Faith or Fear

The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin. (Romans 14:22-23)

Here's one of the scenarios as Paul has set it up in this passage. A person comes to feel liberated from the superstitions of believing that somehow food that has been offered to pagan idols before being set before them on the table contains some sort of supernatural contamination. They understand that the idea that somehow this food is “unclean” simply because of its physical locations en route to the table is a silly idea, because idols don't really have any power at all. God states plainly in the Scriptures that idols are just rocks or pieces of wood created by foolish people with vivid imaginations. So this person has no problem or stress about eating food that may or may not have been offered to idols ahead of the meal.

This person has matured in their spiritual growth and their faith in God so that they have peace about this issue and it no longer bothers their conscience as it once did to sit down to a meal with friends without obsessing over finding out whether their friends (or otherwise) secretly arranged a rendezvous between the food and an idol previously. They are living in a different perspective of reality than many around them based on their knowledge of God's supremacy and are learning to rest in the truth of Scriptures.

However, they are also with fellow-believers, some who are not so sure and confident about this idea of “no fear” when it comes to the potential problems involved with things pertaining to idols. These other possibly newer believers still have not had this issue sufficiently settled in their hearts to feel free to participate in such activities because from their own background there was enormous significance attached to eating food offered to idols. They believed that in some way you were accepting some authority of that false god over your life or ingesting some spirit force by eating food that was spiritually linked to that specific idol.

For this person there was still a remnant of fear lingering in their heart that they would be compromising their allegiance to their new Master, Jesus Christ who had redeemed them from sin and the power of demons, if they indulged in activities that used to hold so much spiritual significance for them as an active pagan. For them, to eat food that was offered to idols, even if you did not do so intentionally, was to commit treason against God and to spiritually commit fornication with that idol.

So when these two kinds of believers found themselves at the same meal together you can see that there could be a great deal of potential tension. One believer feels free and confident that they don't have to worry about the spiritual dimension of food on the table and the other believer is wondering if there are still demons lurking within the food waiting to infect an unsuspecting guest and take over their soul. To the first believer this is all a bunch of silly nonsense that seems just superstitious and ludicrous. To the second person this is an issue of principle, of morality, of spiritual significance that cannot be ignored except at your eternal peril. As a result they even go to the extent of not eating any meat at all so as to avoid any possibility of involving themselves with demon worship, since it was always the meat that was offered to the idols. By becoming vegetarians they could preempt any attempts through food to draw them back into the world of demon worship and control.

What Paul is trying to point out in Romans 14 is that resolving whether or not it is right or wrong to eat that meat that might have been offered to an idol previously is not nearly so important as the attitude and spirit that each of these believers have toward each other. If the person who has more mature faith looks down on the other, more insecure individual with any amount of contempt for their superstitions and fears, then Paul says this is far more injurious than whether his opinion about the food is actually correct. And if the more confident Christian flaunts his beliefs by deliberately eating food that he knows to be offered to idols just to force his point on the other and thereby damages the faith of the newer believer, then Paul declares that the first believer is tearing down the very confidence and trust that God has been quietly working to build up in the heart of the one still weaker in faith.

Furthermore, this new believer may be trying to shed his superstitions but is still very bothered by them and his conscience smites him every time he eats this food offered to idols. If he were to just go ahead and join his friends in eating the food anyway or if they pressured him into doing so because they insisted that he must in order to prove that their opinions and Biblical proofs were valid, Paul says that he is going to suffer feelings of condemnation if he does so in spite of what the other believers insist. If he deliberately violates his conscience just to conform to peer pressure from other Christians he is not acting from trust in God but is only reacting in ways to avoid judgment from his friends.

This verse reveals to me a very important aspect of God's character and dealings with us that is nearly always eclipsed in the hearts and minds of many Christians. God does not use threats and intimidation to squeeze us into the mold that He wants us to look like. That is the method of the world and God never uses the world's methods to accomplish His desires for us. God is far more gentle and patient and wise than we ever give Him credit for and He knows just how to gently shape and attract the heart so that it learns to reflect that same gentleness and goodness.

God has much more interest in genuine heart transformation than in outward correctness or knowing all the right facts. So when it comes to understanding the true nature of real faith, it can be seen here that faith must be based on a level of intimacy and trust from the heart of each individual person. Faith must be based on a personal, growing, dynamic relationship that works itself out from the inside, not imposed from the outside. So if a person forces themselves to do certain things based on other people's convictions but are not convinced of themselves, then they are likely to have a heart filled with doubts. And according to the Word of God, doubt and condemnation seem to always hang out together and even feed off each other. Whatever is not from faith is sin.

Faith needs to be based on our own personal conviction before God individually. If our faith is based on other people's convictions instead of our own we are trying to base our relationship with God on someone else's foundation and that simply is a recipe for disaster. But unfortunately that is the basis for the faith of far too many people today. It seems so much easier to trust a pastor or teacher or popular evangelist or a denomination to do our thinking and decide how we should view and relate to God. But faith that is motivated by peer pressure or waits to see what is popular with our friends or church is not faith in God but faith in other humans.

What I see in this chapter is a warning to each one of us not to try to make ourselves the object and basis for someone else's faith. I am coming to be convinced that instead of putting so much emphasis on teaching people what to believe, we need to put far more effort into teaching people how to think, how to discover truth, how to listen to the Holy Spirit for themselves and then turn them loose to be impelled and drawn by the magnetic attractions of their Creator and Savior. If we are afraid that they won't conform to our doctrines or comply with our restrictions then we will interpose ourselves between their conscience and their God. And that is no place for any of us to try to be.

(next in series)