Why hard work matters....
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Last weekend I preached Romans 14.1-12 (available online soon). In the passage there's a tricky question of what is going on in Rome. Clearly there is a problem with meat eating which is making some (those Paul calls "weak in faith", i.e. not fully liberated) turn to vegetarianism. The two obvious explanations are:
- this is Jewish converts who are still very sensitive about food laws. The word Paul uses for "unclean" is an "almost technical term" (says one commentator). In this case then the weak in faith are those who have imported old rules into the new way, as opposed to those who come from a Gentile background and are unphased by Jewish food laws.
- this is Gentile converts who are sensitive about food that has been offered to idols as part of the slaughter process. However, Paul does not mention this as a problem anywhere in Romans (compared to, say, 1 Corinthians). On the flip side, vegetarianism is an obvious antidote to this problem, whereas vegetarianism is a rather extreme answer to Jewish food laws (in fact, an "illegal" one, as Jewish law proscribes the eating of the Passover Lamb). So, in this case, the weak in faith are probably Gentile converts who know how the food is slaughtered and are sensitive about its source. The Jewish converts know that idols are all false and are simply not bothered.
This is where the hard work of thinking through these issues matters. Each leads you down a slightly different path of application. On the one hand you have those who have been brought up in a strict (perhaps Christian) background who cannot shake off the nagging doubts about certain activities that their parents thought were worldly, e.g. cinema going. In other words the weak in faith are plagued by legalism.
On the other hand you have those who come from a non Christian background who are so keen to move away from their old way of life that they develop a false kind of asceticism which makes them more law bound than their other brothers - in other words the weak in faith are plagued by worries about worldliness and cut themselves off from everything to do with their old life.
So the hard work does matter. Preachers need to ponder and think through these things. For what it's worth I'm with James Dunn (which I'm not always!) who suggests that the hyperbole that Paul embraces might suggest that he is tackling both using general descriptions.
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