Recently I wrote on facebook that it is not the high road to make rules for other people on debatable issues. There are some people in this world who think they have the right and maybe the obligation to figure out what is good and right for everyone else to do. You wear makeup that is flashy, like that British singer (I can't think of her name right now), and these type of people want to challenge you about that. Perhaps they question why you think you need to wear makeup when God made you beautiful to begin with. And then they take the step of deciding that you MUST have bad motives and it has to be wrong. Or maybe you have a tattoo. They take the step of deciding it has to be a wrong motive that made you get it and therefore it is wrong to get tattoos. Or perhaps you smoke. They can see no way around the scripture that says your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and since smoking hurts your body, they call it a sin to smoke.
I would call these people "next steppers." They find something wrong for themselves and take the "next step" and apply that to other people, too, and decide it has to wrong for all people. They are today's Pharisees that have a list of rules for others to follow to be holy. THEY ARE ALSO LIVING IN DIRECT CONTRADICTION TO ROMANS 14, WHICH THE PHARISEES DID NOT HAVE. Romans 14 requires Christians to not pass judgement on other Christians in regard to disputable matters. It requires it. You just don't get to go there. A debatable or disputable matter would be one that is not clearly laid out in the New Testament as a command or is not a moral issue clear in scripture. When Paul took the issue on in Romans 14 he used the issue of what we eat, and of one day being more holy than another. These were 2 debatable issue to him. Now this latter one was HUGE for Jewish people because this implies the Sabbath. And what Paul was saying was that to keep or not keep the Sabbath was a matter of conviction one had personally. It was a debatable issue. How could he, a Jew, say that? In Colossians Paul talks about how all these issues of the law were a shadow of Jesus, and he includes the Sabbath in that there in Colossians. So Paul sees the Sabbath, and the rest of the law, as having been fulfilled in Christ. That is why we do not have to keep the Sabbath in the same way as old testament time people (Jews especially) were supposed to. And the same can be said of other old testament laws that are not repeated in the new testament or are not clearly tied to the character of God and true moral living. An example from scripture of a clear case of an immoral choice would be rape. Rape is a clear violation of another person sexually. It is a CLEAR example of not loving a neighbor as oneself. It is clearly a sin that we can rebuke each other over. And that the state has obviously decided is punishable (at least in America and most other places), for which we should be glad.
So when an issue is not clearly addressed in scripture, such as smoking, it is a debatable issue. And therefore, as from Romans 14, we cannot judge and require other people to do what our conscience requires us to do. And to do so is not being a better person or more holy. It is simply to be disobedient to Jesus. Those that can smoke, according to Romans 14, are considered the stronger brother, because they feel freedom to smoke and don't see a limitation by scripture (of which there is not one that is direct). Romans 14 says we are not to judge those brothers who feel that freedom. It also says that the stronger brother must not "look down on" those who are called weaker brothers there and don't feel such freedom. We are to give each other the freedom to do or not do these debatable issues without causing an issue over it.
So it is not taking the high road to be a person who makes all kinds of rules, or any kinds of rules, for others to follow on issues that are debatable. It is WRONG to do so. And making these rules does not lead someone closer to Christ (see Colossians 2 end and 3).
Further, I think Christians that understand Romans 14 need to start standing up to other Christians who do not get this passage and want to make rules for others and tell them to back off and leave other Christians alone. In Titus 1 we are challenged to rebuke sharply people like this (I see them clearly fitting in with what Titus says here, although many of them don't make rules for others to get money or fit some of the other descriptions there, but they do fit in as people of "the circumcision" group. These were people who thought Christians still needed to get circumcised to be saved, in obedience to the law of Moses). It is said there that they are ruining whole households. They are called mere talkers and deceivers. They are the type of people who don't think anything is pure (so they make up huge lists of what we cannot do as Christians).
So Christians, stop tolerating these rule makers, and correct them. They are wrong to do this.
Having said that, Christians, do make sure that you feel freedom on the issues you find freedom in, and you are not just going along with the easy crowd. Because as Romans 14 says, we each stand or fall before our Lord. So we should feel confident based on scripture, not just because we don't care or are following slacker traditions of other slackers around us. We need to be convinced of our freedoms.
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