Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 8

Today's reading: 1 Samuel 20; 1 Corinthians 8

I feel like 1 Corinthians 8 is kind of easily misused in the modern West. Conveniently, when I hear/read it misused, it is generally someone interpreting it like the Romans 14 weaker brother, so it becomes a "right teaching, wrong passage" kind of thing which is at least better than teaching something that is otherwise not biblical. But we should still strive to interpret and teach the Word properly, so I wanted to talk about this chapter today.

I think the reason this chapter gets misapplied so easily and often is that the majority of us don't have a background in idol worship. Given the Judeo-Christian background to modern Western society, most of us grew up under some sort of Christian understanding, even if we were not Christians ourselves. This leaves us with some blind spots in understanding how Paul's readers would have received his words.

We have to remember, first and foremost, that in the ancient world there was no atheist. The Corinthian believers had not been sitting around as atheists waiting to be introduced to God by Paul, they believed in and worshipped many gods. In the ancient world you had the god(s) you worshipped, and then there were the other gods. Those other gods were not less real than your god, they just weren't the gods of your family/city/country/trade/etc., and so you didn't worship them. So normally to introduce another god into the mix is no big deal, but the Christians were coming along proclaiming, not just another god, but the God of gods and Lord of lords. Those who were turning to Christ were called to turn from and leave off worshipping the gods they previously associated themselves with and follow Jesus.

But now more to the issue Paul is addressing. Meat in Corinth may very well have been sacrificed to an idol before making it to the table. If an animal was sacrificed in a temple, some of the meat would be burned on the altar but the leftovers would often be sold. There are supposedly records of restaurants even being attached to temples so they would have an easy way to use/sell/distribute the leftover meat. In that cultural space, that could mean, on the one hand, that your favorite restaurant is at a temple and serves meat sacrificed to idols, or on the other hand that even when you buy meat at the market or are served a meal at a friend's house, the meat may have been part of a sacrifice. So the ultimate question for the Corinthian Christian was, "If I eat meat that was previously sacrificed to an idol, am I sinfully participating in the worship of that idol?"

To that question Paul unequivocally answers, "No, not necessarily." It is totally fine for them to eat whatever they want, even if it was formerly sacrificed to another god, as long as they aren't eating it as an act of worship. However, Paul also points out that this needs to not be their only consideration, and they needed to consider what they were communicating to others by their actions. For example, if people generally ate at the temple as an intentional act of worship of the god of the temple, and they see you eating there, won't they assume you are worshipping that god as well? So if they know you are a practicing Christian, won't they assume that means it is fine to be a Christian and also worship these other gods like before? And this was especially dangerous since, like I mentioned above, that was the normal modus operandi, to simply add the worship of a new god to the worship you were already doing. So while you might be perfectly fine to eat in that temple in full faithfulness to Yahweh, you may very well be leading others to sin as they misunderstand what you are doing.

Imagine, for example, if you were a high schooler who just became a Christian and you see your youth pastor out somewhere smoking pot. As far as you know this guy loves the Lord and is faithful to following him, so what do you conclude? Probably that God is totally fine with you smoking pot. And so by seeing this example from someone else, you are led into sin without really knowing it.

Now, to be clear, this example is different from Paul's example in a very important way. Paul's example is not sin, but is being misunderstood by onlookers in a way that would make it sinful for them to follow suit. My example is sin, but I am just trying to make the point that this would be the result, communicating to someone that their Christianity is fine to include something that it should not conclude.

I actually have a hard time finding good analogs for this for us today that aren't rooted in idol worship. This honestly seems like something that would have been a big and important issue for them, but really isn't something we deal with at this point in time in the modern West. Maybe that will change over time, I'm not really sure.

For today though, I just wanted to walk through what Paul is and isn't saying here in 1 Corinthians 8 so we don't fall into the mistake of thoughtlessly treating this passage like we would Romans 14.