Sin for you but not sin for me?

A Christian man asked a new believer to join him at a local baseball game. The new believer was horrified. He said that baseball was sinful, and he would never watch it. Later, the older Christian was told this new believer’s background and realized that for this man, baseball had become sinful.

I was not told what he did then. Several responses are possible. He could have been a bit huffy and looked down at this new believer’s ideas as silly. He could have been insulted and decided to move to another church or not go at all if it meant giving up baseball. In thinking about parallels, what are my Christian freedoms and do my actions seem like sin to others?

The church at Corinth asked about issues in their culture that involved activities not covered by the law or any commandments. Today, some of those issues may have been whether they could go to movies, use the Internet, smoke cigarettes, dance, drink wine, or buy a lottery ticket. While the Bible gives no chapter and verse for doing these things, it does present principles — and most of them are not at all what we’d normally expect. One of these principles tells me that instead of fretting about my right to do what seems okay to me, I need to think about others. Like that man who had a problem with baseball, people can be sensitive to issues that are not a problem for me. To this, the Bible says:

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. (1 Corinthians 8:9–13)

Paul was willing to set his ‘rights’ aside if exercising those rights took a whack at the conscience of another Christian. I’m sad that I’ve not been as sensitive as Paul was nor as dedicated to the gospel. He would do anything and give up anything if it meant that God’s good news would be told, upheld and glorified. When it came to his rights as a Christian, he fully understood God set him free from rules. His conscience was clear, yet he did not cling to those rights.

If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ . . .  So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:12; 26–27)

The word ‘disqualified’ confused me until I read that it means to be phony, or bogus, or having a misleading appearance. That is, if he did whatever he felt free to do, he could come across to some as not being a Christian. Those with a weak conscience would think he was ignoring conviction of sin and therefore was a hypocrite.

All this said, I might feel free to drink wine (my doctor says no), yet if I did, a new Christian with a former life as an alcoholic would see that as sinning. I could ignore that person’s booze issue and maybe become his excuse for falling off the wagon, or I could avoid him and only hang out with people who agree with me, or I could form a new rule of ‘thou shalt not drink wine’ that is not biblical but could be divisive. Or I could not bother drinking. It is one of those ‘take it or leave it’ issues that does not have a biblical guideline except an exhortation against drunkenness. It also says ‘’a little wine” is okay for stomach problems. No wine at all is recommended for me, not by the Bible but my heart specialist.

How do I know what others might stumble over because they think it is sinful even if I don’t see it that way? By less talking and more listening. Paying attention to what people say and how they react is more like Jesus than setting down a list of Do’s and Do nots that myself and others must live by. God will tell me by the inner voice of the Holy Spirit when I should or should not do something, sometimes for my own well-being and sometimes for the well-being of others. I just need to pay attention.

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Lord Jesus, I am listening. I am also thankful for the verses in Ecclesiastes that clearly set me up for this reading. They say it is better to be a person of few words than to talk too much!