Helpers
or Stumbling Blocks?
Luke
17:1-2
In his letter to the Romans, Paul takes the matter of
helping fellow Christians very seriously.
He spends all of chapter fourteen and the first part of chapter fifteen
on the subject. “As for the one who is
weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.”
Too often we are guilty of doing just that. We love to get ahold of new believers and
indoctrinate them into our version of Christianity. Some even go so far as to claim, “If you
don’t believe exactly as I believe, you have no hope of ending up in
heaven.” Jesus addressed this issue
(Matthew 23:4) directly when he said, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,
and lay them on people’s shoulders.”
Paul doesn’t stop there.
He speaks about judgmentalism, one of humanity’s greatest sins. Oh how we love to tell other people how they
should live! How we love to sit in our
chairs by the side of life’s road and criticize those who live differently than
we do. We may not understand the reasons
for the differences, but that hardly matters.
If they don’t meet our standards we (verbally/mentally) cut them to
ribbons.
“Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?”
Paul says. “It is before his own master
that he stands or falls.” In other
words, God is the judge, not us—and a lucky thing for the majority of the human
race it is, for most people wouldn’t make it out of our court unpunished.
Paul’s two topics of concern seem to be celebrating or
not celebrating certain festival days, and what people choose to eat. Usually when Paul addresses food, the issue is
eating meat that has been first offered to idols. While these issues are of no importance to
most of us today, there are many other ways we judge our fellow humans—all of
them wrong.
“Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any
longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block in the way of a brother.” Or sister.
The word Paul uses means brother and
sister. We must be careful not to cause
anyone to err. Paul adds, “So then let
us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.”
Lest you think Paul is alone in criticizing our actions,
we have the words of Jesus Christ to chide us.
“Temptations to sin are sure to come,” Jesus says, “but woe to the one
through whom they come! It would be
better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into
the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.”
This is a double condemnation. People living in the first century had no
idea what lay beneath the surface of the sea.
For all they knew, horrible monsters lived in its impenetrable
depths. The very mention of the sea sent
shivers down most spines.
Coupled with the fear of the sea was the size of
millstones. They measured about four
feet across. They were large and heavy
because they were used to grind grain.
The hard-shelled grain was placed between two stones. The bottom one remained stationary while the
top one was turned, usually by a donkey, since it would be heavy for a man to
move. For a person to have one of these
stones fastened to his neck and thrown into the sea meant there would be no
escape for the horrors that awaited him below.
He was twice doomed.
Which are we: helpful brothers and sisters, or stumbling
blocks? Paul and Jesus give us only
these two choices. If by our judgmentalism
and our insistence on making people follow our standards we cause them to sin,
we suffer God’s punishment. Better—far
better—to follow Paul’s guiding words:
“Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by people. So then let us pursue what makes for peace
and for mutual upbuilding.”
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