Not a Stumbling Block

9Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10For 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? 11So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.13Therefore, 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.

Thoughts: Our calling as Christians is not simply to know what is right.  We are also called to build others up and even pull others up.  So if some are convinced something is wrong, and even if you have the liberty to do it, you should restrain out of respect for them.
    I have a Christian friend who cannot do this.  They are convinced of something, and they bull their way through it- saying everyone needs to adjust to their "right" thinking.  Such thinking is wrong- if only because it is insensitive.
     In today's world many wear their feelings on their sleeve and find offence at anything- even looking for a way to find offence.  Calvin spoke of offending the insensitive but being careful to the sensitive.  There are people who make a right out of being offended about anything that differs from their ideology.  If these folks are not seeking to please and honor God- offending them by being holy is certainly not only okay but proper.  But on the other hand are those who mean well, seek to be holy, but fail.
      
         
Prayer; Lord, let me be a help and not a stumbling block to others.    






If you do anything with unseemly levity, or wantonness, or rashness, out of its proper order or place, so as to cause the ignorant and the simple to stumble, such will be called an offense given by you, since by your fault it came about that this sort of offense arose. And, to be sure, one speaks of an offense as given in some matter when its fault arises from the doer of the thing itself. An offense is spoken of as received when something, otherwise not wickedly or unseasonably committed, is by ill will or malicious intent of mind wrenched into occasion for offense. Here is no ‘given’ offense, but those wicked interpreters baselessly so understand it. None but the weak is made to stumble by the first kind of offense, but the second gives offense to persons of bitter disposition and pharisaical pride. Accordingly, we shall call the one the offense of the weak, the other that of the Pharisees. Thus we shall so temper the use of our freedom as to allow for the ignorance of our weak brothers, but for the rigor of the Pharisees, not at all! [Institutes, III.19.11, p. 843].