Thoughts From Romans 14-Part 5

  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. 16 Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20 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. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.  Romans 14:15-21

          I once read an article somewhere called "The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother". I can't recall most of what it said but I thought it was a cool name. The just of the article was that the weaker brother can really take away from your freedom if you try to follow all these principles in Romans 14. For example, do you read King James in church so as not to offend the King James only people? Our church does because it's the version Paul used. (that's a joke) Does the pastor wear a suit and tie? Ours does a wardrobe change between contemporary and traditional services. Wine or grape juice? I think this isn't a Romans 14 issue. It has to be grape juice because of recovering alcoholics in your congregation. Then there is the church has to have a Sunday evening service and mid-week prayer meeting crowd. Do you keep these on life support for the few that come?

      It appears the early church met on the first day of the week, but can it meet on different days? And does it have to be in a building? The instructions we get are "don't neglect the assembling of yourselves together," and that's about it. Can't that be in a house group. I would think so as long as everyone's spiritual gifts are being used for the benefits of the others. Obviously, a larger assembly allows for better use of these broad gifts. Many people left our church during Co-Vid19 because we chose not to meet in a large assembly but in smaller groups and this violated the principle of the Sunday morning church weaker brother tyranny.

        As I can recall from the article, the tyranny began when the weaker brother was invited into your house and started looking in your refrigerator and saw beer or your cupboards and saw wine or your albums or CDs and saw secular music or your magazines and saw "Seventeen" (am I dating myself?). I remember hiding all my kids' Harry Potter books when certain people would come over and telling the kids what shows they weren't allowed to turn on while their children were over.

       So, what's the bottom line? I think Paul is saying if your righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit is contingent on any of these debatable issues being affirmed, you are missing the boat. We should have so much contentment in Jesus alone that removing any of these things' "rights" or "freedoms" for the sake of others while they grow, shouldn't affect us one iota. Let's find all we need in life in Jesus!