throats and threaten the loss of their jobs. Things are bad.
As I mull over and pray about this, I keep coming back to Romans and 1 Corinthians, where Paul lays out his theology of “meat sacrificed to idols.” Let’s start with 1 Cor. 8. The entire passage is relevant and so I quote it in its entirety:
Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God.
So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.
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.
The basic principle behind Paul’s theology here is summed up in his introductory comments, not in the later working out of them. He writes, “We know that ‘We all possess knowledge.’ But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God” (1 Cor. 8:1-3).
Knowledge and love are at odds with each other. Everyone claims to know the truth of the matter. (We keep eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, don’t we?). Because of that, those who “know” one thing are at odds with those who “know” something else.
Because their commitment is to what they “know” instead of to those whom they love, they are willing to sacrifice the unity of community for the sake of being right.
But Paul makes a surprising comment: The most important thing isn’t what you or I know, it’s what God knows. God knows us: “whoever loves God is known by God.” Paul will come back to this most important fact of our lives — God knows us — later on in the famous love chapter: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). We only know in part because we only see in part. And what’s most important isn’t what we see and know. What’s most important is that God sees and knows us. And remarkably, even with his perfect seeing and knowing, God still loves us. That stops me in my tracks (or it should).
Yes, Paul does take a side in 1 Cor. 8. He lays out the truth that idols are nothings. They have no substance, no existence. Only the one true God exists. This is basic Christian doctrine that even children comprehend now. But we live in an era where monotheism has so completely defeated polytheism that we find it hard to comprehend believing in more than one God. The opposite was true of people in the first century. Even those committed to the kingship of Jesus found it hard to erase their belief that other gods exist. Because of that, they found it hard to eat meat sacrificed to these other gods. Wouldn’t that tie them to worship of those other gods? Wouldn’t it draw them back into pagan temples where the sacrifices were being made?
Paul is clear. Christians aren’t to worship false gods. And that includes entering into pagan temples where these gods are worshiped. This was harder back then than we imagine. There were no restaurants back then. If the copper smith guild holds a meeting, it might do so in a temple where the food served has been sacrificed to the god of that temple. If your friend gets married, it would probably be in a temple, eating sacrificial food. Paul firmly forbids this (see 2 Cor. 6:14-18).
At the same time, much of the meat sold in the Greek and Roman marketplaces had been sacrificed to idols in the local temples. Jewish butchers were allowed to sell kosher meat, but if there wasn’t a Jewish butcher in town, idol meat was what most people had available. Paul is OK with this. He draws a line between eating meat sacrificed to idols and going into a temple where meat sacrificed to idols is served. It’s not a line everyone understood, hence his words about the “weaker” brothers and sisters who don’t get the distinction.
Paul returns to this argument in Romans 14 which I quote here in full, for again the entire chapter is relevant.
Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written:
“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge God.’”
So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died.Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.
Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.
So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
Again, Paul lays out his basic principle up front: “Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters” (Romans 14:1). The community is poisoned by contempt when we quarrel over these things. He concludes by writing, “So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God” (Rom. 14:22).
Paul’s basic message is this: Stop judging and shut up!
What’s brilliant about Paul’s argument is the ambiguity about who is “weaker.” I’ve always assumed it is those who don’t feel free to eat anything, but scholars disagree about that. The fact of the matter is this dispute isn’t just about what to eat or which calendar to keep. Scholars of the book of Romans agree that the entire letter was written because of racial tensions between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians in Rome that were being expressed by the ways they kept or didn’t keep Jewish boundary markers.
There were three main practices Jews used to distinguish themselves from non-Jews in the world of the Roman Empire: the calendar they kept (sabbaths, new moons, and feast days); the food they ate (kosher meat not sacrificed in pagan temples); and circumcision. Many Jewish Christians believed these boundary markers were still important. Others, like Paul, argued that they were no longer important and that to push them on others was to exchange grace for “works righteousness.”
This led Jewish Christians to think of themselves as the “stronger” Christians, because they were doing their biblical faith correctly. This led them to think of non-Jewish Christians as “weaker,” because they were doing it wrong. At the same time, this led non-Jewish Christians to think of themselves as “stronger,” because they had newer and better info than the “weaker” Jews who stuck to old and out-dated practices.
The beauty of Paul’s argument is that it works in both directions at the same time. Whoever thinks of themselves as “stronger” must never have contempt toward those they think of as “weaker.”
The reality is I always think I’m right and you always think you’re right. In other words, we always think of ourselves as “stronger” and those who disagree with us as “weaker.” Because of this, Paul’s argument should work on both you and me. And it needs to work on us over and over and over again.
Any time I think I’m right and you’re wrong, I need to refuse the path of contempt. I need to stop judging and shut up, refusing to argue and refusing to treat you as less. If I think of you as “weaker,” so be it. But if I am thereby “stronger,” the burden of maintaining unity in the relationship falls on my shoulders. If you’re weaker, it doesn’t fall on yours.
If you, likewise, think I’m the “weaker” one and you’re the “stronger” one, then the burden lands squarely on your shoulders, not on mine.
In every disagreement, then, the burden always lands on both sides to make the first move toward reconciliation and away from contempt and disunity. If we think we’re “stronger,” let’s act like it.
Whether you vax or not, it’s time to kill the contempt and just shut up. Be convinced before God and get on with loving the “weaker” ones in your life.