Contemplative Bible Reading

Romans 14:1 (New Living Translation)

1 Accept other believers who are weak in faith, and don’t argue with them about what they think is right or wrong.

There is something about much of the writings of the New Testament and how they are translated into English. This little something bothers me. This sentence is one example. There is a statement, “Accept other believers.” There is a little phrase that modifies the statement, “who are weak in faith.”

Folks seem to focus on these little phrases that modify the statements instead of the statements. Allow me to revise the sentence to:

Accept other believers, and don’t argue with them about what they think is right or wrong.

The following sentences in scripture use the topic of food as something not worthy of argument of right and wrong. “You, fellow follower of Jesus, should cut the carbs!” Can you imagine arguing that?

And sometimes we focus on, “who are weak in faith.”

Oh, well, you have to understand that fella’ over there. His diet is all out of whack in opposition to what the Bible teaches. Our bodies are temples of God, and he abuses his body and tears down God’s temple because of his diet. Well, he is “weak in faith,” so we’ll just let him slide into whatever bad place the weak in faith slide and be done with him. We can’t expect the “weak in faith” to meet our standards of strong in faith.

Nope. Nope. And more nope. Other believers are believers. They eat other this, wear other that, live other there, and all sorts of other things. Argue about those things? Nope. Who wants to join the believers if all the believers do is argue about all those things? Let’s do much better. Please God, help me to do much better.