“Let The Strong Lift Up The Weak!”

“Let The Strong Lift Up The Weak!”
“Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.” One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetable. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand…Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind…”(Rom.14:1-6).
In “Gulliver’s travels,” the Anglo-Irish prose satirist, Jonathan Swift, tells the story of a bitter and violent protracted war between the nations of Lilliput and Blefusco. The reason for the war is seemingly very childish: Lilliput believed an egg should be broken from the small end, while Belfuscu believed it should be broken from the big end.
The causes of many bitter conflicts between persons and nations are childish and without relevance in the lives of those involved.
Some protracted disagreements are uncalled for, because at the end of the day nothing changes when whoever wins. When we innerstand certain basic deep truths, we would know that on such disputable issues we should live and let others live as they are.
A vegetarian Christian is not spiritually matured than the Christian who eats meat, neither is the reverse true. A tetotaller does not become holier than the one who takes wine; and we are not here giving a blessing to drunkards!
The point being that these are “disputable matters.” Whatever is disputable “is not established as a fact, and so open to question or debate.”
We come to Jesus with quite different priorities, and those priorities shape the questions we ask about salvation. What we eat, how we eat them and which days we observe or which feast we keep are not relevant to the answer to our salvation. What is relevant is Jesus convinces his followers, even today that “the answer to their deepest questions lay with him, even when the question and the answer” does not seem to fit”(Andrew F. Walls, 2002).
My friend, God in Christ takes us as we are, not on the basis of what we ought to become. But he takes us as we are to make us what he wants us to be.
*We owe each other a duty to be one another’s keeper. The strong in faith accepting the weak in faith without passing judgment. We need each other to grow and mature in the faith. The Lord is able to make everybody to stand! Nobody is going to stand because you or I decides so by human judgment.
Live and let others live! *If you are tall and standing in front, please stoop, so that the short people behind can see the stage too. If you know you are short, find your way and sit on the floor and nobody will bother you.*
Weekend prayer: Thank you Lord for accepting me as I am. Make me into what you want me to be and let me be tolerant of others. Amen!
Have a blessed weekend! Peace be with you!
Babila Fochang
nibabsfon@gmail.com