Disputing the debatable

I'm guessing that there is some dispute over what Paul means when he talks about 'disputable matters' in Romans 14. 

On Sunday we finished our morning series looking at the second half of Romans - so it is about time I caught up on here.

Reading between the lines of Romans 14 there was obviously some disagreement in the church that Paul was writing to. It may have been between those Christians from a Jewish background and those from a Gentile background - but not necessarily. And it seems as if there were those who thought that eating meat was OK and those who thought that eating meat was not right for a Christian. Maybe the issue was whether it was kosher or not; or maybe it was about meat that had been sacrificed to idols - but we don't get that much detail. But what we do know is that Paul didn't think there was anything wrong with what either group were doing - except that the attitudes of some on both sides of the argument were wrong.

For Paul there was nothing inherently sinful with eating or not eating meat. For Paul the over riding issue was their wrong attitudes, the damage that was being done to relationships within the church, and the harm that could be done to people's faith.

For Paul maintaining loving and peaceful relationships with others inside the church was much more important than who was right and who was wrong. Building others up in their faith is more important than standing on the rights and freedoms that I may have.

One question I didn't really explore on the Sunday we looked at this - which was quite a while ago now - was how do we decide what is a 'disputable matter'? From Paul's wider writing it is clear that there are times when he came down very strongly against certain types of behaviour, and warned the church to have nothing to do with people (in the church) who were behaving in a particular way. So Paul is not saying, anything goes - and get along with each other whatever. He is not saying that anything goes and you must never challenge 'wrong' behaviour.

For Paul a 'disputable matter' seems to be one where it no longer matters whether a person does or doesn't do something. And Paul's list of what no longer matters may be different to mine, which may be different to yours. The trouble is that there are no easy answers - it's not simply a case of looking up a verse in the Bible - if it was that simple then we wouldn't be disputing what is disputable.

So what do we do? I think we prayerfully wrestle with the Bible - with both sides of the disagreement. We remember that those we disagree with are people who are loved by God and we treat them accordingly - we don't see them as enemies - and we don't go out to win the argument. We make sure that our behaviour isn't damaging the faith of others or harming the reputation of the church.