Thoughts on Romans - Day 39

                          Romans 14:1-13a
Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. ² One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. ³ 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. ⁴ 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.
⁵ 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. ⁶ 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. ⁷ For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. ⁸ 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. ⁹ For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
¹⁰ 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. ¹¹ It is written:

“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
    every tongue will acknowledge God.’”

¹² So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

¹³ Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another.

       There are a lot of debatable areas of Christian behavior out there - behaviors that some Christians are perfectly OK with and other Christians aren't. To name a few I give you drinking alcohol, smoking, sports on Sundays, worshipping on days other than Sundays, celebrating Halloween, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, home schooling, eating pork, being a democrat, birth control, the lottery, and many more. When you approach these things from the scripture, either stand , for or against, can be defended because the Bible doesn't speak clearly on these areas. There is probably more to be learned later in this passage on what to do in regards to these areas but I will focus on the one thing this first half emphasizes. Don't judge!

      I often think of my 2 oldest boys in regards to this. We had one of those plastic rimmed basketball hoops on a stand in the basement. My 9 year old and 7 year old sons would dunk on this 4 foot basket and of course it would be a competition between them and I would have to score the dunks. I was the judge. The oldest would go and I would score him 10. He would be so happy until the youngest one would go and he would get a 10 also. Then I would hear complaining because all the factors that he considered that a good dunk should have, were not met in the younger one. My answer to him was always the same -"You aren't the judge, I am. You agreed to me being the judge so you have to accept my scores. I use a different criteria to judge than you do."

       When we become children of God, we agree to Him being our judge. The first thing we need to realize from the above illustration is that we are not in a competition with our brothers and sisters - we are actually cheering them on and wishing for the highest possible "score" to be given to them, even more favor than was granted to us if that were possible. That is what love is. Secondly, we must realize that God uses different criteria that he is judging everyone by. In other words, God may want someone to homeschool and someone else not to. He may want someone to avoid alcohol because He knows the dangers for them and another person it is perfectly Ok . We are not to think of them as lesser Christians, nor us as superior to them in any way.

      Lord, this is hard for me having grown up in a very legalistic church. Help me to grow in these areas and not categorize Christians into boxes of what they do and don't do. Help me see all my brothers and sisters as equal and equally loved by our Father. Amen